#balloon world arcade theory

[shiningstarr15]

GGY Week Day 4- Game

“Come on, see if you can beat my high score”

@ggyweek2025

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Things from the ruin dlc that keep me up at night.

Spoilers under the cut.

SERIOUSLY DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE AVOIDING SPOILERS.

Disclaimer: I wrote this before I had seen Everything the DLC has to offer or all the endings yet. I was on the wrong track, but I think my cooking before I knew everything was good cooking. I have more concrete theories now under #danachan's rants

Something that I was 100% right about that I was going to write into Lofi eventually.... But I guess I'll talk about it now since the dlc confirmed it.

But Balloon Boy world was literally Eclipses cage as I suspected. It was suppressing them. It wasn't an evil arcade or Eclipse was living in there. Eclipse's AI was being suppressed in the arcade cabinet.

Eclipse is how they talk to eachother, and Eclipse was asleep and completely blocked off from the Virus. So Sun and Moon had no communication with eachother anymore. Which is why they were both so stressed and lost.

I was astounded I got that completely correct in regards to what Eclipse is, and what the balloon boy game is.

(the dlc does not explain the Dcas weird connection to Vanessa and why the arcade cabinet was in Afton's boss fight room though)

Bonus points Moon talks exactly how I write him when speaking about the Sun and the Moon.

Another thing that has been mind-blowing me that all the comic book endings are scenarios that GREGORY DREW.

And according to the dlc....

The Afton Burntrap Blob ending is another one of those endings that he drew.

Which means Peepaw Afton and the Blob were never real in the first place.

Which is why no one could really figure out what the blob is.

It doesn't exist.

Princess Quest ending was the canon ending.

Vanessa leaving the Pizzaplex with Gregory is the canon ending.

The ending where you fight Afton in the basement.... Never happened and was just Gregory attempting to make sense of the FNAF lore that Vanessa probably explained to him. Since in the DLC, we do find a book about Fazbear History in Vanny's room.

I honestly don't know if Steel Wool retroactively made Burntrap non-canon due to everyone making fun of him, not taking him seriously and hating the blob, or if this was always the case. Because despite the Afton ending being the hardest to get.... It's still a two star ending.

So it's hard and too early for me to tell if I want to give them points for that soft retcon. I mean I don't blame them honestly.

But yeah. Skeleton man Afton in the basement and his best friend the Blob isn't actually real, and neither is Freddy's "I am not me" speech either.... Which honestly makes sense. Because it's all Gregory's comic book trying to make sense of FNAF Lore he doesn't understand.

Also, I can say definitively, and finally, Afton is not the Mimic. Glitchtrap exists as its own entity in this, and the Mimic seems to have its own agenda. It's unclear if Afton is possessing the Mimic via virus corruption, but for now, I believe the Mimic is acting of its own will.

And man oh man. I feel so sorry for people who haven't been keeping up with Tales of the Pizzaplex Books.

The ending of the dlc is just really "who's Henry???" From pizzasim all over again huh....

Anyways. Those are my thoughts. I will be streaming the dlc again tomorrow. Gonna try and get a better ending, but I have a suspicion they're all sad.

[bionicboxes]

whoo, some of the ArcadeQuest AU designs done! little story summary below:

Freddy and his Companion, a TALKI bot named Gregory, are sent on a mission to find five keys scattered across time and space to stop an ancient evil from destroying these universes. Along the way, they must help the residents of these parallel worlds defeat minions of this great evil in order to obtain the keys needed to fully defeat it.

or at least, that's what they believe. As the 'Glamrock' crew meets odd individuals that tell them of an older evil they once defeated, things start to become hazy, and reality as the believe it to be starts to fall apart. But the evil they face is all too real, and someone really does need their help. History loves to repeat, and its up to the Glamrocks, with guidance from those who experienced said history, to put a stop to it.

ArcadeQuest is based on an AU/Theory idea I had revolving the arcade machines in the game; Said theory being that like Princess Quest frees Vanny from control once completed; the Balloon World, Feeding Frenzy, and Monty Golf arcades were supposed to free their respective animatronics from the Mimic's control early in development for SB before being scrapped. To be clear, that's entirely speculation on my end, just trying to find a practical answer to their odd inclusion.

Each of the Glamrock's worlds are somewhat based on their arcade and/or location in the pizzaplex (especially with Roxy and Freddy whom don't have an arcade).

Its really just for me to have some good fun with all of the animatronics I've come to love over the years. Just about every animatronic will have some sort of appearance, albeit the ones with the most major roles are the SB characters, the FNaF 1 crew, Puppet, Springtrap, and Ennard. Potentially Baby as well, AQ isn't a fully finished AU by any means haha.

[werywrenniethoughts]

Let's Talk About Sun and Moon

I've been itching to share all my thoughts & theories on the Daycare Attendant ever since I first played SB. With MattPat's latest video reacting to Fuhnaff's recent Ruin theory, I could no longer contain my silence. It's obvious Steel Wool is pointing us back to Sister Location, or more specifically Circus Baby's Pizzaria. I think we'll find that the daycare attendant has been here all along. Below are a few key things I want to open discussions with the DCA fandom. Buckle up friends, and grab a snack or 3, because this is a long one. Let me know your likes, let me know your dislikes. (FYI general disclaimer that I bummed all these pictures from Google and that spoilers ARE contained below)

Personally, my theory is the DCA is an old funtime/toy animatronic from Cirus Baby's Pizzaria that was repurposed for one reason or another and brought to the PizzaPlex. Let's go over some of the reasons why:

Does the Daycare attendant fit with the Glamrock animatronics?

No. Not even a little. The Glamrocks are synonymous with neon signs, rock n roll, and 80s-early 90s vibes. Sun and Moon are based off of the naturally occurring satellites we see in the sky on the daily. Most FNAF theorist tends to unanimously state they simply "don't know what to do with the daycare attendant." It's understandable. They don't really flow with the rest of the SB cast animatronics.

You know who I think they do mesh with though? Circus Baby, Funtime Freddy, and Bellora. While one could argue they are not an exact fit, they certainly fit the circus designs far better than the Glamrocks. Sun with his striped pants, bells, ribbons, and poofy collar certainly give him more of a clown-like look (dare I even suggest, they look like a jester, Mimic fans?)

I've also always felt that Moon's speech patterns model Funtime Freddy's more than the Glamrocks or even Suns. They sound like preselected lines he's been programmed to say, rather than cohesive sentences most of the time with limited vocabulary usage, not unlike the lines delivered by the withered, Funtime, and Toy animatronics in Ultimate Custom Night. Phrases that sound innocent, but with the given inflection, they're obvious threats. Kellen Goff, the overly amazing voice actor for both the DCA, and Funtime Freddy stated once in an interview that the audition description for FF was "a voice that children would love, but adults would hate/fear." He nails that with Freddy, but, I think his performance with Moon warrants that description somewhat as well.

Another circus link I want to point out is this little devil right here:

Ballon Boy. He too blends in with the circus theme. It's also worth mentioning the arcade machine hidden within the DCA's room is Balloon World. Where in-game versions of Sun and Moon watch over any poor soul attempting to complete this flappy bird ripoff. Has anyone ever noticed that the arcade cabinet, and the game's home screen you start on, display a carnival tent?

Further, Kids Cove is linked to the daycare- the floor map shows us the shore of Kids Cove flows into the daycare, which flows to a flowery hilltop where the DCA's castle room sits. A pirate version of Foxy is the featured animatronic of Kid's Cove. In fact, every character cut-out you need to flash with the FazCam to access the DCA's room is a member of the original four: Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy.

The DCA lore from Bobbiedots states the DCA was "an old stage animatronic" NOT specifically from the FazBear theater. Of course, no one can deny the FazBear theater is absolutely pointing us toward them being meant to be performing there. The artwork of the daycare has the FazTheater in the "sky" per the scenery, there's a sun framing the entrance banner, and Moon's patterns decorate the door. Additionally, both the comedy and tragedy masks line the banner.

Could it be they are older animatronics meant to be retrofitted and added to the lineup but were instead reprogrammed as the Daycare Attendant last minute or, were they performing an old throwback routine from their original pizzeria for a time before they were reprogrammeed? Or was it always the FazBear Theater from the get-go? I feel all these scenarios are somewhat plausible.

Sun/Moon make more rudimentary machine sounds than the other animatronics in SB. It's hard to describe the glamrocks and the endos just sound smoother, like well-oiled machines. While Sun's movements are fluid and the sounds he produces are rhythmic, he sounds more like a clock or wind-up toy than anything else. Moon flat-out squeaks- a LOT. Like he hasn't been oiled in years. (Admittedly, this could just be a subtle attempt by Steel Wool to help you deal with Moon during the generator section. It's dark as crap, and you CAN hear Moon coming far sooner than you see him.) You can listen to isolated sounds of Sun's mechanisms on the FNAF Wiki and you can hear Moon on any SB playthrough. I think their cable might also be considered rudimentary compared to the glamrocks as well, but, this is also a personal opinion that doesn't really have any evidence to back it up.

I could probably add a few more minor things, but I think I've given us all quite enough to chew on for now. I know I've failed to mention Eclipse this entire time. Without any additional lore, it's hard for me to decide whether he's the original version of Sun and Moon, or a brand new addition. Obviously, a lot of my theories here are either supported or thrown out the window based on which one is true. I'm okay with letting that lie for now until we (hopefully) get a more concrete answer from Scott or Steel Wool.

It seems like we'll be getting a Sun-based story in Tales #8 so I'm eagerly awaiting to see if that completely disproves my ideas, or gives them any merit. I certainly don't think I have them 100% figured out, but, I think the limited amount of lore regarding the origins of the DCA means Steel Wool's hiding something. I'm eager to hear everyone's thoughts! Thanks for coming to my Sun/Moon TED talk.

