Sportsball & Comic Con

In honor of this weekend’s Cortaca game, Game Over will be continuing with our tradition of “Sportsball Coverage.” The episode involves a running joke that we as geeks don’t know anything about sports, which gives us plenty of material to work with when doing writing assignments. My personal favorite is the “Top 5 Madden Games” segment, which has become a tradition for our Sportsball special.

We’re also finishing up editing our footage from New York Comic Con. I’ve been editing the round table interview for China, IL with Brad Neely and Daniel Weidenfeld and the interview with Avery Monsen and Jory John, the pair behind the children’s book All My Friends Are Dead. Both interviews were hilarious, and I can’t wait to watch the finalized Game Over Comic Con special!

How Not to Market

The ICTV show I'm on, Game Over, is currently at Comic Con. The first day was press and limited passes, so the floor was as empty as we're ever going to see it, and it was a good way to get a handle on the different companies who are going to be there over the next few days, and the different products each company offers.

The day started off kind of slow, and resulted in a few hours hanging out in the press room. While we were there, one of the companies, Truth, gave out folders packed with information about an anti-tobacco campaign they've been working on: "Flavor Monsters." The idea for "Flavor Monsters" came from the fact, "Big tobacco isn't allowed to sell flavored cigarettes; yet, they offer over 45 candy flavors in the other tobacco products they sell. Sugary sweet flavor monsters."  The campaign has merch and a highly developed app, which all focuses around the different types of flavored tobacco in the industry. The Flavor Monsters are all designed as monstrous fruit that no one would ever want to cross.

When I finally got to visit the company's booth on the exhibition floor, I was sceptical as to how well Truth would present "Flavor Monsters," on account of even the promotional material they gave press was hard to disect, and was disappointed to see the result. The set-up itself was kind of cool. They had this covered booth that housed different characters from the game. They had a green screen set up that you could run in front of to make yourself part of a movie where you're being chased by the monsters, and several stations set up where you could play the game. However, not once in the entire process was it ever made clear that all of this had a point.
It wasn't until the end when they gave you your free promo t-shit with the fact that spawned the whole campaign that your realized the game was actually a campaign against tobacco use.

What is the point of creating an entire campaign against one of the largest industries in America, if you aren't even going to mention it in one of your largest marketing platforms?

Regular Show

New York Comic Con is next week, which is an exciting time for the geek community. Many TV shows, movies, video game developers, comic book publishers, independent artists, and other organizations hold panels and give sneak peeks at the latest content they will be producing and distributing. 

One program that I hope will be at NYCC is Regular Show, which was created by JG Quintel and airs on Cartoon Network. Like Adventure Time, the show has a large following among college students due to its absurd and surreal humor. The show follows Mordecai, a blue jay and his friend Rigby, a raccoon, who work as groundskeepers at a park; while attempting to slack off, the two often act irresponsibly and put themselves in surreal situations that threaten their status as park employees or even the park itself.

Regular Show draws inspiration from two of Quintel’s student films, The Naive Man From Lolliland and 2 in the AM PM; Quintel’s characters Mordecai, Benson and Pops all appear in the shorts, and look and act much like their Regular Show counterparts. Both shorts can be viewed on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56STDM667ds

Regular Show has been well received critically, and recently won an Emmy for Best Short-Format Animated Program for the episode “Eggscellent,” which features Mordecai and Rigby attempting to eat a twelve egg omelet in order to win a trucker style hat with the words “I’m Eggcellent” on it. The episode also contains a humorous reference to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This clip shows Mordecai completing the Eggscellent Challenge, and demonstrates the show’s surreal sense of humor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvZ-22mb55o

Now entering its fourth season, the season premiere “Exit 9B” introduces Roger Craig Smith as Thomas, a goat who interns at the park for college credit. I hope that Regular Show will have some great sneak peeks if they attend New York Comic Con!