There are several new articles that popped up about Bright Falls.
Advertising Age listed it in their Best Ads section. The site works in conjunction with Creativity Online who featured it in their AdCritic section. Creative Review is another site focusing on the advertising angle. Although it requires you to login to view the article, Shorts.net had a write up about it this week as well.
The term “viral advertising” has been thrown around so much in recent years that it’s become hard to define. When I think of viral advertising, I remember back to I Love Bees, Year Zero, Why So Serious? and The Lost Experience. While I suppose those are all alternate reality games, the two terms used to be synonymous.
It’s easy to forget that Bright Falls was created as an advertisement. It was produced to get people excited about Alan Wake. It creates buzz, gets everyone talking. It has a certain “did you see this?!” shock value to it, and that’ll get gamers interested in the upcoming Xbox 360 title. While that makes it seem like Bright Falls is doing Xbox a huge favor, think about the other side of things.
The Xbox 360 is the sole reason anyone knows about Bright Falls. The crew behind it has done some amazing stuff in the past, but the potential audience they have here is astonishing. Xbox has been a big help there. When you think about it, the platform is the very reason Bright Falls even exists. It’s not something Phillip Van and crew came up with out of thin air, it was a project based on the preexisting Alan Wake property.
That complimentary nature is a great model for filmmaking. Xbox gave some independent filmmakers an opportunity to create a great piece of stand alone film AND promoted it for them. In return, the film itself promotes Xbox and Alan Wake. Everyone benefits from the deal. Thanks to the talent of above mentioned filmmakers, the product of that deal – Bright Falls itself – also happens to be incredible.