End of the LA Clipper's "reply all" nightmare?

The superfan for the Los Angeles Clippers is back in "uniform."  And it feels about as natural as a person showing up to work the next day after accidentally clicking "reply all" on a scathing email about a colleague.  It's a little awkward.

Don't know who Clipper Darrell is?  For about two decades, this was the world's only Los Angeles Clipper fan:

But due to a spat with the organization, the "Clipper Darrell" phenomenon seemingly ended two weeks ago.  When Darrell Bailey and the Clippers could not come to terms over his use of the "Clipper" trademark, the organization asked that he stop using the name.

The beloved fan was bound to be a sympathetic media figure.  Therefore, a major sports franchise needs to deal with this very gently, using the utmost tact to make sure this doesn't hurt their organization.  Perhaps they would release a statement expressing regret, hope that the two sides could resolve their differences soon, and appreciation for Darrell Bailey's years of loyal support for the team.

"He is not actually a fan of the Clippers, but a fan of what he can make off of the Clippers."—Official Clippers statement on Darrell Bailey.

Whah, but… oh NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I don't really care about the Clippers.  I don't even care about basketball.  But when something is this unnecessarily dumb, I read it and have to restrain myself from jumping up and running around crying with my arms in the air like a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man.

The Clippers claim that Darrell Bailey was being unreasonable, and they may have a point.  Personally, I don't begrudge a "superfan" for trying to make some profit out of it.  For example, I'm sure the royalties for the "Fireman Ed Chant" app don't all to the Jets.  But even if Clipper Darrell was playing hardball, wasn't it worth trying a little harder to keep him happy?  For a franchise whose owner is one of the all-time great sports villains, it might not be wise to make your disdain for the "little people" quite so obvious.  Naturally, it became an easy joke to point out that the "he" in the official Clippers quote above could refer just as easily to Donald Sterling as to Darrell Bailey.

The Clippers say they offered Bailey $70 per game to be a "cheerleader."  Which is an insult.  Nothing against cheerleaders, but there are plenty of them to be found.  Pay isn't just about talent; it's about scarcity.  In economics, this is called "marginal value."  In sports, it's called "wins above replacement (WAR)."  A cheerleader can be replaced.  Clipper Darrell has built a recognizable public personal, and can't be immediately replaced.  That means he gets paid more.  A sports franchise should understand this sort of math.

When their relationship started to break down, both Darrell Bailey and the Clippers organization made hasty statements.  (I think it's slightly more excusable for Mr. Bailey, who probably doesn't have his own public relations department.)  Perhaps they would like to take it all back now.  Problem is, anger can go viral, too.

First, Clipper Darrell posted this statement on his badly designed, WordPress-powered, to-this-day-only-one-comment-on-the-post-itself personal website.  I doubt it's one of the top ten most-trafficked sites on the net.  But it got picked up by news outlets, and prompted the Clippers to deliver their painfully ham-handed public response.

Clipper players tweeted their support for Bailey, as did other basketball players… and baseball players… and more.  Bailey got his own mini-documentary.  He openly cried on television.  There was a sports media firestorm originating from a single post on a website that no one reads.

Now, it's the morning after.  Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan of the Clippers deleted their tweets, although Chris Paul's tweet still exists.  (Of course, tweets never really disappear, do they?)  Perhaps they rethought the wisdom of standing publicly against the organization that issues your seven-or-eight-figure paycheck.  Cooler heads must have eventually prevailed between Bailey and the Clippers, too.  He's back in costume at the Clipper games.  But after all the anger and tears and finger-pointing, it sure feels a little weird.

In a viral world, everything you write is potentially "reply all."  You can't take it back.  (Seriously, I'm not even talking about the Clippers anymore. Treat EVERYTHING you write as though it was "reply all.") You won't get a second chance at your PR spin.

Once again, the genius is in the Super Bowl ads you didn't see.

So, if there were a Super Bowl for advertising, it would be... the Super Bowl.

Is there anything else for which the Super Bowl is the actual Super Bowl?  I think it's pretty much just American football and television advertising.  So I figured I'd have to have something to say the next day, but early on I was about as nervous as anybody who'd placed a bet on the "over" side of +/- 54.  I guess the ads aren't as interesting now that certain people are no longer in the game of making these spots.  ;)

The Doritos crowd-sourced ads are solid, but they always seem to be about the same thing: an obnoxious bag-hog gets his comeuppance.  This kid could be a younger version of this guy.

