Anyone who knows me knows I love Game of Thrones. The books are amazing – pick up a copy at your local bookstore.

The companion show is coming back for its third season this weekend, and HBO has kicked off a creative new web campaign to promote it.

They have put up a site called “Join The Realm“, which allows users to create their own “sigil cards” for their house.

You sign in via Facebook to connect to the web app and then either create your own card from scratch or have the app put one together for you (based on the Houses from the show).

I clicked the “do it for me” button a few times to get a card I liked:

hbo-got

As you can see, there are plenty of share options on all the major social media sites.

I personally love the “make your own” interface even more:

make your own card

Sure, the interface is a bit chunky and tiiiiny bit slow, but the options are plenty! You only get to choose between black and white for your text (and you can’t change the placement), but there are more color and pattern options for the background. The icons are even more numerous – choose from the sigils of the Houses from the show (in the picture above, I’ve chosen the Direwolf of the Starks), or from other icons categories such as animals (they have one called “fluffy cat”!), fun, hobbies, lifestyle, medieval, religious, shapes, sports, and technology. You can spend hours making new cards if you’re not careful! 😛

After you’re done, click “save/continue” to go to the sharing screen, where you can download the picture or share it on your preferred network.

All in all, I think it’s a great web app and genius marketing on HBO’s behalf. Game of Thrones (and shows/series like it) have a community followings and require community avenues for fan to interact with each other, exchange ideas, and enhance their own entertainment experiences. The best part of this app is that it connects directly to your facebook/twitter/etc. so you can instantly share your creations with fellow fans and spawn even more discussions.

If there was one thing I would improve with this web is that I’d add ability upload pictures so users can create their own custom sigils. Perhaps next time?

Here’s my sigil card! Combining my favourite houses: Lannister, Targaryen, and Martell. (Couldn’t fit the Starks in!)

JoinTheRealm_sigil(4)