The Threshold
The Threshold alternate reality game was an interactive spy drama featuring the employees of networking giant Cisco as both the characters and the audience. As the first game of its kind for a Fortune 500 company, The Threshold took 19,000 members of Cisco's international sales force on an expansive adventure that entertained, educated, and brought them together as a team to solve creative challenges. Players cracked codes, found documents and websites, and uncovered over thirty different pieces of streaming content. Players were captivated by the story remaining fully engaged for four weeks until they solved the mystery of . . . the Threshold.
- Experience: 3 weeks
- Audience: Cisco Sales Force, 89% male but with active female audience
- Participation: 13,000 participated (nearly 70% of total audience)
- Views: Over 40,000 views of in-experience Wiki
- Posts: Over 1,300 posts in in-experience Forum
- Kudos: Biggest corporate experience of its kind
- Case Study Website
Cisco’s The Hunt
After the success of The Threshold, Cisco again turned to transmedia as a way to entertain and foster connections among the members of its 19,000-strong Global Sales Force. The Hunt was a thriller that took place in locations around the world, and Cisco employees from six continents participated. Players again cracked codes and found documents, but they also contributed content, found a clue in a park in Norway, and interacted across social media in story that played out in real-time. Set in the world of Cisco and highlighting Cisco technology, The Hunt explored new ways to get people to form cross-discipline connections and use newly developed technologies.
- Experience: 2 weeks
- Audience: Cisco Global Sales Force
- Participation: Nearly 9,000 players (50% of potential audience)
- Global: Over 40,000 views of in-experience Wiki
- Time Spent: Over 10 minutes per day
- Case Study Website
Webishades
Are you tired of having to wait to watch your favorite web series? Need more of The Guild? Find you just can't wait to see Squatters or A Good Knight's Quest? Have you got Compulsions? Then you need Webishades! Here's your chance to find out more.
Webishades was a fun transmedia experience that took place across the web partnering with 10 of the top web series creators to bring a wacky product to life. Launched at ComicCon, players could receive a surprise phone call from Felicia Day by solving puzzles involving:
- "The Guild"
- "Good Night's Quest"
- "Compulsions"
- "Squatters"
- "Bumps in the Night"
- To start the experience. go to: www.webishades.com
Slick
Slick is a transmedia experience that uses film, live events, and digital to immerse its audience in the story of Ian, who finds the lost by travelling through mysterious portals leading to a strangely empty alternate world, each trip increasing the risk that this time he won’t be able to find his way home.
- Selected as one of top 5 projects presented at the Power to Pixel Cross-Media Conference.
- For the complete summary click here (PDF)
Cisco’s A Matter of Time
Part comedy flick, part adventure game, part IQ challenge, this high-paced story lets you drive the action within an interactive Hollywood-style sitcom.
- In order to hold the attention of a busy audience who’ve seen more than their share of "infotainment" platforms, Juxt Interactive decided to develop a new kind of learning tool. A Matter of Time was an immersive role-playing game (RPG) rendered in a Hollywood-style sitcom with real Cisco employees invited to help a fictional Cisco sales team win the contract of the century. Throughout the experience, informative dialogue and interactive challenges were incorporated covering topics like cloud computing, collaboration, and core products and services, while keeping the audience entertained.
USC/Hybrid High’s i4
Hybrid High is an experimental high school emphasizing science, technology, engineering and mathematics. What better place for an immersive experience where students learned everything from the fundamentals of chemistry, astronomy and rocket science, to code-cracking, and spectral analysis through. They were led by a crack team of super spies who communicated with them through videos and forum posts, Facebook, Twitter, text messages, phone calls. Students participated in on-campus challenges and took special trips to SpaceX and the California ScienCenter. Then they turned around and used those skills to thwart a secret organization and save the Curiosity Rover from destruction.
- Experience: 8 weeks
- Adoption: Over ¼ of total audience engaged
Why So Serious?
(42 Entertainment)
A 14-month long, world-wide Alternate Reality Experience leading up to the release of the feature film The Dark Knight, Why So Serious? was an experience woven across 30 websites, phone numbers, email accounts, text messages, live events and product integration points. With over 10 million impressions in 75 countries, players called phone numbers written in the sky, found mobile phones baked inside cakes and unearthed the story of what happened in Gotham between Batman Begins and the opening moments of The Dark Knight.
- Steve, Behnam and Maureen were part of the talented 42 Entertainment team. Recognized by Guinness as the largest project of its kind, Why So Serious? eclipsed any other viral movie project in scope, richness and complexity, and its design established effective engagement techniques that set the standard for many campaigns today.
Year Zero
(42 Entertainment)
An award-winning, groundbreaking Alternate Reality Experience extending the world of the Nine Inch Nails album of the same name developed by 42 Entertainment. Included 30 unique websites, USB drives with previously unreleased music discovered in concert venues across Europe, codes in concert t-shirts, and an underground "Art Is Resistance" movement, it culminated in a secret concert in an LA warehouse.