[puhpandas]

balloon world is GGY's princess quest theory:

so theres been speculation that Balloon world in SB is like Dr Rabbits equivalent of princess quest for Vanny because of the purple glitches inside. im here to add on some evidence to that theory

so ruin confirmed that the Princess Quest ending (free vanny) is canon. it hints at it multiple times and it pretty much confirmed. epecially with THIS room in ruin.

the third princess quest (aka the cabinet that freed vanny plus killed glitchtrap) is shown on its side with a sword driven through it. implying its been conquered and shut down.

its this exact theme that made me notice it in balloon world as well.

in ruin, the room with the balloon world arcade cabinet is still accessible, even though it seemingly has no impact on the story (it was famous for being disappointing when sb first released). in that room, balloon world is also shattered. and when you put on the mask, like seeing the sword driven in princess quest with the mask on, you see this.

the eclipse from balloon world is shown outside the cabinet in the AR world like the sword in PQ.

this is what the game looks like normally:

and by normally i mean ONLY when you glitch it out. this screenshot is a product of using the games mechanics to reach multiple PURPLE glitches across the arcade game. and multiple (meaningless) messages appear as well. That same eclipse is shown outside the machine in ruin.

we know pretty much nothing about ggy outside of the book. so here is what i think happened by this evidence along with more from the games in general:

pre sb, very close to the actual games events, gregory had been glitchtrapped just like vanessa before suddenly freeing himself on accident. this could have happened from anything, but my idea right now is that ggy found the secret room and unknowlingly played the game that held his free will because of his love for arcade games (shown in his high scores)

queue gregory getting freed from glitchtrap and waking up with amnesia pre sb. hes stuck in the pizzaplex with no memory and is freaking out. vanny and glitchtrap immediately know he isnt under control anymore. vanny goes after him herself, posing as vanessa during business hours

gregory escapes and after freddy crashes on stage, he hides in his stomach hatch. queue security breach, where vanny sends the animatronics after gregory to bring him back to re-glitchtrap him/just kill him so he doesnt tattle (let me take you to your parents/your family is looking for you)

due to the content massacre in sb, we can only guess if balloon world had ggy hints or if it meant anything before they removed any mention at all. eclipse feels like a last minute filler, and that could work in canon too. maybe eclipse was the games way of filling that hole gregorys conciousness left in the game

and when everything is said and done post SB, when gregory kills glitchtrap for good in princess quest, the machine breaks. and anything related to the VANNI network/glitchtrap virus is leaking out into the AR world, but contained in the pizzaplex.

and thats what i think :) this amnesia + ggy theory for gregory can also work with cut voicelines from security breach + ruin. it seems like gregory still doesnt fully remember/understand that he was glitchtrapped, and him seemingly being best friends with cassie but not contacting her at all after going missing is explained by the fact that he literally didnt remember her until he saw that she existed.

and maybe the memories started coming back after that, setting up for him eventually remembering all that he did as ggy

not to mention how a ggy reveal would perfectly explain why gregory would cut the elevator if it really was him. it would at least add context.

[millenniumproductions]

Sun, Moon, and Eclipse are SUPPOSED to be a family.

Just to be clear I'm talking about the MAIN Security Breach canon, NOT the Sun and Moon Show one.

Ever since Eclipse became introduced to the SB canon, I've been thinking about some things.

See, I'm a big supporter of the Sun x Moon ship, just like I am with Fronnie and Chicanne (the ship between Glamrock Chica and Roxanne Wolf).

But there was one thing I've always wondered...

COULD the animatronics have ANIMATRONIC children?

So in response to that question I came up with possibly the most wholesome yet angstiest theory:

What if Sun, Moon, and Eclipse were supposed to be Fazbear Entertainment's attempt at making an "animatronic family" for advertisement purposes but the three of them ended up becoming an actual family?

Reason why I came to this theory was because recently I've been viewing a comic called "Obsolete" by Ice Tiger Kitten on Twitter (great story by the way) and the way that Sun, Moon, and Eclipse were interacting with one another wasn't "sibling-like" at all...

It was more like two parents trying to protect and support their child.

I say "child" because Eclipse WAS confirmed by Kellen Goff to be Non-Binary.

Now... HOW would it work in canon?

Considering that we may or may not be getting a RUIN part 2 DLC at SOME point, it may show more of the three of them interacting. Who knows? It may end up just like how the comic is going or if it turns out that they're either just a weird Steven Universe fusion-esque program or if they are all just three AIs in one body. In any sense, I'll be okay with it in canon.

Now... what is everybody's positions in this "family"?

Sun: The Mother

The reason I put Sun as the "mother" is because another youtuber named Techno Dragon theorized that Sun was supposed to be a female animatronic but since Sun and Moon were stuck in the same body, I think everybody else just assumed Sun was also male and never bothered fixing it.

Also, consider the fact that SUN is possibly being FORCED by the STAFF to stay at the Daycare, kind of how like a HOUSEWIFE was forced to stay at home and only care for her children and husband instead of possibly also working like it was back in the thirties.

Moon: The Father

Moon just gives me the "kind-hearted but also protective" father vibes when not under the Virus's control. Also, him being possibly a part of the Security gives more evidence to my analysis about Sun considering that back then working men were known to work through a WHOLE NIGHT, which fits with how Moon was allowed outside of the Daycare and NOT Sun.

Eclipse: The Child

Eclipse to me is just like a little kid that also has the same intelligence level as Gregory or Cassie.

I think Eclipse was just born sporadically one day, considering the "Happy Birthday" line that is said in RUIN, which could have been a hint to THEIR birthday, since children are known to be the happiest when it comes to their birthdays.

Now... What happened to this family?

Obviously, the virus happened, but I also think the STAFF was partway responsible.

Considering the condition that both Sun and Moon were in before RUIN, it is VERY clear that STAFF didn't actually bother to maintain them like they did with the Glamrocks.

I think all of the broken STAFF bots in their room were broken up by Moon so he could maintain their currently shared body when the STAFF didn't want to, which gives more evidence to my family placements.

When the Virus finally took its hold over Moon and partially over Sun, it ended up pushing Eclipse out of the body and POSSIBLY into the AR world.

Now I know there's been another theory going around that the "Eclipse" we saw in the Balloon Boy arcade cabinet is supposedly the same Eclipse we know, but I don't think that's it. I think THAT Eclipse is just its own entity that might have been protecting OUR Eclipse while they were trapped in the AR World, which is what I think their face on the ceiling in the AR version of the Sun and Moon's room represents.

With their child seemingly now "dead", Sun and Moon started to fight for control over their shared body, possibly fought within their shared mind and blamed each other for what had happened to Eclipse, which was not a problem they started to have before until the Virus came into the picture.

Also, I think Eclipse was aware of what was happening and constantly tried to go back into the body, but the Virus kept pushing them out.

Now, here's where the events of Security Breach come into the picture.

I think Eclipse was the one making the cables glow those bright colors.

And yes, I KNOW it was the actual developers that changed the cable colors because some of us couldn't find them, but in canon it wouldn't normally make sense that the cables would be glowing like that.

Since Eclipse was still trapped in the AR world at the time, I think they managed to develop SOME control over electronics like the generators, which is why the cables were glowing those bright colors.

And what were those colors?

Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, and Purple.

Blue: Represents Moon

Yellow: Represents Sun

Green: Represents Eclipse

Red: Represents the Virus itself

Purple: Represents Glitchtrap

Eclipse was trying to tell us their story through the cables, but back then we didn't have a way to see them.

Well, until RUIN came around.

With the Virus now seemingly gone, Eclipse was able to go back into their parents' shared body, but Moon was still clearly traumatized by what had happened and was possibly in denial that Eclipse was still "alive".

Also, I think the "song" that Sun was singing was supposed to be a lullaby for Eclipse, but because of the events of the Virus, the song had become twisted with Sun's sorrow.

After Cassie reboots Moon, Eclipse is able to express themselves again, and does seem to be very grateful to Cassie.

Also, Sun's "thank you" not only made me cry the first time I heard it, but I think it was also a "thank you" for reuniting the family.

Hopefully, if we do get a RUIN part 2, these three will get more screentime.

[chipistrate]

In your Balloon Circus Story, would BB World return? I think it would be cool to see BB World actually coming back in newer games, the way Princess Quest came back in SB but just in case that's not what happens I'll settle for hearing what your awesome AU would do with it :D

I 100% WANT IT TOO!!

The theming is PERFECT for its return, and also 2 me it's a pretty important game since I like to believe that it's basically Gregorys Princess Quest, that being the game that set him free from the virus- or on the flipside, being the game that introduced him to the virus.

I'd love too add it to the plot somehow- make it important to the story. Buuuut I haven't found a way to do that yet,,, so for now it's one of the arcade games you can find down in the area where Faz Ent dumped the Pizzaplex stuff- a mysterious game that surprisingly still works, despite not being plugged in for years now.

I want to do more with it- maybe make it part of Cassie's plotline, with all the clown/balloon theming and all- maybe it somehow helps set her free from the Mimic. But for now, it's just another mystery below the circus.

If/when I figure out what to do with it there's a good chance I'll reveal it pretty soon after because I love BB World soso much I would be incapable of keeping my mouth shut if it became super plot relevant in Balloon Circus LMAO

Also thank you!! I'm glad you like my AU :D

And I also would LOVE to see Balloon Boy World return in later games- seeing how important Princess Quest ended up being is just- Like- the whole arcade conspiracy- Balloon Boy World mysteriously disappearing and ending up in the DA's room without anyone(besides the arcade conspiracy guy) finding it, and the whole glitched out area/ending with Eclipse and it saying "good night" before the game closes, and in Ruin having the roof in the DA's room turn into Eclipse with the corrupted sky when in VR mode. Chica's Feeding Frenzy being said to stay on even after being unplugged and the workers having doubts that the residual charge could last so long, and then having it give you Chica's voice box when beaten in Ruin, and then using said voice box to fix Chica. And EVERYTHING ABOUT PRINCESS QUEST!!!! Not to mention GGY putting such a heavy focus on arcade machines- and the logs talking about someone sneaking in and playing the arcade conspiracy games and then us literally NEVER learning who that was???

It's all soso interesting there's SO much we don't know about the arcade conspiracy that I'm DYING to learn more about and I SO hope they get explained soon- seeing it be brought up again in a future game would be a dream come true,,

Of course I have my own interpretations and theories, but there's obviously something being planned here- there's so much set up and so far we've seen no pay off and I NEED to know what's going on!!!! Especially with BB World cause that game has like the LEAST explanation out of the three- we get the whole glitch world and "good night" ending and the roof in VR mode but we don't get anything from the game itself like with CFF and it doesn't do anything major like the PQ ending, but we still have to go on a scavenger hunt to find it- and we can't even play it in Ruin, but it has a weird glitch effect coming out of the screen- like BB World is so mysterious and it and PQ are the games I need an explanation for the most There's just so many questions left unanswered and they plague my mind almost constantly I'm banging on Steel Wools doors and begging for answers I NEED TO KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING,,,,,,

[theroboticscientist]

Sun and moon theory

Okay, okay I'm sure someone has figured this out by now and the likelihood that this is wrong is very high but also as an old fnaf fan getting theories proven right and wrong is just par for the course. So let’s get down to what me and my friends have noticed.

