tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66090845806064644002024-03-13T11:04:54.912+00:00Beware of the SorrellThe Future of Electronic EntertainmentMark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-28845252406706287642013-06-24T17:02:00.000+01:002013-06-24T17:02:56.542+01:00Panopticons: A How To Guide<div class="p1">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Innocent until proven guilty. Turns out it's a threat, not a promise</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello viewers! And hello to the world’s security services. It’s great to see so many of you here tonight.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Panopticons eh? They’re pretty great. A hypothetical prison design by Jeremy Bentham, the term has been co-opted to mean a particular kind of self-imposed behaviour change. The original idea was to construct a prison with a central guard tower and cells arranged in a circle around the tower in such a way that all of them could be observed from that tower. Because even a single guard could be observing any cell, at any time, and the prisoners could never know if they were being observed or not, they would act as if they were being observed at all times.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No-one ever built a Panopticon, but the word is now often used to describe any system of mass-surveillance. I, along with every single human being with internet access, have already compared Facebook to a Panopticon, and the word is getting a second tour of duty with the revelation that at least the US and UK governments are capable of looking at basically anything you do online. Which they have to do because Terrorism.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s cool when they do it in a Bond movie</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But are PRISM (not prison) et al actually Panopticons? Well, they certainly weren’t. They sort of are now. They could certainly become one, red in tooth and claw. See, for a Panopticon to do its work - its work, remember, being self-imposed behaviour change, acting as if you are being observed when you may or not actually be observed - there are three requirements.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Guys, no wait, guys, listen. No guys, listen. <br />I have an idea.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first is that it must be physically possible to construct a system capable of observing the prisoners (not PRISMers). Well we know that one’s sorted now. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We can build handcuffs.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second is that the prisoners (not PRISMERS! Reaction to that one holding steady at the front, some laughs over here, but really not much happening towards the back of the room.) must know that they are in a Panopticon. After all, folk are not going to behave as if they think they are being watched, if they don’t think they are being watched. Self-evident, yes, but important here. Why go to all the trouble of observing every piece of online traffic created if you’re not going to tell people about it? Terribly inefficient. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are wearing handcuffs.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third, and most important, is that occasionally, you have to drag one of the prisoners (not PRISMers) out of their cell and give them a bloody good thrashing, right where all the other prisoners (not PRISMers) can see. There must be consequences to failing to observe the rules of the Panopticon. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the key that locks the handcuffs and so far, this hasn’t happened.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With all this in mind, PRISMNOTPRISON is a great start, and the revelations of its existence are certainly a step in the right direction, but for the iron boot to really start upping its stamping-on-a-human-face-forever game, they need to start acting on the information they’re getting. If they just stand around looking, no-one’s really going to descend into a living nightmare from which there is no escape, and we can’t have that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m bored of the PRISMERS thing now.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The irony of this, of course, is Panopticons are about self-imposed behaviour change, they’re only good at controlling pretty low-level infractions. The kind of crimes that a fear of punishment might effect. In other words, mass-surveillance is only *not* about stopping terrorism and child porn.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>What do you mean you forgot the chicken nuggets?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the unveiling of PRISM, the first two parts of the digital Panopticon are now in place. And whatever is said from here on in, no-one is seriously going to believe that this spigot is ever actually going to be turned off. Indeed, more to the point, I doubt many of us don’t now assume that everyone else is doing it too, the US and UK just faced the public first. That’s it now, this is a thing and it won’t go away, ever.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So my advice to the US government is to take the opportunity and start acting on this stuff now. Then we can all just get on with living in constant, unbridled fear for the rest of our lives. A decisive victory in the War on Terror, I think you’ll all agree.</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-30061850424887740832012-09-10T11:59:00.000+01:002012-09-18T17:58:38.196+01:00Gambling For Kids: A How To Guide<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Children are stupid and make poor decisions</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So a little while ago I gave a talk on a panel at the Children’s Media Festival. It was called ‘Taking Candy From a Baby’ and it was about using free-to-play and IAP techniques in apps aimed at children. That nice Stuart Dredge man from The Guardian <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/09/regulation-iap-apps-for-kids" target="_blank">did writing which mentioned it</a> and there’s even a picture where a tiny dot is me! I did a proud and told my mum and she did one too. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>I’m so humble, I self-deprecate myself.</i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The thrust of the talk was that free-to-play uses a lot of manipulative techniques to get people to pay for things. It aims to do so in a way that they will willingly rationalise and defend, but it’s not from a kind and lovely place. It’s not a bad and evil place either, it’s just a particular way of doing business and places a lot of emphasis on making creative and commercial concerns work together. It has plenty of upsides - try before you buy, pay what you like and ensure constant support for your favourite titles.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That said, both the game design and behavioural economics powering the exploding world of free-to-play are manipulative things. And while it’s fine to give adults choices and let them choose between those choices - even if you are loading the behavioural dice in your favour - doing the same thing with kids is not so fine. They don’t have the same cognitive development, are wildly less able to make those decisions, and depending on their age, may well have literally no understanding of the value of the money they are spending anyway. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303753904577452341745766920.html" target="_blank">Asking children to pester their parents to spend money to cure a sick kitten</a>, as Pet Shop Story does, is as bad and wrong as game design gets.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I, on the other hand, have 32 pairs of shoes</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So fremium for kids seems to be a non-starter unless you are a horrible insect-like being made from poison and murderers. Right?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well here’s a thing. Panini Sticker books are gambling for kids. There’s no doubt that’s a fair representation of them. Collect stickers! Oh god collect them now! But do so by giving us money for random stickers you may or may not need or want! Swap them with your friends by all means, but lets be honest, some stickers will just be rare. So you have to be lucky. And you are not lucky. So buy more!</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Could you help? I seem to have a horse stuck in my paw.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now while parents probably aren’t exactly keen on sticker collecting - my parents certainly weren’t - nor is it regarded with the same suspicion and hostility as IAP. Buying packs of random things at 50p a go in order to cure your OCD is fine. Gambling for children is fine - so long as it has footballers on the front and glue on the back and no-one thinks about it all that much.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And there’s more. Penny falls machines sit close to slot machines in the pleasure gardens and arcades of various seas-side resorts. But it’s fine to give the kids a handful of coins to push into the glittering piles of treasure with the hope and aim of claiming back even more. So they are definitely gambling too, and this time with actual more-money-than-you-started-with as the motivation, but again, they’re also fine and good entertainment and pretty and hey kid, here’s some change, knock yourself out.</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And who could possibly object to the humble claw machine? The claw! Because you're alive, you've seen Toy Story and you laughed at that bit because it was funny. Ha ha! The claw! Shame really, because <a href="http://www.quora.com/Arcade-Games/How-do-the-Claw-crane-arcade-game-machines-work" target="_blank">claw machines are completely evil and must be destroyed.</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I bet I gamble less than you</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sticker books, penny falls and claw machines all have a great deal in common with the IAP and free-to-play world. And, indeed, are considerably harsher in many ways. The things you buy in a game might well be virtual, but within that world they almost always have hugely more use than a sticker does in the real world. And sticker packs are usually located at exactly the right place to calm an annoying child on a trip to the supermarket - they wear their pester-power intentions proudly. Behave like a not-bastard and Daddy will buy you some stickers when we get to the end. Presuming your children are old enough to grasp the principles of delayed-gratification, you have yourself a whole mess of behavioural economics and no mistake.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are a few of my favourite things.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it works. Panini alone print around 6 billion stickers a year. 1 billion packs. 50p a pack. That’s quite a lot of numbers. Quite a lot of money. Quite a lot of money from children learning how thrilling gambling can be.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why is that ok, but PAY TO STOP THIS CAT THAT YOU LOVE FROM DYING HORRIBLY is not? Being horribly manipulated is unpleasant, of course it is, but it doesn’t actually teach you anywhere near as much in the way of negative behaviours. It isn’t telling you that gambling is fun and that you should do it. It’s not showing you how you can make money into more money using nothing but luck! Except that you are not so lucky. It’s vile, unquestionably vile, but it at least has the decency to ring-fence its evil and malicious behaviours to itself.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">copy goes here copy goes here copy g</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fear of the new is undoubtedly a factor. Particular dances, comics, Elvis Presley’s nethers, specific trousers, videogames, taking loads of drugs, a different kind of videogames; all these have caused the older generation to declare that the younger generation were a write-off and should probably be catapulted into the sea. They were wrong in all cases, or at least I am still alive and have seen other alive people recently, so we can’t have gone too far wrong.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An old person, chilling out.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More, and an off-shoot of the above thought process, this is about the real and the virtual and control. Panini stickers are bought in the real world, by a parent, or by a child with cash given to the child by the parent. Penny Falls machines are yet more real. They run on real money and give out real money. Their value is clear and visible and entirely under the control of the parent.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IAP, like the ringtone subscriptions that last made money disappear magically from parental bank accounts, break this connection. If you want to make an IAP you (largely) have to do so electronically. The parent gives their child indirect access to their bank account or credit card. Children don’t usually have access to electronic money, and reasonably so - it’s much harder to understand the implications of a number getting smaller than it isto have to give away those heavy, shiny, strange-smelling coins.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One day we will have a world without coin stink</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, much as it might be nice to think that we can go back to pushing metal discs across a shop counter in exchange for some reformed sugar and a series of brightly coloured objects, money doesn’t work like that anymore. Mobile phones on contract are access to a parental bank account. Still-active passwords in an iOS device are access to a parental bank account. We need to face and take advantage of the virtualisation of money, as do the banking industry and the providers of the entertainment than children crave.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am <u>not</u> cool with this.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not a problem, it is a challenge. Giving children access to more meaningful budgeting experiences is entirely possible. Letting parents control the funds their children have and let them learn how to spend it is an opportunity to create a more financially savvy generation, and that’s an opportunity we shouldn’t miss out on. It’s a rather better choice than teaching kids about the joys of gambling, don’t you think?</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-34669951778029050752012-04-02T10:51:00.000+01:002012-04-03T15:23:56.266+01:00Gamification is Dead. Long Live Gamification.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Don’t let the door hit you on the way out</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gamification. A dirty word. Pointsification, that’s the term, isn’t it? Some badges, some points, some extrinsic rewards to make you do all those things you don’t want to do. An unproven concept that was instantly leapt upon by the kind of people who actually </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">want</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to work in marketing. Awful business, from tippit</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">y-top to bottomly-bottom.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Everything is better with badges.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem with gamification of course, was that the people who were trying to do it didn’t know their games from their elbows. While the number of good brains in the gaming arena goes up every single day, there are still very few people who really get what makes games tick in the first place - and that’s just among people who make games professionally. People who work in marketing generally don’t even understand how marketing works, let alone games, so once they’d attached their feeding tubes to it, gamification was never really going anywhere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The definition of gamification that has stuck is this; </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adding game-like elements to things that are not games.</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The problem with this definition is that is completely and utterly wrong. If the fearful, band-wagon jumping, fad-machines that saw gamification as the solution to every single problem ever had correctly defined the thing in the first place, perhaps we’d be parading gamification proponents around on pagodas instead of openly jeering at them in the streets. Specifically the streets of Hoxton.