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Immersive Projects' Checklist for Video Games, Ads & Animation
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A project with sophisticated ideas creates new worlds and experiences. It evokes deep emotions and sensations. It expands concepts and recognizes no boundaries. It touches and moves human beings. A project with sophisticated ideas changes the world.
There's something in that kind of project that makes it special, unique, magnetic, and unforgettable.
It's a delicate balance of elements that transform abstract and complex ideas into powerful projects that are changing people's lives.
The Elements
In the last decade, I've been observing some projects win oceanic audiences while other projects fail. It intrigued me and led me to research it further.
I discovered that despite the varying and complex reasons related to failure, there are clear causes for the success of the winning projects that no money, marketing and PR can replace.
All projects with sophisticated ideas that managed to invite big audiences to their own world have harmony between a set of qualities.
Although following a checklist of those qualities is not a magic formula to turn any game into The Legend of the Zelda, any plot into a Steven Spielberg's movie or any animation into a Disney movie, you do want to bring each one of "The Elements" to your project.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere must be coherent and inviting. The language, the visuals and the sounds must be one single thing, one single world. Never lose sight of the big picture. Work on the variations and subtleties inside the cosmology of the game or the scenario of the commercial.
Language
If you are localizing, you must be very attentive to the translation stage, before anything else in the localization. Boutiques, small agencies and native managers will give you what no big, generical localization company can ever give you: human attention and flawless conversion of the character from the source language to a new one.
It takes creativity and full immersion in a language to bring your idea/world from one culture to another. You'll want to talk openly and directly about it with the people involved. The less middleman, the less waste, and the more value everybody invests in the creation.
Characters
If your project has characters, use it to your benefit by setting their personality, way of speaking, vices, and voice, but keep them in perspective with the other characters. The character must have a reason to be brought to light and to engage with others. Keep them all connected as a whole, no matter how opposite they are, so the world you're building is real, organic, and natural. Look for real-world traits, not neutrality or indifference.
Visual
This topic deserves a full set of articles since the visual aspect, including colors, forms, textures, shades, and layers, is such a complex and crucial element of reality. It's not by coincidence that the majority of the credits in a game, movie, or commercial goes to the creatives, designers, workers, and everybody involved in making the visual part happen.
The visual element, along with the other elements, must be coherent, without loose ends, resembling real life and the real world at some proportion, but showing itself as a new world, a new land, a new scenario, with irresistible reasons to become part of a person's life.
Niche
Get along with the people you're offering hospitality in your new world. You want to be an insider and part of the tribe.
If the audience is widely spread, like for the video game Super Mario World, that captivates kids and adults, go deep on the furthest emotion/aspect/element they have in common. Look for that thing that makes them be one as a group, or find the biggest group within them, without necessarily polarizing. Here, don't split your world. Instead, create polarizations inside it but don't give them strength enough to break your world.
New vs. Known
Feel like wild
Have occasional wild cards to show. Novelty and unexpectedness bring freshness and people enjoy innovation and variation at some capacity. Wild cards can entice and attract attention. Take care so your experimentations don't threaten the audience and users. It's a delicate balance between the new and the known.
Feel like home
The majority of the characters, the narration, the environment, the emotions, the terminology - the majority of everything must feel like home.
Most of the time, changes in behavior and the creation of new demands are gradual. They are based on the known, and then expanded or repurposed, repeatedly. Keep that in mind, and you won't lose the connection with the reality of people's comfort zone.
Use native and local languages, treat them like family, and make them feel at home - then you can propose something new without threatening or scaring them at a no-returning point.
Feel like new
While the story and all around it must feel like home, it can't be exactly like it. Nobody wants to see a commercial or a movie that is boring and predictable, that doesn't evoke something new or something desired. So you want to harmonize the known and the new wisely, so those 2 opposite forces strengthen the energy that makes your world and ideas breathe.
You can imagine that you love your home, and you are comfortable there, and then you buy something nice, beautiful, and new to decorate it or to make it more fun. Another way of approaching it is thinking about seasoning or spice: you cannot forget it, you cannot over-pour it.
You are the master
Manifesting complex and sophisticated projects is challenging but worthy - keep that in mind.
People, ideas, goals, pressure and burning desires will be happening all together.
Difficult moments and conflicting circumstances will arise.
Creativity will hit a wall from time to time.
You might even take the wrong road by mistake and feel like you'll never arrive at your destination in time.
That's all right. When you and your team or company are creating something new, things around it will change. They must change for change to occur.
No matter how abstract or turbulent it is, there's always an opportunity to improve, organize, and bring more clarity and focus, so the path is more pleasurable and the results are guaranteed.
History is not written yet. There's a magnificent version of your project waiting for you. Let us help you get there.
You might also like:
Projects with perception of value
- Corporate videos
- Long product presentation videos
- Webinars
- Documentaries
If your project has a touch of perceived value, gets the user, consumer, customer, or prospect amid another activity, or seeds an idea more intentionally, check the troubleshooting checklist for value-driven projects.
Faster, simpler projects
- eLearning
- Training
- IVR
- Corporate Education
Now, if your project falls into the "Informational Projects" category, follow these steps to improve your localization processes immediately.