You have to give the folks at Walt Disney Pictures credit.
Because when it came to getting word out about “Tomorrowland,” they
certainly didn’t go by the standard summer blockbuster promotional playbook.
If you think back to February of 2013 when photos of that
mysterious “1952” box first popped up online …
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… or that alternate reality game, “The
Optimist,” which Walt Disney Imagineering and Walt Disney Studios worked
up. Which sent Disney’s biggest fans all over LA as they looked for clues in
some of Walt’s favorite hang-outs like the Tam O’Shanter and Griffith
Park. Game participants were eventually
allowed to enter some of the most exclusive spaces in the Disney universe,
among them Club 33 and Walt’s private apartment over the firehouse at Disneyland
Park.
To help properly set up the world of
“Tomorrowland,” Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case worked with Brad Bird
and Damon Lindelof to create “Before Tomorrowland” (Disney Press, April 2015), a prequel to this upcoming Walt Disney Pictures release. This
handsome hardcover gives you all sorts of insights about that secret society of extraordinary geniuses who were about
share an incredible discovery with the world.
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All rights reserved
“What incredible discovery?,” you ask. Well,
that’s where Minecraft comes in.
For those of you who don’t know: Minecraft is an extremely popular game with
over 19 million sales. At its core, Minecraft is a world where you can pick and
place blocks to create things, because everything is made of blocks. Think
extremely simplified Legos. You can create things with friends. Heck, you can
build a computer. You can even
make Disney Parks.
Copyright Mojang 2009-2015. “Minecraft” is a trademark of Mojang AB
Minecraft seems to draw in large amounts of fans with Let’s
Play videos (Videos where someone else plays a video game and the viewer
watches. Sounds boring, but it’s really quite fun. Think ride videos), with these
videos garnering millions of views.
So it shouldn’t really be a surprise to see Disney reaching
out for this audience, right? The audience for minecraft and minecraft Let’s
Plays seems to skew towards younger teens, and given the action/adventure
focused advertising we saw with “Frozen,” it seems to be an audience
Disney especially strives for.
Copyright Mojang 2009-2015. “Minecraft” is a trademark of Mojang AB
Polaris (on Disney’s behalf) commissioned the BlockWorks
team to create this map. And what a GORGEOUS map it is. Especially considering
it was built in only a week and a half! Here’s a video tour from the project
manager.
The Tomorrowland map comes with a game that — at the time — requires at least three players (a later single player version is coming). One
player, the gamemaster, controls the amount of time the other players have to
collect varying items to present to them that one would find in Tomorrowland (Circuit
boards, robot parts, DNA strands, etc). They start off with the Tomorrowland pin
that teleports them randomly, and allows them to detect whether an item is ‘safe’
to pick up (When not safe, it triggers random bad incidents- Such as being
attacked by killer angry chickens, or spawning hostile explosive enemies at
your location) and a teleport ring that can help you control where you teleport.
Here’s a video of some players in action, playing the game.
Insert Plus Ultra 5.
It’s fascinating to see Disney using promotion like this for
“Tomorrowland,” a gorgeous world made through innovation and teamwork
(and a commission). It’s neat to see something this creative and clever funded
by Polaris and Disney, and made by these players. Projects like this with such
a huge scale in a game for a promotion aren’t funded often. The only thing that
comes to mind is when Ubisoft used Minecraft to promote “Far Cry 3,” or when the
Disneyland map was shown in Disney Infinity 1.0.
I’ve gotta say I’m really impressed with this gorgeous map,
and I think I’m going to be taking it out for a spin. If you want to do the
same, you can download the resource pack here (if you have a copy of Minecraft). Or if you’d rather wait out to see the
movie before checking it out, “Tomorrowland” opens at a theater near you on May 22nd.