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Shaping Your Community: What Films Did, Games Must Do
The game industry has always
been supported by enthusiastic communities of gamers. However, the relationship
between development teams and the gaming public is often typified by
either reticence or tension. For years, the communities and groups springing
up around game releases have been left to their own devices. With the
rise of the casual game market and wider acceptance of games, we take
a look at what can be learnt from how films have capitalized on their
enthusiasts and wider public following.
What Films Have Done
The success of The Lord of
the Rings, and films like it, represents an against-the-odds production
that drew heavily on support from an enthusiast community. Traditionally
the film industry would keep its production process close to its chest,
only making announcements when the majority of the work was in the can.
Much like a magician's dark art, it was thought that to give too much
away would diminish the audience's final experience.
However, this trilogy
employed a strategy that involved fans in the project each step of the
way. Peter Jackson and his team shared their progress in a frank and
open manner with a wide audience through official and fan-run websites.
Let's look at how Jackson publicly surveyed the task of starting filming:
"My team and I have poured
our hearts into this project for the past three years, so it's a great
thrill to begin actual photography. Filming three films at once has
never been done before, in addition to which the project features state-of-the-art
special effects, so it was essential to plan everything down to the
last detail. We owe Professor Tolkien and his legion of fans worldwide
our very best efforts to make these films with the integrity they deserve."
Jackson and his staff delivered
blog-style entries dating back to the beginnings of their project that
shared every aspect of the process from casting and location hunting
to script writing and editing. Jackson himself took time during the
busy filming schedule to record audio entries that answered questions
from a variety of fan sites. One such site, TheOneRing.net, was particularly
positive about the process: "Evidence suggests that the three films
are being done slowly and with great care." Other sites such as
RingBearer.com instantly took to Jackson's accessible
and open approach, with an AintItCoolNews.com poster remarking, "I really have enjoyed this little experiment
of Peter's, and I'm sure that most of you out there would agree we should
do it again".
This transparency soon garnered
respect and interest from both fans of the books and the wider public.
Although it is hard to quantify, it is likely that this approach was
at least partially responsible for the widespread success and fan-adoption
of their film trilogy.
This is all very well for grand
projects, but what about those with more modest budgets? Fledgling productions
such as Joss Whedon's Firefly have also succeeded through fan support
-- even with their studios cutting funding. A strong relationship between
the Whedon and his audience was engendered by his willingness to listen
to fan feedback and appear personally at events.
Websites, podcasts
and interviews were all used to ensure they communicated openly and
consistently with their fan following. Such was the support in the face
of the series being cut, that Joss went on to produce a full feature
length movie, Serenity. "This movie should not exist," commented
Whedon, to his fans. "Failed TV shows don't get made into major
motion pictures -- unless the creator, the cast, and the fans believe
beyond reason. It is, in an unprecedented sense, your movie."
Whether through the big budgets
and impressive plans of The Lord of the Rings, or through the fan love
of Firefly, the film industry is now painfully aware of the need to
enable audiences to have a sense of ownership of the entertainment they
buy. There is no better way to establish buyer loyalty, or in fact to
deliver a compelling experience, than to share the film's development
and production process with the consumer.
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