Village Gamer

The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the winners of the International Digital Emmy® Awards at a ceremony last evening. Organized in partnership with Reed Midem and attended by over 300 international executives from the television, broadband and mobile industries who are in Cannes for MIPTV 2012.
Endgame Interactive: Facebook Episode, developed by  Secret Location for Shaw Media and Thunderbird Films for the television series Endgame, won the Fiction Category. The Facebook Episode is a transmedia experience created to extend the Showcase television drama Endgame in an online property. Although the series was cancelled by Showcase at the end of its first season, the show has become a cult favourite, recently finishing a very successful first run on Hulu. It is the hope of fan group Save Endgame that the series will be given a reprise and return to production in the near future.

In Endgame Interactive: Facebook Episode,  the audience participates in an interactive mystery where they take on the main role in the narrative, which is populated with information from their Facebook account. Fans interact with the cast, search for clues, question suspects, and unravel the mystery in a cinematic and personal experience.

The episode seamlessly integrates elements of the viewers Facebook profile into the video and places the users friends at the center of a kidnapping mystery. The online experience is built on a platform that builds social media directly into the story, posting cryptic messages to viewer’s Facebook accounts and weaving the need to share the content right into the story’s conclusion.

The objective was to draw the audience into the Endgame show world with an immersive experience and create a direct interaction with Arkady Balagan, the charismatic star of the show played by Canadian actor Shawn Doyle. By joining Balagan’s band of investigators, users experienced the show content through online video and casual gaming elements in a new and unique way.