In 1994, Ottawa’s Animatics Multimedia branched out from its core business of developing corporate multimedia products for clients like Apple and Corel to create an interactive social drama on cd-rom called Midnight Stranger, and now has followed up with mode and club mode.

mode and club mode are the latest version of interactive drama from Animatics, which has formed a joint development agreement for the project with Ottawa-based Corel.

mode consists of a three cd-rom set in which users play themselves crashing the party of enigmatic fashion designer, Vito Brevis, and are given the opportunity to meet and establish a relationship with one of 11 characters and interact with them via the ‘mood bar,’ the technological basis for the experience whereby users have a range of available reactions to characters which can alter the course of an exchange.

The titles contain elements of fashion, romance and murder mystery and feature a game within the game which allows users to pick up clues to unravel the party’s goings-on.

The cd-roms feature full-motion video and 11 different endings, all of which lead the user to club mode, an episodic Web version of the game. club mode is a virtual club where users interact with similarly modeish characters as well as with other players.

Midnight Stranger was one of the first cd-rom titles to employ a kind of adult-oriented interactive format, a sort of interactive soap opera. Users interacted with the characters in Midnight Stranger with the mood bar, and the project gained attention because of the new format.

club mode is designed to work within the bandwidth considerations of the average office or household. Where the cd-rom title employs realtime video, the Web site will rely mainly on text, still photos and audio, accessible with the Real Audio Player, which may be downloaded at no cost.

Coppola says each episode will have a climax, or payoff scene, for which there will be a downloadable videoclip, and users will have options as to photo size and audio depending on available bandwidth.

Corel is financing the lion’s share of development costs for mode and club mode as well as co-ordinating marketing and sponsorship efforts, and will deliver club mode from its server.

The launch of the two products will account for nearly $1 million and about $40,000 per week will be spent on club mode episodes.

Coppola says Corel is basically buying the licence for the product; Animatics will retain ownership of the concept and the two companies will split revenues.

Ottawa’s Global Exchange will take a portion of Animatics’ share for its work on the database software for the project. club mode Web play will be free to users and will be sponsor-supported.

Coppola says test sponsors like Netscape and Ziff-Davis Publishers are on board and he has been talking to Donna Karan New York and Air Canada. Advertisers will have the option of Net-standard banners or messages integrated into the game itself. Coppola says an advertiser may sponsor a character in the game or be their exclusive brand of beverage/clothing/whatever, or sponsor whole rooms of club.

Corel’s Tim Magwood says the business opportunities stem from the traffic the site attracts, and that club mode affords the opportunity for creative integration of advertising.

‘Most Web advertising is very linear and unimaginative,’ says Magwood. ‘With this project, we can bring on board someone like Absolut vodka and have someone within the game wear an Absolut t-shirt or have an Absolut bus shelter outside of the bar.’

In terms of Corel’s advertising presence on the site, Magwood says a number of scenarios are possible – like having a Corel ‘store’ within the club – but details have yet to be hammered out. ‘We’re now in the exploration phase as to how to launch this successfully and how we can garner some publicity and excitement about it,’ he says.

The concept for club mode took about six months to develop and it will be about three months before the first episode hits the Web. Animatics is currently about a month into the project’s live-action shoot, which takes place in an Ottawa bistro.

The plan, says Coppola, is to spin popular characters from the online game into cd-rom titles every few months.

Coppola says the key to an absorbing, worthwhile interactive drama experience is immersion and an enjoyable interface.

‘You have to look at this medium as an immersive environment – you’re not 10 feet away like you are with tv, you’re probably about six to 12 inches away from the screen. It’s very much a one-to-one thing; to engage someone in a drama you have to give the user lots of interaction points, but you have to maintain an important balance between work and play.’

Coppola says club mode is aimed at a wide audience; anyone from 16-35 who would watch a Melrose-type drama in the evening, and was written with the ‘Web culture’ in mind.

‘The Web is starving for quality entertainment,’ he says. ‘Our goal is to blow The Spot out of the water.’