If You’ve Ever Wanted to Be in ‘Hamilton,’ You Can Now Do So — on Roblox 

This screengrab provided by Super League shows an Alexander Hamilton game avatar from the "Hamilton" simulator for Roblox. (Super League via AP)
This screengrab provided by Super League shows an Alexander Hamilton game avatar from the "Hamilton" simulator for Roblox. (Super League via AP)
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If You’ve Ever Wanted to Be in ‘Hamilton,’ You Can Now Do So — on Roblox 

This screengrab provided by Super League shows an Alexander Hamilton game avatar from the "Hamilton" simulator for Roblox. (Super League via AP)
This screengrab provided by Super League shows an Alexander Hamilton game avatar from the "Hamilton" simulator for Roblox. (Super League via AP)

The landmark Broadway musical “Hamilton” has landed on Roblox, turning the innovative stage show into an immersive online environment for a new generation.

“‘Hamilton’ has global recognition. Roblox has 66 million daily active users from all around the world. What a perfect match,” Matt Edelman, president and chief commercial officer for Super League, which designed and built the online experience in collaboration with Small World Games.

In the Hamilton Simulator, players use their own avatars as they rub shoulders with the musical’s characters and negotiate through 10 levels set during the Revolutionary War. It starts at the New York docks and the goal is to free the city from British yoke. Appropriately, the music-filled game requires no real money from players.

“The intent here was to create a fun experience for this community and by doing so, introduce them to ‘Hamilton’ if they don’t already know it, or to honor and inspire the passion that they have if they’re already fans,” says Edelman.

The game has the blessing of writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose blockbuster musical charts the rise and fall of statesman Alexander Hamilton and stresses his orphan, immigrant roots as well as his near-Greek tragedy of a fall.

Roblox is the largest immersive gaming platform on the planet and businesses like Mattel, the NFL, Dave & Buster’s and Cirque du Soleil have all planted a flag there, as have fashion labels Vans, Ralph Lauren, Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Givenchy and Gucci.

“If you are an intellectual property owner and you want to connect to the younger generations — people really under 25 and particularly under 18 — that’s where they socialize, that’s where they learn. More than half of Gen Z expects to discover a brand for the first time in an immersive space,” Edelman says.

Hamilton Simulator players assemble a squad from characters in the musical — James Madison and Charles Lee, perhaps, to begin with, and more valuable characters like Maria Reynolds and Angelica Schuyler coming later — to confront Redcoats. Victories earn coins, which can be used to better arm companions as stronger enemies lurk.

The 10 settings include a tavern, George Washington’s office, town squares, the ballroom where Hamilton and Angelica fall in love and the Battle of Yorktown. Each level has songs from the musical, including “Guns and Ships,” “You’ll Be Back,” and “The Schuyler Sisters,” used as a sort of sonic laser to wear down and defeat enemies.

“For us, being able to allow the player to connect to the characters and the music was really important. And that really inspired the general approach to the gameplay,” Edelman says.

The simulator currently ends around the midpoint of the musical, with British rule defeated and a nascent country needing its Founding Fathers to guide them into becoming a nation of laws. Creators hope the simulator can also grow.

“We have plenty more in the future to expand on and we’re really excited about what we can do with this experience moving forward over the coming months to really be able to expand gameplay, expand the story and really be able to listen to our players and what are they doing,” Edelman says.

Each scene is carefully realized, with ceremonial swords, candles burning, flowers, artwork, sandbags and smoke. David Korins, who designed “Hamilton” for the stage, consulted on the look of the simulator and offered his tweaks. (There are also Easter eggs, like The Public theater, a nod to the off-Broadway space where “Hamilton” premiered.)

“‘Hamilton’ has achieved something that feels timeless. And if you can achieve that with an intellectual property, you can bring it into any channel and have success because it has that innate feel of belonging everywhere,” Edelman says.

The genesis of the idea came from Maggie Brohn, the executive producer for “Hamilton” worldwide and chief operating officer of Adventureland LCC, the lead producer for “Hamilton” and other Broadway shows.

She had been pondering a marriage between the musical and a gamemaker, eventually turning for advice to Edelman, her brother, who knew the perfect platform.

“My kids during COVID were glued to Roblox,” she says. “They became our our test group as we’ve been going through this.”

The hardest part was taking an award-winning linear narrative and turning it into an interactive experience. The breakthrough came when it was conceived as a simulator, one of the most popular Roblox genres.

“When you bring intellectual property to a medium where it did not originate, if it doesn’t have kind of some of the natural components to it already that belong in that new medium, it isn’t easy,” says Edelman.

