Package Pachinko X
Package Pachinko X is a world building project from UCLA AUD Entertainment Studio.
My team constructed a fictional world where the supply chain has been gamified. Through designing digital locations, fabricating physical props, filming in-universe advertisement, organizing events, portraying characters, and creating narratives, we blurred the line between fiction and reality. Across two school terms, we introduced our instructors and fellow students to the deep fandom of Package Pachinko.
Gamifying Labor
In universe, Package Pachinko is a package delivery game launched in direct response to the supply chain crisis with millions of packages congested at the Long Beach Harbor. Over ten years it has completely changed the package delivery experience in southern California.
How It Works
The game allows people on their everyday commute to move packages around by scheduling transfer points along everyone's daily routine. Each of the players will carry a package for a short distance and then pass it to another Pachinkler, and they earn Pachincoins along the way.
Design and World Detail:
The Culture and Community
The game has also spun a series of entertainment venues. Port Pachinko is a Long Beach theme park where you can get packages. Pachinko Cafés are conveyer belt restaurants where you can get packages. PPX Stations are amazon locker plus claw machine at most street corners, where, you can also get packages.
We follow Package Pachinko pro, Willy Wellington, through his daily experience. Competitive package hunt, filming YouTube Pachinko strategy videos, hosting Pachinko podcasts, driving to the containers at the Port, hanging phones on a tree overnight to get notified first and so on.
Merchandise and Accessories
The accessory marketing combines disney theme park merchandise with the Apple website rendering style. There’s something about the dramatic lighting on those huge product renderings paired with a few nonsensical sentences that makes any useless object epic.
PachinCON
And of course, there’s the Package Pachinko convention, PachinCON. You get everything from Pachinko celebrities, new Pachinko Man movie releases, poster signings, individual panels, presentations from partners, product experiences, themed marathon races, Pachinko strategy lectures, scooter riding lessons, speed dating…
As we know it, all fandoms eventually evolved into about dating. Package Pachinko has always been bringing people together. MATCHINKO is the official Package Pachinko online dating community. It’s the perfect way for pachinklers to make new friends and meet new people.
The Experience
The final presentation took place as a live performance of a Package Pachinko super fan being invited to PachinCON to host a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary. It then transformed into an immersive experience where the juries went to the PachinCON exhibition floor…
Production
The production time for Package Pachinko X is about 8 weeks with three of us. We utilized all the tricks we know to pull off the huge amount of stuff. Including Unreal Engine rendering, digital compositing, miniature models, virtual production, video screens, digital humans, and physical props...
A Future We Can See
Package Pachinko is not a parody of a dystopian corporate future. Instead, it’s an sincere exploration of a world where these extremely outrages and stupid ideas have actually worked. It is all based on real life events. It feels very likely to happen, or a version of this world is already happening.
The goal of this project is to explore to what extent can a pitch of a world build be detailly visualized using the technologies that are available to students and indie filmmakers. What level of detail makes a person starting to believe a world could be real.
How much, how little can we do.
The Team
Takin Daneshmir
Willie Wu
Luying Xu
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design IDEAS Entertainment Studio Spring 2022
FACULTY: Natasha Sandmeier, Nathan Su
