I’ve seen a few of these movie promotion ads on Facebook now, and I’m pretty much astounded at how big of a waste of money they are. The problem with an ad like this is the fact that there are only two ways I can interact with it: I can either become a fan of “From Paris with Love” or I can blacklist the ad for any number of reasons. I don’t want to blacklist it, because I actually prefer seeing movie ads about 100x more than seeing ads for “Scholarships for Dads” or “Christian Singles” or GroupOn…

The problem is–they’re not even asking the right question. Am I going to go see it in theaters? Sure. I loved Taken, and while I’m skeptical of Travolta’s ability to play a fast-and-loose action hero, I have tremendous faith in Luc Besson as a writer/producer of fun action movies. Solidly on board, solidly planning to go see the movie they’re promoting, there’s still no way I’m ever going to become a fan of From Paris with Love on Facebook. Or–likely–any other movie on Facebook. For one thing–whether I become a fan or not has nothing to do with whether my friends go see the movie. If they haven’t decided one way or another on it by this point, my becoming a fan is going to amount to a drop in the ocean. Secondly, I have no interest in helping some viral marketing firm (”We get u lots ov fans!!!11!”) get a higher bonus because they hit some fan threshold. The obvious disconnect between the people who actually make the movies and the people who promote them just astounds me. What kind of ads do I want to see? Here are 7 ads I would’ve clicked on:

1. Ask me if I’m planning on seeing the movie in theaters. If I click “no,” you can tailor future ads towards your stronger “change someone’s mind” content instead of showing me the same thing over and over and over again. If I click “yes,” you can start showing more interesting ads that might eventually get me to become a fan. (To be fair, I’ve seen polls on movies–but they’re usually some asinine unrelated question written by a marketing intern).
2. Don’t promote the movie itself–promote the people within the movie. Had this ad said something like “Become a fan of Luc Besson,” I probably would’ve clicked it in a heartbeat. I don’t even know if he has a fan page, but (assuming he does) that gets any of his future marketing material right into my stream. Becoming a fan of an actual person says something to my friends, while becoming a fan of some movie that just came out says I’m gullible and pay too much attention to ads.
3. Build a Flash game for the film (and hire an indie flash developer to do it–there are lots of us) and promote the From Paris with Love game.
4. Link to an interesting article on the Film (Digg does a great job of this)–a behind the scenes article or an interview with John Travolta. Something more engaging than “please please pay attention to me.”
5. Instead of a canned one-sentence synopsis, just put in a bite-sized piece of trivia with a “like” button. We call them “nuggets” on ShowtimeFu, though we’re a little behind in entering them. A “like” is much less of an investment than fanning something, and I’m much more likely to use them.
6. Give me a link to add a similar movie to my queue on Netflix. “Get ready for From Paris with Love by watching Taken”
7. Now that I’m 5 or 6 steps down the funnel and I’ve had plenty of positive interactions with your campaign… now is the time to ask me to become a fan of the movie. Don’t just give me marketing drivel, though–remind me of how into the movie I am: “You’re going to see it in theaters, you’ve played the game, you’ve read the trivia, and you’re already a fan of the cast. Isn’t it time to become a fan of the film?”

Okay, I still may not click on #7, but my chances of responding are probably up around 50% instead of 0%, which is a bajillion-times increase. Funnels are used for all kinds of things on websites, so I don’t see why people don’t set up ad funnels to guide people towards the desired result.

I finally finished playing Mass Effect a few days ago, and it was everything I expected it to be. Pretty graphics, great dialogue, good characters, fun fight system… all in all, a fantastic game. The one criticism I have of the game isn’t so much about Mass Effect as it is about the state of games in general.
I’m tired of being the epic hero.

Sure you can play the bad guy if you choose the “mean” dialogue options, but whether you’re good or bad, you’re still the epic figure in charge of saving the universe. Really then, my issue is with the “epic” part and not the “hero” part. I get it. Games now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, so anything less than an epic experience seems like too little bang for your buck.

I blame Bioware for being too good at what they do. The dialogue system, the backstory, the universe itself is just too good to only be capable of telling one type of story. The sad thing is that’s all we’re likely to get out of them (until an equally epic sequel hits, that is). I thoroughly enjoyed playing the Star Wars-esque space opera the whole way through, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much more amazing it would be to play a Maltese Falcon or a Seven Samurai or a Die Hard or a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I’m talking story structures, here, not direct adaptation) style game using this same engine.