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, what is it?</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that’s not to say that gamification doesn’t work. Quite the opposite, in fact. The problem is that it was defined wrongly, not that it doesn’t work. So what is gamification then? That’s easy. Gamification is actually this; </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">adding non-game elements to games.</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There you go. That’s how you do it.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adding non-game elements to games.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QJSjfKFnqu4/T3l1hEBQdsI/AAAAAAAAAOA/LAL1I_Fphcc/s1600/drag+horse.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QJSjfKFnqu4/T3l1hEBQdsI/AAAAAAAAAOA/LAL1I_Fphcc/s320/drag+horse.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Adding non-horse elements to horses.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our case study will be Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing fighting against Typing of the Dead. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is, quite unexpectedly, a piece of software that teaches typing. It does so through a formal system of lessons and mini-games devised to get the user touch typing as quickly and accurately as possible. It is gamification of the bad kind. It starts with the non-game of ‘learning to type’ and adds in some game-like elements in order to make everything such terribly good fun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bollocks. If you want to learn to type, get yourself a copy of Typing of the Dead and you’ll have finished your first novel by the week’s end. It will be rubbish, but you will have written it really quickly. This is because Typing of the Dead is a game, onto which the process of learning to type has been added. It’s based on Sega’s really rather good light-gun arcade smash, House of the Dead. Except instead of shooting at the zombies to kill them, they have words on them and you must type those words in order to re-kill your living-dead adversaries. Unsurprisingly, the threat of being eaten alive by zombies and the promise of defeating evil is a more effective motivator than a nice lady telling you that you’re ok really, no matter what anyone says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who’d have thought?</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But whyyyyyyyyyy?</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reason this is true is very simple. In the taxonomy of all things media, games are a fundamental particle. You cannot sub-divide games. Something either is a game, or it is not a game. There’s some arguing about what a game is, of course. We could have a long old chat about toys and puzzles and gambling and whatever it is that you see as a chink in this argument.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AOGsK4GF-DE/T3l110sdjrI/AAAAAAAAAOI/G6lhRo5io9s/s1600/wat+cat.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AOGsK4GF-DE/T3l110sdjrI/AAAAAAAAAOI/G6lhRo5io9s/s320/wat+cat.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>...and welcome to Jackass.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the essence remains. Games can be tautologically described as ‘things with game mechanics’. The fact we use the word ‘mechanics’ to describe games in no accident. Games are machines. They are cogs and gears and cranks and rods and connections and dependancies and causes and effects and results. Much like an engine stops working if you take the crank-shaft out, a game will not function if you remove one of its mechanical parts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The old-world definition of gamification goes even further. It doesn’t remove the crank-shaft and expect the engine to continue to function, it expects that taping the crank-shaft to a house will then let you drive your house around. If you actually want a house you can drive around, you start with a car, then add a house and end up with a motor-home. You don’t start with a house and add a car.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And there it is. If you want to enjoy the same levels of dedication, enjoyment and motivation that games exhibit, then make a game and add your product, service or desired behavioural outcome to it. Of course doing so requires selecting or creating exactly the right game in the first place and inserting exactly the correct parts of your non-game in exactly the right quantities in exactly the right places. So it’s still really, really hard and requires some unusually clever game design. But if you want to do it, that’s how.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Add non-game elements to a game.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-52101513111022874682012-03-07T15:29:00.001+00:002012-03-07T15:29:36.000+00:00Look, Listen and Learn<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Christ almighty, would you look at the state of that</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello you! I’ve done a few talks and podcasts of late and I thought it might be useful and/or interesting and narcissistic to do a round up of them all. So here they are.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BOpqfsp7kTU/T1d8lRGuVtI/AAAAAAAAANE/Jdb5PARUaig/s1600/happydog.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BOpqfsp7kTU/T1d8lRGuVtI/AAAAAAAAANE/Jdb5PARUaig/s320/happydog.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Snoop Bloggy Blog</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://offthewallpost.com/2012/01/10/the-television-is-the-second-screen-ft-mark-sorrell-head-of-games-screenpop/">Off the Wall Post - 2 Screen and That</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...wherin I talk (argue) about 2-screen with the lovely Barry Pilling, Dan Biddle and Kat Sommers of Off the Wall Post. I make a joke about breasts! </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://hqofconey.posterous.com/99826701">Coney Salon - Neo Geo AES</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was asked to do a brief talk at the Coney (a wonderful playful theatre group) and Somethin’ Else salon. Which is a fancy word for show and tell. I took along a Neo Geo AES cartridge, pulled it out of my bag and made a bunch of shit up. Now you too can enjoy the sound of me making shit up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-02-games-for-change-kickstarter-and-the-industrys-gender-imbalance">GamesIndustry.biz Podcast - Games for Change, Kickstarter and Gender</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A great chat with Paulina Bozek, Will Luton and Dan Pearson on a bunch of quite serious issues, including the perpetual bugbear of gamers being, largely, a bunch of horrible pricks.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKgRAHRLlbU">BBC - How Not To Second Screen Telly</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OMG YOU CAN SEE MY FACE AND BODY. Seriously now, this one is a goddamn video. I spend 16 minutes being miserable about second screen and telling everyone to calm down and stop being silly. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qONUzWu5juw/T1d9xB-9WPI/AAAAAAAAANM/tR03CidQWDU/s1600/cateyes.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qONUzWu5juw/T1d9xB-9WPI/AAAAAAAAANM/tR03CidQWDU/s320/cateyes.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Notorious B.L.O.G.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And that’s it. I apologise wholeheartedly for how horribly self-centred this post is, but I’m a terrible person.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-17934244993861785362012-02-08T12:32:00.003+00:002012-02-09T15:32:49.764+00:00Games Good Stories Bad<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This post is part of a conversation with <a href="http://maryhamilton.co.uk/2012/02/story-games-lean-forward-back-middle/">Mary Hamilton</a> and <a href="http://silumb.posterous.com/shortthought-narrative-story-games">Si Lumb</a>. You should read what they have to say, because it is very good indeed.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a quick post I’m going to write in THIRTY MINUTES OR LESS (including pictures and captions but not proff-reading) - or your money back!</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This week on Twitter, UKIE’s CEO Dr Jo Twist (she’s not that kind of doctor) asked which games had made us cry. The answers were mostly along the lines of ‘none, ever’. A few weirdos proffered up answers like Ico (it does have a brilliant, bitter-sweet ending I suppose) and GTAIV (which has the worst story/game integration of any videogame ever made and I still assume the suggestion was straight trollin’). Then the question opened up to be ‘which games made you feel empathy’ to which the answer was an even more unequivocal ‘none, ever’.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-15c-14TqIDM/TzJqOvdEvcI/AAAAAAAAAL8/3Ws3hUED8cA/s1600/bender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-15c-14TqIDM/TzJqOvdEvcI/AAAAAAAAAL8/3Ws3hUED8cA/s320/bender.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My name is Bender, please insert girder</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can’t have empathy with yourself. Officially, empathy is ‘Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives’. With another. When you’re playing a videogame, it’s you making those choices and decisions, so you can’t have empathy. Even when bad things happen to other characters in the game, the scaffolding of game that the story is impaled upon still makes empathy very hard to come by. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In passive media, you never have a personal influence on the outcome of anything. You know the story will play out a certain way and you are there just to experience it. The limited range of carefully chosen interactions you have in a game means that you are put in a strange position of having <i>some</i> control over the outcome of events - which prevents you from being a truly passive observer - but often (and quite deliberately) not enough to change the outcome of serious, pre-determined plot points. So when your dog dies or an innocent is jailed or someone is wearing a truly awful blouse, you can’t really feel for them because the mechanism that provides these moments to you is the same mechanism that prevents you from doing anything to prevent them.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m sure I’ve done this before</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Games can <i>create</i> great stories, don’t get me wrong. But they are largely incapable of <i>telling</i> great stories. Games are about interaction and agency, about choice and self-determination. One of the points made by fancy-pants French sociologist Roger Caillois</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when defining what a game is, was that the outcome of a game must be uncertain. The result cannot be known in advance. When you try and tell a story in a game, you must break that rule, you must make the outcome of events pre-determined.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are some games that recognise that there is usually a zero-sum game being played between the amount of game and the amount of story a videogame can offer at any one time and break that rule in interesting ways. Bastion is the obvious one, featuring, as it does, a voiceover that narrates your progress as you play, allowing you to have your gaming cake and eat your story too. Then there are more out-there games, such as the Grow game series, where playing the game is in itself discovering the story.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But most traditional approaches, where gameplay and story are fundamentally different acts and story guides player action, rather than player action guiding story, still feel like remnants of a misguided cult, dedicated to the act of beating very square pegs into the roundest of holes. If anyone if going to make me cry at a videogame, it will be me...</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-78063849586421003672012-01-26T13:09:00.002+00:002012-01-26T16:33:35.858+00:00Fuel For Thought<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I went to #Fuel4 (I think that’s how you spell it) recently. It was an event put on by Channel 4 Online to get a bunch of bright young things from various aspects of media production to share their knowledge and insight. Also, I was there.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MiDheWTh-cY/TyFMrQFp4cI/AAAAAAAAALE/OjCaRlxAywA/s1600/bitmun.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MiDheWTh-cY/TyFMrQFp4cI/AAAAAAAAALE/OjCaRlxAywA/s320/bitmun.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Yes, this is a metaphor for my arrogance</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were a raft of speakers, each of whom gave a brief, five-minute talk and gave a quote for the little book that went along with the event. It was a surprisingly good session and I want to spread some of the seething mass of thinking into the wider world.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So here, I shall quote some of the speakers and then explain why I think they are right, or wrong. Mostly wrong, because I am like that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hydrogen is a colourless, odourless gas that spends its time contemplating its own existence</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Passive participation in the TV viewing experience is on the verge of extinction” - Niall Austin, Omnimotec</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So opens my quote-a-thon, with something completely and utterly wrong. I’m calling that one, right now. Passivity is lovely. We really like passivity. Passivity is going to be hip and cool and trendy for the rest of human history. This is because passivity is the result of human laziness and human laziness is the most powerful force in the civilised world. I can’t be bothered to explain why.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aYywBd8Uflo/TyFM99EPFpI/AAAAAAAAALM/_RWzrNYtiyo/s1600/canda.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aYywBd8Uflo/TyFM99EPFpI/AAAAAAAAALM/_RWzrNYtiyo/s320/canda.jpeg" width="283" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>What do you mean, you forgot the Coq Au Vin?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you’re looking to make something awesome in the TV space, I’d highly recommend that you ignore what Niall has to say there and concentrate on experiences that make passivity more enjoyable, or at the very least, add interactivity by extending the experience out beyond the broadcast window. When people are riding the knife edge of a permanent vegetative state on their sofa after a hard day doing boring shit for an idiot, trying to love their stupid children or fighting with their dog, they don’t want to <i>do</i> anything at all. So bear that in mind.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m a little teapot, short and stout</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Entertainment must involve the audience more and allow them to play along from the sofa.” - Tom McQuillin - Microsoft</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a very similar area, we have a chap representing the XBox and Kinect. Sure, entertainment <i>can</i> do this, but it musn’t <i>must</i>. People are quite happy to sit there and have delightful things happen and carry them far, far away. Entertainment isn’t better just because you have to wave your arms around, press buttons or waste precious energy deciding what you think at all.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many a mickle, makes a muckle</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Gone are the days when people enjoyed passive media alone, without a voice.” - Henrique Olifers - Bossa Studios </span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a good point. If people want to talk about your show (or any entertainment media) on the internet, then they will. You can’t stop them and they will likely speak their minds, so do not expect them to be kind or forgiving. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AVf3FNy8AD8/TyFNll11gJI/AAAAAAAAALU/p7ZWuYLHPUY/s1600/CLAAAAN.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="259" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AVf3FNy8AD8/TyFNll11gJI/AAAAAAAAALU/p7ZWuYLHPUY/s320/CLAAAAN.