Johan Brand
Friend of Playgroup
- Loves: Salt water... where my sail boat floats, Wind (heavy ocean storms), Snow (loads of fluffy white stuff)
- Hates: Spelling (Dyslectic Norwegian living in the UK = disaster), Melting snow, Crammed tubes
- Inspired by:
- Hirosi Sugimoto
- www.carls-cars.com
- www.onedotzero.com
- intelligent people
- the ocean
- My links:
Star Quality - it always works
When we created the Demons game, we knew that we would need the main characters to appear in the game to achieve the desired link between the show and the game. Demons The Game is an immersive game experience and strong links with the show were extremely important. It needed to be an extension of the Demons world, and we successfully achieved that.
3D Design & Animation
We were quite ambitious with the project and aimed to create 3D characters and use custom voice & video footage of the characters as one of the methods to achieve the full Demons experience. We ended up designing & animating 8 different characters from the show. Each with their own special move, ranging from spitting hair balls to bowling heads.
Custom Footage
It was vital that we had custom footage of characters and were not just repurposing content from the show. This gives the game the right credibility and it allowed the actors to have a natural presence in the game. Mina & Ruby are highly integrated in the game-play, calling Luke (the user) on his mobile to offer their advice or express their worries/happiness about your performance. This is quite unique and gives the player an interaction with characters they have not experienced before with the show.
The logistics of getting the custom footage and the right buy-in from both the production company and the actors is still a major hassle, but I believe that going forward this will get easier and easier as we get involved earlier in the process and can capture the needed footage during production.
Online <-> TV
This game has yet again proved the importance of a tightly linked online experience and a TV show. All of our user research has showed that this was one of the most successful aspects of the game.
Posted by Johan on 12 Feb 09, at 11:55 pm
2 comments on this post
You're absolutely right Johan.
Closer integration between show, website and game is vital for giving the audience a more rounded, fulfilling experience. In this respect we have been extremely lucky with Demons that we had a client who understands this imperative.
Going forward, the relationship between the various channels will only become more 'connected'.
An exciting prospect.
The online experience allows fans to connect in between episodes and beyond, and so enhances the Demons-audience relationship.
Demons seems to have successfully captured the attention of non-gamers. Through being fans of the show people who would not normal spend time online gaming are getting hooked.
It also seems that non Demons fans are seeing the game as a challenge and are playing too.