This theory all started when a friend of mine mentioned how out of place sundrop and moondrop where compared to the other animatronics, this would be fine if there wasn’t a very obvious way to connect them to the 80’s aesthetic, and over the series a lot of lore heavy characters tended to not match their groups such as the puppet or springtrap. This doesn't have a lot of weight on the theory but I thought it was interesting to note. In one section of the pizzaplex we find a note explaining the missing balloon boy minigame. 

‘MAINTENANCE LOG - The BB World game has been acting up. Customers have complained that it starts to glitch over time. I headed to the theater to fix it and now it's gone. I never saw a move request so it should still be there somewhere. I guess I'll check again after the company meeting.’ Now where do we find this arcade game? In a secret room behind sundrops ‘castle’, we can assume this is sundrops room as there are toys placed here like they have been played with. We see children's drawings and pieces from out in the daycare. The balloon boy minigame is through a small tunnel into another room (never a good thing to have) here we find another note and I want you to notice if this sounds like anyone. ‘ They are working together. The arcades. They are hiding something. The glitches. Glitch them all at the same time… then the Princess will recognize me. She’s testing me. I am not yet worthy. The others are protecting it. Let me stay! I am so close! Just one more night, please! I can save the Princess!’ 

Now I wouldn’t put it past fnaf to put in a completely new character for the game, or maybe this is Vanessa, either one would work and fnaf has been known to throw completely new characters at us. However I can’t help but notice that this message sounds strangely like a certain sun we all know. 

We also know that all the animatronics are glitched by Vanessa, and while this is very obvious with moon, sun is less so. I think when Vanessa let out the glitch moon was infected first and sun noticed this and attempted to find some way to reverse it. However he may have just walked into his own demise in his attempt to look for clues. 

This arcade game was stolen by him, since there isn’t any move order in the message, and it’s in his room. It’s only A to B to assume he stole the game. How he found out about princess quest or the glitches is still beyond me and I'm trying to scour the game for more information about it.

The balloon boy minigame is riddled with glitchtrap influence, and I think it’s no coincidence that the sun and moon in that game are represented by each daycare attendant respectively. At the end we see an eclipse, the moon overtaking the sun, and the words ‘good night’ in purple. It’s a little creepy to think that in his quest to help his other half sun may have infected himself with the glitch and ended up as we see him in game. I refuse to believe that’s how he usually is, yes as a children's robot they have to be energetic, but also they are an attendant to the children. They have to take care of a child, and in the state both sun and moon are in I doubt either is fit to keep a child safe and happy. That’s the thing as well, it’s a little creepy in my opinion, that the robot with the closest access to very young children may have been the one in direct contact with glitchtrap glitches from a broken machine. Anyway, that's my theory! Or at least part of it, still got to look for more clues and see if anything else adds to this, I’ve got a lot more for the ideas on why there are eyeless staff bots in their room, and the sheer amount of moondrop iconography down in the endo area so I hope you all will stick around for those rambles! (and a final big thanks to @lacking-hydration for they were a huge help in my 4 am brainwave moment as I was putting this together! ) 

[squeiky]

FNAF SECUTIRY BREACH THEORY:

MAJOR SPOILER WARNINGS BELOW:

You've been warned.

This theory has to do with the arcade games: Ballon world, Chica's Feeding Frenzy, and Monty's Gator Golf.

As well as the secret conspiracy message you find in Sun/Moon's secret room.

Thanks to the following videos:

Keetee's video on all the secret minigames

Matpat's fnaf sb video (Part 8)

Banden's video: Sun's room

I was able to gain access to information about these 'glitched' game I mentioned above. All credits go to them.

As seen in Banden's video (@ 1:50-time) while exploring Sun/Moon's room, you will find the message: "ARCADE CONSPIRARY"

And quote:

["EXIT INTERVIEW: They are working together. The arcades. They are hiding something. The glitches. Glitch them all at the same time... then the Princess will recognize me. She's testing me. I am not yet worthy. The others are protecting it. Let me stay! I am so close! Just one more night, please! I can save the Princess!"]

This message, though it seems to be talking about the games, Princess Quest 1, 2 and 3, it is not. Princess quest games is not, and cannot be "glitched" by us. Most likely, its already glitched due to Glitchtrap (or Malhare if you like calling him that.)

Whoever said this, was previously working in the pizzaplex before being fired. Hence why it says "EXIT interview" which is an interview someone takes before they leave.

What's strange is that this message is right next to the game "Ballon World" where you find a purple glitch in the game and enter if, then follow a glitching line to the T, and at the end you get a glitched version of the Sun anamatronic (or what I like to call: Eclipse) where purple text read "GOODNIGHT."

Now this oddity leads me to my second point, Chica's Feeding Frenzy. In Keetee's video (timestap: 5:55) they were able to show gameplay of Chica's Feeding Frenzy.

If you look closely, during the "LETS EAT!" mode of the game, it glitches out and creates a dizzying, blurred, flashing rainbow event where colorful balloons (that you can't attack) will fly across your screen.

By slowing the video down at a playback speed of 0.25, you can see black glitches located up on the top of the screen.

My theory on this, is to follow the balloons up into the top portion of the screen, and enter a new glitched area. But in the time of the making this post, I have not seen this yet.

For the last game, Monty's Gator Golf as seen in Matpat's video (timestap 10:51) I believe his idea of using the numbers to as a score will active some sort of glitch in the game, and/or find some type of out of bound hits around the areas.

Try doing it in the order of: 3192 ,6369 then 55.

I understand the score only goes up to 9, but hey, we're trying to (canonically) glitch the game here, you never know what's going to pop up.

If not, try going out of bound with the golf ball. In case of any secrets in the dark. Though I doubt there is any, it's nice to try.

(Particulary in the Sun/Moon area caught my attention a bit, though this is pure speculation: try and hit your golf ball into the "slide into fun" part of the course. The course itself is beautiful in its own right, but it just felt a bit odd to me.)

I believe that the order of the games is Balloon world, Chica's Feeding Frenzy, the Monty's Gator Golf, simply beacuse the level of obvious "glitchness" between the games. Though I could be wrong, I'm positive that balloon world always statts up first. As the message it located in there.

I feel these games have some significance to this story. Minor or not, they wouldn't hide the arcade machines unless they're hiding something right? Perhaps we might even find out who got kicked out of the pizzaplex (I like to think is someone was close to Vannesa before the Vanny stuff happened.)

For what will happen once all the games are glitched? I don't know. I believe we either save a few anamatronics perhaps, or we get a secret boss or just some extra lore. Either one or all is great.

Anyways so that my theories on these games.

Some of it was a bit of speculation but I don't own the game, I can't dig in any further that what is currently shown to me. Hopefully someone with the game will find this and help me.

Alright, chao!

[lindwyrmrelinquished]

What are some of your FNaF headcanons?

Mangle is the spirit of a dog and also genderfluid. She's everyone's service dog ever and she does her job damn well.

Moon is SOFT. YOU CAN NEVER TELL ME OTHERWISE, HE'S THE SOFTEST DAMN BOY. He's also semi-verbal all of the time and prefers to say as little words as possible while still making sense. Unfortunately, usually people won't accept the simplest phrases, so he makes sure to at least say enough to be considered socially acceptable. There are two people he feels comfortable enough saying so little around, and one of them is Sun. The other, he doesn't always feel safe around in general, but he loves him.

Monty scared the absolute dickens out of Moon when they first met. Well, that's a bit of a weak word. The story is told long, so I will shorten it: Monty got angry at Moon's reluctance to speak or emote at all while he was trying to talk to him on the catwalks above Monty Golf. Moon got scared, and while Monty was yelling Moon shoved his arm down his mouth in an attempt to escape. Monty was holding him rather tightly, you see, and he pulled some wires deep inside and Monty bit his arm off. Perhaps the damage could have been lessened if Moon hadn't pulled himself away and shot off on his wire, but Monty was left pulling a blue and gray arm out of his body. It took a long, long while for Moon not to have a panic attack whenever he saw Monty, though much much shorter of a time for him to be fixed. It still stings sometimes. But, on the bright side, this is how Sun and Moon started talking.

Sun kept feeling Moon's distress every time he saw Monty. So he started writing notes. And one from Sun turned out one from Moon, and two become several over many many nights. Eventually, due to a plan from Sun that Moon agreed to and then tried to chicken out of, they made up relatively well.

Eclipse... Eclipse, Eclipse. Eclipse. Our beloved little game boy. Daycare Emergency Security. It was never supposed to be its own AI. There was only enough to protect the children and learn from it's creator. But of course, sharing a body with Sun and Moon, two who have learned from each other how to live, it's inevitable that one baby AI will grow into its own. They're the little sibling of the Sky Twins, and they love it very much.

When Moon got the virus and realized its true intentions, and the fact that it hadn't yet gotten to Sun or Eclipse, he shut himself off from them entirely. The firewalls were far too thick for them to see more than a blur of him, and the virus was always straining to get to Sun. but the walls followed Moon everywhere. It was never able to get out. Not even when Eclipse was getting deleted.

It stayed very far away from Eclipse. The little thing could kill it within minutes, after all. There's no safe chance of infecting Emergency Security, not at all. The majority of it would have to jump off of Moon to even have a chance at invading Eclipse's code, given it wasn't torn to shreds upon contact. It didn't let Moon ever touch Eclipse, and it was always jump away when Eclipse tried to peer at their brother through the wall.

Now, we all have our theories over why Eclipse is in the Balloon Boy World arcade cabinet. Most of us believe it was Vanny, or Afton, or simply that it formed in there. Maybe even that it's a virus of its own. My headcanon is that Eclipse started getting deleted by Vanny. The game was an improv failsafe. Sun could hear them screaming from the front and with some thinking and comfort to his dying little sibling, he went below the theatre and grabbed the game, hauled it up to his room, and put what was left of Eclipse inside.

