Six to Start

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SALT: Day X Exists


Salt is an upcoming American action thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Kurt Wimmer and Brian Helgeland, and starring Angelina Jolie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Liev Schreiber. Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, accused of being a KGB sleeper agent, on the run to try to clear her name. (Wikipedia)

In Day X Exists the game experience, you are a junior officer at the CIA. Your mission is to track Salt and capture her. However, after making contact with you, Salt asks you to help her clear her name and get the real Day X agents.

In order to do so, you have to complete a series of 9 missions over a nine week period. You can keep track or your progress by using your Facebook account (Facebook Connect), however, it is not mandatory. All unlocked missions are independent from one another and can be played out of order.

9 missions: interrogation, photo surveillance, laser bug, tracer, signal diverter, electronic dead drop…

 All of them involve puzzles and/or testing your speed and reactivity. Even though the first mission is fairly simple (“mission 1 interrogation”: when to “bluff” and when to tell the truth to a senior officer), there are some pretty tough ones such as the electronic dead drop which is a ‘maze construction’ puzzle. Even the photo surveillance challenge requires a couple of tries. If you can’t succeed, the game doesn’t get too frustrating as you can either replay the minigame / mission or continue the story. The gameplay has another layer to it, with “clue codes” hidden in every missions’ clips: once the codes are entered, users can gain bonus points. The story clips are not too bad either and try to address the user directly (subjective camera).

The campaign was developed by Australian transmedia company Hoodlum for Sony Pictures.

MovieViral does a recap of all the missions here

Posted at 1:59pm and tagged with: transmedia, marketing, games, film, hoodlum, by silentsun.

Posted at 4:20pm and tagged with: transmedia, by silentsun.

This is transmedia world building: creating a fictional universe so rich and complete that a multitude of interweaving stories can emerge from it, taking form through the social and technological spaces we share. The video game spin-off becomes an opportunity to extend the narrative and create a new experience. The web site becomes a breadcrumb in the story arc offering a phone number that conveys a meeting place. The graphic novel picks up the life of a tertiary character from the original story. The audience is asked to participate in the unfolding narrative.

Broadcasting Tangible Narratives

On the importance and key role of physical artefacts in transmedia entertainment

Posted at 3:03pm and tagged with: transmedia, physical world, gameplay, digital data, by silentsun.

I think we all dream of one day having a holodeck – the perfect storytelling tool. It would let us employ visuals, audio, touch, smell, and taste to pull the audience through our stories, allow us to mix archeaological, environmental and immediate storytelling. In some ways, transmedia storytelling nudges us toward that goal.

But our theater, the real world, is so diffuse. If we want to convey touch or smell, we have to compile a mailing list and send out packages. The bulk of our players generally have to make do with audio and visuals.

So one of my pet questions is, how can we broadcast more things digitally?