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>THE POWER OF DREAMS</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It also means that if you have a story worth sharing, people will almost certainly share it. One thing social media unquestionably does is amplify your content’s voice. What was good will be sung from the rooftops. What was bad will be taken apart, brick by brick. People are often not that picky and will watch any old shit if they can’t be bothered to stop. But they will tell people about it afterward.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And this is without taking into account what will happen when everybody stops talking about social media as a trend and it’s just ‘the way things are’. After-all, while social media is just people talking to each other, except on the internet, the fact they're doing it on the internet does mean we’ll see new types of behaviour emerge. And that means opportunity.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let’s make games for everyone. Yes, even her. And TV shows exclusively for just that guy there. No, that one.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Over the past 30 years, television entertainment has undergone a profound shift. Viewers went from spending their time on a handful of broadcast channels to clustering around hundreds of niche-based channels with the rise of cable and satellite viewing. Online video is the next stage of this evolution, with the rise of millions of channels catering to their own specific audience.” - Rachel Ball, YouTube</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The future of games-based entertainment will be one of increasingly mainstream appeal” - Paul Canty, Preloaded</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So TV is getting more niche and games are getting more mainstream. That’s a trend, that’s a thing, you will see that happen, it will happen. Of course, while it is happening (and it will happen) there will be all manner of lovely space opening up for people - maybe people like you - to make games for just that guy and shows for everyone on the planet.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5bIFLbSrmV8/TyFNyrwLbcI/AAAAAAAAALc/qB74ZzWZZKg/s1600/Dwwak.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5bIFLbSrmV8/TyFNyrwLbcI/AAAAAAAAALc/qB74ZzWZZKg/s320/Dwwak.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bitches don't know 'bout ma cardigans</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now this is completely unsurprising - TV started out as a broadcast service and so had to at least attempt to appeal to really quite a lot of people. Games on the other hand have always been an on-demand product, so naturally started out serving niches and have slowly pulled back to look at the bigger picture. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The trend is not news, is not insight, but I suspect the wise will find as many opportunities to buck it as they do to play along.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You may be wondering why I gathered you all here today...</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“those TV shows that create events and build a virtual community around those events will thrive” - David Flynn - Endemol UK</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The next evolution of entertainment will happen when the talented folks in TV and film [...] start thinking in terms of ‘content systems’ rather than television programs.” - Paul Bennun, Somethin’ Else</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And herein is the story. Communities! TV is broadcast. Lots of people will see a TV show, so the chance that a community will be created, regardless of the intentions of the producer and broadcast. Have a look at <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspectorSpacetime">Inspector Spacetime</a> for some pretty amazing details of exactly that kind of thing happening.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KChOApcItvg/TyFPSJtvgQI/AAAAAAAAALk/1FssfKqq__4/s1600/NVBnr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KChOApcItvg/TyFPSJtvgQI/AAAAAAAAALk/1FssfKqq__4/s320/NVBnr.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I'm on the right track baby, I was born this way</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The trick, truth be told, isn’t so much in creating the community, but in knowing what the hell to do with them once you have them. This is the point my esteemed (lol) colleague (ha ha) Paul Bennun is making. The more openings your content has, the more ways there are for the community to get involved and actually ‘do’ rather than simply ‘being’.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hell, even without any such access, given sufficient time and a large and passionate enough community then you get <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ezeYJUz-84">Star Wars The Director’s Cut</a>. Working out ways to make that kind of community action and creativity easier and more enjoyable is a big challenge for modern media.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Making a community is the easy part. It’s having a meaningful relationship with them that’s the tricky bit.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10 points to Gryffindor!</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“...have writers, directors, game designers and technologists all in a room together, at the start, trusting one another and devising the format from scratch” - Alex Fleetwood - Hide & Seek</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The next big thing has to be delivering an engaging lie-back and enjoy experience for connected entertainment devices.” - Andrew Walker - Tweetminster</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are my favourite quotes of the lot. These cut to the quick of the matter, to me.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9i_YztDKbMo/TyFQZVg5WkI/AAAAAAAAALs/K_bM3Qe2rC0/s1600/J9pOP.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9i_YztDKbMo/TyFQZVg5WkI/AAAAAAAAALs/K_bM3Qe2rC0/s320/J9pOP.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Can I come?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First we need to start thinking in a far more cohesive fashion. This requires, in the immediate future, for the TV part of multi-platform stuff to simultaneously take more of a back-seat without losing any of its strengths as a TV show. That’s a difficult thing to balance and will take a lot of experimentation and inevitable miss-steps, but we need to start dropping the presumed hierarchies we’ve used for so long and start giving each element the space it needs to shine, whatever new and unusual approaches that might require.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Secondly, when it comes to TV and broadcast specifically, the fundamentally lie-back and passive aspect to the experience is the one that defines the medium more than any other. Interactive TV will have its place, and shows that <i>require</i> interaction should absolutely be given their chance to shine. But the core of the TV experience is one where you turn-on, tune-in and drop-off, right? </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That, more than anything, is the real insight of the day. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apologies to those who I didn’t mention. I suppose.</span></i></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-76051880234242893342012-01-20T13:16:00.001+00:002012-01-23T11:39:59.943+00:00Smash TV<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Big money! Big prizes! I love it!</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s what everyone wants to do, isn’t it? Beat TV. Kill TV. Kick TV to bits and throw all the little pieces into a big bin. TV’s been sitting there, in the corner of your personal living room, doing its TV thing since like, <i>forever</i>. How bloody dare it. Did no-one tell TV that there was the internet now? This is the future guy, and we have smartphones and Twitter and Skyrim. You’re not a TV, you’re a device. Get with the program and stop making 300 billion dollars a year without even a ‘like’ button.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9mtzYnnoxRY/TxlmlFboz_I/AAAAAAAAAKs/oo5wrIq2vmA/s1600/dogfood.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9mtzYnnoxRY/TxlmlFboz_I/AAAAAAAAAKs/oo5wrIq2vmA/s320/dogfood.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"What's that boy? Timmy has diabetes?"</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Considering how much the internet wants to duff up the telly, it surprises me how much the problem is viewed as a technical one, rather than a cultural one. That was a lie, it doesn’t surprise me in any way. Tech people see the ‘TV problem’ as a tech problem, of course they do. But they’re wrong. Partially wrong.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">TV is a cultural entity. There are a bunch of things about the way it operates that are viewed not as strengths, but as technical issues in need of solving, when if anything, tech could do to learn from TV’s limitations. Linear, broadcast, passive, sit-back experiences that are often more ambient than gripping. Surely we can make TV into a customised entertainment engine, blasting out exactly the right show for YOU right NOW! See what your friends are watching, watch it with them, submerge yourself in the worlds of your favourite shows for the rest of your natural life!</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or we can just press a button and sit down and see what’s on.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Define ‘better’</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s the shared pain of television's shortcomings that make it what it is. Making TV ‘better’, solving TV’s ‘problems’ won’t do anything to challenge its dominance in these terms. To create something that is both capable and deserving of killing TV, one needs to create something that defines small-talk and office chat by its sheer ubiquity. The race to provide customised, perfectly entertaining streams of content to customers’ unconscious needs is not going to do that. We can’t share experiences we don’t, you know, share.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did you just zippety bop zoopa bop?</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s an important difference between TV and video, yet it’s rarely discussed by even the biggest players in this game. Video is a kind of content, TV is a delivery mechanism, but more importantly, it’s a culture. It’s entirely obvious that the delivery mechanism of a product is important to the experience. It’s less obvious that the most convenient option isn’t necessarily the best.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social proof, the enjoyment and reassurance given by doing what you know others are doing, is a powerful force and one which television gets to enjoy by default. The larger the number of channels available, the weaker this force becomes, as the audience splits into smaller and smaller niches. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You Tube’s power play with its commissioning of original content and attempt to reposition itself as a serious alternative to TV is based on a strategy that extends the cable paradigm of more channels with more specialised content. This is probably good for the individual, but I’m not convinced it’s good for society.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello, yes, this is Situation</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">TV has a wonderful ability to remind us how we’re all the same, as much as give us what we personally want. It shapes and informs us a culture. That can surely be a force for bad, as much as a force for good, but I for one would be sad to see that end. Let’s make sure that while we try to make TV better for each of us, we don’t end up making it worse for all of us.</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-38683786543508502752011-12-20T10:20:00.001+00:002011-12-20T10:20:48.056+00:00Ladies and Gentlemen<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">War of the Words</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So yeah, that was a thing. I don’t usually do follow up posts, but the response to my sexism piece was so extraordinary, I don’t think it’s right to ignore it. So here, a week later, is a brief post to follow up on what happened before I go back to musing about the future of things like an idiot.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gottle of gear</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I got 1000 times more traffic than I usually do. The link has been retweeted well over 100 times. There have been some excellent follow up pieces, <a href="http://lookspring.co.uk/in-which-i-dont-try-to-write-like-a-man">one from my good friend Margaret Robertson</a>, discussion on <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2011/12/16/games-women/">Forbes</a>, <a href="http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-changing-fat-ugly-or-slutty-status-quo">Edge</a>, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/n9r60/excellent_post_about_sexism_and_gamers/">Reddit</a> and numerous blogs and forums. And that’s only what I’m aware of. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wasn’t expecting any of those things to happen.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My predictions about the comments proved largely accurate. I received little abuse, and certainly none for it was based on my gender. Largely, people have agreed with me. Some people just claimed there wasn’t a problem, some detractors claimed that actually trying to do something about it was a bad idea, or impossible, and a few said that men suffer from sexism too! These excuses have been fully addressed in the comments.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Lynx Effect</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I received a lot of messages, mostly from women saying thank you. That made me happy to have done something seemingly right and sad that a bunch of intelligent women would feel the need to thank a random guy on the internet for writing an article that took maybe two hours to put together. There is no doubt at all that I believe what I wrote more now than I did when I wrote it. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If this wasn’t a problem, or if doing something was worse than doing nothing, none of these things would have happened.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And that’s all I have to say about that.</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-6219447769230219822011-12-12T11:32:00.000+00:002011-12-12T11:32:07.820+00:00Dear Men, Please Listen. Love, Man<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I‘m going to talk about something I am evidently unqualified to talk about. Women. I have met some and they seemed very nice people on the whole. I read, seemingly more and more often with every passing day, about the way that women are treated online, particularly in the game community and their lack of representation in the game industry. It makes me angry. So here, I will write about that.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>To crush your enemies, see them driven before you</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will not be accused of being a shrill moaning harpy. I won’t be asked to make anyone a sandwich, nor will I be accused of being a lesbian, asked to suck anyone’s cock or be threatened with rape. Partially, this is because those who have met me understand that I view other humans as lunch with a temporary stay of execution. Let the Wookie win, as they say. Mostly, it’s because I’m a man and so people will read what I have to say rather than switching off their brain and spewing out some astonishingly unimaginative sexist bullshit. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It strikes me as incredibly bizarre to think that men talking about the mega-sexism in the game industry, pointing at it and screaming and banging their ham-sized fists on the metaphorical game-table and bellowing that<i> “this will not stand!”</i> could have more effect than the same outrage expressed by the women actually suffering it. However, it seems very likely true. So here I will stand and bellow.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am bellowing</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So first up, is this a problem at all? Yes.<a href="http://fatuglyorslutty.com/"> Yes, this is a problem</a>. The gaming community contains an incredible number of idiots. <a href="http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1213567p1.html">Go here and read this article about Saint’s Row 3 by Emma Boyes.</a> It’s a good article, well reasoned and the complete opposite of anything aggressive or hectoring or provocative. It <i>defends</i> a game that has been attacked for sexism. It’s a great piece.