HomeStation Announces the Winners of the “Fake Developer Ad” Contest
by NorseGamer, HSM founder
Advertising is the ultimate in emotional shorthand, and yet it takes an enormous amount of time and energy to create one. You somehow have to get someone’s attention, reach into the mysterious emotional sectors of their brain stems, and motivate them to spend money on something they didn’t know they needed.
Oh, and you typically have only thirty seconds to do it.
Ads are challenging. It’s one thing to make a functional advertisement; it’s another to come up with an ad that people actually remember. And hardest of all is the challenge of coming up with a memorable ad that actually moves the needle in terms of product sales. Because ads can have a powerful effect on people, and it’s amazing how broad an audience they can reach. If this simple Doctor Who ad can reach more than 54,000 people and motivate a percentage of them to monetize in Home, then frankly this is a filmmaking skill set that Home’s truly talented machinimists should embrace and explore.
So, a month ago, we unveiled a very unique machinima challenge: create a fake PlayStation Home ad for some developer’s product(s).
We honestly didn’t know how much response we’d get. Despite the fact that there are really only two major community outlets for Home machinima — and HSM is one of them — no one’s really challenged Home’s filmmakers to think like advertisers before. But it fits HomeStation’s ethos incredibly well: we’ve always been focused on examining gaming from a sociological and business perspective, and this is a wonderful creative exercise to get the consumer thinking more like a developer. It’s a learning curve I’ve had to go through myself, so I was personally curious to see what would emerge.
The results didn’t disappoint. Five entries were submitted:
Olivia’s fake Digital Leisure ad:
Bill’s fake Doctor Who ad:
Sue’s fake Sodium2 ad:
Homeboy’s fake Lockwood ad:
Keara’s fake nDreams ad:
Talk about a hard decision to make! The judges had to pick one winner from the HSM team and one winner from outside HSM, and we locked them in a room without food, drink, light or oxygen until they did. After much discussion and asphyxiation, the vote tally showed Bill from the HSM team and Sue from outside HSM as the two winners of the $50 codes, which will be sent along to them via e-mail shortly.
Here’s the thing, though: the real prize is the opportunity to be shown on the EOD. After all, it’s near impossible to get user-generated content into Home, where the potential audience is staggeringly large. And given the quality of these HSM contest entries, we’d like to feature all five of them on the HSM EOD Channel.
Moving forward, I highly encourage Home machinimists to explore creative means of showcasing Home commodities. It takes just as much creativity to put together the sort of entertaining video journalism that HearItWow and KaptinFathead are known for as it is to create something wholly fictional, and it’s a fantastic service to provide to the community as well.
Congratulations to all of our contest entrants — absolutely fantastic work!
May 2nd, 2013 by NorseGamer | 10 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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Congrats Bill and Sue! I know you both and know you both do fine work. Well deserved, and to the others, good work as well, applause all around.
Thank you HSM! I would love to see all of them on the EOD too.
Homeboy’s Sunset Lounge looked really cinematic. Hope you keep making films, your awesome at it. You got the eye. 8)
Olivia your humour is great.
Keara, I have always loved your eye for film.
Sue, in my humble opinion, you should be making ads for Home for real.
Congrats to all of you. Now to go watch these on the EOD.
Thanks, man! Yours was great as well. You and sue have those special effects down it seems. I may need to get some pointers!
CONGRATS BILL and SUE great job
Lot’s of hard work was done here. I enjoyed everyone’s machinimas. Such a diversity of talent here. Looking forward to seeing more from all of you, thank you for sharing!
Hey that’s my WEASEL in your video Olivia…lol
Congrats to Bill and Sue!! Great video to chose from, I’m sure it was tough deciding!
Seriously. You have no idea how tough it was! They were all very good.
I must say this caught me by total surprise !! I bet on Homeboy79 and Bill to win..if not Bill then Olivia..It saddens me that only five entries were submitted..you’re telling me no one needs 50 PSN bux!!
I love Homeboy79s video.just two shots..great music..I was sure that would of won..
As for mine..I wish we could have turned off the PSN IDs..it takes away from the ad I thought..
Thank you all for your kind comments..AvatardProductions is now 2 for 2 in contest entry winnings..
Now where is my 50PSN code..I got dance moves and locomotion stuff to buy..and figure out a way to blow up TJs train set…
I am very happy to hear that they will ALL be showing up on the EOD screens..Great job to all the entrants..
Thank you to @HomeStationMag for sponsoring this and thank you to @LOCKWOODLKWD for making my favorite game to play on PlayStation Home to this day
Aloha and Ahui Ho -- Susan
GREAT JOB EVERYONE.
Btw, what a generous offer to put all 5 videos on the EOD. Since my work hasn’t been on the screen in Home since co-producing HomeCast Rewind with HearIt (besides some freelance work I did for Replay during the last season of the Tester), it would be really cool to see it in Home again! Thanks again for the opportunity.