The engine is already built, so they might as well squeeze as much out of it as possible. Instead of one single epic that takes 30-40 hours to complete, why not build a half-dozen or so 2-5 hour long stories using the same engine and slightly more human storylines? You could call it Mass Effect Tales or something evocative of a short story collection. By doing so, they would bring us one step closer to legitimizing games as a storytelling medium–and for a fraction of the cost!

Rather than return home for Thanksgiving (going Christmas), I decided to do Thanksgiving here. My best friend from high school lives in L.A. now, so I invited him and several other local-family-less friends over for the works–my first turkey (~11.5 pounds), gravy, green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. So what if the gravy was out of a jar, the mashed potatoes were instant, the stuffing was stove-top, and the pie was store-bought. We felt pretty darned authentic.
I got up at 4:45 a.m. on Black Friday to hit Circuit City and Best Buy. After standing in line for about an hour, my friend and I made it into the store. There was a similar wait to check-out (they only had 4 registers open for some reason). I definitely spent more than I should, but I’ll be well-stocked for things to watch for the next 6 months or so. Between the two stores, I got the entire James Bond ultimate edition for ~$20/pop (vs. the $70-$80 list price for each), three seasons of House, two seasons of Rescue Me, and four seasons of Nip/Tuck (all for $15/season instead of $50). I haven’t tallied the total number of hours, but it’s a lot. Just in time, too–the post-football-pre-baseball doldrums are just around the corner.

Other than that, the last week has essentially consisted of a lot of chilling out, playing Asassin’s Creed, watching movies (No Country for Old Men is excellent, Hitman not so much–but entertaining nonetheless), and sleeping in. I haven’t touched my current game for a week or so (waiting to hear from sponsors) and Bike vs Car is stagnating a bit, but I’m starting to feel that tinkering urge again. The first manifestation of that is the new ad-enabled skin. I don’t plan on taking this whole blog thing tooooo seriously, but I figured if I’m sticking MochiAds in my flash games that get < 1000 views, I might as well do the same for the blog.

Fast forward ten years. Pefect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers are three of my favorite animes (and I no longer even really care for the genre). The fact that Satoshi Kon makes movies–you can really tell he knows a lot about film-making–that just happen to be animated… well, I find that really cool. I never caught his TV show, but it might be something to throw on Netflix some day.

Last night I dragged a couple of friends along to go see Paprika, which, shockingly, I also really enjoyed. I just love the way he’s able to blend fantasy and reality (not, as the reviewers say, unlike Philip K. Dick). I’ve known since the first time I looked him up many years ago that the guy was a protege of Katsuhiro Otomo, but this is the first time I really felt that influence in one of his films. The ruined city-scapes and tentacled villain seemed reminescent of Akira, while the gigantic debris parade really reminded me of Roujin Z. If appropriation is at work, though, Kon has certainly taken the two visual themes and branded them his own. There is a certain lightness of heart at play in his films–something I’m not quite sure I can formulate into words. Akira is philosophical at the end, but there is an underlying cynicism that runs throughout the film–biker gangs, an oppressive government, freedom fighters, crazy religious sects, a “Neo-Tokyo.” Likewise, the mechanical mayhem in Roujin Z is all driven by the dying desire of a lonely old man.

It’s not like the subject matter of Paprika is light, either. At its core: bad guys stole some high-tech gadgets and are using them to make innocent people act batshit crazy. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that… but that’s the big picture. As you would expect, there are good guys who try to stop the bad guys. It’s these characters that Satoshi Kon clearly loves. All three of them–Atchan, Konakawa, and Tokita–are split in some way, though it may be a bit of a stretch to call Tokita a main character. Atchan is a cold psychiatrist by day and the vivacious, friendly, and loveable Paprika when she enters the dreams of her patients. Konakawa is a depressed and lonely cop who once dreamed of making movies. Tokita is a brilliant scientist, but he acts like a child and is enormously fat. Within the context of the movie, you could kind of see each of them as having a real-world persona and a dream-persona–who they would be in their dreams. One of the major themes of the film has to do with the dreamworld merging with reality, and by the end of the film each of these character takes that “dream” personality and absorbs it back into their “real” personality.

I’m starting to ramble, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it. I didn’t even mention how pretty the whole thing was.