A few entertaining longer spots.  I'll let you search other lists for those, rather than linking to a bunch of ads that I don't really want to talk about.  One seemed to have people talking more about how much they loved Clint Eastwood than how much they loved the cars he was hawking.  Technically this is a social marketing blog, so look-but-don't-touch Super Bowl ads don't provide a whole lot of material. 

Coke had a nice little idea about live-streaming the polar bears, and by default they win the war against an aging Pepsi campaign about delivery truck drivers that is way past the end of its natural lifespan. [UPDATE: I forgot the Elton John ad. But somehow I found it more memorable that they hadn't given up on the stupid truck drivers yet.]

Among the couches I was sharing, the Audi vampire commercial was a pretty big hit, and I took notice of this: the cheeky Twitter hashtag "#SoLongVampires" got as big a laugh as the commercial itself.  Add another box to the checklist for your perfect television ad: hashtag.



But like I explained in my first post, I most admire the campaigns that win the contest without even competing.  This year's guerrilla Super Bowl entry from Old Milwaukee can't really match Old Spice's trick of out-buzzing every other ad while spending zero dollars on spots during the actual broadcast. But it is getting a good bang for what I imagine is a very limited budget (including reportedly volunteer services from its star).


This Will Ferrell parody of badly-timed ad transitions aired only in the North Platte, Nebraska market, so few saw it live.  But it is making the viral rounds as Sunday night's best kept Super ad secret.  And though people might normally hate the idea of having to endure television ads, if they find out there's an ad they weren't allowed to see, THEN GODDAMNIT I NEED TO FIND THAT SHIT ON THE INTERNET RIGHT NOW!!!

Well played, sirs.

OWS social media marketing (is it more capitalist than capitalist?)

Whenever they decide it's time to sell out, I think there are some great thinkers behind Occupy Wall Street who will make pretty good one-percenters (that is, if they aren't already…).

O.W.S. seems to have its roots in the sixties counterculture.  In one of the great ironies of American history, the anti-capitalist hippie aesthetic has turned out to be a veritable gold mine for people who are willing to, well… capitalize.  Just thinking of a few:

Easy Rider

Hair

The Wonder Years

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream

the "classic rock" radio format

festival concerts (example: Bonnaroo)

You could probably think of some others yourself.  How many Woodstock movies, retrospectives, box sets, t-shirts… How much profit have the suits made off of nostalgia for this one concert?  What about the side-effect of brands that are only tangentially, but fondly, connected to hippie culture (Marshall amplifiers, Harley Davidson motorcycles)?  Have you ever bought any hippie-inspired clothes in a Wal-Mart?  Is this anti-corporate?

Though hippie supporters like (beware, upcoming link somewhat NSFW) Bill Hicks would be loathe to admit it, counterculture or outcast movements become big and important only when they contain an element of brilliant marketing.  Sorry, Bill.  Much like hippies, the occupiers wish to avoid contributing to mainstream capitalist culture… except the occasional ad buy, of course.

The Occupy movement strikes me as a hippie movement for the internet and social-media savvy.  They spread their message through Twitter hashtags (#OWS, #OccupyWallStreet) and take videos of themselves getting arrested in hopes of going viral on YouTube.  This tumblr is in the running for most ubiquitous of the OWS memes.  It's a great viral campaign, because it's simple enough for people to easily interact with, but also flexible enough for people to be creative.

And if marketers in the business world aren't paying close attention to this stuff, they aren't doing their jobs.  Call me cynical, but if you can sell a movement this way, I don't think it's a big stretch to believe you can sell a product this way.

Hey guys, you can go ahead and keep destroying the capitalist mentality and all.  But meanwhile, in the spirit of your movement, a few capitalists are probably going to be borrowing your stuff for free.

Meet the New (media) Boss/Sopa Nazis

What no blog updates in a while?  I have excuse!  I went black for S.O.P.A. way before anyone else!

OK, maybe not, but I have to come back out of hiding to address the biggest social media story of the year.  Short year so far.  But still.

[Wouldn’t it be ironic if Wikipedia sued me for displaying this copyrighted image without their permission?]

