Majestic

Majestic was a game developed by Electronic Arts, described as an alternate reality multiplayer game. Instead of engaging users on one platform, users were able to engage on multiple platforms as “new subscribers disclosed their phone number, fax number, email, instant messenger names, and other personal contact information.” If different mediums were disclosed, users would then receive messages pertaining to the game on those specific mediums. Another interesting aspect was that the timeline the game took place on. Say for instance, a character needed to drive to a town an hour away, a user would have to wait an hour for that character to arrive in that town, a user would not be able to quickly simulate that hour.

One big takeaway from Majestic is the attempt the game creators made to move their users into a completely different world. Unlike your typical life simulation game where users were taken to an alternate world, they were taken to a different world within their own world.

Connection

While ultimately unsuccessful, the attempt to provide users insight/awareness into events they would not have known about otherwise is noteworthy and brings up potential implementations for the purposes of my thesis. For instance, could you immerse users into simulations of other couple’s conversations which could then help a user discern what behaviors are beneficial and not beneficial in their own relationship. A user then, by not micro analyzing their own conversations, would be able to take a more objective view in their analysis and be able to implement learnings into their own relationship.

Questions

• How much of the game’s lack of success was due to the juvenile level problem solving skills needed to successfully complete the game?
• What percentage of users engaged with the game on multiple platforms?