Alt-Minds, the first "total fiction"
Alt-minds, the first "total fiction" The twelfth of November, Orange and Lexis Numérique launched Alt-minds, described as "the first total fiction". What? The concept is very innovative and groundbreaking, and that's why it's so difficult to classify it in one of our traditional category. Alt-minds is neither a novel nor a video game or a film/series. It's all that. The Orange and Lexis Numérique work team talked about a "paranormal thriller" in which everyone is called to take part in the fiction and interact with the characters and the others participant players. How? The investigation takes place in Europe. Five scientists working for the Alvinson foundation have abrubtly and mysteriously disapeared and we have some reasons to believe that it's a kidnapping. But the insitutions and the police aren't very efficient and their searchs don't progress that much... That's why the foundation decided to call on the Internet users, who will be able to help thanks to different tools Alvinson is going to provide them. An important point is that every Internet user can chose its degree/level of participation. There are several complementory and optional medias: PC/Mac, tablets or smartphones, and every participants can follow the progresses of the investigation on the website, through their Facebook page, on which assignments are proposed, be geolocated to interact with the other players and find secret places, or just read the eight chapters of the story (€2.69 per chapter) and watch the web documentaries about science and paranormal. Alt-minds is a great experiment in social marketing and probably the most ambitious transmedia project. It gets people commitment because it enables them to share a real experience and be part of a community - the Orange community. I think it's very smart, even brilliant because what they propose isn't commercial at all: there is no intrusive add, no call to buy Orange products. Quite the opposite, it's a real immersion in a game in which fiction and reality are melted through a very clever use of the social medias. But? If we have to pay tribute to Orange big idea, we still have to wonder about the hypothetic ethical problem... Isn't there a risk of confusion and mistake between fiction and reality? How particpants are going to make the diffrence with life?