The Stop Online Piracy Act strikes me as one of those little pieces of Congressional legislation that could potentially become law without you ever noticing, until some in-the-know friend casually mentions it to you months later.  I mean, let’s face it, it’s not exactly the sexiest bill in the world.  There are no soldiers shipping off to war, or money going in or out of your paycheck, for the most part.  It’s all background-lawyery stuff.  Who can I count on to distill all this obscure bullshit for me?  Why, the newly un-blocked Wikipedia, of course:

“The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a law (bill) of the United States proposed in 2011 to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Proposals include barring advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with allegedly infringing websites, barring search engines from linking to the sites, and requiring Internet service providers (ISP) to block access to the sites. The bill would criminalize the streaming of such content, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.”

SOPA (and its Senate sibling with an even cuter acronym, PIPA) carries draconian consequences for websites that infringe copyright, or are even accused of infringement.  Ten years ago, would there have been any real opposition to this?  Were any politicians warned that there would be public relations hell to pay if they didn’t, say, save the original Napster?  There were extremely powerful interests lined up against Napster.  And almost none to support it.

But the website business ain’t kids’ stuff anymore.  The internet, as many of you know… is serious business.  Very serious:

"Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet."

Mark Zuckerberg.  Net worth: $17.5 billion.

On Wednesday, January 18^th, Google promoted an online petition against SOPA and PIPA.  Wikipedia (the thing you’re actually looking for whenever you type a search term into Google) blocked itself in protest of the bills.  Zuckerberg posted his statement on behalf of Facebook.  Lolcats cried.  And I have never seen a story light up my Facebook or Twitter feed quite like this.  SOPA was the only thing being talked about.

[No, no, no.  Wrong SOPA!]

I have Republican friends who protested Obamacare and Democrat friends who protested the Iraq war, but no amount of protest marches or Tea Parties could stop these things from happening.  The medical care of an entire nation, or soldiers killing and dying, might be important things.  But if you threaten the existence of funny YouTube parodies, only then will the entire internet rebel.

Reaction from legislators was profound.  Around dinner time on Wednesday, I found this listing of the bills’ supporters and opponents.  It listed 80 supporters and 32 opponents.  It now lists 63 supporters and 122 opponents.  By Wednesday night, even PIPA co-sponsor Marco Rubio had turned against the bill.

[No, no, no.  Wrong PIPA! (pippa)]

It feels good, doesn’t it?  The entertainment industry can rant all they want about their special-interest dollars, but it doesn’t matter.  You’re stickin’ it to The Man.  The people have spoken.  No sopa for you, you big corporate bad guys who control all information!

But is that really true anymore?  Do powerful figures in the old media and old Hollywood control our information?  Psshaw!  Of course not!  You get all your information from reading blogs and Wikipedia articles!  And when Wikipedia asked you to jump, you asked how high.  We may be in love with our favorite websites, but now that the hangover from the big SOPA push is over, let’s not kid ourselves about who we wound up in bed with.

Meet the new boss, my friends.

Gatorade Social Media: Your brand has its own brand!

When I first discovered this Gatorade “Mission Control” idea, I was a little confused about its purpose.

This promo video, released last year, has a lot of style.  But it doesn't do a great job explaining exactly how it works:

Here’s what I gather: At Gatorade’s headquarters in Chicago, one room contains monitors displaying data which is gathered from all sorts of social media.  With it, their people are supposed to be able to immediately measure the public reaction to Gatorade and things related to Gatorade.  It provides the ability to quickly intensify strategies that are working, and abandon those that don’t.  If the buzz is good, do more.  If it’s bad, try something else.  According to this Mashable article, Gatorade made a short commercial featuring a song that a lot of people actually liked.  Once they realized that people liked the song, they immediately went to work recording a full-length version of the song, which was released a day later to Twitter and Facebook followers.

Even still, I was confused by the need for the “mission control” room with the nice monitors.  It seems almost retro-futuristic, like some sort of movie version of NASA Ground Control, or the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.  It’s a lot of cryptic-looking data flashing by too fast for the average human mind to comprehend.  Hey, if you really wanted to monitor social networking, or create your own social networking experience, couldn’t you make something less centralized that people could just access from their own computers?  Wouldn’t that be, you know, THE VERY ESSENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA?