"Don't worry. I'll put what's left of you in here, then when the time comes, I'll get the rest of you and put you back together!"

Eclipse could talk to Sun for a little bit after that. They could project themselves a little bit outside the screen instead of just appearing on it. Sun could hear them. The virus, and subsequently Moon, could not. With a while, and with too much stress, eventually Sun stopped listening. Stopped seeing him. Eclipse stopped getting daily updates. it wasn't lonely or stifling in the arcade machine, even with the loss of most of their functions and speech due to the attempted deletion., as long as they had their brother to talk to.

There was no brother that talked to them. Not for months.

They forgot about him for a little bit after the virus was eradicated and the Daycare re-opened. Simply too busy. And then the kids described something in the arcade machine that looked like "if Sun and Moon smushed together and were EVIL". Moon didn't know where Sun had stashed Eclipse, only that they were safe. The virus had been listening, always, at the time. When Eclipse was brought back into the collective systems, it brought trapped trauma of the lonely game with it and a bitter resentment for the siblings that would've left it to rot there had it not caused the glitches. It would never hurt its siblings, of course. But it stayed away from them for a while, even with the loneliness tearing at its core. It's not sure it was meant to stay alone for so long.

On a lighter note, Eclipse is the only of the siblings that can emote! Their mouth moves and so do their eyes. Their pupils appear at will, and their eyes look like lava lamps when they activate.

[vigrotter]

Do y'all remember that Daycare attendant's room is weirdly messy and dirty? Knowing how crazy he is about cleaning its weird that his own room is so dirty. He also has a secret room that is connected by a pipe and has a balloon world arcade game, a make shift bed, many kid clothes, drawings and toys. So, what if Gregory isn't the first kid that tried to run away from Vanny and survived? What if there was another kid? The kid run away and got founded by Sun/Moon and got protection inside his room for some time, Daycare attendant were giving the kid toys, art's and so on, to try and take care of the kid. But what happened to the kid? So if you'll play the arcade it shows that you play as Balloon boy that collects balloons and there is Sun's face as the sun in the background, but through the game there is glitches. If you collect them you'll get stuck in a dark glitching mode of the game with Sun's face being black and creepy, the more you collect glitches the more creepy Sun's smile gets. After getting all of the glitches Bb will be on the screen and black creepy sun face will be burning bright behind him in full screen without the tree's. And on the front in purple there's going to be text "its time to sleep". After opening the bag in the room that gives you messages you get this

My theory is is that kid was stolen by Vanny but they run away to daycare, Sun/Moon found them and after hearing about the kid being alone or chased Daycare attendant decided to keep them safe but failed later on, hence the the creepy sun face in the game. The kid represents Bb and the Daycare attendant is the sun. The kid had a fazz watch and was trying to understand the secret of the arcades (the way the texts goes it gives of vibes that an kid wrote it, it is weird for a grown up to write in the manner it was written) and found the Glitchtrap glitches, but something went wrong and the kid was killed by possibly Moon (the text saying "its time to sleep" Moon talks in the same way,the sun face in the game got black, like the second side of Moon, and got a creepy scary smile) or by Sun himself (maybe he was controlled by Afton?). The room is still a mess by probably Sun losing his control and going mad, or by a fight between him and something else (broken parts of helping bots there). By the look of the secret arcade room there it seems it was a while. Maybe thats why Sun is so crazy on keeping rules and being so clingy to Gregory (before being banned)

[listoriented]

Burnout: Paradise

1. Burnout. Spinning wheels without moving. Antipodean slang. The smell of burned rubber.

The blank word document is another rounded bend. A few cars here and there loaded in. Driving these virtual streets is seeing ideas, tangents, discourse, thoughts spill off. In front is always nothingness. An inability to grasp on to anything coherent. Yes this is synecdoche, yes this is consumerism, a shiny shell of petromodernity – an actual critical theory term that I now take seriously - yes this is me, my life, my phd in miniature, the imperfect totalising open-world game, or yes this is a microcosm of the entirety of trying to play through the letter “B” of my steam library, stop-start, hopeful then despairing, takes longer than it should, yes this game is a magnum opus and I wish so hard to fill my lungs and release until my fingers are pinching some inflated balloon perfectly full of a graspable idea, or yes this game is fundamentally empty, a comment on a comment; at the bottom of all searches for purpose we find searches for purpose, etc. 

So I start and I start and I start again. I drive I drive I drive. Event after event ticks down, my license goes from learner to D to B to A and then I hit my goal, “Burnout license”, and still I don’t know what I’ll write. Something about driving, in general; driving as notionally relaxing, driving while thinking about other things. How do people write? Write things? My PhD is in pieces on the floor and in the computer and in my head. I drive around Paradise City and terrible emo from the mid-noughties plays, interspersed with long bouts of classical. Days pass, and in the game the day turns into night and back again, and I adjust the clock to make this happen slower, and the weather changes in Paradise City, a little – cycles of rain and cloud and sun - and here in Melbourne the weather changes too. It was the tail end of summer when I started, and we’ve been through the surprising highs and lows of autumn, now settling into winter, doing it all again. There are no roads leading in or out of Paradise City, and it’s a long drive back from the hills.

2.      Burnout. A series of arcade-style racers made for various platforms by Criterion Games [official site] between 2001 and 2011.

It’s a little uncanny, this pocket of 2008. It just looks real good to my rusty, unfussy eyes, like in visual terms it hasn’t aged in ways other games from that year age (though my friend James vehemently disagreed). It does the trick. It does lots of tricks. And it seems rare too, to say of a 2008 game that it’s a masterpiece, that it’s the best of its class, though of Paradise this is surely true, if all reports are to be believed with regards to all other open-world arcade driving games that have come since, including everything else made by Criterion.

Any doubts about its age are firmly put to bed by the soundtrack, though, which despite prominently featuring that Guns N’ Roses song from 1987 just screams mid-2000s at me, abundant “rock” guitars, masc whine and all, very of its time, salvaged by one timeless Avril Lavigne banger, a chunk of classical, and (to a certain extent) personal nostalgia for a time when this sort of soundtrack just seemed vaguely synonymous with “driving game”. There’s also the dated blemish of inane unmutable advice-slider DJ A(u)tomica, who at least has the good grace to (somehow) avoid repeating himself, even after seventeen hours of driving, at a clip of one quip every few minutes or so. There’s also the very 2008 nod to renewable energy via Paradise’s wind farm, harking back to that post- An Inconvenient Truth moment of progressive euphoria when we really all believed we could build towards a sustainable future that would also accommodate our oily desires, before another decade of resource-industry funded filibustering hadn’t proven this, again, impossible.

And yet Paradise stands up in ways that surpass the non-ironic soundtrack of fragile masculinity and the very 00’s DJ Atomica, despite or because of the people-less world, the flat and drab urban interior, the hardly even tokenistic ways of engaging with the city as function rather than form. I particularly like how B:P has not even the faintest hint of story, how even in terms of progression it purely becomes a game of exploration, winning events, checking boxes. It melds (excuse me for a second) form and function and manages not to get in the way of itself – the story is what the player does in the game, where the player goes. It’s kind of breathtaking, rare for any game before or since. (Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not advocating for the dissolution of narrative in games, only that the lack of narrative pretence here is very suited to this particular game, and very preferable to the kinds of irrelevant and bloated narratives that are thrown over e.g. other driving games).

Ah, 2008. It was just there! And yet so far. I played Burnout Paradise for a running total of seventeen hours over nearly three months. During this time, I also played forty-two hours of Tetris99. Everything in its place. Criterion recently announced they’ll shut down the Burnout Paradise’s online servers in August, though Paradise lives on in Remastered (2018) glory, Origin only. 

3. Burnout. The act of refuelling the boost capacity of an engine by running out of boost.

Despite the time I’ve spent with it, the fact that I managed to complete its main in-game objective, and the running thoughts on time and place and representation of cultural norms, I feel I’m struggling to say much of definition about Paradise that fits easily into the scrapbook nature of this blog. Perhaps in some ways it's too close to life; a series of arbitrary checklists through which feeling happens (nebulously) around. I "liked" it but do not feel moved to thought, and I'm aware that that is the point – it’s a game that allows you to drive, endlessly, if you want to, think and do whatever. It won’t get in the way (barring DJ Automica butting in every couple of minutes – he literally cannot be switched off).

I do not drive much these days. Last year when Lauren and I moved to Canberra, we drove nearly 4000 kilometres across the country. The landscapes wound by, at the time fleetingly, but they piled on and left deep rivulets in my head, and though it was just five days and nothing really happened – we leant on the accelerator, stopped every hour, listened to music, stayed in nothing-motels quite literally hundreds of kms from anywhere else and ate forgettable takeaway - it feels immense, now. Driving is funny like that - you are never quite in a place, separated from it by machine noise and windows and infrastructure, the one activity you can do to facilitate thinking about something else. Still, impressions, motion, the sense of having moved, of having journeyed. Here in Australia, the fossil fuel lobby has won its third straight election in a row. Hope is eroding into nothing.

Probably my favourite hour or two in Paradise City was spent mucking around in the online section with Roy and James, trying to check off a few of the game's multiplayer challenges. These involved such serious exercises as trying to do barrel a series of barrel rolls, or try and land on top of each other, or smash into each in mid-air, or drive on top of a parking lot to jump a ramp onto a shopping centre. It was very good, if a little eerie and dystopic, strewn with outdated real-and-paid-for advertising billboards, branded vehicles, quaint echoes of paused time and uncanny dilapidation.

The mill of the game I could never quite settle on - I “liked” it, I think, but it wasn’t without problems. I found the single-player events to be mindlessly enjoyable, ploughing other cars into crash barriers, or effortlessly holding down "boost" to accelerate down a straight and into a finish line, celebratory cutaway shot ensuing. Sometimes I crashed into too many grey girders that my eyes hadn't picked out and got frustrated, or sometimes I missed a critical turnoff and got frustrated. Sometimes they just felt like chores, and it was certainly sometimes annoying to not be able to restart events that I had botched, and it took me ten hours to learn you could opt out of races, stunt runs etc just by letting the car idle for a few seconds. And knowing this probably would have saved me a lot of time in the early game, because like I said it’s a long way back from the hills, where like three out of eight events end up at, and committing to staying in a race which after a couple of botched turns and unseen barriers you’re definitely not going to win, whose distant finish line is going to land you a long way from the nearest event (once you finally get there) can feel pretty dire, really, though there was also part of me that admired how Burnout refused to let you jump around the map, forced you to drive, take your time, see the city, see the sights.