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then read the comments and it’s just a roll-call of complete fucking bullshit. Angry, shouty, stupid, illogical, emotional, insecure ranting, brought forth from the depths of the internet’s prick cabinet. If that exact same article had been written by a man, not a single one of those comments would have been written. That’s because they have absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s said in the article and, more importantly, because men don’t get handed this shit. That said, it <a href="http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/hulk-vs-arkham-city-round-2-bitches-be-trippin/">didn’t stop The Hulk coming under attack</a> for daring to call a sexism a sexism. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4Lt1zuoJyQ/TuXksDYeQKI/AAAAAAAAAJk/UyalKLbzq2A/s1600/NkSpC.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4Lt1zuoJyQ/TuXksDYeQKI/AAAAAAAAAJk/UyalKLbzq2A/s320/NkSpC.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and to hear the lamentation of their women</i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The even worse part are all the articles I can’t link to because they were never written. There is a gathering number of smart and interesting women who state that they don’t write what they want to write because of the abuse they will get for doing so. <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/11/comments-rape-abuse-women">Read this to see what I mean. </a>When they do write, they don’t speak their minds because of the abuse they will get for doing so. There are even more smart and interesting women who don’t admit to doing this, but secretly self-censor to keep themselves out of the crosshairs of the legion of poisonous clowns that would otherwise ladle depressing filth upon their good work.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s <i>really</i> bad for the game industry to have an atmosphere where women have to self-censor in order to avoid or placate a bunch of duck-brained super-ninnies. How can it be good for games to have the opinions of half the entire world cut-short or cut-out entirely, because the other half are peppered with socially-handicapped dick-weasels, determined to spoil everything for everyone because fuck you, that’s why. I remember when trolling was a art. On this subject, in this arena, it’s a disease, and not a very good one at that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But but but but but but but but but</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Ooh, if you can’t take it, get off the internet’ comes the call from over clutched handbag. Well if you can’t speak to a woman without resorting to wholly unimaginative sexist copypasta, how about you get off the internet? He who repeats sexist tropes wins? I think not. Sexism <i>can</i> be funny, same as racism, homophobia and so on. But only when it’s used to actually say something. You look at Stewart Lee or Louis CK and they will take sexist concepts and wield them to carve great ideas, explain great truths. They won’t use them to make women feel bad for no fucking reason, they usually use them to make men feel like shit for being fattening idiots. Just as it should be. But if you get it wrong, then face up to it. <a href="http://kotaku.com/5863934/if-you-say-the-elder-scrolls-isnt-for-women-this-is-what-happens">Don’t do this.</a></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Take these broken wings and learn to fly.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And if you’re thinking ‘well I’ve never said anything like that’ then I don’t care. What have you done to stop it? <a href="http://paxvalkyrie.tumblr.com/post/11399537687/no-flat-girls-how-allies-are-born-guest-post">When this happens, what will you do?</a> What have you done to help the tiny handful of women in the game industry that you do know get their point across without being swamped in blandly, endlessly iterating threats, insults and bile? It’s <i>really</i> bad for the game industry that women don’t feel able to talk openly, so it’s now your job to help them do that, however you can. That’s your job, that’s what you have to do, because that’s what a decent person who cared at all about either women or games would do.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ur a fag</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a completely different note, this shit doesn’t even make any sense from a commercial perspective. From the perspective of a lizard-like being that cares not for people and only for money, the sexism that rides the industry like a pernicious, whispering, idiotic jockey is still a really bad thing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social games are often played by more women than men. PopCap reports about 54% women playing its games. But the number of women employed in the industry is, depending on who you listen to, between 7% and 15%. I suspect the 7% is probably closer to the truth.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The game industry is happy to lobby for tax credits, happy to lobby for better computer science teaching in schools (something that will probably help address the gender gap, admittedly) but seem to be doing close to nothing to get more women involved. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every day I'm levelling.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And this isn’t some white knight bullshit. This is just business. The more diverse your team, the more diverse your products, the more attitudes and angles will be considered and the better your product will be. The more money you will make. In a world of freemium, of mass-market gaming, of digging out those few whales that will bring money and fame to your game, you need to have as broad an appeal as possible. More diversity in your company will bring more diversity to your product. So form a more diverse team. And if the people just aren’t there for you to hire, make damn sure you’re pressuring everywhere you can to ensure that these people do exist in the future.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Diversity doesn’t mean women making games for women, by the way. I don’t believe that you have to be your customer. But more diversity just makes everything better, more nuanced, more knowing, more understanding. Better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even if you don’t think that fairness and equality are intrinsically valuable things to fight for, it’s still by far a better idea to be as inclusive as possible just to make more money. There is simply no excuse, beyond laziness and fear. Don’t be scared and lazy, it’s not very manly.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It just sort of vandalised itself</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And worse still, if we don’t do something about this ourselves, one day the big bad government will get involved and make us do it. Norway already insists on quotas of women at the highest ranks in companies. It might not be the last place to do so. Hate speech will come to include sexist language and censorship will weigh heavy on the internet. If you won’t moderate yourselves, eventually people with guns and courts and locks and keys will come and moderate the shit out of you. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2OqVBHYL4hI/TuXl2NenBZI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/Zk1ppbJSPO4/s1600/34S1p.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2OqVBHYL4hI/TuXl2NenBZI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/Zk1ppbJSPO4/s320/34S1p.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The city this hero deserves.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So men, this is important and it needs you to do something about it. Of course women need to keep doing what they’re already doing, but we should be helping them and we are not doing enough. This is me trying to do something about it. It may not be quite the right thing, it may be very small, but I’m damn well going to find out.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is my straw. I hope the camel is suffering.</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com119tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-73623597643659813412011-12-07T11:00:00.001+00:002011-12-07T15:10:56.502+00:00Uncle Computer, Tell Me A Story<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why we can’t have nice things</span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Content is king’, that’s what they say. They don’t say ‘good content is king’ because that would be silly. If good content were king, then the Venn diagram of ‘things that are good’ and ‘things that sell a lot’ would be a circle. It’s not. We wouldn’t bother with different words for excellent and profitable, unless they were different things. In business terms, I’d rather have a shitty product and a great salesman then a great product and a shitty salesman. So what they should say is ‘Content that is good enough, is king.‘</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u8MQJiWD2SQ/Tt9JP0GohaI/AAAAAAAAAJE/IG_tQTpUDeo/s1600/Kpx68.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u8MQJiWD2SQ/Tt9JP0GohaI/AAAAAAAAAJE/IG_tQTpUDeo/s320/Kpx68.jpeg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Hiatus going to hiate.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I like something, then I probably want more of it. This is how the TV channel Dave works, and it works very well. All of Top Gear, all of QI, that’s about it. This is also how piratebay works, because that means I can watch all of a thing in one go instead of being drip-fed it at the rate the advertisers and broadcasters have agreed on without ever even asking me once, the bastards. If, however, it costs a lot of time and money to make that thing that I like, then there’s going to be a disappointingly small amount of it for me to consume. Production is expensive.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The basic maths behind the delivery of digital media is that cost trends towards zero. This means that we end up with the position that media publishers are charging for something that costs nothing - a digital file. Making that file in the first place was of course massively expensive, but copying it? That costs nothing. And yet you, as a consumer, still get charged for it. Distribution is cheap.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The internet’s ability to distribute digital files for close to no cost has already been hugely disruptive and will continue to rework the way that commerce in relation to these files is handled. So what would happen if you could also trend the cost of production towards zero?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think you’re ok, no matter what anyone says</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are three entities capable of producing content. The first is professionals, the second is amateurs and the third is machines. We are used to professional content, that’s how pretty much everything on TV , the games we buy at retail, newspapers, magazines and books were made. It’s usually quite good, but it’s expensive. A lot of what we see on the internet is amateur content; YouTube videos, blogs, comics, comment threads, all that lovely crowd sourced stuff that hippies get so excited about. It’s cheap, but an awful lot of it is rubbish.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hWqgdXe96jE/Tt9JgKYDe7I/AAAAAAAAAJM/GvPqvzeynIo/s1600/S9SEk.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hWqgdXe96jE/Tt9JgKYDe7I/AAAAAAAAAJM/GvPqvzeynIo/s320/S9SEk.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fly you fools!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because you’re clever, you’ve realised that I’m saving machine generated content for last because that’s the one I’m excited about. Well done you, you are completely right. See machines that produce content, once you’ve built them, make new content essentially for free. They trend the cost of production towards zero. And that is an astonishing thought.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Computer games have toyed about a bit with procedurally, automatically generated content for about ever. It’s never really worked very well. Puzzle games already sort of do this - you can pretty much play Tetris or Triple Town forever. But they don’t generate stories or objects or landscapes or characters, at least not in the traditional sense.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One day, they will. Computer generated content has to be juuust good enough and it will immediately find a place where quantity is what users want.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If at first you don’t succeed, complete this line yourself</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a fantastic snippet from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ">a talk given by Kurt Vonnegut</a> where he plots out some basic stories as graphs, showing how stories can be broken down into arcs where things get worse and arcs where things get better. He invites his audience to put these ideas into a computer. I’m not sure if anyone did.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_104:_The_Juicy_Details">Here,</a> Dan Harmon, the writer of Community, discusses an algorithmic approach to writing stories, and it’s great. A chap called Dan Benmergui made <a href="http://playthisthing.com/storyteller">a lovely little storytelling toy</a> called, well, Storyteller, which lets you move people around and as you do so, the three panel story changes.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XuKUXV_T_1s/Tt9Jz1UO0mI/AAAAAAAAAJU/ita8HLCep3U/s1600/VsWHQ.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XuKUXV_T_1s/Tt9Jz1UO0mI/AAAAAAAAAJU/ita8HLCep3U/s320/VsWHQ.jpeg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Are you Thor about this?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stories have a shape, a shape that humans instinctively understand. This has been known for some time. And if that's true - and it seems it is - then it must be possible to get computers to make stories that humans find satisfying. The clues are all there. As yet, the case has not been cracked. If you can teach a computer to tell a story, you have a genuinely disruptive piece of technology. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only would such a thing be able to trend production costs towards zero, if you have a machine capable of making content, of in some way telling stories itself, then you can make completely new kinds of experience. And that is the most exciting part of all.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the story is told by a computer, it can be altered on the fly by the computer. These things have happened, so finish the story from here. If that's true, then you have genuinely interactive stories. Like an Uncle adapting his bed-time story to the whims and suggestions of his nieces and nephews, the story can go any way you want, change to suit the desires of the user, turn on a dime and still reach a satisfying conclusion. Is it a story? Is it a game? Who cares?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ahh, the future. Makes you feel all warm inside, no?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-45199089860194609302011-11-09T11:11:00.003+00:002011-11-09T15:15:19.139+00:00Advertising’s Social Contract Is Fucked<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s why nanny has departed for Waitrose</span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will never, ever shop at Iceland. I wouldn’t eat food from Iceland during a zombie apocalypse, I’m certainly not going to do it while Waitrose is still around to cater to my petty middle-class whims. As a consequence of this hideously bourgeois lifestyle choice, I do not want to see another advert for Iceland as long as I live. Not that I expect to live very long.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--5N4Jv9ZwqI/TrpaQ5qOsVI/AAAAAAAAAIY/C620bCf4WNA/s1600/y564u.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--5N4Jv9ZwqI/TrpaQ5qOsVI/AAAAAAAAAIY/C620bCf4WNA/s320/y564u.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Hello, yes, this is dog</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time I see an Iceland advert, it’s a waste of my time and Iceland’s money. Yet if I watch TV on a Saturday night, perhaps as a punishment for the many crimes I have committed during the week, then I’ll see over nine thousand Iceland adverts. They will all be awful, they will make me hate Iceland even more and make me hate the entire concept of advertising at the same time. Please stop wasting my time, I am already very good at doing that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Logically, targeted adverts are better. Logically, not having my time wasted is better for me and not having their money wasted is better for advertisers. Logically, I want to see Waitrose adverts and Waitrose want me to see Waitrose adverts. But it just doesn’t seem to work like that in the real world. