Sony is offering a series of Web episodes and companion challenges that reveal an important plot line in an upcoming movie. Sony hopes to mimic the viral success of Facebook games like Mafia Wars, which is played by tens of millions of people.
Ambitious Web games that interlock with social networking sites are an increasing focus. The goal is to reverse the consumer-advertiser relationship. Traditional marketing pushes a message over and over. If people instead pull bits of information into their lives through a game, they are more likely to feel a sense of ownership.
Successful movie games get over a million plays, with some soaring to 10 million and movie-related iPhone apps can be downloaded in “the high hundreds of thousands of times. The challenge is to make these kinds of efforts feel organic. It has to be an experience in and of itself that is powerful enough that people will forget that they are being marketed to.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