Honestly, I was baffled.  But NewThink partners Janet and Mike know how to spot an angle being exploited, and they let me in on the secret: Mission Control is as much about spectacle as it is about functionality.

The takeaway quote from the project is the idea that Gatorade wants to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into the largest participatory brand in the world.”  Here, utilizing social media almost takes a backseat to creating the perception that you know how to utilize social media.  Who is that promo video intended for, after all?  Doesn’t it seem a little circular to promote your promotion-promoter?  But Mission Control needs to be seen by the public.  “See?!?!?  You are participating with us, and we are listening!  Look at all these monitors we bought for you!”

[When you command a room full of undefined computery-looking things, this is the way you think.]

That's not to say Mission Control doesn't provide any useful information, but the spectacle factor raises an important point.  If glorified sugar-water needs to be seen as a social media brand, than what sort of thing DOESN’T need to be promoted as a social media brand?

Lessons from FOE5

I recently attended one day of the "Futures of Entertainment 5" conference at M.I.T., which included a diverse group of panelist from advertising, academia, and entertainment.  Below, I've included everything I learned at the conference in one raw information dump...

Intro (William Uricchio of MIT, Ilya Vedrashko of Hill Holiday ad agency)

---In Europe, they are experimenting with technology that can transfer the data of 700 DVDs in one second.  It’s not publicly available, but supposedly demonstrates the expanding power of the internet.

---The Progressive Insurance Facebook page has 35,000 “likes.”  The Facebook page for their Flo character has 3.2 million “likes.”

---“Advertisers are content producers now.”

Panel 1: “Spreadable Media” (Henry Jenkins of USC, Sam Ford of Peppercom Strategic Communications, Joshua Green of Undercurrent)

---I think this Jenkins guy claimed to have invented the term “spreadable media.”  That is what you do as a professor, I guess.  You come up with a new name for something which is happening anyway, and then you get credit for the whole phenomenon.

---Supposedly the word “viral” is not accurate because it doesn’t recognize the agency of the community which spreads the thing around.  So that’s why “spreadable media” is better.  (I plan to still use the word “viral,” because people will actually know what I’m talking about.)  During the Q&A portion, Jenkins had a good phrase about how people might incorrectly think of social media, calling it the “smallpox infected blanket” theory of viral media.  This is what happens when you think you can force the viral phenomenon.  But just because you put it out there, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will spread.

---Copyright and piracy: Copyright owners have the right to exercise total control over their property.  But depending on the situation, it may or may not be in their BEST INTEREST to exercise control.

---Panelists recommended “Sita Sings the Blues” as an example of something that was released in an unconventional way.

---If you need to talk about internet piracy in a nice way, it’s better to say “unauthorized circulation” than “piracy.

---Distribution or circulation?  Distribution = top-down.  Circulation = part top-down, part bottom-up.

---A “gift economy” has different rules than a regular economy.  This is used in the context of user-generated content, crowd-sourced stuff, etc.  Do the people need to get paid for this?  Or would it corrupt their labor of love?  (Example: Would it be like paying for sex?)

Panel 2: Audience Participation in Decision-Making (C. Lee Harrington of Miami University, Seung Bak of Dramafever, Jamin Warren of Kill Screen)

---Piracy = a demand for content which has yet to be monetized.  (Sounds like something that belongs in the last panel, but was actually mentioned here.)

---Bak (Dramafever video streaming website): Korean TV show “Heartstrings” was a ratings flop in Korea, but a big hit on the internet among non-Koreans.

---Harrington: Fan participation in soap operas is a long-standing tradition that didn’t start with the internet; fans have long tried to drive soap opera plots through letter-writing campaigns.

---Fans who love a television program can become connected to their advertisers, too.  When the TV show Chuck was going to be cancelled, fans brought their protests directly to Subway, who saved the show with a sponsorship deal.  When All My Children was about to be cancelled, Hoover vacuums pulled all their advertising from ABC in protest.  It didn’t exactly work, but it endeared Hoover to soap fans by actually NOT advertising.  Whoever was running Hoover at the time said that members of his family were big fans of the show.  This gave Hoover’s protest a “perceived authenticity.”

---Warren (runs a website/magazine about video games): Video game fans want different levels of control.  Some people just want to be led along (this sounds like the video games I don’t like).  Some people want to explore someone else’s creation (this sounds like the video games I do like).  Some people want to be able to create their own thing (I’m not sophisticated enough for this).

