Jennifer Buckendorff writes in the Seattle Times, "Unlike traditionally passive television shows, which
expect viewers to zone out in a couch-potato haze, Lost, which returns with
new episodes Wednesday night, has embedded clues throughout. It's these recurring tidbits — and the patterns they
form — that make Lost the first show to resemble a video game."She makes a strong case, drawing analogies between consumers of both falling into casual and hardcore camps. The community involvement, in forums and podcasts, strongly resembles the ad-hoc communities that developed around popular alternate reality games. Think of The Cloudmakers group that deciphered the A.I. promotion The Beast, or the groups that worked together on Microsoft's i love bees.
As television viewership decreases because popular demographics (that's you guys) spend more of their entertainment time reading blogs (that's us) and playing video games, it's encouraging to see that at least one show has created a formula to attract viewers back to the often dull network television.
Is it only one show though? I've always thought 24 encouraged the same kind of critical attention; with dozens of characters and more backstabbing than a daytime soap, it's one of the few shows on television that can match the excitement of a video game.
[Via Cathode Tan]