I did appreciate the cracky coloured collectms of Paradise City, how they brought the city to life, sort of, or gave it the impression of being a well designed and thought-through playground, though I never got too completionist about them, the core exercise of the whole thing. Both John Walker of RPS and Chris Donlan of Eurogamer have written about Paradise’s fluoro crash gates, the impulse to reinstall the game every year and knock them all down from scratch. Along the way to getting my “Burnout license” I unlocked 36 of the 75 vehicles, jumped 35 of the 50 super jumps, broke 79 of 120 neon red billboards, and smashed through 353 of 400 aforementioned glowing yellow crash barriers. The game puts me at 55% completed. No steam achievements (woulda been nice, perhaps, given that Burnout Paradise is fundamentally a collectmup; nothing but metres and percentages). I’ve driven a little over 1000 miles, supposedly, which is certainly more than I’ve IRL driven over the past few months.

4.  Burnout. noun Physical and emotional exhaustion; breakdown caused by overwork. Commonly associated with “crunch”, “the video game industry”.

But here there is also pure hesitation. Procrastination. The fear of moving on, even at the end of this little step of what has ballooned into an impossible project. I can see the next letter waiting there, a new chapter, a chance for renewal. The one disappearing behind us has drawn out so far, encompassed a few years and a fair bit of change, and now almost petered into nothing at the final gate. I want to hit the ground running but I'm not sure I'm ready, and in the meantime various other deadlines swirl around, make it difficult to see the clear path ahead that I crave. And so it is that the temptation has been there to keep driving the streets of Paradise, its anonymous suburbs and abstract goals, continue delaying the inevitable, or the nearly inevitable, or the not-inevitable-at-all of writing this post and moving on to the next chapter, because it turns out this is a project I once made a choice to begin, and could at one point choose to stop.

There are nagging questions, of course. Who blogs, anymore? Who reads blogs anymore? How does one find a blog they like and then continue to follow it for the span of its natural life? Does anyone use “bookmarks”? What’s an RSS feed? I'm not even sure, in a broader sense, that I know where to find the kinds of writing about games that I want to read at the moment, at least not reliably, outside of say the occasional check-through of Critical Distance or Unwinnable. I look at the slate of games coming out and find it hard to be excited by anything much, the hype and the saturation. It is bountiful until it is not. The guilt element of playing games – something inherited from childhood that I’ve never been entirely able to dissociate - has become more and more prominent. I've increasingly used games as a tool for procrastination and a coping mechanism, a distraction from various (work/study and other) anxieties. I've also been aware of myself doing this, and in turn the kinds of gaming experiences I've relied on have been more focused on short term, low-investment distraction (hence the sudden unyielding devotion to Tetris, which really was just filling the hole left by an earlier act of self-discipline AKA uninstalling Rocket League; more recently, as I’ve managed to put the Switch away for longer periods, I’ve turned back to another simple but deceptive time-filler in Mini Metro. Choose your poison, basically). For a while it seemed Burnout would not only fill this role but do it responsibly: it seemed great for dropping into in short bursts - win a race or two, unlock a new car maybe – without quite the same dangerously addictive pull for me as those other games. But then I heard the GnR song "Paradise City" one too many times (it's mandatory with startup), or got sick of the menu loading times, and it lost this specific part of its appeal.

And then there's the subjective nature of this particular Sisyphean project - the knowledge that here I am pushing a rock up a mountain of my own making, one that exists only for me, entirely built out of and defined by the games and bundles I chose and continue to choose to buy, the rules I chose to set. Life is short, this task is absurd, and at the moment it's not even a joke I feel particularly happy about sharing. Sometimes I get to play great games here, games I may never have gotten around to; at other times I am playing shit games for this blog, and in the process there are inevitably other things I'm not doing. One choice erases another. Increasingly it feels like an isolated pursuit - playing games in general, not just the writing and making of this here blog. It seems like I know fewer people who play games these days, between falling out of touch with friends, seeing lots of other old friends give up games in one way or another, and playing games less frequently with those who I still know. I’ve accidentally become something of a game hermit. For years I've loved the camaraderie and easy familiarity of social gaming experiences even when I haven't loved the games that conduct them - the feeling of being connected to people even in a transient, shallow, goal-oriented sense, but even these I'm not sure I believe in anymore, or I find myself less and less willing to invest in the "right" titles to facilitate it.

I’m into my thirties now, and maybe this is just a feeling of age, life, I dunno, priorities finally shifting to where people told me they should’ve years ago. One of my oldest friends is about to have a baby, though he more or less quit video games over a year ago now. I'm extremely happy for him. Two of my younger cousins just had children, several hours away by plane – my uncle, a new grandfather to two babies, makes posts on facebook claiming climate change is a socialist hoax, and I can’t help but think of the kind of world his grandchildren are going to inherit. I'm mulling over a missed deadline that's been a thorn in my brain now for months, the single-largest hitherto unsaid reason why this post has taken so long to dig its way to the surface. This month marks the five year anniversary of another cousin’s sudden/unexpected passing; he was five years older than me, and though I’ll never be able to make sense of it, I feel like I get that there’s something sort of vulnerable about this age, when the things you want don’t quite work out, or when you’re a bit aimless and stuck in your patterns and feel like things aren’t going to change. He was so kind and gentle, a beautiful soul and a terrible Zerg, and I miss him so much. And one year ago I drove from Canberra to Melbourne and slept on the floor of this house I now call home while I waited for a truck with rest of my stuff to arrive. I’m very aware of the calendar, of change and inertia, of patterns and decay, of newness sprouting underfoot, but I don’t know how games fit at the moment, or I’ve lost the thread of feeling like they’re actually important, or why, amongst all the noise.

Burnout: Paradise is at the start, in the middle, and right at the end of all these things. It's a great game, part of me feels, or wants to say I feel. Playful, irreverent, childishly violent, simultaneously full of stuff and empty of matter. I'm happy I've played it, happy I can say that I've played it, happy to understand on an experiential level most of what it offers, happy I'll be able to remember it later, nod in some hypothetical conversation where someone brings up Burnout: Paradise and say I know what they mean, yeah. I get it. When we were playing it online together briefly, a couple of months back now, Roy told me that Burnout Paradise is the only game he ever one hundred percented twice - once on 360, once on PC - and that it was almost three times, because the first time he was almost done with it, someone broke into his house and stole his Xbox and all his games, and that Paradise was the only game that he re-bought with the insurance money, so determined he was to tick every box the game left open to tick, even if it meant doing it all again.

But maybe – counterpoint - I don’t get it. I’m finding it harder and harder to make good sense of this kind of experience, or feel like this kind of thing is (in some arbitrary way) a net positive, or that it’s okay to keep glossing over the emulation of destruction that games of so many different kinds fundamentally rely on. Outside there is so much suffering, so much to be upset about, and I no longer feel like there is time enough to sink into mindless (rather than meaningful, perhaps?) distraction. Or I’m finding it harder to get beyond the thought that this is an extension of the distraction/avoidance behaviour that I realised might actually be a problem in my life.

“Burnout” is, you’ll know, here in the great mess of the year 2019, a buzz word, particularly in the games industry. Games company employees have perpetually been expected to work unsustainable hours out of some sort of devotion to the industry, creating a cycle of talent depletion and toxic work cultures. But as is often the case with games, it’s a tip-off of what happens elsewhere, across the board. The mass casualisation of careers across all industries, the gig economy, pressures caused by un- and under- employment, the dissipation of viable faith, social-media and political stresses: all of these are leading to burnout, everyone has burnout, we are inundated with burnout. There is something ripe about the words or the idea of Burnout: Paradise, the very conceptual juxtaposition that seems to be two sides of the same coin, that feels very reflective of this moment, what we are all experiencing versus what we were promised. But what does this have to do with Burnout: Paradise, the game in which you pretend drive fake person-less cars around a virtual city, have horrific, visceral crashes from which you immediately respawn and “beat” by achieving a long series of arbitrary victories, collecting all there is to collect? Something, nothing, I don’t know.

“Burnout” means a lot of things, and the meaning of “burnout” the game adopts isn’t the other ones I’d associate with cars – a burnt out engine, or the smell of burning rubber - but one that exists only for the series, so far as I can tell: getting to keep using your boost because you’ve been continually using your boost. Keep going at all cylinders or bust, basically – except not, because the consequences for interrupting the boost are slim even on the relative scale of things that can go right or wrong, in this game where there is never really all that much on the line for the player anyway.

Paradise. n. Heaven. A place to await judgement. An enclosed park. Eden.

In Paradise City the grass is trim; the girls (all humans actually) are non-existent, unless you happen to be riding a motorcycle, presumably because a motorcycle without a rider would look very weird.

In Paradise City the cars are peopleless and drive themselves, so maybe it is an early vision of the tech bro version of Paradise. Or maybe the cars are driven by people who can only exist on the outside of the world of Paradise City, looking in across the matrix. Or maybe in Paradise City the people are the cars. This is Cars, the movie, sans dialogue.

In Paradise City all the cars emulate brands and models that exist in "the real world" but are called by names that exist only in the Burnout franchise.

In Paradise City all the cars ostensibly run on petrol, which is infinite but unnecessary, because going through a petrol station merely refills the car's boost capacity, whatever that is, rather than imply that your car would stop running if you at some point failed to “fill up”. It's very important that you know, though, that the cars run on petrol, because otherwise it wouldn't be a realistic representation of cars. Even in Paradise.

In Paradise City cars exist and then don't exist.

In Paradise City a lot more cars suddenly exists if someone decides they want to flip their car over and see how much monetary damage they can cause.

In Paradise City cars crash and crumple in a hyper-realistic way, but it's okay because the cars have no drivers and anyway all cars are all miraculously fine again after a few moments.

In Paradise City the railway has been shut down to give cars more places to hang out. 

