Landon Rivera, the 19-year-old who created the viral “Beyoncé’s Assistant for A Day” game on Twitter, has just taken his innovative talents to the big leagues.
Rivera has partnered with the interactive short-form storytelling app Yarn to launch more pop culture and celebrity-infused games. The latest one? Being Blue Ivy’s nanny for a day.
And of course, this is much easier said than done.
“I wanted to create a game that my followers could interact with and give them various, fun scenarios for them to figure out. I’m a huge Beyoncé fan, so I just chose the answers that I felt like Beyoncé would want her assistant to do,” Rivera told The Daily Dot. “Once I posted it to my Twitter, it just kind of blew up! A few days later, Talia Kocar, Mammoth Media’s VP of Content, slid into my DMs and asked if I would be interested in writing more Choose Your Own Adventure-style content for Yarn. I really love how Yarn’s stories are told in an SMS text messaging format, so I instantly agreed. It’s been really fun to experiment with.”
In the game, the user gets a text message from Queen Bey’s headquarters. The goal is to try and get Blue ready for the Grammy Awards on time, but, just like the assistant game, the user is met with a series of decisions. Make the wrong one, and you’re fired.
The game, which was released earlier this week, is the first of many games slated to be released on Yarn’s interactive storytelling format. The format is choice-based and gives users the ability to influence the outcome of the game.
Yarn, which comes from the mobile entertainment studio Mammoth Media, has worked with big brands such as NBC, Sony Pictures, and Disney’s Marvel Comics to create interactive stories for fans. It also offers other storylines in various genres, ranging from horror to comedy, romance, and action. Yarn initially launched in 2017 as a “text-only storytelling format” but has since expanded into video, images, and more.
“I love pop culture and anything celebrity-related,” Rivera said. I take my inspiration from anything trending and super hot at the moment, so my followers can connect to the topics and want to interact with them.”
Rivera and Yarn also have plans to release a Kardashian-inspired game, and another game which allows users to “storm” Area 51.
“We want our users to have a more personalized entertainment experience that allows them to lead the journey and forge their own paths throughout each story,” said Benoit Vatere, founder and CEO of Mammoth Media. “With this interactive format, it also makes it easy for users to try different branches (decision points) and see a different perspective of the story, or even ‘play’ a different character. When we asked some of our users to go through beta testing, they went through stories multiple times to learn the different ways they could unfold and figure out the best solution, which was our goal. We have seen really strong engagement so far and are excited to continue building out this feature.”
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