If We Were Willing to Tease the Press
We've always been fans of imagining the press coverage you want about a project, and then writing the press release as if it were the article the journalist would write. When you target that really well, journalists will occassionally just reprint your press release verbatim. At the very least, you can sometimes make it irresistible to play along. It might be time to start thinking about something similar for Eldritch Errors, which led us to start dreaming about the follow press release (that we'll probably never actually send):
Cultist lures Internet users to West Virginia wilderness -- strangers narrowly avoid becoming victims, return alive with their tale.
Monday, November 5, 2007 (Cass, West Virginia) - On the weekend before Halloween, a cultist lured five Internet users of an online discussion board (who thought of themselves as "investigators") to one of the most remote and communications-inhibited areas in the continental United States. The 1920's vintage primitive fire warden cabin at the top of Bald Knob, on Cheat Mountain in rural West Virginia is also located in the heart of the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000 square mile region that protects the National Radio Astronomy Observatory from noise produced by cell phones, wireless communications, and radio/television broadcasts. Above 4,200 feet in elevation, Bald Knob is more than a half-mile hike from the highest station of a historic coal-powered railway that stops once a day on weekends, more than two hours by rail from the nearest paved roads.
Facing a full day in primitive camping conditions after having driven up to 14 hours the night before, these armchair investigators encountered a wet night surrounded by drought-hungered black bears. Sub-freezing temperatures turned the standing clouds scraping across the mountain peaks to snow. They had expressed concern about who they were joining on that mountain before they even departed, which included a self-professed ex-cultist of questionable mental stability, a goth psychic prone to nightmares who claimed to be haunting other people's dreams, and two strange vagabonds who had been hiding in those mountains for most of a decade.
They couldn't have called for help, even if they needed to. Their friends lost touch with them for days and feared the worse had happened. They knew their families wouldn't even know where to look for their bodies. Online acquaintances were repeatedly calling the lone payphone in nearby Cass, West Virginia trying to contact them.
When the screaming started at 1:30AM on Sunday morning, those random strangers weren't sure they'd make it off that mountain alive. They all knew the authorities would think it was all just a game.
Fortunately, the authorities would be right on that count -- the entire weekend expedition was part of Eldritch Errors, an immersive thriller playing out in real time on the Web and in the world around us. Inspired by the works of "weird fiction" master H.P. Lovecraft, Eldritch Errors is set in a universe where dark and unspeakable influences infiltrate every aspect of our modern lives without us recognizing it until it might already be too late.
Created by Orlando-based experimental media studio GMD Studios in collaboration with Atlanta-based game developer Brooke Thompson, Eldritch Errors began in April telling a story that has spanned websites, malware, mysterious packages, telephone voicemails, shady psychics, Craigslists personals, computer hacking, Powerpoint presentations, public storage facilities and the dreams of the participants themselves. The team are veterans of an emerging genre sometimes called alternate reality gaming, immersive fiction, chaotic fiction or pervasive gaming.
"Stories don't say on the screen or on the stage," explains Brooke Thompson, known for both grassroots (Metacortechs set in The Matrix universe) and professional ("Who Is Benjamin Stove?" helped promote ethanol awareness for General Motors) games. "They lure you onto the screen with them, or show up in your mailbox like an unexpected visitor."
GMD Studios sees Eldritch Error as an independent media project, drawing on the tradition of indie art in other disciplines coupled with an inherant entrepreneurial streak. They expect to invest as much in Eldritch Errors as they have in past independent feature film productions before focusing on the project's aspects designed to generate sustainable revenue.
"Sponsors bring with them attractive budgets, but also limits on the kinds of stories you can tell and their duration," says GMD Studios' Founder and CEO Brian Clark (who's work includes "Beta-7" for SEGA, "Legend of the Sacred Urns" for Sharp and "The Art of the Heist" for Audi.) "With Eldritch Errors, we can envision storylines that play out over the space of years and that touch upon cathartic emotions that sponsors might not see as the best branding opportunities. Building a fan base and providing them with exciting experiences is the first critical phase before turning it into a business model example for other storytellers."
Additional information:
Series Website: www.eldritcherrors.com
Developer's Blog: www.schmeldritch.com
The Experience: www.sentryoutpost.com
WV photos from players: www.flickr.com/photos/tags/stfeline
Brooke Thompson: www.giantmice.com
GMD Studios: www.gmdstudios.com