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PBS Digital Studios Halloweek

PBS Digital Studios Halloweek

A Twitter poll with a piece of a story, it is followed with a piece of a story that corresponds to the chosen option.

Project overview

To celebrate Halloween and highlight a special episode of Monstrum, a digital series on folklore, I created a choose-your-own-adventure game on Twitter for the week of Halloween. The goal of this campaign was to highlight a documentary on the Mothman legend while providing a way for our audience to interact with PBS Digital Studios in a communal way. They needed something playful, informative, and best of all spooky.

A whiteboard with brainstorming results

Inspiration

I drew inspiration for this campaign from classic choose-your-own-adventure books, Stranger Things, Dungeons and Dragons, and the Mothman legend itself. The structure was inspired by social campaigns like Wieden + Kennedy’s Old Spice social experiment and @CORNYASSBITCH’s Beyoncé’s Assistant for a day roleplay.

Screenshot of a story flow from Twine.

Implementation

The game was conducted via Twitter polls. The response with a majority of votes would determine the next step in the story. There were two daily polls posted in the seven days leading up to Halloween.

In preparation, I wrote the storyline in Twine, with each step in the story highlighting videos across the PBS Digital Studios network encompassing a variety of subject areas.