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Any colour, so long as it’s wack</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advertising is the mass-production of salesmen. When the industrial revolution and the assembly line made mass-production happen, the same thing had to happen to sales. If you have a million doohickies in a warehouse, you’d need to have a veritable fleet of door-to-door salesmen to offload them onto the general public.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nmtGg4mLlZw/TrpeFFYpDsI/AAAAAAAAAIg/HFjgoGA-4cs/s1600/2B4AE.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nmtGg4mLlZw/TrpeFFYpDsI/AAAAAAAAAIg/HFjgoGA-4cs/s320/2B4AE.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Hello dog, this is, umm, eagle? Hawk? Falcon maybe?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So instead, all that lovely human-to-human connection was replaced by a poster summing up the benefits of Doctor Monroe’s Particular Ointment For A Range Of Ailments. Then some stuff happened and radio and television and finally the entire industry just gave up caring and made the Muller advert. Do you remember anything at all? Do you? You do? Then buy yogurt!</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only this, but also, the internet! The internet makes it possible for that one-to-one connection to become a thing again. There is no longer the absolute requirement to have one message for everyone, like say, WERE YOU ONCE A CHILD? THEN BUY YOGURT! Now diversity and personalisation is possible again. I never have to see another Iceland advert again, because I’m me and advertisers can show me adverts for me, and I can marry Waitrose and great. But it just doesn’t seem to work like that in the real world.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Screw you guys, I’m going home</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As soon as I start to think that I’m having adverts targeted at me, I get angry and shake my fist at the godless sky. How do they know who I am? Who told those people that I am me? How dare they, how very dare they? I suddenly don’t care that someone gave a shit who I was and sent me a personal message just for me, I care how the hell they found out who I was in the first place.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p7Rt9V54cno/TrpeeEEcXXI/AAAAAAAAAIo/utcRIGuGGXE/s1600/tumblr_lt8crjXgh11r4pd9wo1_500.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p7Rt9V54cno/TrpeeEEcXXI/AAAAAAAAAIo/utcRIGuGGXE/s320/tumblr_lt8crjXgh11r4pd9wo1_500.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Oh look, how adorable! BUY YOGURT!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So you should ask me first, right? You should ask me if it’s ok to show me personalised adverts just for me, lovingly crafted for my personal eyes. The problem with that is that you’re <i>advertisers</i>. You’re the worst people in the entire world. I trust advertisers less than I trust bankers. At least they have the common decency to point at me and laugh as they set fire to some money with some more money, rather than pretending to be my best friends ever, then selling me yogurt in the most creatively bankrupt way I can possibly conceive of.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem boils down to this. If you track me, without telling me you’re tracking me, then I get scared and I hate you and I wish you were dead. If you ask me if I want to be tracked, I say no, because I’m scared and I hate you and I wish you were dead. So if you show me adverts for just everyone, that’s awful. If you show me adverts just for me, that is also awful. So what to do?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you get to the end, do it over again</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Remember where all this started? With a knock at the door and a display of highest quality pans or a vacuum cleaner with powers quite out of the ordinary, madam. Advertising is the mass-production of the salesman. The salesman, see he was a man. A person. A human being. He wasn’t a brand, he wasn’t every nostalgic IP imaginable being whored onto my television set to get me to buy fucking yogurt, he was just some guy.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The plan is simple, gentlemen. We kill the Batman!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I like men’s tailoring. I can’t afford to like it very much, so I read about it on the internet and imagine myself striding into Anderson and Sheppard to order a selection of bespoke suits. While that would be the height of luxury today, go back a couple of hundred years and that’s how all clothes were made. By a person, just for you. One day last year, I decided to throw my credit card to the wind and go to Mr Jonathan Quearney of Windmill Street for a jacket. It was made just for me and it is marvelous and I love it in a way I love nothing else I own. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A couple of months ago, he contacted me on LinkedIn and asked if I’d write a personal review of his business. I did so and with great gusto. I was overjoyed to say exactly how much I loved that damn jacket and how much I’d recommend his services. I didn’t engage with his brand, I wrote a little piece about how great he was. It was like going back in time, except with the internet.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">rip mr gadaffi</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’d be amazed if a whole bunch of you weren’t following the Shippams Paste Twitter account. It was set up by just some guy and, it turned out, had nothing whatsoever to do with Shippams Paste. He’d picked up over nine thousand followers in his two weeks of existence, and, I dare say, he’d shifted some paste. The guy behind it wasn’t being honest about his real identity, he was pretending to be the world’s most inept social marketer.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>#paste</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But check this out. He wasn’t interrupting anything. There was no advert. There was no targeting and no brand guidelines. There was a guy, called Ben, tweeting about stuff and also #paste. And I, along with a whole damn bunch of other people decided that we would choose to follow him and read what he had to say about a range of fish based sandwich spreads that I would never otherwise have considered buying.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was a person. And people, just some guy or girl, standing there and asking you to buy a thing is the most effective way of selling that there has ever been. Not brand ambassadors, not carefully coached PR spewing machines, just some person saying what they think. Like Steve Jobs did.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to sell me something, then you, personally, should sell me something, Not your company, not your brand, you. That’s the power of social media. It’s a bunch of people, talking to each other. It lets us rediscover how things used to be, lets us remember how millions of years of evolution have shaped us to be, lets us remember that we’re just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to buy some crab paste.</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-6195686209956905012011-10-28T15:38:00.000+01:002011-11-05T13:26:41.837+00:00The Importance Of Toys<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What games aren’t</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Definable. That’s one. The world of media is an infinite sphere of infinite dimensions and within it, we’ve laid out a few boundaries and declared them to be meaningful. We decided that if you <i>wrote</i> about <i>news</i> we would call it <i>journalism</i>. And if you <i>printed</i> those <i>words</i>, we’d call that a <i>newspaper</i>. Brilliant!</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Really, in real life, you can educate people about what is happening in the world in pretty much any way you like. A poem, a drawing, interpretive dance, machinima, an FPS, billboards or mime. And you can mime about anything you like. Drugs, love, bison, firework safety, trigonometry or the phone-hacking scandal. The need to put things in boxes doesn’t make the boxes real.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I'm on a horse</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you’re seeking to tell a story or play a game or teach someone or sell something, you can take pretty much any combination of things from that gigantic toy-box and make a new thing. Some of those things will stretch the words ‘ill-advised’ further than they were designed to stretch, but some of them will sparkle and glow like hot, buttered diamonds.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Furthermore, when you make a new thing from two old things, the old things don’t just suddenly cease to exist. Largely, media forms don’t change, they grow. When photography happened, it didn’t stop people painting. In fact it probably made painting a lot more interesting, because now there was another, largely better and certainly more convenient way of fulfilling one of painting’s original uses. Now painting was free to go off and examine what it was to paint, rather than do an eerily accurate copy of a big man’s face. This was good for everybody in the whole world.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What games are</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, that said, I want to talk about what games are. I want to do that because I want to talk about what toys are. My favourite definition of games is ‘toys with rules’. It’s my favourite because it’s short and it works. It also ignores the fact that toys already have rules.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>oh god how did this get here I am not good with computer</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A ball has the rules of physics. If you drop it, it bounces. It doesn’t have rules like ‘if it bounces that high, you win one billion points’ but it does, none the less, have rules. It has intrinsic rules, the rules that define it as a ball. If you get a certain kind of ball and give it to 22 grown-men on a big field, and only let them kick it, add goalposts and a man with a whistle and some casual racism, you have the game of football. And well done you.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ball is a toy and it has intrinsic rules. Football is a game, that results from adding extrinsic rules to the ball’s intrinsic rules. So we can now say that games are ‘toys with extrinsic rules’. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To infinity, and beyond</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'I'm just a toy. A stupid little insignificant toy.'</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is how we think of toys. We think of toys as childish playthings. Toys are afforded even less social currency and clout than games, and games are rubbish. I collect games and from a distance they look a bit like books, so I can let people come inside my house occasionally. If I had endless shelves of action figures and toy cars, then visitors would either presume that they would never be allowed to leave or, at best, that they would never be coming back.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>‘Whoa. Hey. Wait a minute. Being a toy is a lot better than being a...a Space Ranger.’</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The thing is, much like gamification’s battle between intrinsic rewards (yay!) and extrinsic rewards (boo!), toys’ intrinsic rules make them fabulously good fun to play with. Game makers - despite being toy makers by default - want to make games. Often times, the game bit, the extrinsic rules bit, overwhelms that first point, that crafting of a supremely awesome toy. Again, like gamification, it’s concentrating on the extrinsic rewards (boo!), not the intrinsic ones (yay!).</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7jtNZUW1UVA/Tqq9ioRczjI/AAAAAAAAAH0/gSy59GK0eOQ/s1600/290cb5690c0fece13b2da4b77d8e9887.jpg+%2528500%25C3%2597708%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7jtNZUW1UVA/Tqq9ioRczjI/AAAAAAAAAH0/gSy59GK0eOQ/s320/290cb5690c0fece13b2da4b77d8e9887.jpg+%2528500%25C3%2597708%2529.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Guess I got my swagger back</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Toys need to get much more respect than they do. People shouldn’t be so keen to say they are game designers or that they want to make games, and should spend their time making beautiful toys. After all, what would you rather have contributed to the world of games, Zelda or dice? Grand Theft Auto or the pack or cards? In a thousand years, people will still be throwing balls around, they are far less likely to be playing Mass Effect 2.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s toys that make play happen, it’s rules that make toys into games. While there’s skill in both, making great toys is vastly under-appreciated. The battle over ‘are games art’ has been won and now they are. But if they are, then toys are an even greater art.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m off to change my job title, brb.</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-57729611976929970412011-10-19T16:14:00.001+01:002011-11-05T13:26:52.455+00:00TV Platforms, Not TV Programs<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Split attention is fine oh look a pretty flower</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recap. People do stuff while the TV is on. They also to do stuff while the radio is on. They have always done this. It used to be books and newspapers and phone calls and bare-knuckle boxing, now it’s probably internets. The thing that has changed isn’t behaviour, it’s the nature of the device that is distracting people from the telly. The interactive nature of that device means that now the telly people can tempt attention back onto their programs, and thus the delicious advertising that pays for the whole kit and caboodle. Two-screen TV is born.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dV5J66r-HfU/Tp7kKKqL-lI/AAAAAAAAAG4/RORHpd1iVzk/s1600/472f9f4d57b90_preview.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dV5J66r-HfU/Tp7kKKqL-lI/AAAAAAAAAG4/RORHpd1iVzk/s320/472f9f4d57b90_preview.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Lou Dobbs, chilling out</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we batten down the hatches and prepare for a slew of two screen programs of wildly variable quality and vision, one of the many questions troubling those producing such content is how to deal with the issue of split attention. Even if your test subjects are engaging with your TV show, their attention is still split, you just have responsibility for both of the things they are looking at.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we’ve managed to convince you to synchronise what you’re doing with your personal device with what’s happening on the large glowing rectangle on the wall, how do we then artfully sashay your attention from the small screen and back to the large screen? How do we manage your attention across two devices?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SQUIRREL!</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes this isn’t a problem. In most interactive (the show listens and talks back) rather than participatory (the TV just listens) cases, it will make complete sense for you to be looking one way or the other. If there is a quiz, then you will look at the screen with the question on it, look at the screen where you input your answer, then look at the screen which tells you if you were right or not. That’s not managing, that’s just a natural result of the format.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you are looking at a more participatory format, one where there isn’t a direct, logical reason to look at one particular screen baked into the format from the get-go, then things become a bit more complicated. This is when split attention and managing that split can start to loom large into the sights of producers.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"If we don't move, he can't see us..."