The Getaway – Bringing a Flat Marketing Image to Life

The Getaway for the PlayStation® 2 computer entertainment system is a realistic and violent interactive narrative video game.  Its target audience is males ages 18-34, and it appeals to car racing fans (ala Grand Theft Auto), action gamers (ala Quake), and, surprisingly, film buffs who love a good, dark crime story (ala The Italian Job, The Godfather). 

The game is unique in that its development was more in line with a typical feature film production than traditional game development.  This included scriptwriting, cinematic cut-scenes, motion capture, make-up and plaster casting, and an original, orchestrated score.  Furthermore, the environment realistically depicts an actual 10-square-mile area of London “right down to the cracks on the sidewalk,” including tourist attractions and key landmarks like Kings Cross and the Parliament buildings.  All this would be pointless if the cars weren’t also ultra-realistic, as well as the physics and damage engine used in the game.  Thus the story takes place in a detailed, reality-based world as close to cinematic photography as the gaming industry has ever achieved.

To bring users into the world of London’s gangsters, we chose to show a city street using a design style reminiscent of film noir. The site opens up on a relatively calm but foreboding image of a group of shadowy figures with guns. As the user scrolls further into the site, the city street transforms to more sinister areas of London, ending up in an all out mayhem scenario of a violent car crash. Throughout this journey the user is introduced to all the main characters and sections of the site via sliding boxes that highlight a specific area of the street scene such as Charlie the gangster boss, Yasmin the femme fatale, the Cars, the Mobile section, and so on. The sound also changes as you move along, starting off with ambient sounds of a city street then moving into a thumping bass line from a club in the red light district and finally to the pronounced traffic noise of a busy city street.

Flash is an excellent vehicle for showing off videos, screen shots, game footage, character and car models, music and more, all of which are colorful and active.  Game content is therefore indicated in color, distinguishing it from the black and white background.  Pre-loaders play sound clips related to each sub section to introduce the upcoming content and to keep the viewer immersed while waiting for it to load.  The red background used for the content areas matches other (unused) marketing materials. 

Rich content

It was important to grab the audience’s attention immediately and convey the cinematic aspect of the game, so the best way to do that was to use integrated video within the site. Most content areas open to a video that plays immediately by default. In some cases, other videos and stills are available to view by choice.  It was our goal, however, to give some immediate insight into the character and his role or dilemma right away.  Using Sorensen Squeeze, two sets of video files were created for each clip, one lower quality for modem users and one high quality file for broadband users. Bandwidth detection was done automatically from within Flash and totally transparent to the visitor. Thanks to the variable bit rate technology of the Sorensen Spark codec, file sizes were kept to a minimum while maintaining high video quality.

Intro movies give immediate insight into the character

We also used video to show behind the scenes features about making of the game, which underscored the level of detail that went into making this title. Moreover, flash was used to show how the 3D models of characters were developed, allowing the user to interactively view the different stages from wire frame objects to fully rendered models.

The site also featured a members-only section, which had exclusive content for PlayStation Underground members. The navigation was integrated into the city street in the form of a London Underground (subway) entrance. Once users logged on or signed up they could access behind the scenes footage, making of videos, game hints and secrets, a giant map of the area of London recreated in the game, and much more. Fans wanted more, so we also provided things like the comps that were developed but not selected for this site design.  The unique content offered was a reward for being a member and an incentive for more users to sign up to the PlayStation direct marketing program.

Early on we had proposed tying in the cell phone (“mobile” in UK-English) aspect of the game – the player’s character receives his instructions via cell phone – as a supplement to the web site.  For this we developed a ring tone based on one of the theme songs, and created cell phone themes for phones that supported it at the time. We added to this section the PDA trailer, web site, and themes, taking advantage of the popularity of mobile technologies.  These downloads were not as popular as we had hoped, but they were available to those who did appreciate them.

Although we do not have access to sales information, the success of the web site is measurable by its awards, recognition, and the players themselves.  The site won Macromedia Site of the Day on February 21, 2003.  It later won the Best Web Marketing WebAward (2003).  Web logs show that the average time spent viewing content on The Getaway site was about 50% greater compared to most other official game sites on PlayStation.com.  Players really took the time to explore and view the content.

            Some of our most valuable feedback, however, came directly from the gamers themselves. Last summer the client conducted a survey and focus groups around the country, asking gamers to compare a wide variety of web sites and comment on what they liked and disliked about each. The Getaway was most often selected as a favorite because of its simplicity, atmosphere, and the depth of rich content. The Getaway was preferred over The Hulk and Terminator 3 web sites, as well as most other PlayStation and third-party game sites.

Site Credits

Developer: Zugara

Design: Patrik Karolak

Producer: Ingrid Moon

Full screen captures provided separately at www.zugara.com/getawayscreens/