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Spore – New Worlds, New Marketing

Have you heard of “Spore”:http://www.spore.com – the new game from Will Wright, creator of SimCity and the Sims? The PC game won’t be released for at least another 1 1/2 years but right now I’m pretty sure it is the best video game ever made.
How can I say this? Well, I’ve seen Will Wright walk-through and talk-through what Spore is in both a “one hour presentation”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066 from the 2005 Games Developer Conference and an edited 35 minute version.
Here, watch it:

I’m still getting my head around “micro-chunking”:http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/11/the_future_of_m.html as a marketing strategy but I think there is something _really_ big here.

Spending 35 minutes watching Wright talk about his latest obsession is entertainment in itself. Heck, watching this on my Mac beat out watching CSI on TV one night last week. But it is also one of the best ads for a new product I’ve ever seen. Really a 35 minute infomercial full of passion and ideas that made me “ooh” out loud.
We need to start thinking much more about making marketing that is inherently compelling AND entertaining AND incredibly easy to pass along. I found this on “Google Video”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore via “boing boing”:http://www.boingboing.net and now you watched it on “One Degree”:http://www.onedegree.ca and if you took the time to watch the video my guess is you’ll be talking about this and passing it along to.
Now, does anyone know if “EA”:http://www.ea.com released this video intentionally, or was it a fan that put this online?
Either way this is a glimpse at the future of advertising.

One Comment

  1. Patrick Buechner
    Patrick Buechner May 26, 2006

    We released this video intentionally, but only through the GDC’s offical site. Recently before E3 06 we released the first new game footage in a year via You Tube. This was before we released it to the press or established gaming web sites. It ended up being one of the most viewed videos on the site (currently at 240K views). It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHaulHxmO4A&search=spore%20e3. Also worth checking out is Robin Williams playing the game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3DRiREBm9Q&search=spore%20robin%20williams

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