Super League and “Hamilton” creators suspect their simulator will attract some visitors who have never heard of the musical, but will get caught in its gravitational force — much like the cast album became a hit by people who hadn’t yet seen the show.

“The music brought people to ‘Hamilton’ in some cases before the actual production of the show brought them there,” says Edelman. “I don’t think this will be any different if we achieve our primary goal, which is to make this a fun gameplay experience that attracts the Roblox community.”



Studio Ghibli Marks 40 Years, but Future Looks Uncertain

This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)
This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)
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Studio Ghibli Marks 40 Years, but Future Looks Uncertain

This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)
This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)

Japan's Studio Ghibli turns 40 this month with two Oscars and legions of fans young and old won over by its complex plots and fantastical hand-drawn animation.

But the future is uncertain, with latest hit "The Boy and the Heron" likely -- but not certainly -- the final feature from celebrated co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, now 84.

The studio behind the Oscar-winning "Spirited Away" has become a cultural phenomenon since Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata established it in 1985.

Its popularity has been fueled of late by a second Academy Award in 2024 for "The Boy and the Heron", starring Robert Pattinson, and by Netflix streaming Ghibli movies around the world.

In March, the internet was flooded with pictures in its distinctively nostalgic style after the release of OpenAI's newest image generator, raising questions over copyright.

The newly opened Ghibli Park has also become a major tourist draw for central Japan's Aichi region.

Julia Santilli, a 26-year-old from Britain living in northern Japan, "fell in love with Ghibli" after watching the 2001 classic "Spirited Away" as a child.

"I started collecting all the DVDs," she told AFP.

Ghibli stories are "very engaging and the artwork is stunning", said another fan, Margot Divall, 26.

"I probably watch 'Spirited Away' about 10 times a year still."

- 'Whiff of death' -

Before Ghibli, most cartoons in Japan, known as anime, were made for children.

But Miyazaki and Takahata, both from "the generation that knew war", included darker elements that appeal to adults, Miyazaki's son Goro told AFP.

"It's not all sweet -- there's also a bitterness and things like that which are beautifully intertwined in the work," he said, describing a "whiff of death" in the films.

For younger people who grew up in peacetime, "it is impossible to create something with the same sense, approach and attitude," Goro said.

Even "My Neighbor Totoro," with its cuddly forest creatures, is in some ways a "scary" movie that explores the fear of losing a sick mother, he explained.

Susan Napier, a professor at Tufts University in the United States and author of "Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art", agrees.

"In Ghibli, you have ambiguity, complexity and also a willingness to see that the darkness and light often go together" unlike good-versus-evil US cartoons, she said.

The post-apocalyptic "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" -- considered the first Ghibli film despite its release in 1984 -- has no obvious villain, for example.

The movie featuring an independent princess curious about giant insects and a poisonous forest felt "so fresh" and a change from "a passive woman... having to be rescued," Napier said.

- Natural world -

Studio Ghibli films also depict a universe where humans connect deeply with nature and the spirit world.

A case in point was 1997's "Princess Mononoke", distributed internationally by Disney.

The tale of a girl raised by a wolf goddess in a forest threatened by humans is "a masterpiece -- but a hard movie," Napier said.

It's a "serious, dark and violent" film appreciated more by adults, which "was not what US audiences had anticipated with a movie about a princess."

Ghibli films "have an environmentalist and animistic side, which I think is very appropriate for the contemporary world with climate change," she added.

Miyuki Yonemura, a professor at Japan's Senshu University who studies cultural theories on animation, said watching Ghibli movies is like reading literature.

"That's why some children watch Totoro 40 times," she said, adding that audiences "discover something new every time."

- French connection -

Miyazaki and Takahata, who died in 2018, could create imaginative worlds because of their openness to other cultures, Yonemura said.

Foreign influences included writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery and animator Paul Grimault, both French, and Canadian artist Frederic Back, who won an Oscar for his animation "The Man Who Planted Trees".

Takahata studying French literature at university "was a big factor," Yonemura said.

"Both Miyazaki and Takahata read a lot," she said. "That's a big reason why they excel at writing scripts and creating stories."

Miyazaki has said he was inspired by several books for "Nausicaa", including the 12th-century Japanese tale "The Lady who Loved Insects", and Greek mythology.

Studio Ghibli will not be the same after Miyazaki stops creating animation, "unless similar talent emerges," Yonemura said.

Miyazaki is "a fantastic artist with such a visual imagination" while both he and Takahata were "politically progressive," Napier said.

"The more I study, the more I realize this was a unique cultural moment," she said.

"It's so widely loved that I think it will carry on," said Ghibli fan Divall.

"As long as it doesn't lose its beauty, as long as it carries on the amount of effort, care and love," she said.