To do this you run down the corridors blindly searching for an exit. Your task is ‘simple’ – you have to stay alive and get out. You can hear your shallow breath and your heart pounding. The lighting is dim and ominous creaks suggest that staying put is not an option. Then the action starts and you wake up inside the hotel of your worst nightmares. Significantly, the game asks for permission to use your webcam and your mobile phone number – as well as access to your Facebook friends. ‘Hotel 626’ – The Game: You need to check into the hotel. As I mostly teach teenagers I can just imagine them glued to the screen, hearts pounding, totally absorbed – totally focused and I ask myself: ‘Can we not design equally effective materials?’ To get an idea of what the game is like, just watch the short clip below. While the ingredients are familiar, the cooking method employed and the spices used simply blew my mind away! No wonder it won the most prestigious marketing award, the Cyber Lion, in 2009. Learning from the experts: How do you frighten the life out of teenagers? Here is a recipe: you take the demon child from ‘The Exorcist’, the scary corridor shots from ‘The Shining’ and a number of killer psychopaths from ‘Scream’, you mix them all together and, hey presto, you have got ‘Hotel 626’! Why would you want to scare teenagers senseless? Why, to sell stuff of course! Amazingly, ‘Hotel 626’ – an interactive video game – was designed for promotional purposes! But it is nothing like the infomercials we watch on TV.
0 kommentar(er)