In Paradise City the whole city runs on wind energy, because it's important to care about the environment too, because you can have both, promises the radio, though seeing as there's nobody there in all of Paradise's buildings it's unclear, anyway, what such energy would actually be running.

onward to Caesar 3

[enterinit]

New Xbox One Games for February 25 to 28

New Xbox One Games for February 25 to 28.

Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind (February 25)

Re Mind—The other tale that unfolded during the climax of KINGDOM HEARTS III. Determined to rescue Kairi, Sora travels to the Keyblade Graveyard a short time before the final battle was to take place. Lacking a corporeal form, he traces the hearts of the seven guardians of light. Through experiencing their personal battles firsthand, Sora is about to discover truths that he has never before imagined.

Infliction Extended Cut (February 25)

Wander through an interactive nightmare set within the confines of a once-happy household. Uncover the heartbreaking mystery hidden within messages, artwork, household objects, and other vestiges of domestic life all while struggling to survive encounters with an entity that relentlessly stands in the way of finding absolution.

Two Point Hospital (February 25)

BUILD, CURE and IMPROVE! Design stunning hospitals, decorate them as you like, cure very unusual illnesses and manage troublesome staff as you spread your budding healthcare organization across Two Point County. Two Point Hospital includes two DLC - "Bigfoot" and "Pebberley Island." Design and build your own hospital Build up a hospital from nothing to a masterpiece as you design the most beautiful – or functional – healthcare operation in the whole of Two Point County. Cure unusual illnesses Don’t expect Two Point County to be populated with your usual types of patients. In this world, you’ll experience Two Point's trademark quirky illnesses; from Light-headedness to Cubism – each requiring their very own special type of treatment machine. The County's the limit Your first hospital is where it begins, but what next? https://youtu.be/ATxBPTj8fvU

Wasteland Remastered (February 25)

Originally released in 1988, Wasteland brought the post-apocalypse to video games and inspired a genre. Play one of history’s defining RPGs with completely overhauled graphics, sound, and expanded musical score. The year is 2087, nearly a century after an all-out nuclear war turned vast swaths of the Earth into a radioactive hellscape. You are a Desert Ranger, a band of stalwart lawmen who are the only hope left in what was once the American southwest, and good people’s last defense against hunger, sickness, ravaging raiders, and mutants. Now something more secretive and sinister is menacing humanity, and it's your job to investigate. Recruit help and follow leads—the choices you make will shape the world around you. Choose wisely, your life and the lives of those you’re sworn to protect depend on it. Features: Wasteland Remastered retains the spirit of the original game while updating visuals and audio.The original game’s physical storybook is available in-game, fully illustrated and with full voice over.An expanded musical score from the "Wasteland 1 - The Original Classic" release.Old bugs that have been around since Reagan was president have been fixed.Survive the apocalypse from the comfort of your couch with full game controller support.Quality of life improvements that make the post-apocalypse a little friendlier. https://youtu.be/W6KF4xc-cd4

Ark: Survival Evolved – Genesis – Part 1 – (February 25)

Continue your quest for survival and unlock a whole new chapter in the saga of Ark: Survival Evolved with the Ark: Genesis Season Pass! This Season Pass gives you access to two new huge expansion packs and one exclusive in-game cosmetic pet. Further the Ark storyline while adventuring through unique and diverse biomes via an all new mission-based game mechanic. Discover, utilize and master new creatures, new craftable items and structures unlike anything you have seen yet.

Mega Man Zero / ZX Legacy Collection (February 25)

Six classic titles in one compilation: Mega Man Zero 1, 2, 3, and 4, as well as Mega Man ZX and ZX Advent. In addition to the original games, this package includes an artwork gallery, music player, special filters, and much more. Casual Scenario Mode and a Save-Assist feature are available for those who would like to enjoy the story at their own pace. Players can also try their hand at the new leaderboard-based Z Chaser Mode, an exclusive new mode created just for this set of games.

Hayfever (February 25)

Help Thomas the Allergic Mailman gather all his lost letters in this challenging and unique 2D platformer! In Hayfever, the player takes control of Thomas – a young postman with a strong work ethic. There is just one tiny little issue… Thomas suffers from terrible (and we mean TERRIBLE) allergies. It is up to the player to use Thomas’s allergies to help him traverse a dangerous world, turning his weaknesses into strengths! Different allergens have different effects on Thomas – radically changing how he interacts with the world. Regular pollen allows him to build up a big sneeze to propel himself through the air. Smog, on the other hand, makes him swell up like a balloon. Peanuts… Well, peanuts are a WHOLE other story. Features: Quirky retro-inspired graphicsDemanding, sneeze-driven mechanicsFour worlds, spanning all four seasons140 levels, with 240 letters to collect (legend has it that collecting enough letters unlocks extra, extremely challenging levels…)Allergy-fueled gameplay ranging from pollen and smog to nuts!An A.M.A.Z.I.N.G soundtrack

Sayonara Wild Hearts (February 25)

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a dreamy arcade game about riding motorcycles, skateboarding, dance battling, shooting lasers, wielding swords, and breaking hearts at 200 mph. As the heart of a young woman breaks, the balance of the universe is disturbed. A diamond butterfly appears in her dreams and leads her through a highway in the sky, where she finds her other self: the masked biker called The Fool. Journey through a custom-written pop soundtrack, chase scores, and set out to find the harmony of the universe.

Edgar – Bokbok in Boulzac (February 26)

You are eccentric outcast Edgar, living in the woods with your chicken and beloved squash crops. Unfortunately, a sudden disaster forces you out of your shack and towards the bright lights of the big city, Boulzac, where an 800 year old fire rages beneath the surface, and weird things are afoot. Explore a strange and comic universe, meeting its unhinged (and unforgettable) inhabitants and discovering ancient secrets. Unveil the surreal conspiracy holding Boulzac together. Trek above and below the light city. Enjoy whip-smart dialogue, surreal adventures and satire. Equal parts whimsical and dark: you’ve not met a cosmic horror like this before. It is developed by La Poule Noire, a cooperative that aims, through its productions, to make fun of social trends. In Edgar, conspiracy theory is at the heart of the plot.

Grizzland (February 26)

A seamless open world platformer presented in a retro style and filled with old-school challenges. Explore without pointers to uncover secret areas, equip yourself with unique items and skills, even the ability to shrink and enlarge or explode and recombine. Only through self-discovery will you overcome enemy dinosaurs in epic combat and find the truth of Grizzland.

Ganbare! Super Strikers (February 26)

An innovative mix between tactical RPG and soccer. Win matches to level-up and earn new equipment that will allow you to learn special abilities, boost your players’ stats or protect yourself against altered status effects, such as Sleep, Silence or Poison. Assume the role of a small-town soccer team in Japan on their way to victory. Perform well enough and you will be selected to join the National Team where you will need to play alongside old rivals in order to conquer the world.

One Finger Death Punch 2 (February 26)

You’re surrounded, outnumbered and must use any weapon you can get your hands on to dismantle your opponents in a flurry of kung fu. That’s the essence of OFDP2, the world’s fastest brawler. It features the original’s unique two-button mechanics where speed and precision are key in this whirlwind fighting frenzy, as players maintain control over the 26 different unlockable skills, frenetic gameplay, and classic kung fu-inspired animations.

House Flipper (February 26)

House Flipper is your chance to become a one-man renovation crew. Buy, repair, and remodel devastated houses to give them a second life and sell them at profit. What you’ve got at your disposal is a set of tools and parts to hammer, drill, nail and screw things together, and do whatever is necessary to fit, fix or clean up. Then experiment with interior designs and decorating styles you like with hundreds of items that to choose from. https://youtu.be/nh4zuyi7vVM

Vasilis (February 26)

Vasilis is a hand-drawn adventure game. Vasilis, the main character, has lost her husband Peter in the rebellious city center. The city has plunged into chaos by constant riots, and almost every day something is burned or someone is killed. Having been abandoned by the government, the center is now dominated by local workers and students, who were able to build four towers that bring life back to those that have died. Vasilis is a game which focuses on characters and story. It is divided into five chapters in which the player will deal with riots, cults, and cruel war events.

Castle of No Escape (February 26)

Explore a mysterious castle full of monsters and secrets on a quest to collect treasure (that will also protect you from the curses on your way) and crush the main boss. The game won’t let you exit the castle, no matter how you try; technically you can win, but there is no end.

Castle of No Escape 2 (February 26)

Prepare yourself for the dangers of the cursed castle where countless heroes have tried and failed to destroy the ancient spell held in its walls where hundreds of monsters roam, guarding the sword shards — the last known thing to be capable of defeating the demonic castle’s owner. Plan your steps carefully, because save points don’t exist in the Castle of No Escape.

Yakuza 0 (February 26)

The glitz, glamour, and unbridled decadence of the 80s are back in Yakuza 0. Play as Kazuma Kiryu and discover how he finds himself in a world of trouble when a simple debt collection goes wrong and his mark winds up murdered. Then, step into the silver-toed shoes of Goro Majima and explore his “normal” life as the proprietor of a cabaret club. Fight your way through Tokyo and Osaka by switching between three different fighting styles instantaneously and beating up all manner of goons, thugs, hoodlums, and lowlifes. When you’re not fighting, kill time in 1980s Japan. From discos and hostess clubs to classic Sega arcades, there are tons of distractions to pursue in the richly detailed, neon-lit world.

Spartan Fist (February 28)

Fight your way to fame, fortune and glory in this first-person puncher rogueltke as you work to retrieve the fabled Spartan Fist. Playing as Emma Jones, a down-and-out detective working to earn her keep, you’ll tap your inner badass as you punch dudes so hard they explode. Navigate through an arena that’s different each time you play and delve into a whimsically gritty and colorfully punk pixilated world while fighting your way to the top.

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows (February 28)

Dive into a dynamic fighting game experience with beloved characters from the first season of “One Punch Man.” Play as your favorite hero… or become one! Create your own hero avatar and choose your own set of powers and abilities with edge of your seat fighting and dynamic 3v3 fighting featuring events as seen in “One Punch Man” such as meteors and other heroes. Pre-order to receive early access to play as Saitama (Dream Version), Saitama (Black Suit) outfit, Saitama (Jersey) outfit, and Saitama Mask avatar part. https://youtu.be/1Qf8K7K6GaY

Stab Stab Stab! (February 28)

A brutal, physics-based, couch multiplayer fighting game where you stab your friends until they pop. Play as explosive fleshbirds with razor sharp beaks through vicious combat as you battle your friends in versus mode or team up in survival mode against the mindless hordes of cronenbirds across 12 unique and deadly arenas.

