Springtime
Published on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 by ReubenOK, so the seasons here in Northern California are much milder than what I grew up with in New Jersey, but there’s still an optimism and general sense of rebirth that happens every year around this time.
For me, this year is especially poignant — we’re pulling up on our 2nd anniversary as a company and looking forward to the next year. While we began as a company building presences in Second Life, we’re now operating in a wide variety of worlds, building worlds from the ground up for major entertainment companies, creating Alternate Reality Games and asking ourselves, “What do we want to be when we grow up”? Will we continue to focus on connecting the real world and the Internet? Or maybe go more broadly into Social Media? Or maybe all of the above. It’s Springtime after all, and these questions seem normal and healthy.
Second Life has a new CEO — as Mark Kingdon’s start date approaches, we’re curiously watching, wondering and wishing well.
I’m mostly happy to be back home — for the last two months I’ve been traveling at least 2 days every week. It’s so nice to be able to take a deep breath now and spend a couple months (semi) stationary. We’ve got some big announcements coming out in the next few weeks, so that’ll keep things interesting. Aaah Spring.
Any Summer predictions?
You free Thursday?
Published on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 by LyraFor over five years I’ve had the extreme pleasure of knowing an evocative, intelligent individual in both RL & SL. The first time I met him in Second Life, he could have filed an abuse report on me. The talented writer of the New World Notes blog (with a bevy of other writing credits under his belt) has written his first book, “The Making of Second Life“.
Please join us for a “mixed reality” party in celebration of Hamlet Au’s (Wagner James Au in meatspace) latest achievement!
Past
Thursday, April 24
5:00-8:00 pm SLT
It’s going to be a “mixed reality event”, meaning that he’s also having a parallel party in a penthouse in New York City! While he’s chatting with us in world, he’ll also be hanging out with friends and wine IRL and posting pictures of the party there on a laptop at the penthouse.
Contact me (Lyra Millionsofus) with any questions! See you tomorrow.
MediaWeek: Steiger on Fox Interactive Reorg
Published on Monday, April 21st, 2008 by MatGiven the ongoing conversations he has across the interactive advertising, social media, entertainment and virtual world spaces, Reuben is fast becoming an oft-cited authority at the messy intersection of these disciplines. MediaWeek’s Mike Shields today quoted Reuben weighing in on the implications of the recent reorg at Fox Interactive for advertisers pushing into social media. MySpace is obviously central to this discussion.
First MoU Contribution to AdAge DigitalNext Blog
Published on Monday, April 21st, 2008 by MatBe sure to check out Reuben’s first contribution to AdAge’s new DigitalNext blog, which AdAge describes as follows: “a collection of news and opinions on the emerging media and technology space and its opportunities and impact on marketers. The group’s esteemed (and opinionated) contributors run agencies, startups, and creative departments and hail from all sorts of disciplines, including design and user interface, social networking and community, mobile, gaming and virtual worlds.”
WWE in Gaia Garners Webby Recognition
Published on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 by Mat
Already the recipient of an LACP Spotlight award, last fall’s WWE SummerSlam in Gaia campaign has been recognized as an Honoree by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, best known for putting on the Webby Awards, aka “The Oscars of the Internet.”
As if a regular fez wasn’t cool enough.. meet the InfoFez!
Published on Friday, April 4th, 2008 by LyraBack in October 2007, Electrolux in conjunction with Gronstedt and Millions of Us announced a grant program for Second Life residents to submit ideas for useful devices designed to solve a specific challenge. After several months of hard work from Ann Enigma (SL name) / Hilary Mason (RL name), Electrolux is proud to present the Infofez, a cool fez that you wear, designed to let you experience the cultural and educational information in any build that contains the distribution nodes. Come get your own Infofez on April 7th, 2008 at noon SLT in the Electrolux Innovision Hub. Ann will be there to answer questions and talk about the Infofez which will be set up to display information around the Innovision Hub.
As you travel around the Innovision Hub, information will appear on the bottom left of your screen or your “Near Me” chat box when you approach specific areas. You can also turn it on/off whenever you choose by clicking on the fez to configure it.