</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The solution here is to forget about guiding attention and instead to allow that attention to wander. The behaviour you are seeking to piggy-back by making your two screen product in the first place is that of varying, split, wandering attention. So fit your product into that. If people wanted to do one thing at once, they would be doing one thing at once. Two screen will be more about choice and variety than it will be about a carefully curated experience</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let people pick and choose what they want to interact with and when. Watching TV is a largely passive, sit-back experience. If you want people to move beyond that and actively get involved, you need to fit those moments into your overall experience in a way that lets them choose when to get involved and how to get involved.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Actually, you just can’t please all of the people, ever</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fundamental point behind this is that you can’t make a TV show or two-screen experience that’s great for everyone, because you can’t make any product that’s great for everyone. We are all different people with different desires. Well, except that one guy. If you want to make your show more appealing to more people you need to make it more different, to do different things and let people get to the world you’ve created in as many ways as possible.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-duolVvFtp2Y/Tp7oJeCz5MI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/f_doiWtC5Zs/s1600/creepy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-duolVvFtp2Y/Tp7oJeCz5MI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/f_doiWtC5Zs/s320/creepy.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>What good are words when I have no mouth to scream?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Obviously, doing that takes time and it takes money. And you don’t have either of those things. This stuff should be a profit centre, not a cost centre, right? If you want to make plenty of content around your show, let people access it in lots of different ways and hopefully make money doing so, that’s going to require a lot of experimentation, a lot of up-front cost. So what to do?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The logical end-game for that line of thinking is to make your program into a platform. The big successes of our time are not products, they are platforms. They have APIs and they are open to other people adding onto them. Facebook, Twitter and iOS leap out as great examples. None of these companies make any content at all. 80% of all Twitter content is accessed through third-party applications.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Come on in, the water’s mutually beneficial</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is needed is a platform approach to program, to content, to brands. There’s no question that the more ways to access your ‘thing’ the more people will access it and there’s no question that doing that all in house is prohibitively expensive. So don’t do it in house. Open it up. Let anyone who wants to contribute to the world of your ‘thing’ make a ‘thing’ using all of your ‘things’.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fascinating. Please, do go on.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By allowing access to the inner bits of your program/brand/content to developers and entrepreneurs, you’re exponentially increasing your chance of discovering really great ways to get your audience more engaged or engaging a new audience. Stop thinking that great ideas for your program/brand/content can only come through the laborious and arcane commissioning, tendering, pitching process. Use the good bit of capitalism and let the market decide what a good idea looks like, not a clever person in a room deciding WHAT IS RIGHT and WHAT IS WRONG. That person will never be as smart as everyone.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only is this shifting the discovery, the R&D costs and thinking onto others, it’s still letting you benefit from its successes. And via the power of the brand, it’s helping the creators get access to audiences they would never have otherwise managed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let your IP free. Create platforms, not content. </span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-71379272843925188722011-10-04T12:14:00.002+01:002012-01-20T11:20:16.937+00:00On Telification<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am sorry I said that word, I really am</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gamification is great and all (it isn’t) but it’s all a bit yesterdays news, don’t you think? ‘I remember gamification’ say the elder statesmen of the media world ‘and it was rubbish’ they continue.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well the problem with it was that it had precisely fuck all to do with games. <a href="http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/">It was, as Margaret Robertson so eloquently put it, pointsification.</a> Shaving the most insignificant layer of fluff from the exposed flanks of gaming’s prone body and magically exchanging the meaningless word gamification for the meaningless word engagement.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Do you do group discounts?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course for real gamification, actually learning from games and applying their sense of agency, loss, learning and self-improvement to anything that stays still long enough, the future is as rosy as it ever was. Those that really understand games are still rare, but they get less rare by the day and their influence will be felt everywhere. Gamification is dead, long-live gamification.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so to telification. Adding television-like elements to things that are not television. This one can’t possibly get wrongly understood, right?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What this means for television</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are two kinds of broadly interactive television, Participation TV and Interactive TV. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Participation TV is where the show invites contributions from the viewer, but doesn’t necessarily give anything back. Big Brother and The X Factor both fall into this category, inviting the viewer/player to give their opinion and vote for their favourite, but with no guarantee that their views will be reflected in the show itself. The Million Pound Drop also falls into this category, with the playalong elements, while mentioned as statistics, having no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the show.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This can be seen as the gamification of television. It’s adding game-like thinking to television. In all these cases, the show came first and the game came later. The TV show is by far the most important part of the equation and the game-like elements are there to get the player invested in that show, not to give them a meaningful game-like experience. It works very well, largely because it retains the essential TV experiences of passive, sit-back, almost ambient entertainment. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interactive TV is where the show reacts to every viewers input individually. It reflects the players actions back at them and alters their experience of the show accordingly. It is a vanishingly tiny sector of the TV market, in fact the only example I can think of is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH26lejfSi0">Dutch show ‘Intuition’.</a> (Disclaimer - we make this show) That is undoubtedly going to change, as more broadcasters decide to take a risk with shows that put the focus on the audience rather than the show itself.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Rubik's Cube Show" never got the respect it deserved</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the telification of games. This is starting with a game and adding in the television elements until you have something that looks enough like a TV show to persuade a broadcaster to pop it on their channel. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These kind of shows won’t necessarily make for very good television. The problem with making them work is that either the game will make demands of the show which will make the show suffer or the show will make demands of the game which will make the game suffer. Seemingly simple factors such as pacing will be pulled in two totally different directions by the need to provide a good television (slower) or a good gaming (faster) experience.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Getting Interactive TV right will be extremely difficult. It is a whole new type of show and the rewards for getting it right will be vast, but in order to do that, television and game thinking will have to be brought to bear in very even measure. Only teams who can bring a genuine understanding of television and a genuine understanding of games together will be able to make this kind of thing work.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What this means for games</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what if we ignore the television entirely and apply telification to games that intend to remain games? I don’t mean the sort of EA Sports presentationism, where game and TV producers are locked in a dizzying race to make the art of sports presentation so bombastic it literally hurts your face when you look at it. And I don’t mean the idea of episodic content, seasons of content, a ball fumbled so expertly by Valve with their Half Life updates that no-one even knows where it is anymore.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BdCdwmirA_s/TorqZae5w9I/AAAAAAAAAG0/iRxGEMqPTJo/s1600/article-2015772-0249C527000004B0-219_468x286.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="184" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BdCdwmirA_s/TorqZae5w9I/AAAAAAAAAG0/iRxGEMqPTJo/s320/article-2015772-0249C527000004B0-219_468x286.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">FACT: The Queen is a huge fan of Frankie Boyle</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Television has three relevant strengths. It is linear, it is broadcast and it is passive. Games can be linear in the same sense that a single television program is linear, but they are not linear in the same sense that a television channel is linear. Games are broadcast in the sense that many people may be playing the same game on the same server, but not in the sense of many people doing *exactly* the same thing at the same time. And games are passive in the sense of having cut-scenes, but even those bits aren’t truly passive, as you’re actually mashing every single button on the pad at that point, to try and dispel their dreadful interlude. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are genuine strengths, do not underestimate them. Television, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a rather popular way of passing the time. How can games take these strengths and use them to forward their own agenda. How do you make linear, broadcast, passive games? And if you could, if you did, would you even call them games anymore?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think you can and I think we will, but I don’t know what we’ll call them when we get there.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Telification. It’s going to be rad.</span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-18809465777963243322011-09-28T14:46:00.001+01:002011-12-07T21:19:22.508+00:00How To Learn From Games<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The four games you meet in heaven</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve spent about a thousand hours a day playing computer games since way before I was born. That’s turned out to be quite useful, not because I work in games but because I don’t. Games have a lot to say and if you don’t make games, you can learn an incredible amount from them. The inverse is true for people who do make games, but hey, those guys are a bunch of nerds, right?</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People are different and we can learn from each other</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem is that there are more games out there than there are stars in the sky, so working out which ones can teach you the most is basically impossible. I’ve already played literally every game ever made, so here’s my break-down of THE GAME that can teach you the most, based on your profession.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s extremely important to note that you have to actually play these games. If you just read this and think you’ve learned anything except which game you should play, then you are an idiot. A big stupid idiot. Reading a few words written by another idiot about the most important games in the world is no match whatsoever for actually playing them. You spend more than it costs to buy these games and their accompanying consoles on lunch and stupid shirts in less than a week, so go and put the time in. In exchange, you will be hailed as a genius by your tribe. It’s not a bad deal.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_the_Samurai">If you work in education, play Way of the Samurai on PlayStation 2</a></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh god just please go and play this now, oh god please. Way of the Samurai is half sword fighting game, half choose your own adventure. It’s set in 1878, at the end of the Samurai era. The fighting game is fun and the whole thing is very short. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s arranged into areas and each area presents the player with a dilemma and leaves them to decide how to deal with it. Depending on how they react, the situation in the next area they visit may be affected. Because the game is very short, players can and will play through it several times, getting to see what the effects of their actions truly are from many different perspectives.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Typical Samurai dress circa 1878</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fighting bit is highly enjoyable and the desire to see what else might happen is incredibly high. You learn a great deal about 1870s Japan and you bloody love doing it. Go, now, play, now. You’re wasting your time if you haven’t seen how well this can be done. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls">If you work in marketing, play Demon's Souls on PlayStation 3</a></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you work in marketing then you are interested in gamification. And, if you are interested in gamification, you’ve heard that games people don’t think gamification is worth shit. Well Demon's Souls is the game that will demonstrate exactly what they are talking about, and it will do so with utterly brutal efficiency. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Demon's Souls is fucking hard. Really, totally fucking hard. It is a game about loss. About losing. About losing over and over and over again, until you win. And when you win, it is the best feeling since that one time when you smoked rainbows while having sex with god, dressed as a unicorn.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XjHsCb0LaJk/ToMjFb0GvWI/AAAAAAAAAGc/dCcnBPgwvNc/s1600/batman_preview.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XjHsCb0LaJk/ToMjFb0GvWI/AAAAAAAAAGc/dCcnBPgwvNc/s320/batman_preview.jpeg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is this, I don't even...</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to understand what actual games rather than the operant conditioning machines of Facebook have to offer your profession, you’ll go home and beat yourself against this game until you finally bend it to your will, by which point you will have become an immortal being, a god among men.</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Demon's Souls is the opposite of gamification and will teach you more about what gamification can actually offer than any other object in the known universe. Get on with it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridge_Racer_(video_game)">If you work in advertising, play Ridge Racer on Playstation</a></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This one is as effortlessly enjoyable as it is embarrassing to every single person who works in online advertising. As the game is loading, it lets you play Galaga, an ancient 80s arcade shooting game. You play for a few seconds, then the game starts and you play that instead. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gYTl3GJU0Ec/ToMkJnBRISI/AAAAAAAAAGk/p7tMoizvcf0/s1600/Scaroth_preview.