Go Forth
(Wieden + Kennedy)
"Who was Grayson Ozias IV and Where is His Fortune?" Jan provided the Story/Experience Design for the G.O. IV Experience and Treasure Hunt. She then remained on the project from launch to endgame, in the dual role of Producer & Community Manager.
LonelyGirl15
(LG15 Prods)
As a Writer for the Webby 08 winning Lonelygirl15 series (seasons 1 & 2), Jan wrote over 70 scripts for the show. She stepped into the role of experience design, creating live and online events, raising the level of interactivity, engaging dedicated Fans and giving them an opportunity to step into the Fiction and interact with the Characters.
- To date, the Lonelygirl15 YouTube page has received over 274 million views.
Focus Rally
(Undercurrent)
The Ford Focus Rally brought the unique challenge of turning an Amazing Race-like contest into an Interactive, Cross-platform Adventure.
- Jan designed epic challenges for both the Online Players and the Rally Drivers around iconic pieces of Americana that stretched across the country. Each challenge was created to not only ignite the Online Players, but to connect them to the Drivers, their fellow Players and ultimately the fabulous and newly designed Ford Focus.
Vanishing Point
(42 Entertainment)
Developed by 42 Entertainment to mark the release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, Vanishing Point became the world’s largest puzzle game. Players around the world took part in an online/offline puzzle hunt with clues embedded in everything from the fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas to skywriting in Sydney to architectural projections on landmarks in London, Berlin, Hong Kong and Toronto. The trail culminated in a huge fireworks display in Seattle, which itself contained clues to the final puzzle. Prizes included Xbox systems, laptops, and the ultimate vista: A trip into space.
- Experience site: http://www.vanishingpointgame.com
Dead Man's Tale
(42 Entertainment)
This was a first-of-its-kind 2-player interactive adventure celebrating the release of Windows Live Messenger and the feature film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest developed by 42 Entertainment. Working together, players unlocked narrative and ultimately revealed exclusive movie footage before the film hit theaters and shattered box office records.
Nine Paths to Chloe King
(Wieden + Kennedy)
ABCFamily's "Nine Paths to Chloe King" was created to help launch the 2011 tween series, "The Nine Lives of Chloe King".
Jan and the team at W + K designed and created a rich storyworld that led YA Bloggers and Fans (aka the "Circle of Strangers") to the show's premiere via a mysterious story trail that began with the delivery of 40 content packed iPads (aka "MaiPads") to key influencers.
- The "Circle of Strangers" completed the trail, found Chloe King (aka The Uniter) and the ABCFamily series premiered to more than 2 million total viewers.
The Matrix
(Karetao Media)
An indie Alternate Reality Game set in the Matrix universe, Metacortechs stands to this day as the largest "grassroots" ARG ever produced
with over a million uniques in the first 4 weeks alone. Twenty websites, mysterious phone calls, geocaches, and dead-drops revealed a thrilling real-time story leading up to the release of The Matrix Revolutions. Metacortechs blurred the lines not only between fiction and reality, but between fan-fiction and branded entertainment.
Six Minutes to Midnight
(Fourth Wall Studios)
To promote the release of the feature film Watchmen, Six Minutes to Midnight introduced a unique phone/web interactive platform to immerse the user in the world of the film and reveal exclusive stills and clips from the film.
- On the site, players would receive a phone call from Rorschach, who would show them an inkblot and ask them what they see. When players replied, the site would update in real-time reflecting their answer. Using a proprietary voice-recognition and artificial intelligence system, each user’s experience was different, tailored specifically to their answers.
- Link: http://www.6minutestomidnight.com/
RIDES
(Fourth Wall Studios)
RIDES is storytelling without boundaries. It’s an interactive platform that gives viewers unique access to their favorite characters on screen, by phone and over email. By connecting with the audience across their devices, RIDES draws them into the action and passive viewers become active participants in the narrative.
- Multi-platform touch points deepen the connection to the story and create dynamic interactions that bring the content to life. Over the course of two years Behnam, Steve and Maureen, along with the entire Emmy-winning Fourth Wall Studios team developed this groundbreaking storytelling platform, dozens of pieces of original and branded/co-produced content and a companion app.
- Experience site: http:/www.rides.tv
Why So Serious?
Warner Brothers's The Dark Knight
Steve Peters, Maureen McHugh, Behnam Karbassi as part of the 42 Entertainment team
Year Zero
Trent Reznor | Nine Inch Nails
Steve Peters, Maureen McHugh as part of the 42 Entertainment team
Dead Man's Tale
Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean
and Microsoft
Steve Peters as part of the
42 Entertainment team
Nine Paths to Chloe King
ABCFamily's The Nine Lives of
Chloe King
Jan Libby for Wieden + Kennedy
Six Minutes to Midnight
Warner Brothers's The Watchmen
Steve Peters, Maureen McHugh for
Fourth Wall Studios
