• by Colin Kirkland , Staff Writer, November 26, 2024

Imagine being able to play your favorite show or movie, scene-by-scene, like a game.

One U.S.-based company has made this a reality via a new Netflix campaign running on metaverse gaming platform Roblox -- potentially unlocking new branding opportunities for media partners looking to stoke higher levels of engagement, especially among Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers.

Barrier Four, a full-service animation studio focusing on Roblox, has joined forces with Netflix to launch one-to-one reanimated, immersive games around a new kids movie called “Spellbound,” as well as Season Five of the “Karate Kid” spinoff “Cobra Kai.”

Unlike some recent Roblox entertainment marketing launches such as Warner Bros.’ recent “Beetlejuice” digital experience, that present players with interactive games based around the thematic heart of a movie or show, Barrier Four’s creations for Netflix enable users to engage with their favorite IP via fully recreated playable scenes -- showcasing a new frontier of gamified storytelling. 

Through Netflix’s central Roblox hub, "Nextworld," players can currently relive an enchanting musical scene taken directly from “Spellbound."

Soon they will be able to immerse themselves in a martial arts showdown, embodying the character Robbie from “Cobra Kai," as they join Miyagi-do teammates in a recreated scene from the show. 

“This is one of those transformative moments in transmedia,” says Barrier Four CMO Jonathan Millar. 

Before Barrier Four figured out how to gamify exact scenes from music videos, movies, and shows, the company worked with Nickelodeon and Paramount, reanimating scenes from iconic shows like “SpongeBob,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “The Office.”

The result involves frame-by-frame replicas featuring people’s favorite characters, aesthetically Roblox-ified.  

“After doing this enough, we had an internal pow-wow,” says Millar. “We were like, how far of a leap is it for us to make this playable? Because that's been the golden goose.”

Until now, bringing brand experiences into Roblox involved themed experiences, not one-to-one recreations.

“It's never like a scene from ‘Transformers,’ with your protagonist running around as the movie plays out,” Millar adds. “And so we just saw an opportunity, and we were like, if I was a media outlet, this is how I'd want to speak Roblox.”

Millar refers to Barrier Four’s early projects as “gateways” to the company’s most recent campaign with Netflix and sees Roblox as a leader in the future of “playable media.” 

“Roblox has been at the forefront of transmedia in terms of how brands have been really trying to push the bounds of what they can do with their IP in the platform with varying integrations and media types,” Millar adds.

Over the past few years, Roblox has gained a reputation for being brand-friendly through countless immersive experiences and worlds launched by brands across industries, all of which are vying to capture the attention of young audiences. 

Right now, there are 80 million daily active users on Roblox, making it a fruitful space to achieve scale for a media partner -- especially since they are not required to build out an entire Roblox world. Brands can take their IP and plug it into any of the top games on the platform -- guaranteeing tens, if not hundreds of millions of players. 

“It’s like a typical brand integration within the Roblox platform, but on steroids,” says Millar. 

Ultimately, Barrier Four’s reanimation process presents media and entertainment brands with an unrivaled branding opportunity to translate their IP directly to a Roblox audience -- the majority of which are Gen Z and Gen Alpha -- and make it playable.

There is also a picture-in-picture box for social assets, which will show a side-by-side of how the media looks in the show compared to how it looks on Roblox. 

The future of playable media is vast. Barrier Four envisions an opportunity to use their proprietary technology for longer animated segments -- possibly entire feature-length films -- that fit into media partners’ go-to-market launch.

“Maybe you're selling premium passes to the Roblox version of the film,” says Millar. “I think there is an opportunity here to take any media, connect it to your everyday Robloxian and get the best of both worlds – best of the gameplay, best of media, and fuse them together.”