---Due to the success of unauthorized “mods” (people hacking into and altering their games), video and computer games sometimes come with the built-in ability to create your own levels etc.  When you allow the users to create, you have to balance simplicity (what beginners want) and the ability to have more flexibility, control, and creativity (what sophisticated users want).

---Warren mentioned the fact that the Goldeneye video game is more successful than the Goldeneye movie.  Afterwards, I mentioned to him that I was writing something about this myself.  During our conversation, he had a general criticism about video game marketing: “Video games are usually marketed as a product, not an experience,” but mentioned the Call of Duty “We Are All Soldiers” campaign as an example of good video game marketing.

---The anonymity of internet memes: Even when people have no ability to receive credit in any way, they sometimes enjoy collaboration for its own sake.

Panel 3: Crowdsourcing/Crowdfunding (Mirko Schafer of Utrecht University, Bruno Natal of Queremos, Timo Vuorensola of Wreckamovie, and Caitlin Boyle of Film Sprout)

---Timo was clearly the star of this panel.  For one thing, he had a foreign accent (Finland).  Also, he is making a film about Nazis who live on the dark side of the moon.  Every time a new subject came up, he would begin a sentence by saying something like, “So, the way you can apply this to Moon Nazis…”  And somehow it was still funny every time.

---While Timo’s films elicit ideas and money from fans, he insists that the films are ultimately a “dictatorship.”  He and his producers make all the real decisions, and they get all the credit and money.  I guess he’s not quite so idealistic about stuff being “bottom-up.”

---One of Timo’s mottos regarding social media strategies is “fail fast.”  If people don’t respond to it quickly, just get rid of it.

---More Machiavellian talk from Timo (or Alinskyite talk?): It’s much easier to get people motivated when you present an enemy they can fight.  For example, people are more likely to support your campaign if you post a video of an obnoxious person saying, “It will never work.”  Then, you ask them to help prove that person wrong.

---Bruno is a young guy from Brazil who promotes concerts based on crowd funding.  When the concerts make enough money, the crowd investors get paid back.  However, they don’t make any money off of the concert; they just get the joy of making the concert happen.  Bruno and his partners make a profit.  Bruno says that people who give their money toward his concerts never complain about this because of the fact that the accounting is totally transparent.  He says, “People are OK with profit if you are honest about it.”

---No one gets anything done unless there is some sort of pressure or deadline.  Even crowds need to be put on a deadline.

---The size of the crowd is not as important as the passion of the crowd.

---No one gets noticed in social media unless they are on multiple platforms.

Panel 4: Location-based services (Germaine Halegoua of University of Kansas, Andy Ellwood of Gowalla.com, and some lady who was a last-minute replacement so her name isn't on my program)

---Online photos and virtual check-ins are today’s scrapbook.  (People don’t make real scrapbooks anymore.)

---No one uses foursquare.com for the coupons and financial incentives it gives.  It’s all about the social aspect of letting people know where they are or have been, or the gamification of building up your statistics.

---People expect that others will stalk their Facebook or their Foursquare, but if people actually come up to you and talk face-to-face with you about something you posted online, somehow that seems creepy.  So people feel like it’s OK for others to stalk them, but it’s not OK to actually respond honestly to what they’ve posted online?  Weird, but often appears to be true.

---Andy: QR codes are everywhere and people think everyone else is using them... but actually they are dumb and almost no one uses them.

---Andy: People are unwilling to waste time on anything.  If your website opens with a flash graphic, I’ve already given up on it.

Panel 5: Privacy concerns (Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard and Helen Nissenbaum of NYU)

---Nissenbaum has helped invent internet privacy tools like TrackMeNot and AdBlock Plus.

---Despite her work on privacy, Nissenbaum admits that voluntary sharing of information is different from loss of privacy, and if people demand “personalization,” they must give up some privacy.

---People want to get rid of online ads, but do they have an ethical obligation to tolerate them?  (After all, these ads are how they “pay” for “free” sites.)

---Traditionally, entertainment generates profit by either charging money or selling ads.  But is there now another way: profit by extracting labor, specifically through gamification?  Zittrain makes the analogy to Tom Sawyer and the fence; the work is portrayed as a game so that people want to do it for free.  The ESP game is an internet example.

