CAMPAIGN
The Madison Avenue Videogame - the birthplace of the American workday.
// genre: videogame // single player strategy RPG
*soliciting thoughts and feedback on this videogame concept in technical prototype phase // drop a comment below
**narrative description is followed by a technical description of gameplay
Madison Avenue was an interesting place in the 1950s. At least, I think it was – I wasn’t there.
People smoked indoors.
People smoked.
Women didn’t wear pants and the only jobs they held were as secretaries. Liquor was prominent. With the advent and proliferation of both radio and then, several years later, television, the world ran on advertising and the New York stock exchange. Golden years, to some. The beginning of our end, to others.
Neil Berlin was an origin-less man; a man that could have fallen out of space and time right onto Madison Avenue and never existed anywhere else. He had an elegant wife and a commanding career. He was a Senior Creative Principal and partner at the nascent but prestigious HHBerlin advertising firm, with newly rented office space squarely in the middle of Madison Avenue. It didn’t have nearly the book of business as Crest Constantin or Lawson Neiman Fils, but it was steadily winning new accounts by the day.
Crest was the new kid on the block – the brightly-shined baby blue 1959 Eldorado. It only had a few accounts but, man, were those accounts ones that mattered – several of them British. Lawson Neiman Fils had been around forever and it swept the majority of the American market. LNF was, for all intents and purposes, the default selection for choice advertising in America at the time. It did all-platform print and had enough capital to bankroll the advertising community’s first media department as television advertising began to pick up steam.
HHB was special, though. It had talent. Real talent. And some of it was female. A bold, pioneering move for the times but, hey, “talent was talent” Johnson always said. HHB was founded in 1960 when Johnson Hudson, Jacob Hudson, and Neil Berlin joined forces. Johnson and Jacob were brothers. Johnson had been at LNF for an eternity and his departure was a riot and a half on Madison Avenue. Jacob was new to the advertising industry but a great businessman – or so they said. He had been abroad working in spice manufacturing in India, then did a stint in automotive in Germany followed by some time in Portugal. His reputation was legendary; whether for acumen or mystique, it was uncertain. Neil Berlin did not come from a noteworthy family, but had stunned the Hudson brothers with his creative alembic and visual alchemy in the ad industry from the first time he ever wrote copy at 27. No one knew what his life had been before that and no one cared. No one asked. He was the visual advertising mage. His creative was sentimental. He didn’t sell products; he sold emotions. He sketched them on napkins and on flipchart paper. He crafted the most impactful and memorable phrases around the most mundane products; ketchup and women’s scarves and cigarettes and painkillers.
The Hudsons had seen it right away and approached him at the young age of 30 to become partner when Jacob came home and Johnson made his move. Johnson knew the industry. Jacob knew the numbers. And Neil knew Americans. No one knew where he came from and his voice seemed to have come from everywhere. He resonated.
Neil ran a small team of creatives – two women and a man, all under 30. They wrote copy and seeded Neil’s intellect, though he ended up doing the majority of his own creative, which was highly irregular for a partner. But that was HHB. Highly irregular. The three of them had decided, after much deliberation, to call it HHBerlin because it sounded better than saying Hudson twice. Neil designed the logo himself.
HHB headquarters was on the 30th floor of a skyscraping office building. The marble entrance and elevator attendant gave an air of sophistication and the rest of the building was likewise populated with black suits and briefcases. Despite appearances, the HHB offices were smaller than most. The partners occupied the four large offices with windows overlooking Madison Avenue. The office girl, Anne, sat at the front, and the creatives huddled in a small bullpen area in the back. While they complained about not getting fixed offices, they had to be contained as their workspace was permanently littered with magazine scraps, half-read newspapers, small drawings, charcoal, and paint. The entire office revolved around a stand-alone industrial printer which Anne had surrounded with exotic foliage in an attempt to make it blend in. Bullpen-style cubicles surrounded the printer where copywriters, editors, personal secretaries, marketing researchers, and junior financial analysts sat. The iconic sandwich cart stood on the first floor of the building inviting all for tuna fish sandwiches and hot, black coffee. It was the birthplace of the American workday. The surrounding apartments harbored the subversive undercurrents of a bespoke nightlife for those who did not wish to go home - and there were many.
Madison Avenue was filled with storefronts – mostly furniture and jewelry stores, several law offices, several choice restaurants and bars, LNF, HHBerlin, and several financial offices. There was no doubt that HHB was the most presciently interesting advertising firm in America.
The premise of the game: You play as “Neil” (male) or “Nara” (female) Berlin in this single-player strategy game with RPG story elements. The game map is fixed-view Madison Avenue, with all the offices and hosting locations.
You are the creative kingpin of the industry. You are one of three partners and have to increase the revenue of your firm by winning new accounts over a two-year period (you will likely lose an account or two by no fault of your own, but your progress will have to make up for it). To win accounts you have to 1. pursue account executives from product companies and convince them to let you pitch, then 2. do the creative for their product and have it accepted.
Some accounts will be new accounts (not working with anyone yet) and some accounts will be takeaways (working with one of the other firms that have advantages over you, e.g., Crest has really flashy creative, LNF has reputation and a media department for clients that want to move into television).
To “do creative,” you will use an instantiation of ChaptGPT (AI-powered text-generation) and Dalle-2 (AI-powered text-based image generation) to create a campaign with a tagline, a narrative, and visual advertising imagery. This work product will then be assessed by the client and either accepted, allowed a second chance, or rejected outright. You can build skills in charisma/persuasion, industry knowledge/clout, and/or creative acumen. You build charisma by schmoozing with clients and talking with people at bars and restaurants. You build clout by winning accounts, winning takeaway accounts, and interacting positively with LNF and Crest. You build creative acumen by practicing creative in the *creative sketchpad and winning accounts.
*The creative sketchpad is a bullpen environment where you are given random products and prompted to use generative AI to develop new creative (tagline, narrative, and visual). It is assessed randomly and does not factor into the scoring or the storyline of the base game.
Alright, gamers and narrative enthusiasts… I would love to know what you think!
This is ingenious. How do you think about game development?