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gYTl3GJU0Ec/ToMkJnBRISI/AAAAAAAAAGk/p7tMoizvcf0/s320/Scaroth_preview.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They don't think it be like it is, but it do</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s incredibly simple and fun. It is the most engaging pre-roll ever made. Literally no piece of pre-roll or interruption advertising has been as good as this was. And it’s been there since 1994, four years before Google existed. Go, get a PlayStation, and play it. Then stop making pre-roll videos, start engaging people through engaging objects and receive a colossal pay-rise and infinite respect from your co-lifeforms.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII">If you work in television, play Final Fantasy 12 on PlayStation 2</a></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh how I envy you. To be able to go back to a time when I hadn’t played Final Fantasy 12 is a regular subject of my thrice-hourly daydreaming sessions. It’s a gigantic, huge, sprawling epic of a game that takes forever to finish. It’s on a scale with watching the whole of The Wire. That was worth doing and so is this.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reason is that this is a game that basically plays itself. You tell it how you want it to play and it does that. It’s a game that seems to take control away from the player, but actually gives them greatly more, by giving them a position as director rather than actor.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E61WG6Mihj4/ToMkfZsbKXI/AAAAAAAAAGo/28L7q7BMawE/s1600/xllCm.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E61WG6Mihj4/ToMkfZsbKXI/AAAAAAAAAGo/28L7q7BMawE/s320/xllCm.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Owls are both passive and interactive</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to know how to do passive, sit-back, yet interactive programming, then go and play this game, then have a good long think. Control isn’t just about pressing buttons and seeing a man jump or an enemy die. From the lightest of touches in the rightest of places, you can give people an incredibly interactive experience. Go and learn how. Now.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the end bit</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve said here before that we all do the same job, that we all need to look outwards, not inwards. Well now you know exactly where to start looking when it comes to games. The time and money you spend on actually playing these games will repay you a thousandfold. I don’t even have a joke to finish off with here. </span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-74846379066559468982011-09-24T14:41:00.000+01:002011-09-25T02:48:48.564+01:00Facebook Makes Me Like You<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m just a big fan of a certain length of paragraph</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So Facebook has done another thing. It’s made your history look pretty and let you share all the important and not so important things in your life more quickly, more easily, more accurately and more often. This is terrible news.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See, Facebook is the anti-social network. It concerns itself with the people you already know and the things the people you already know, know. You can’t make friends on Facebook. We’ve all got our privacy options cranked up so far, we’re not </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">even </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">allowed to look at our own profiles, just in case we discover the shocking truth about what we did last summer. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On Twitter I meet new people all the time. I actively try to make new social connections with people who are interesting to me, and hopefully me to them. And it works. I’ve has three real life meetings in the last two weeks with people I’ve met on Twitter. This has never happened through Facebook.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M9es2nC22uA/Tn3dVwRs8bI/AAAAAAAAAGE/CQqiiU8xE8U/s1600/oh_hai17.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M9es2nC22uA/Tn3dVwRs8bI/AAAAAAAAAGE/CQqiiU8xE8U/s320/oh_hai17.jpeg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>These little fellows are Twitter</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nothing Facebook has added will make creating those new social connections any more likely. In fact the more data is there for people to see on my Facebook page, the less comfortable I am with letting new people see it. I don’t want to be stuck in my past, I want to reach for my future. You’re only as good as your last gig, right?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two-facedbook</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are two more nefarious and subtle elements to the lack of new connections on Facebook. Firstly: sharing is boring. If I share music, by listening to music on Spotify, you see me listening to that music and you decide to also listen to that music. We sit there, both listening to that music. We were listening to different music. Now we’re listening to the same music.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the best things about the internet was how it let you be weird in private. It let you look at anything you wanted, anything at all, no matter how strange, unsavory, socially unacceptable or simply at odds with your carefully curated public image. The world had been a place of mass-production and mass consumption. There are four cars, which one do you want? There are twelve bands, which one do you want to listen to? Be normal, you have to be normal, we can only do normal. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xv8J22zwm6c/Tn3cgiArSBI/AAAAAAAAAGA/nHTu6ZnhO1I/s1600/trek.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xv8J22zwm6c/Tn3cgiArSBI/AAAAAAAAAGA/nHTu6ZnhO1I/s320/trek.jpeg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This man would never happen on Facebook</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suddenly internets! And we could do weird. We could make content that only a handful of people wanted to see. Demographics could diverge and home in, the logical conclusion being that you would see your own individualised things that were for you. A demographic of one. By making ‘social discovery’ so simple, we make homogenisation a force once again. Listen to what I’m listening to. Watch what I am watching, Read what I am reading. Don’t be different, be the same</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More insidious still, the strange choices I do make are also publicised. If you know everything you listen to, watch or read is going to be shared, will you listen to things that don’t fit with your public image? Worse, what if you’re not sure if what you’re listening to, watching or reading is going to be shared or not? What when there’s a little voice at the back of your head reminding you that maybe all your friends will see that you’re being, maybe, not completely the person you claim to be?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Facelessbook</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second, yet more nefarious and subtle element is the feeling you get that you can’t be sure if Facebook is watching you or not. And if Facebook is watching you, Facebook is totally a snitch. A grass. An informer, a tattle-tale, a loud-mouth.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a kind of theoretical prison design called a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">Panopticon</a>. The idea behind it is that the cells are arranged in a circle around a central tower. The guards look out from the central tower and can see into any of the cells at any time. There aren’t enough guards to look into all the cells all of the time, but the prisoners never know whether or not they’re being observed. The idea is that because the prisoners might be being watched at any time, they behave as if they are being watched all the time.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Behold the Panopticon!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Facebook is a social Panopticon. Some of the time, it watches us and we can never be completely sure when. Sometimes, when it watches us, it tells our friends what it saw, and we can't really be sure of that, either. And slowly and subtly we’ll act as if we’re being watched all of the time, because sometimes we are being watched, but we’re never quite sure when.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who wants to live together?</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Facebook anchors us in the past. It encourages to discover things that other</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> have already discovered. It encourages us to find what it is that makes us the same as our friends, not what makes us different, and it does so while sitting outside our house in an unmarked van. Maybe it’s looking at what we’re doing. Maybe it’s listening to what we’re saying. Maybe it’s going through our bins at night. Maybe it’s not, but better safe than sorry. What goes on internet, stays on internet, right?</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NgXXonQg7cE/Tn3dpSOLwcI/AAAAAAAAAGI/dHpKdtQwI-g/s1600/XYLdb.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="287" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NgXXonQg7cE/Tn3dpSOLwcI/AAAAAAAAAGI/dHpKdtQwI-g/s320/XYLdb.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This image will stay on the internet forever</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If this is a good or a bad thing is pretty much moot. It is going to happen, so how do we deal with it? What does it mean? The forces of individuality and conformity have been fighting each other forever, and surely this battle will go on for as long as humans are shuffling around, spoiling things.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Facebook is playing for the conformity team. You can decide how you feel about that for yourselves.</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-16196443167468096652011-09-19T12:43:00.000+01:002011-09-25T04:03:40.051+01:00There Is Only One Platform<br />
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you had everything, where would you put it? Everywhere</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you work in media, in entertainment, in journalism, in advertising, in gaming, in TV, then you work with me. You work with me and I work with you and we all work with everyone else. Meet you at reception in five mins and we’ll grab a coffee, k?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you’re alive, you’ve probably noticed that devices are converging a bit. Most of the stuff you have is a screen and a computer and wifi and an input device. It runs twitter and you can look at cats in dresses and use it to buy a particular sort of hat. Your television might not be like that, but I’d imagine you’re expecting that to happen by about lunchtime. If you’re not, then look forward to a pleasant surprise at about lunchtime.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qUEFDCPoR68/TncpdcU3LJI/AAAAAAAAAF4/d2Ny-vHMOwM/s1600/Gj6Ka.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qUEFDCPoR68/TncpdcU3LJI/AAAAAAAAAF4/d2Ny-vHMOwM/s320/Gj6Ka.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This hat</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Convergence in devices is definitely a thing. The logical next step from the convergence of the device is the convergence of the content on that device. Of course that’s already happening. Advergaming and gamification are games nailed to advertising and marketing respectively. Branded content is video nailed to advertising. Behavioural economics is psychology in a bag with some economics. Interactive TV, when it arrives, will be games and TV, Social TV is TV and social networking. Everything that’s new in the media world is two old things falling very much in love, a trip to Vegas and the long wait for the stork to arrive.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My psychiatrist died. I don’t know how to feel about that</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This process is not one that is going to stop. The convergence of things is not going to cease when we’ve added this and that together and made those. We’ll keep adding those together until we end up with them. Then we’ll repeat the whole process until, just like there’s only one basic kind of device, there’s also only one basic kind of content.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is entirely sensible, because there’s only one platform when it comes down to it, and that platform is the human being. However you choose to get your message to human beings and whatever that message is, what you’re trying to do is get your message to human beings. Everything else is window-dressing.</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5J_rZIM2TBQ/TncnfPeHjHI/AAAAAAAAAFs/ewIsS_jzvaw/s1600/fuck-you-lion-480x353_preview.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="235" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5J_rZIM2TBQ/TncnfPeHjHI/AAAAAAAAAFs/ewIsS_jzvaw/s320/fuck-you-lion-480x353_preview.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Even I cannot justify using this image</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is one device, one type of content and one platform, because there’s only one product (or service). Emotions. When you make a thing, you do it because you want people to feel a particular way, think a particular thing and probably give you money because of it. What that thing is and how you make them feel is pretty much irrelevant. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let’s just be friends</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we accept that, stripped down to its stockings, the world of media is a bunch of people making other people feel particular ways for money - and we should, because it’s true - then we are on the verge of a rather smashing golden age. A media-scented Renaissance. It’s long been impossible for one person to be at the top of the many scientific fields, but it’s not entirely inconceivable for someone to have a pretty good grasp of pretty much all the major media forms.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those people are going to make some goddamn amazing things now that canvasses broad enough to hold their ideas are not just possible, not just mainstream, but quickly becoming standard.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EnXHWh1p0t4/TncovjQi5wI/AAAAAAAAAF0/wfEbWAGZKRc/s1600/worktogether.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EnXHWh1p0t4/TncovjQi5wI/AAAAAAAAAF0/wfEbWAGZKRc/s320/worktogether.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is basically the real life X-Men</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So whatever bit of media you work in right now, stop looking at it. Stop right now, turn around and look at any of the others. And keep looking and listening and touching and loving until you know what the other media forms can do better than yours can. Then stop looking at them as different things at all, because really - really - they’re not. I look forward to working with every single one of you.</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-8975669445297097612011-09-16T15:07:00.000+01:002012-11-29T11:43:06.028+00:00The Revolution Will Not Be Broadcast<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Children are different</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moshi Monsters is a game for children. It’s made by a British company called Mind Candy and run by a man called Michael Acton-Smith. It is a mixture of virtual pets, mini-games, education and social network. You may have heard of it. You may not. You should check it out.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has 50 million users. More than half of all British children between the ages of 6 and 12 play Moshi Monsters. It has one new sign-up every second and users in 150 countries across the world. It already sells a staggering quantity of soft-toys, clothes, music and magazines off the back of its huge and highly engaged user-base. Its next project is Moshi TV, a version of YouTube for kids. YouTube isn’t really the kind of place you’d want to let your kids wander unsupervised, so Moshi Monsters is going to step up and offer their own take on YouTube specifically designed for children. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnAsP-nj--A/TnNW9vWwEPI/AAAAAAAAAFk/0Im_PPygapE/s1600/Yaycat.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnAsP-nj--A/TnNW9vWwEPI/AAAAAAAAAFk/0Im_PPygapE/s320/Yaycat.