If video games are movies now, do we still need the movies?

I don’t buy too many new video games, but when I was in the store recently and saw that the new Goldeneye007: Reloaded game was available, I couldn’t resist snapping up a copy, if only for the sake of how much I loved the original Goldeneye 007.

The first game came out in 1997, and even then, it may have been a warning sign about the future relationship of video games to movies.  The Goldeneye movie (starring Pierce Brosnan) was a moderate success, but very few of my friends actually watched the movie when it came out, and no one seems to have any fond memories of it now.  But every guy who was a teen/preteen in 1997 can remember playing the Goldeneye: 007 video game for hours on end.  Even now, the game’s “legendary” status is being used to promote the new game.  The cultural importance of the video game has overtaken that of its parent movie.

And so I was way psyched up to relive some of my old Goldeneye memories with this new, beefed-up version of the game.

The only problem is, the new game sucks.

Of the original game, one might say: “007stays fresh by never having you do the same thing twice. Players also have a bit of freedom as to what they want to do in any given situation, and what order the directives are completed in.”  There was a certain amount of open-endedness to the game’s missions, allowing for some individual creativity in completing them.

As for Goldeneye: Reloaded, it has better graphics, glitzier production values, and voice acting by the actual current stars of the Bond movies (Daniel Craig and Judi Dench).  It also has absolutely none of the freedom of the old game.  The game leads you through every step.  You always know where to go and what to do; there is no exploration or creativity necessary.  The progression is so linear, it’s a lot like watching a movie while pushing buttons.

Technology now allows video games to be more movie-like in other ways.  For old-school video games, plot was not much of an element.  The graphics and sound weren’t sufficient to include much story.  The old games were all about action.  Pac Man was way too busy eating those dots to deliver any memorable monologues.  Now that games have much more sophisticated animation, and the space to store almost unlimited voice-actor recordings, game plot is a much bigger factor.  To make their stories even more attractive to consumers, video games utilize the acting or voice-acting of superstars in order to bring attention to the game.  Stars with prominent video game roles include Mark Hamill, Patrick Stewart, Kiefer Sutherland, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, Neil Patrick Harris, and all four Ghostbusters (Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson).

 [Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009) reunited the original movie cast.]

The Goldeneye of the 1990s was a mediocre movie and a legendary game.  But now that video games basically are movies, the new game plays a lot like a mediocre movie.  Nevertheless, after I first put the disc in my Xbox, my disappointment didn’t prevent me from playing the game for 4 hours straight, long past when I’d planned to go to sleep.  Older video games used to offer logical stopping points.  If the game had a save feature, it might return you to a menu screen after each level.  If there was no save feature, you would probably either beat the game or receive a “game over” within a couple hours.  Modern video games zip you along from one task to the next, with no obvious break points.  There’s something strangely addictive about them, even when they aren’t any good.

During a recent trip to the gym, my personal trainer was commenting about the fact that he had some friends who were going out that night, but he’d rather stay home by himself and play the newly released Batman: Arkham City.  For a guy who I don’t consider to be a total loser, that’s really saying something.  This same guy once told me that he had to get rid of Red Dead Redemption to prevent it from taking over his life.

Here’s how this could be dangerous for the film industry: video games (1) are a lot like movies, (2) can take about 20 times longer to complete than the average movie, and (3) are dangerously addictive.  Movie theaters are losing business, and it’s hard not to think that these movie-like video games are one of the many culprits.  How can a 2-hour movie experience compete with a similar 40-hour movie experience with an addiction factor?

[Side note: This is Aeris's death in Final Fantasy VII, a prime example of how video gamers can feel a very emotional connection to the game characters they play as.  Can you match that emotional level without the interactive element?]

In my experience, I’ve found that people are rarely excited about watching movies, at least compared to my impressions of decades past.  Watching a movie just doesn’t seem special anymore.

But people still love going out to the movies.  And the “going out” half of that phrase may be more important than “the movies.”  Movie theaters still bear a social aura that video games may never have (despite somewhat social things like multiplayer modes or MMORPGs, but that’s a subject for another post).

People like to go to sleep knowing that they “went out” that night.  And that’s something the movies have which many competing media don’t have.  Are there ways to maximize this advantage?  More on that later...