Welcome to Perrier Mansion, a swanky and retro venue where you can follow American burlesque artist, model, and actress Dita Von Teese into the edifice and play slightly naughty games with her (as you might guess from Dita’s photo at right).
This decidedly R-rated Web story/game has been tweeted as the best Web production of this year. The production values are spectacular.
To enter the mansion, the user must enter his or her birthdate — presumably an attempt to keep younger voyeurs out. Dita performs a mild striptease as she walks into the mansion. (There’s no actual nudity, just a bit of exposure and lots of sensuality.) In a sort of choose-your-own-adventure (a.k.a, choose your own story) style, the user gets to a point of selecting between two rooms — The Dark Room and Roll the Dice. The Dark Room is quite remarkable; a camera graphic is superimposed on the screen, and the user sees the resulting still upon clicking this virtual camera. In Roll the Dice, the user clicks to — you guessed it — roll the dice, which tell Dita to do naughty little things like lick her lips. In the final activity, the user is instructed not to click on (“touch”) Dita. My hand was nowhere near my mouse, but a cursor on the screen clicked on Dita, who threw Perrier on me. Ultimately, I was unceremoniously asked to leave the Perrier Mansion for clicking on her. I have to wonder if some users get to stay, and if so, how.
The production is gorgeous, sumptuous, and engaging. But … target audience? I looked at some articles and blog entries about the piece and found that many people were bewildered by it. One anonymous commenter said “upscale, classy and sober image. Should appeal to a broad 20s and up male target audience.” I asked my PhD-in-marketing husband his thoughts. We thought the gamer aspect might be at odds with the retro look of the piece in terms of the age group Perrier is targeting. Perhaps the retro look is meant to align with the fact that Dita is a latter-day burlesque star.
I was surprised not to find more commentary in the blogosphere about this provocative production. You can read more about Perrier Mansion here, here, and here (for a compilation of links about the piece).