Bucket Knight (February 28)

Even knights must pay taxes, loans, and alimony. Help an unnamed, brave knight in his sacred mission to find the Holy Grail (and make some money). Explore dungeons, slay enemies, avoid traps, stay alive and get rich in this classic styled run-and-gun platformer. Read the full article

[lindyhunt]

11 Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns That'll Give You Serious Event Envy

Work events are really hit or miss. Let's be honest: How many times have you found yourself anxiously fidgeting with a paper napkin in the corner of a stuffy networking happy hour?

Here's the thing: It's not the event itself that prevents you from coming back the following year. It's the experience you remember having. In this blog post, we'll look at some of the best experiences brands have ever offered their customers.

I have a big problem with generic trade shows and industry conferences. That's why I was not only relieved, but surprised and delighted, when I attended a holiday party that featured a live, interactive version of an arcade game.

An entire room had been curated to look like a video game setting, and people were dressed up as characters from it. There was a giant, real-life scoreboard, boppy electronic music, and best of all, there was no tedious small talk.

It wasn't just another tired work event ... it was an experience. And in our line of work, that sort of thing has a name: experiential marketing.

While a surprising number of people haven't heard of the concept, it's kind of a big deal -- there's an entire three-day summit dedicated to it, and 65% of brands that use it say that it positively correlates with sales.

But what is it, exactly? And how has it been used effectively? We found 11 of the coolest experiential marketing campaigns that really break down how it works, and how you can apply those lessons to grow your business.

Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing, also called "engagement marketing," is a marketing strategy that invites an audience to interact with a business in a real-world situation. Using participatory, hands-on, and tangible branding material, the business can show its customers not just what the company offers, but what it stands for.

Experiential marketing might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense -- experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But there are also times when they have nothing to do with a specific event, as you'll see from the examples we picked.

When an engagement marketing campaign is event-centric, it's dedicated less to the type of event -- like a concert, festival, conference, etc. -- and more to interactions between the brand and the customer. (If you already have an event in the works, check out this guide to adding experiential elements to it.)

These campaigns can take an integrated approach. The primary purpose is to experience a brand in a tangible, offline way, but you'll still want an online dialogue around it. When you consider that 49% of folks create mobile video at branded events -- 39% of which is shared on Twitter -- it makes sense to incorporate a digital element. A branded hashtag, for example, can get people talking about the experience.

11 of the Coolest Experiential Marketing Examples We've Ever Seen

1. Refinery29: 29Rooms

For about three years now, lifestyle brand Refinery29 has hosted the 29Rooms event: What it calls "an interactive funhouse of style, culture, & technology." As the name suggests, it consists of 29 individually branded and curated rooms -- and attendees can experience something different in each one. The rooms are designed and created with brand partners, who range from personalities like artists and musicians, to consumer-facing companies like Dunkin' Donuts, Dyson, and Cadillac.

Each year, 29Rooms has a different theme, with this year's being "Turn It Into Art." Attendees, it seems, are encouraged to enter each room and use the surroundings to create something -- one room, for instance, invites participants to put on punching gloves and hit punching bags that each produce a different sound when contacted to create a symphony of sorts. A truly hands-on experience, indeed.

Takeaways for Marketers

Go nuts, but keep it on-brand. An experience should be memorable, but relevant to the people attending.

Partner with creators like artists and musicians to create experiences, especially if they are recognizable within the region where you're trying to build or augment an audience.

2. Red Bull: Stratos

If you were online October 14, 2012, you probably came across a live stream of the "Stratos" jump.

Red Bull has been at the forefront of extreme sports coverage for almost as long as the brand has existed. But in 2012, the company brought its content marketing to new heights -- a world-record height, actually.

Affectionately named Stratos, Red Bull's superterrestrial marketing campaign featured Felix Baumgartner, a skydiver from Austria who partnered with Red Bull to set the world record for highest skydive.

That record: 128,000 feet, about 24 miles above Earth's surface. Gulp.

To pull off this amazing stunt, Red Bull housed Felix in a small communication capsule and sent him up to the stratosphere using a large helium-filled balloon. And what's truly remarkable is that his ascent and preparation to jump, alone, allowed him to break another record before landing safely back on Earth (spoiler alert): Red Bull streamed the entire event online, and saw the highest viewing traffic of any live stream ever broadcast on YouTube -- at just over 8 million viewers.

Want to see that experience again? Check out Red Bull's recap video below. I won't lie, I indulged in a rewatching as I wrote this article.

Takeaways for Marketers

Don't underestimate the power of suspense when hosting an event your audience can own a piece of themselves. Being able to witness something new, and maybe a little scary, is such a personal experience. And the better the result, the longer your audience will remember and reminisce over it.

Oh, and if you can put your brand in the record books while you're at it, that's pretty cool too.

3. Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis

It's disconcerting how many commercials today tell women to change something about themselves. Sitting on the couch and watching TV for just two minutes, I had already lost count of the number of times that message came up.

That's why it's so refreshing to see brands like Lean Cuisine, whose marketing used to center solely on weight loss, stray from diet-centric messaging. And its #WeighThis campaign is a great example of just that.

As part of the campaign, Lean Cuisine curated a gallery of "scales" in New York's Grand Central Station, and invited women to "weigh in." But here's the catch: The scales were actually small boards where women could write down how they really wanted to be weighed. And rather than focusing on their weight in pounds -- or anything pertaining to body image -- the women opted to be measured by things like being back in college at 55, caring for 200 homeless children each day, or being the sole provider to four sons.

What's particularly cool about this experience is that none of the participants actually interact with a Lean Cuisine product. No one was interrupted, asked to sample something, or stopped to answer questions. In fact, no one was really asked to do anything -- the display itself was enough to make people stop, observe, and then voluntarily interact.

Lean Cuisine figured out what message it wanted to send: "Sure, we make stuff that fits into a healthy lifestyle. But don't forget about your accomplishments. That matters more than the number on the scale." But instead of blatantly advertising that, it created an interactive experience around the message.

Still, the experience was clearly branded, to make sure people associated it with Lean Cuisine. The company's Twitter handle and a branded hashtag were featured on the display in large text, which made it easy for people to share the experience on social media. And that definitely paid off -- the entire #WeighThis campaign led to over 204 million total impressions.

Takeaways for Marketers

Don't interrupt -- especially if you're trying to grab someone's attention in New York City, like Lean Cuisine was. If you create an experience that provides value to the people who pass by it, they're more likely to participate.

Figure out the message you really want to your brand to send -- that may or may not be directly tied to an actual product, and it might be something that your brand hasn't said before. Then, build an experience around it.

4. Volkwagon: Piano Staircase

Smile, you're on piano camera!

In 2009, Volkswagen caught people at their most musical by turning a subway staircase in Stockholm, Sweden into a giant piano when nobody was looking. The next day, each step produced the sound of a different piano key as people climbed up and down the stairs. The campaign was a part of "The Fun Theory," which suggests people are more likely to do something if it looks fun (I happen to agree).

For Volkswagen, however, the message of fun goes a bit further than just catching people discovering a musical staircase on their way to work.

As the automotive industry started to take big leaps into environmentally friendly products, Volkswagen wanted to help make people's personal habits healthier to go along with it. According to Volkswagen -- and its partner, DDB Stockholm, an ad agency -- "fun is the easiest way to change people's behavior for the better."

According to the video below, 66% more people chose the stairs over the escalator at that particular subway terminal, as a result of Volkswagen's piano staircase.

Takeaways for Marketers

With every marketing campaign you launch, find the "fun" factor. It's easy to get caught up in how much your brand helps solve your customer's problem. But what about them, as people, would also bring them enjoyment?

Once you find your campaign's "fun" factor, find the "good" factor. Hosting an experience is your chance to make an impact on your community, not just the users of your product.

5. Google: "Building a Better Bay Area"

Corporate philanthropy is definitely on the rise. Between 2012-2014, 56% of companies increased charitable giving, and Google is no exception. But when the search engine giant gave away $5.5 million to Bay Area nonprofits, it let the public decide where that money would go -- in an unconventional, interactive way.

Google allowed people to cast their votes online, but they also wanted to involve the Bay Area community in a tangible way. So they installed large, interactive posters -- in places like bus shelters, food trucks, and restaurants -- that locals could use to vote for a cause.

Source: Google

In the video below, the narrator notes that this experience reaches "people when they had the time to make a difference." That's a big thing about experiential marketing: It allows people to interact with a brand when they have the time. Maybe that's why 72% percent of consumers say they positively view brands that provide great experiences.

And that concept works in this experience because it takes advantage of a "you're-already-there" mentality. In San Francisco, finding people waiting for the bus or going to food trucks is pretty much a given. So while they were "already there," Google set up a few opportunities:

To learn about and vote for local nonprofits

To interact with the brand in a way that doesn't require using its products

To indirectly learn about Google's community outreach

With the help of the online voting integration -- and a branded hashtag: #GoogleImpactChallenge -- the campaign ended up generating 400,000 votes over the course of about three and a half weeks.

Takeaways for Marketers

Create a branded hashtag that participants can use to share the experience on social media. Then, make sure you've integrated an online element that allows people to participate when they learn about it this way.

Keep it local! It's always nice when a large corporation gives some love to its community -- in fact, 72% of folks say they would tell friends and family about a business's efforts like these.

Remember the "you're already there" approach. Find out where your audience is already hanging out and engage them there, instead of trying to get them to take action where they don't usually spend their time.

6. Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard

When was the last time you used cash to pay for something?

Tough to remember, right? We're kind of a species of "mindless swipers" -- globally, an estimated 357 billion non-cash transactions are made each year. And knowing how often we whip out our cards, German relief NGO Misereor decided to put our bad habit to good use with its charitable giving billboard.

It was what they called SocialSwipe. Set up in airports, these digital posters would display images of some problems that Misereor works to resolve -- hunger was depicted with a loaf of bread, for example.

But the screen was equipped with a card reader, and when someone went to swipe a card -- for a small fee of 2€ -- the image moved to make it look like the card was cutting a slice of bread.

