The Afternoon Report, March 10, 2009

This information, called The Afternoon Report, is provided by a daily email blast from the publicity firm of Boneau Bryan-Brown, which maintains this blog. This feature doesn't run daily but whenever The Afternoon Report seems to point out articles of interest.

First show to get one of these wins
PRODUCER’S PERSPECTIVE – BLOGGED BY KEN DAVENPORT
“The most explosive entertainment medium of the last several years, which shows no sign of slowing down, is the home video game market. We’ve come a long way since I played Asteroids on my Atari and Donkey Kong on my Colecovision. There have been umpteen game systems and a zillion and a half games since then, from Pong to Pitfall, from The Godfather to E.T. But in the 30 years of the home video game market I can’t name a single video game based on a musical. Can you? Forget the potential profit - think of the marketing value. A good game will get a player in front of a monitor for hours, which means your characters, story, music, and message are getting continual exposure. It’s the ultimate form of content based advertising. You can’t tell me that if you were Val Jean, and after rescuing Marius from the barricade and confronting Javert in the sewers, you wouldn’t want to run out and see Les Miz again. (That was our idea at Altar Boyz when we developed our own simple game - ‘Don’t Wreck The Van’. I'll post the link tomorrow). I don’t expect the vid game industry to ever embrace us. Video games, like top 40 music, is an area of pop culture that the theater just can’t find our way (back) into.”
Well, there could also be a game called "Get That Videotaper" and another one called "Who is Patti LuPone Screaming At?" and another called "Where in the World is Auntie Mame?" But seriously Ken is really quite right. And Les Miz is an almost textbook-perfect example of a musical that could work as a video game.

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