During the launch party Electrolux will announce another exciting opportunity for SL residents to get involved in helping shape the future of SL innovations.
Contact: Mat Small
Telephone: 415-332-3054
Email: mat@millionsofus.com
Virtual Worlds News: Industry Coalition Works with Forrester on Virtual Worlds ROI
Published on Friday, April 4th, 2008 by MatVirtual Worlds News picked up today’s announcement that Millions of Us is leading an industry coalition working with Forrester Consulting to help deliver standardized - and more in-depth - metrics for virtual worlds marketing campaigns. They key issue is moving away from simplistic eyeball counts towards a measure of engagement quality.
Read More
Mighty Words of Wisdom
Published on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 by ChrisThis has just gone around our facebook wall at Millions of Us. Powerful prose indeed. Worth sharing with the world.
The Road to WrestleMania XXIV Paved in Habbo “Furni”
Published on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 by Eliana
The Road to WrestleMania XXIV has been paved, the gauntlet thrown down! Who will rise to the challenge for a chance to party with a real Superstar in Habbo Hotel?
Following on the heels of two successful campaigns promoting Royal Rumble and No Way Out, World Wrestling Entertainment and Millions of Us brings you this third and final campaign promoting WWE’s marquee event WrestleMania XXIV. We are thrilled to tie together all three campaigns as we continue the narrative of the Road to WrestleMania XXIV with our “WWE Habbo Road to WrestleMania XXIV“ contest running March 19th - March 28th, 2008.
In this campaign, WWE will challenge Habbos to battle on behalf of their favorite Superstar in five WrestleMania matches - Triple Threat Match, World Heavyweight Champion Edge vs. Undertaker, Big Show vs. Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather – The Biggest Battles the Best, The Money in the Bank Ladder Match, and ‘Playboy’ BunnyMania Lumberjack Match. In the “Habboized” version of Road to WrestleMania XXIV, each of these matches is represented as a complex maze race taking place daily for one hour in the virtual world of Habbo Hotel. Each of the Superstars in these matches will call upon Habbos to “battle” for their victory by racing through the “Habbo Road to WrestleMania XXIV” - a virtual labyrinth built out of Habbo “furni” spanning 7 WrestleMania themed Habbo Hotel rooms.
To fully convey the WrestleMania story, the race begins within the No Way Out Elimination Chamber themed room, since the Road to WrestleMania goes through No Way Out! The Elimination Chamber room is just one of the 7 WrestleMania themed rooms. Habbos will also race through 5 other rooms, one for each of the five matches we are representing, and the final room which is the WrestleMania XXIV room. This maze will be complex, changing daily, and requiring the right selection of paths, doorways, and tunnels to find the finish line. Each time a Habbo successfully traverses the maze during the 1 hour window the race is in play, the Habbo is able to earn points for his or her favorite Superstar and bring the Superstar that much closer to winning that day’s respective match. At the end of the 5 days, points will be tallied for each Superstar and the Superstar with the most points (and support) from the Habbo community for each match will be the winner of the respective WWE WrestleMania XXIV match. The winning Superstars for each match will be announced at the end of the 5 days and all Habbos who enter and finish at least one race and have supported the winning Superstar(s) will have the chance to party in Habbo Hotel with a real WWE Superstar! This exclusive and private event reserved only for winning Habbos will be the first of its kind in Habbo history!
Special thanks to our long-standing client WWE and Tom Boland for all his support and rapid client approvals, as well as, Kristin Kanan at Sulake Corp. for her dedication and infectious enthusiasm throughout all 3 campaigns. It’s been a blast!
Habbo Road To WrestleMania XXIV Group Page:
Another sweet banner ad!
