Juggernaut’s Cutteridge Ghost Stories Bundle
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
There’s an emerging trend with personal estates: that instead of simply being blank boxes, they should be game experiences unto themselves which unfold over time, giving the user reasons to return long-term. And this should be applauded. The marketplace for personal estates in Home is quite saturated, and it gets to a point where the consumer really needs more than just a pretty setting to justify choosing one space over another. By making the space a game unto itself, the value of the investment goes up considerably — and the developer can then charge for add-ons.
A perfect example of this is what Juggernaut Games is doing with their Cutteridge Estate.
Cutteridge is already an outstanding property; its sound design adds considerably to the overall spookiness of the environment, it has actual weather controls (other estates have diurnal controls, yes, but this is quite different), and there are tantalizing hints of a deeper story: the mysterious book, the poltergeist furniture, the veiled woman who disappears, the ghostly attacks and so forth.
In Issue #12 of HSM, we asked Juggernaut, point blank, if we would ever learn more of the backstory to Cutteridge — how it ended up the way it is. Backstory is a wonderful marketing tool by itself, because it creates a further emotional connection between the consumer and the commodity, but Juggernaut’s answer was very interesting: that there are a host of spirits trapped in Cutteridge, and they intend to tell us their stories. Forcibly.
That time has arrived.
I spoke with Juggernaut’s George Cochrane about this video.
“The update is tied to the 10/17 expansion for Cutteridge,” Cochrane explains, “called the “Cutteridge Ghost Stories Bundle”. Buying the bundle unlocks a series of minigames in the space that expand on the stories of the specific ghosts that haunt the estate.”
This is, in my view, absolutely brilliant. Earlier this year, HomeStation had a very lively discussion about personal estates, and whether or not we as consumers would be satisfied with developers reaching into estates we own and periodically changing them. LOOT did this with the Amaterasu Yacht, and Digital Leisure regularly updates its hotel room with new disasters. The general consensus was that developers were encouraged to periodically update their estates, although there is validity to the dissenting opinion that it could take away from the aesthetic experience the consumer originally chose to purchase.
The answer, then, is to sell the content updates. That way, the consumer has a choice in the matter — and the developer generates revenue to help offset the cost of the update.
Personally, I can’t see any reason why someone wouldn’t want to buy the Ghost Stories Bundle. We’ve had a year to enjoy “classic” Cutteridge, and if Juggernaut’s willing to commit resources to making it even freakier, then I’m willing to commit my credit card to buying them.
What can we infer from this promo video, aside from a rather fun bit of tongue-in-cheek parody of those insipid “Ghost Hunters” TV shows that all try to recreate The Blair Witch Project? Well, for starters, there are hints of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), which I certainly hope is part of the bundle. The best horror is the horror that stalks you just out of sight; you know you’re being watched, but you can’t see where it’s coming from. Hearing a disembodied voice is a universal poop-your-pants cue, and the promo video certainly makes good use of it. Will we enter a Cutteridge Estate wherein there are voices whispering obscenities and warnings at us?
The other genuinely tantalizing clue is at the very end of the video. Notice how the Cutteridge house actually changes into a far more dilapidated, run-down version of itself, much as you occasionally cross over to the “otherworld” in Silent Hill and discover a very disturbing mirror image of the setting you were previously inhabiting. This is no small update! If the footage in this video is to be believed, Juggernaut went to the expense of dramatically overhauling their own estate, creating a very different setting to explore.
At this point we know very little about what mini-games the Ghost Stories Bundle will include. It’s fairly evident that two new virtual commodities — the static night-vision camera and the audio recorder — are linked to the new mini-games. While the audio recorder will almost certainly be used for EVP, what will that video camera pick up? Will this be something like Fatal Frame, wherein ghosts can only be seen (and defeated?) through the night-vision camera?
The video also makes reference to two characters who (amongst others) died in the estate: Jessame and Clara. Whether each character has their own mini-game, or the same mini-game interfaces are used to solve one character story at a time, is still unknown. The title of the video suggests that there may be subsequent promo “episodes” which reveal some of the other characters.
As a promotional video, this is a very clever bit of marketing by Juggernaut. This is heating up to be a competitive Halloween season for Home’s developers, and Juggernaut is leveraging its head start with a property that’s already established in Home. The video itself offers just enough tantalizing detail — but still leaves a lot of unanswered questions — to pique the consumer’s curiosity.
For a long time, I’ve felt that Home would be an ideal environment for something like the Stauf Mansion from The 7th Guest — a haunted house that required puzzles to solve in order to unlock new rooms and solve the mystery. It was an addictive formula then, it’s just as compelling today, and it’s good to see a Home developer going for something akin to it. Personally, I’m already sold on Juggernaut’s Cutteridge Estate Ghost Stories Bundle.
October 14th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 6 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Awesome! <--yeah not the most elaborate and smartest remark one could make,…But its sunday morning and i haven`t had my coffee yet.
HSM is like my morning paper lol. good article. was a pleasure to read this.
and off topic..why is my reply showing an amazingly old avatar from my facebook.And not the recent one?…
This sounds very fun and amazing, I can’t wait to see what it has for us to use next update. Cutteridge is one of my fave places for decorating, but if I have to eliminate my furnishings to play this I will, I saved them to a flash drive anyway, lol. This is going to be very fun!
I did the same thing Burbie, saved my Estate as I liked it, then geared it up for my Halloween party with slot-space-eating interactives for guests to win spooky stuff from. Which leads me on to my question about this new update; will guests be able to participate (and even win rewards) from these updates?
Personally, I’m a real nutter when it comes to Halloween, I probably enjoy it too much for a man my age but hell with it, IT’S FUN! Anyways, I ask about guest rewards because I know some of my friends just dont have money to spend in Home for a Holliday season and I like to help them get a costume together or even just Halloweenify (yeah I know, well it’s a word now ok!?) their spaces.
Also, @ Dutch4friends; the reason you’re avatar is like that is coz this site uses WordPress, which pulls any ‘gravatar’ you might’ve used in the past -- hence my lovely arty, black n’ white pic from my writing/art days on another website that appears here when I comment.
Does open an interesting debate on the fact there will be users out there that wont want to buy these new mini games for cutteridge estate but have lost the original one, can they have a refund because they have lost original content. Not too bothered about cutteridge losing original content but if it works. you know other developers could do it and one of these times the new content will be worse than the original
It’s not lost Gary, its just been removed for the Halloween period. After it’s over, the original mini-game will come back.