The setting of the game is in a deserted village, Hanyuda. All the shooting for the campaign took place in the actual village used as a model for inventing the game. We created many kinds of contents with the assumption that “Hanyuda Village exists in reality”. TV Crews snuck in and set up a 24 hour live camera. This process was divided into 13 ‘webisodes’ and showed in a special website “Siren: Episode 0”. We also made the TV crews’ company site “Searching for Hanyuda Village”, where the real-time video images from the live camera was showed, so the two sites were linked effectively. We made mobile content as well: When fans phoned the deadly number on the company’s site via TV phone, they were connected to Hanyuda Village. The number spread throughout the fans in SMS text messages, which meant horror was “sent” to them straight into their pockets.

There were 720,000 accesses to the special site “Siren: Episode 0”, and 3,050,000 accesses to the TV crew’s company website “Searching for Hanyuda Village” within 50 days they were opened. 57,000 phone calls were actually connected. In all, there were 1.5 times more sales than initially expected, and online sales was especially successful. It also sold well among game players who usually didn’t buy horror games.