Questions -
Eliana Sur
eliana(at)millionsofus(dot)com
The Reality of Producing an Alternate Reality Game
Published on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 by ElianaMillions of Us recently launched an ARG experience for a major network television show. I want to take a moment to discuss the experience of producing an ARG because I found it fascinating. First, designing an ARG is a lot like playing an ARG. It requires imagination, razor-sharp attention to detail, creative and collaborative problem-solving, a knack for detecting subtleties, and complete suspension of disbelief. I also find myself comparing the experience to being in a co-dependent relationship – a really intense, committed, delusional, romanticized, verging on obsessive relationship where both parties track each other’s every move, check in religiously, and are determined in making the partnership work… like marriage maybe? ; ) The happy couple in this case was the puppetmasters (Millions of Us and the fictitious entity known as Enitech Research Lab) and the players (the web community). A healthy relationship would require consistent effort, communication, compromise, collaboration, commitment, and most importantly, some imaginative role-playing to keep things interesting and evolving. Could we both deliver what the other was looking for?
Unlike most of the projects we work on where we design and deliver a tightly controlled experience, producing this ARG required us to design an experience around a lot of variables and in collaboration with a massive and distributed online community. Since the success of the ARG hinged on player participation, and especially since our narrative relied on this aspect, creating a well-defined plan of action was tricky. How do you create a detailed roadmap for producing a viral thriller where audience participation is uncertain but critical in establishing the storyline? We were in a risky position of assuming the audience would respond. Other unique challenges posed included figuring out how to make the gameplay explicit, yet discrete, as well as figuring out how to launch the ARG and seed it in the right online communities to gain visibility, interaction, and virality without compromising the perceived legitimacy and “reality” of the underlying story. Resolving these issues was a bit of an experiment - forming a hypothesis on what we expected, then testing, measuring the results, and recalibrating whenever necessary.
The other challenging aspect of producing this ARG was producing the weekly video series. Since we needed to tell a story where we took into account player feedback and content and had to inject these elements into our storyline, we had to keep the creative flexible, adaptive, and somewhat improvisational. In order to guide the ARG experience, we created a tight feedback loop between us and the players, responding and communicating diligently and often directly to a growing online community of invested players all over the country. Through emails, blog posts, video posts, and more subtle forms of communication such as subliminal messaging in our videos or through affiliated fictitious sites and entities, we endeavored to drive the experience, but also invited the randomness and chaos of a massively multiplayer design in the storyline. It was entertaining for us as the puppetmasters to be entangled in a complex process of trying to anticipate the players’ moves, respond to it in kind, and stay in-step in this weekly frenetic dance. Lastly, and possibly the most difficult challenge was generating the gameplay. Designing these highly complex puzzles within the framework of our story and delivering it with clever subtlety to a super discerning community of Terminator geeks was an ARG in and of itself (thank you Evan!). These puzzles included everything from cracking code, to assembling cryptic diagrams, to digging up geocached “cameras-of-the-future,” to adventuring into real world venues and interacting with the right people to retrieve a hidden item.
Capturing the essence of an ARG experience is a lot like trying to capture the essence of a healthy relationship. You can map out some of the key elements in advance, but ultimately, you have to feel your way through it. You have to intuitively understand your players and feel this vague thing called “chemistry.” Working with Blair Erickson, Creative Director at MoU, and Evan Jones of Stitch Media, aka ubergeeks, we had an intuitive understanding of what our audience wanted and were able to effectively anticipate what would keep them engaged. What was pleasantly surprising, however, was how increasingly engaged and excited we were by the players and the content they were producing as the ARG progressed. It was a great relationship. Without a doubt, we had chemistry!
Though the campaign has ended officially, fans continue to create, distribute, and promote content inspired by the ARG, a testament to successful campaign virality. This experience has taught me some valuable lessons as a marketer. You have to know your audience (target market). You have to anticipate their needs (market research). You have to deeply and genuinely care about the relationship (engagement versus reach). And if you do all this, it’s truly rewarding (high ROI).
Special, special thanks to Blair Erickson for all his effort, vision, and diligence throughout this campaign. You’re inspirational.
Recap of ARG via BoingBoingTV:
Questions
Contact - Eliana Sur
eliana(at)millionsofus(dot)com
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