The Hunt, an eight-week scripted social game on Facebook that accompanied season two of supernatural drama Teen Wolf, is boding well for MTV and its “Storytelling Without Borders” strategy.
Users have spent an average of 46 minutes playing The Hunt (or 9 minutes per week), and 81% of them are weekly visitors.
The success of the game, along with the show’s ratings, has “definitely played a role” in Teen Wolf getting renewed for a third season, MTV tells Mashable. The show hovers around 1.7 to 1.8 million viewers every Monday night, with its key demographic being females ages 12 to 34. Season three will be 24 episodes instead of the current 12.
“At the end of the day, we’re storytellers on as many platforms as possible,” says MTV and VH1 Digital General Manager Kristin Frank, who adds that the show’s writers were involved in scripting the The Hunt.
Players must solve a murder mystery in a storyline and secondary arc that plays out parallel to what’s happening in Teen Wolf episodes. It launched June 4 as of part of MTV’s “Storytelling Without Borders” initiative, which aims to create social TV experiences across digital platforms in between and during seasons.
Storytelling platform SocialSamba created The Hunt and is responsible for other show’s social TV games such as USA Network’s HashTag Killer for detective dramedy Psych and Suits Recruits for legal drama Suits.
The fan engagement for The Hunt makes it prime real estate for advertisers. When MTV released the game, it had not planned to incorporate advertisers. But now MTV thinks weaving in ads non-obtrusively would be a smart move for the game’s next iteration.