I want to live in virtual world

... but barring that, I'll settle for having pervasive and persistent gaming opportunities linked to media content across platforms. Actually, I don't want that, but I'm trying to understand those who do.

I'm not sure why this even counts as news anymore:

Pity the hoary television ad, billboard and trailer. As studio marketers try harder to use technology to advertise movies, ambitious Web games that interlock with social networking sites are an increasing focus. With Day X Exists, Sony hopes to mimic the viral success of Facebook games like Mafia Wars, which is played by tens of millions of people.

The goal is to reverse the consumer-advertiser relationship. Traditional marketing pushes a message over and over. If people instead pull bits of information into their lives through a game, they are more likely to feel a sense of ownership.

People, it's called 'transmedia marketing'. Actually, it's called a lot of things, and has a lot of variations. It seemed to be all the rage before the recession. Let's look back to "I love Bees," an early Think of the extended "LOST experience" treasure hunt game, the Dr. Pepper promotion which inavertantly led to hordes of clue-seekers converging on a historical graveyard in Boston.

There are a few marketing concepts at work here, which have their own kinks:

* users appreciate agency, and those who elect to play will be more receptive to... something. Hopefully the whole movie transmedia franchise, cuz these games aren't cheap to produce.

* females are big casual game users, and games like this are designed to be played and then fade away as new products move front and center. I think it totally depends on the kind of game you're talking about, and the kind of female player you're looking to attract.

"Studios have been using simple Web games to sell their wares for a decade — press the space bar and a character kicks something. More ambitious alternate-reality games, a genre that blends online and offline clues and relies on players collaborating to solve puzzles, have also been successful in reaching what studios call “alpha fans” (the boys in the basement)."

I guess the bigger question is, who is attracted to transmedia participation? It takes a lot of time and commitment and energy, and I for one am far too lazy about my tv consumption to work that hard at it.