Design Studio Exploration - Preloaded

Finding a really impressive design studio can be a bit daunting, as you swim through the sea of “award winning” designers producing something akin to what we learned our first month in class - good for a laugh, if nothing else.
Somehow (Flash Forward?), I found Preloaded Studios (http://www.preloaded.com). According to their website, Preloaded aims to push the boundaries of creativity in order to fulfill client goals and users needs ("We do nice things, we could do them for you, too"). I found the studio after researching the origins of a game called CDX (http://www.cdx-thegame.com/). The game is compelling and well put together - although I didn't have nearly enough time to explore it. Preloaded’s website, however, was stunningly understated. For a company that pushes the envelope of creativity, this website seemed somewhat underwhelming – at least until I used it. It is a clean and effective site, even if it seems to understate their work.
Under the company’s clients (“what we do”) page, the clients were laid out as “case studies”. Visiting a study not only introduced to the work, but the reasoning behind the design. “Cases” can be searched by client, market, platform or service, allowing for several options to see why and how they do what they do. Within each case study, they outline the Goals of the project, followed by the studio’s “solution” and finally the result of the campaign/site/project. Of course, you can link to the project from the case study, as well.
From these case studies (there were many), it seemed evident that Preloaded,works very closely with its clients to meet their goals and visions. They focus heavily on branding and on creating the vision set forth by their clients, then going beyond that to impress the users of the site. Preloaded focuses very much on user impressions and interactivity, with a goal of keeping users coming back. The idea of creating a site that immerses the user and makes them a part of the site seems paramount to this group.
Preloaded seems to excel in user interactivity. Several of the sites that I visited invited the user to participate, rather than just watch. A fine example is a site that they created for a BBC espionage drama called “Spooks”. In the site developed for the second season, they created a Grid Ops (http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/spooks/. The site invited users to participate in “missions” (games) and tracked their progress. New missions were rolled out over a 10-week period, inviting users to come back. The site looks like a police station, using video clips and Flash to give it a realistic feel. To make the site even more compelling, the site tracked users’ progress and gave them scores based on several dimensions. At future logins, those scores were used to determine which tasks the user might do better in, etc. This not only made the website interactive, but personalized as well. According to the “case study” this site ended up achieving double the target user registrations desired by BBC.
Another really fun site created by Preloaded was for another BBC series http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/games/death_sakkara/. This was a historical drama taking place in the 1920s and dealt with the fad of Egyptology and the discovery of the tombs of Egypt. The site was created to go along with the site, but to be a stand-alone narrative in its own right. This ended up being a game, called "Death in Sakkara", that follows the same subject matter as the television show. The site asks the user to log in a they are given a “secret code”. This allows their progress to be saved, again encouraging users to return to the site. Because the site is historically accurate, the game provides both “value added” content to the TV series, and is an educational experience.
Looking at these (and other) sites, it is apparent that Preloaded Studios excels in user interactivity with their projects. Their goal is not only to meet clients’ expectations and advertise a product, but to give users reasons to return to the site. This makes their clients’ websites not only informative, but actually exciting and immersive. In many cases, users may only return to a website once, to gain or clarify information; in the case of many of the sites by PreLoaded, the user has good reason to return and interact with the site (and ultimately, the product) over and over again