Even cooler? On the user's bank statement, there would be a thank-you note from Misereor, with a link to turn their one-time 2€ donation into a monthly one.

Needless to say, this experience required a lot of coordination -- with banks, airports, and a mobile payment platform. Because of that, the experience couldn't just be a one-time occurrence. The people who interacted with it were later reminded of it during a pretty common occurrence: receiving a bank statement.

Takeaways for Marketers

Visually represent the impact of participating in the experience. People interacting with this display were shown exactly where their money was going -- like slicing bread for a hungry family. (Infographics work nicely here, too -- check out our templates.)

Partner with another brand to create an even better experience. In this instance, Misereor worked with Stripe.com for the payment technology, and with financial institutions to get a branded message on users' bank statements. (And stay tuned -- we'll talk more about the value of co-branding here later.)

Don't be afraid to nurture your leads. Even if you don't use something like a branded hashtag to integrate the experience with an online element, find a way to remind someone that they participated.

7. Guinness: Guinness Class

One of my favorite types of marketing is the "aspirational" kind -- or as the Harvard Business Review defines it, marketing for brands that "fall into the upper-right quadrant." Think: luxury cars, haute couture, and private jets. Things we aspire to own.

It's that last one -- private jets -- that set apart the Guinness Class experience. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the U.K., where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.

In order to participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness. After doing that, they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won. They could win everything from passport cases to keychains, but one player per night would get the ultimate prize: A free trip to Dublin -- via private jet, of course -- with four mates.

What we like about this experience was its ability to associate Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. And according to Nick Britton, marketing manager for Guinness Western Europe, that held the brand up as one that doesn't "settle for the ordinary."

That's important -- and can be tricky -- for a brand that's nearly 257 years old: to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience. But Guinness didn't have to change anything about its actual products in this case. Instead, it created an experience that addressed changing consumer preferences -- for example, the fact that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things.

Takeaways for Marketers

Think about the things your target audience might aspire to, and that you'd like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.

If you do require a product purchase in order to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.

8. GE: Healthymagination

Think experiential marketing is just for B2C brands? Think again -- 67% of B2B marketers say that events make for one of the most effective strategies they use.

That's why it made sense for GE to invite industry professionals to experience its Healthymagination initiative. The point of the campaign was to promote global healthcare solutions, especially in developing parts of the world.

Source: agencyEA

To help people see the impact of this initiative, GE worked with agencyEA to create "movie sets" that represented different healthcare environments where Healthymagination work took place: a rural African clinic, an urban clinic, and an emergency room. The idea was that doctors would share their stories -- live, in front of 700 attendees -- that illustrated how GE's healthcare technology played a major role in each setting.

When people measure the success of experiential marketing, one thing they measure is how much of a dialogue it prompted. And that makes sense -- 71% of participants share these experiences. In GE's case, the point ofHealthymagination was to get people talking about a pretty important, but uncomfortable issue: Access to healthcare in impoverished parts of the world.

But when you create a way for people to become physically immersed in the issue, it also allows them to acknowledge a topic that isn't always easy to talk about. And that can have quite an impact -- this particular campaign, in fact, won a Business Marketing Association Tower Award.

But fear not: That concept also works for not-so-serious, but equally uncomfortable discussion topics. Just look at how well it worked for Charmin.

Takeaways for Marketers

Experiential marketing does work for B2B brands. Think about who you're selling to, and create an engagement that would not only attract that audience, but also present an opportunity for them to experience your product or service first-hand.

Get uncomfortable. If your business centers around something that's difficult or "taboo" to talk about, creating an experience around it can prompt a conversation. But make sure you keep it respectful -- don't make people so uncomfortable that they have nothing good to say about your brand.

9. Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Facebook -- who also owns Instagram -- has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.

For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart: A "retail" setting that represented the online shopper's conversion path when using social media for buying decisions. There was also a quintessential Instagram cafe, chock full of millennial-esque photo opportunities and people snapping them -- latte art and all.

The campaign wasn't just memorable. It also proved to be really helpful -- 93% of attendees (and there were over 1500 of them) said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

But what makes those insights so valuable? Momentum Worldwide, the agency behind Facebook IQ Live, puts it perfectly: "When we understand what matters to people ... we can be what matters to them." In other words, we can shape our messaging around the things that are important to our target audiences.

And by creating this experience, Facebook was able to accomplish that for its own brand. In creating this experience, it also created a positive brand perception for a few audiences -- including, for example, the people who might have been unsure of how to use the platform for business.

Takeaways for Marketers

Build an experience for people who aren't sure about how they would use your product or service. Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.

Bring your data to life. We love numbers, but creating a live installment that illustrates them can help people understand exactly what they mean. And since 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product, this setting is a great place to do it.

10. Zappos: "Google Cupcake Ambush"

To help promote its new photo app, Google took to the streets of Austin, Texas, with a cupcake truck in tow. But people didn't pay for the cupcakes with dollars -- instead, the only accepted currency was a photo taken with said app.

And really, what's better than a free-ish cupcake? We'll tell you what: A free-ish watch or pair of shoes.

That was the answer from Zappos, anyway. That's why the brand playfully "ambushed" Google's food truck experience with one of its own: A box-on-feet -- strategically placed right next to Google's setup, of course -- that, when fed a cupcake, would dispense a container with one of the aforementioned goodies.

In order to reap the rewards of the Zappos box, people had to have a cupcake. So while only one brand came away from the experience with an epic sugar high, both got plenty of exposure. And since 74% of consumers say a branded experience makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted, Google and Zappos both stood to gain new customers from this crowd.

But what we really like about this example is how much it shows the value of experiential co-branding. Because Google and Zappos pursue two different lines of business, they weren't sabotaging each other, but rather they were promoting each other (which is what happens when you pick the right co-marketer).

Takeaways for Marketers

Use experiential marketing as a co-branding opportunity.

Pick a partner with an audience that would be interested in your brand, but might otherwise be difficult to reach.

Make sure your partner would benefit from your audience, too -- you want the experience to be a win-win-win: for you, your co-brand, and the consumer.

When you do pick a marketing partner, build an experience that requires an "exchange" of each brand's product or service. That way, the audience is more likely to interact with both of you.

11. Docker: Docker Dash

Docker is a software platform that allows developers to make and run apps on different operating systems -- a technology known as "containerization." By some standards, it's not the sexiest product you can buy. By an enterprise's standards, it's not even the easiest product to understand. Enter: Docker Dash.

In partnership with Jack Morton, Docker used its developer conference, DockerCon 2017, to nurture its core enterprise market with a unique product demo called Docker Dash. What made it so unique? It wasn't a demo -- it was a game. And conference guests weren't guests -- they were players.

Docker Dash was a live video game-style simulation of Docker's application platform, and it recruited 5,000 of its enterprise attendees to create an app together by solving a series of fun challenges inside the game. Each challenge presented in Docker Dash allowed the "players" to engage a feature of Docker's product and ultimately complete their app. It was a fun, collaborative way to show enterprise software developers why Docker is invested in the containerization market and the value these people can get from Docker's product.

Docker Dash got the attention of more than 3.6 million people -- those who watched and posted about the event from social media, in addition to those who attended DockerCon in person.

Takeaways for Marketers

Conference hosts thrive on attendees who network with one another. By creating opportunities for your attendees to collaborate and play together, you allow them to share their ideas -- making for more educated customers as a result.

"Gamify" your brand. Give people the ability to play and compete for something, and you'll instill in them a sense of accomplishment that makes them more passionate about your industry.

Clearly, taking some very calculated risks worked out pretty well for these companies. So when it comes to creating an experience with your brand, don't be afraid to think outside of the box -- and don't be afraid to work together on it with someone else.

Invest some time into thinking about the ways people could interact with you, even if it seems a little nutty. If it's aligned with what you do and executed thoughtfully, people will be talking -- in the best way possible.

[rdeleonvmd180-blog]

GAME 100 EXPLORING GAME WORLDS – VIDEOGAME IN-CLASS APPRAISAL TEMPLATE

Student Name______Russel de Leon

Today’s Date______01-20-17

Game Title Examined_____Lizard Wizard

Year of Publication_______1985

Game Publisher_______Sunn

Game Developer _______Techstar

Game Genre (e.g. shoot-em-up, racing, sports, puzzle, MMORPG, ‘sandbox’, music sequence following game (e.g. DDR, guitar hero)

The genre was am arcade survival game, Where you move in circles in the same screen trying not to touch the pixel dragon flying around.

Type of game ‘world’ or environment (e.g. flat environment, puzzle/maze space, 3D world?)

The game had a flat environment that left no room for expansion.

Perspective taken by player (e.g first person, third person perspective, top down, isometric) in relation to main player controlled character.

I’m not sure if a side scroller point of view is considered third person, but it appeared to be a side scroller that you could float up and down in, much like Balloon Fight.

Gameplay – what does the player have to do?

The player has to float across the screen (slight gliding that is out of you control) and avoid the flying dragon while shooting flying rocks. I never figured out how to shoot…

Is the gameplay intuitive? (i.e. is it easy to understand what to do without instructions?) describe.

Yes and No. In theory it was simple, but there was no information on the Internet Arcade as to how to activate your weapon. I floated around a lot and died hitting every key waiting to see my character attack back.

Is the gameplay patterned (game does the same thing over & over) or is it random (happens differently every time?)

It is patterned. Much like Pacman it appears to be random in which way the enemy will move, but there are key patterns that leave certain areas as a safe zone.

What does the type of graphic approach used as well as the audio tell you about the limits of the technology at the time the game was published?

Extremely limited in its time of creation. It is simple colored 8bit graphics, mostly using primaries and black, and unfortunately my lab computer does not have speakers so I could not hear the audio.

Describe your views about the game from the point of view of

ease of play No. On the internet Arcade I could never find the attack button. I imagine if I tried the arcade version with the jostick and buttons, it would be extremely easy.

enjoyability No. The lack of being able to defend myself made the game turn into just running for my life. I could not advance to the next level.

    c) level of engagement/immersion 1 out of 10

Had you played this game prior to this time?  If so, when? Never have I ever.

Describe other games it reminds you of. How does it do this? It reminded me of Balloon Fight for the NES, since the main objective appeared to be just float in circles while trying to avoid the other floating objects.