Smokescreen - online game / show

Thanks Contagious... love this approach to making content interactive

Smokescreen

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08/09/2009

While teens, and the majority of other web users, are aware of threats that exist online, they have a tendency to seem relatively seem distant and remote. With this in mind, Channel 4’s web adventure Smokescreen has just launched, challenging teens to increase their awareness of some internet dangers, while taking part in a 13-part web adventure aimed at 14-16 year olds.

Developed by the production company Six to Start in London, which also produced Penguin’s We Tell Stories ARG, the game challenges players to uncover a mystery behind a sinister new game, Rumour Mill, hosted on a fictional social network known as White Smoke. Players must set about uncovering information via chat rooms, IM, widgets, profile pages, emails, voicemails, CCTV footage, twitch games, puzzle games to drive the plot forward.

Alice Taylor, commissioning editor, education, explains: ‘We wanted to help teens learn about data issues through play, while exploring big ideas such as privacy and surveillance, Orwell and CCTV. We focused the plot down to within social networks, where teens spend a large amount of their time, looking at issues such as stalking, fishing, data awareness, privacy settings and policies.’

The various missions can be played over the next eight weeks, after which the game will form a complete three hour playing experience. Taylor adds: ‘We have a presence on social networks because we wanted to turn up in teen’s attention streams, but these spaces are really crowded with a lot of brands searching for attention. Teens love to play games, even if they don’t label themselves as gamers. Therefore, we decided to spend at least half our budget on games.’

She adds: ‘We are building these games to try and be as native to the internet as possible. We are seeding content by behaving like a dandelion, including on US sites, such as www.kongregate.com as well as UK ones, because nine out of ten sites visited by teens are based in the US.’

Adrian Hon, co-founder Six to Start, says: ‘Smokescreen is the world’s first game about life online. Every time you hear about a teenager being hauled up at school because of their Facebook profile, or someone being conned out of their password on Twitter - that's what Smokescreen aims to explore. And because our game puts players in a simulation situation, we can give them an experience that is far more powerful and immersive than any other media.’

www.smokescreengame.com
www.sixtostart.com