Something interesting happened this week and I’m still trying to wrap my head around exactly what it was.
About a week ago, I learned (through a gaming blog) that Professor Layton had a Twitter account (@tophatprofessor). Being a fan of Twitter and Professor Layton, I followed that account.
Through the next few days, several other accounts appeared for other characters in the game series: Luke, Inspector Chelmey, Don Paolo.
There was a bit of ongoing story about Don Paolo’s attempts to thwart/kidnap Layton, and Layton would tweet a puzzle or two each day. On Wednesday, there was a bit of an event as Layton went “missing” and followers were directed to a message board site where Don Paolo had posted a series of puzzles that needed to be solved in order to rescue Layton.
The entire thing was charming and the puzzles were nice distractions and it felt like a bit of early viral marketing for the US release of the Professor Layton sequel.
Today, the entire thing kind of…fell apart. It seems that the Layton Twitter account was not an official one. It hadn’t been created by someone at Nintendo, but rather an ardent fan and semi-games-journalist/blogger.
This, to me, doesn’t really matter one bit. The account was well-crafted and stayed within the bounds of the associated character and the hype and excitement it created for the upcoming game was very real (for me, if not the hundreds of other followers).
However, the Internet didn’t quite see it that way and he, out of shame or embarrassment or an unmentioned word from the powers that be at Nintendo, has shut down his Twitter account.
Here’s the crazy part: this random guy who created the Layton account only created the Professor and Luke, his assistant. Two other people then created the Inspector and Don Paolo accounts to aid in the storytelling and created, from three different brains that were unlinked before this event, a viral marketing campaign that was unofficial but very, very compelling.
It was a way of creating something I’ve never seen before and in a spontaneous fashion that is impossible to engineer. A hearty congratulations to everyone involved in the great Professor Layton tweetathon of July 2009. It is something that I won’t forget for quite a while.