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I've had a great evening. This wasn't it</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kids already love YouTube, love the way it puts them in charge of their viewing. Pausing, rewinding, choosing what to watch next, sharing what they’ve seen with their friends. this is how children see TV, this is how they understand TV to work. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Children are idiots</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More than that, young children not only don’t understand why they can’t pause the television, they also don’t understand why the television doesn’t respond to them touching it, like the iPhones they get to play with do. They don’t even understand why they can’t move around the characters in their favourite cartoons, why the content itself doesn’t respond to their input. To a child, interactive TV - interactive to a degree beyond any adult’s wildest imagining - isn’t some future dream, it’s what they expect.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now it’s fair to point out at this juncture that children are idiots and don’t understand anything. But the world they are growing up in is mind-blowingly different to the world even today’s teenagers grew up in. YouTube launched six years ago in 2005. The iPhone launched four years ago in 2007. Farmville launched two years ago in 2009. The iPad launched a year ago in 2010. The media landscape has changed utterly in the time it takes to make a child and send it to school.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s7zo_yLRWoE/ULdJ29-qPKI/AAAAAAAAAVs/qQDHUOsMNCs/s1600/Kt2IB.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s7zo_yLRWoE/ULdJ29-qPKI/AAAAAAAAAVs/qQDHUOsMNCs/s320/Kt2IB.jpeg" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This child looks weird.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back to Moshi Monsters. It’s not a broadcaster or a production house or a company with any previous experience in television whatsoever that’s bringing that brand-new vision of TV to the children of the world. It’s a game company. They have yet to launch this service, let alone make it a success, but this is only one of hundreds of examples of non-traditional entrants into the TV business. And there will more entering tomorrow than entered today.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Children are terrifying</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a time in the future, no-one knows when, where broadcasters make these visions a reality. Between now and then, they are open to disruption. Are broadcasters comfortable with that? It’s not just the obvious giants that are trying to steal their cakes, not just Google or Apple or Microsoft or Facebook whoever. It’s not just the media start-ups, Zeebox or Starling or Tunafish. It’s also start-ups in the general entertainment sphere who have a lot of users and absolutely no pre-conceived notions of how the world of television works.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Children see the world differently and aren’t going to be satisfied with you telling them that ‘it just works that way honey’. That applies just as much to the children of the media world as it does literal children. It’s not the direct attacks that broadcasters should worry about. It’s not about Google wanting to steal your content and put their own adverts by it. It’s about companies not only redefining what broadcasters do, but redefining what content is in the same open-minded flick of the wrist. About taking the entire question, the worries, the concept of entertainment itself, and turning it on its head. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3sVl4nfOgE/TnNXP5caUtI/AAAAAAAAAFo/oLSlyt_lx5o/s1600/metadog.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3sVl4nfOgE/TnNXP5caUtI/AAAAAAAAAFo/oLSlyt_lx5o/s320/metadog.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is not a metaphor and I am not the dog in the metaphor this isn't</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The television program itself is as ripe for reinvention as the way it’s delivered. Today, a child will grow up surrounded by devices and products that are desperate to shape themselves to their needs and entertain them on their own terms. And the speed with which these new, user-focused objects are being produced is increasing, faster and faster every day. Today’s idiot is tomorrow’s customer. Prepare yourself for the rise of the idiots.</span></span></div>
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Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-3452023438481728972011-09-14T14:51:00.001+01:002011-09-25T02:51:06.332+01:00Mobile Is About Personal, TV Is About Shared<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are many iPhones, but this one is mine</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s buzz aplenty in various media worlds about the power of mobile. But the power of mobile isn’t that it’s mobile, it’s that it’s personal. There are certainly a lot of useful things that mobile, personal computers - or phones, as you may know them - can do because they are mobile. GPS, location related offers and services, photography, communications, augmented reality. These things are big and real and will make a bunch of people quite offensively rich. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the bigger and more relevant part of the mobile, personal computer space, is that they are personal and they are computers. There is no mobile internet. There is just the internet. Sure, you have to consider input devices and screen size when making a website useable on mobile phones, and the clever folks out there will add location based stuff where it’s relevant, but the real power of the smartphone is that it belongs to me and is just for me and I can use it whenever I like.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8dHEQlnWHN4/TnCwQU0GWKI/AAAAAAAAAFY/joT5skUdP9U/s1600/aardvark.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8dHEQlnWHN4/TnCwQU0GWKI/AAAAAAAAAFY/joT5skUdP9U/s320/aardvark.jpeg" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Madam, your pet dog requires immediate medical attention.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The television is not personal, is not mine. I mean, I bought the damn thing, and I spent the price of a shitty car on it, but it’s not mine to do with as I please. It’s a bargaining tool, one which features in regular household debates over the merits of costume dramas and property shows versus hundred hour long Japanese role-playing games and another twenty-seven laps of Le Mans in Gran Turismo.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I would make them eat each other</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I want to play GP Story or Quarrel on my iPhone, then I can do that pretty much whenever I want. And, indeed, aside from tube journeys, the only times I do that are when I’m trying to block out the needlessly jaunty stings of some hideously over-excited screed about how a working-class person has done up their bathroom. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The television is a shared screen, and when you’re strategising around its place in the living room of the future, that’s the way you should see it. What gets displayed on the television is visible to all. The smartphone’s place in the living room of the future, the bedroom of the future and most importantly of all, the toilet of the future is as a personal screen, with only one set of eyes on it.</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YCSNFeVsxlE/TnCvfhiLplI/AAAAAAAAAFU/2MBpRagBkRo/s1600/jedward.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="310" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YCSNFeVsxlE/TnCvfhiLplI/AAAAAAAAAFU/2MBpRagBkRo/s320/jedward.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>But what if Steve Jobs had been a cat?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you want those two screens to be working together, you need to keep this in mind above all things. The broadly interactive TV shows of the future may well have several people in the same room interacting with them in several different ways at the same time. Or, they may have no-one interacting with them because the people in the room are arguing about which is the best ever episode of Bergerac or what’s the best way to murder Jedward.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m not going to keep writing just to stick to a format I invented myself</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So those in the TV/games/advertising/can-we-just-admit-these-distinctions-are-growing-more-meaningless-by-the-day/etc businesses should remember that technology doesn’t drive their business, users do. The way a device is used is what defines it, not what it’s designed to do, or what it can do.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KXH-E5UxN4U/TnCwv8fSqdI/AAAAAAAAAFc/_1ir-ihHviI/s1600/owlz.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KXH-E5UxN4U/TnCwv8fSqdI/AAAAAAAAAFc/_1ir-ihHviI/s320/owlz.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Owls about that then?</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your users will have to share whatever is on their TV with everyone else in the room. They can keep whatever is on their smartphone’s screen to themselves. The TV is shared, the smartphone is personal.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you were.</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-69151323541449489372011-09-08T15:46:00.001+01:002011-09-25T02:51:32.551+01:00TV Programs Will Become Software<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is connected TV</span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s2">I’ve mentioned <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/26/eric-schmidt-chairman-google-education">Eric Schmidt’s MacTaggart lecture</a> before. </span>In it, he tells his audience that they will need engineers at every level of their organisations because, basically, everything is becoming software. He is completely right. He is far righter than you are giving him credit for.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shops are becoming software. Amazon is already software and a shop. Supermarkets deliver to your house when you order online. They are becoming software. You can’t fix your car anymore because your car is now software. Google themselves are developing quite capable self-driving cars. Drivers are becoming software.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4NL51fhDVxc/TmjUIkwhx_I/AAAAAAAAAFI/isFaFn0N_oc/s1600/hippo.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4NL51fhDVxc/TmjUIkwhx_I/AAAAAAAAAFI/isFaFn0N_oc/s320/hippo.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>One day, Hippos will also become software</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Computer games are, of course, already software. The wonder of social games, the wonder of Zynga is that they understood that better than anyone else. If you have software running on a connected device, then you can gather as much data as you like about the behaviour of your users. If that software is a game they love to play, that’s more data for you about how to make a game they’ll love even more. Or to offer to advertisers. Or anyone willing to pay for it. And it doesn’t matter that most of your audience pays nothing for your data-capturing entertainment, some of them pay more than enough for you to make a billion hundred money.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The TV is just a big screen</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Television, well that will be software too. I don’t mean digital, I mean software. This is an important distinction to make. Catch-up TV and pirated shows, streams and files are digital, but they aren’t software. The BBC might know how many people watch their shows on iPlayer and probably more besides, but they’re not hooking that into anything particularly useful for their users or their business. Maybe they can’t. The BBC is weird.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, if you make your program a piece of software - I’m tempted to say ‘appify’ but that feels myopic and wanky - you can add so much more to it. You can bring attention back to it. BluRay already gets sort of close to this with director’s commentaries and live ads and so on, but the potential is so much greater. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6JKIcogeFFU/TmjUTO9UEjI/AAAAAAAAAFM/_fqgsFgMZbo/s1600/Lion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6JKIcogeFFU/TmjUTO9UEjI/AAAAAAAAAFM/_fqgsFgMZbo/s320/Lion.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Lions look really weird when they're wet</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When your program is software, your users can buy the soundtrack or the clothes or the car or the holiday or the book or the calendar or the action figure right away. Get the recipe, order the ingredients, follow the cast on twitter or facebook, read the wiki pages, hear the commentary, vote, watch deleted scenes, play-along, interact. And that’s without counting entirely new kinds of program that could only exist as software.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Broadcasters are probably fucked</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once your program is software, it matters far, far less if it gets pirated, because it’s not content so much as a shop. So I download your show for nothing, but I spend a few quid here or there. The adverts are still there, because the adverts are sourced for me personally by the software. And ads that actually mean something to me, I am quite happy to watch. Good adverts are good content, I am quite happy with good content.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why would anyone advertise off the back of the data from BARB or Nielsen ratings, when they can instead aim their adverts with complete precision and confidence that they are targeting exactly the people they want their message to get to? I know I’m wasting half my advertising budget, I just don’t know which half, the old saying goes. I know I’m wasting 10% of my advertising budget, I just don’t know which 10% isn’t as catchy, is it? Shame.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rYyfVxRYgg/TmjUkkAh9NI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/bBAJWU35maM/s1600/feelsgoodman.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rYyfVxRYgg/TmjUkkAh9NI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/bBAJWU35maM/s320/feelsgoodman.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This man will still be watching the radio in a shack. Seems happy though</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not soon, but not that far away from now, television will become software and free to air TV will become free to download TV. That will be better for users, better for production houses, better for advertisers. Not really very good for broadcasters, but you can’t win ‘em all, eh lads?</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-45606272017499805412011-09-07T11:25:00.004+01:002011-09-25T02:55:00.334+01:00TV is the Second Screen<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>TV is the second screen</b></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a lot of surveys and statistics and sound-bites out there saying things like “The majority of viewers now watch TV with a second screen in front of them.” This is a rather presumptuous way of interpreting the data. I don’t doubt that the basic numbers are entirely correct and I don’t doubt that the trend is pointing to more of these behaviours, not less. But the entire statement is back-to-front.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The majority of home internet users have the TV on in the background. That’s a more accurate way of looking at things. This is an entirely logical conclusion. After all, if the TV was engrossing enough to retain people’s attention, they wouldn’t be looking at the internet in the first place. The internet is usurping the TV as the primary source of entertainment in the home.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5pcnzGC3noo/TmdFrhI4UdI/AAAAAAAAAE4/cHQR2CUNoiE/s1600/bear.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5pcnzGC3noo/TmdFrhI4UdI/AAAAAAAAAE4/cHQR2CUNoiE/s320/bear.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Nothing further to add, your Honour</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The TV is still being switched on. TV has the advantage of both being suitably ambient - the internet often doesn’t have any sound - and of being a habit. So you come home, you stick the telly on and you get on the internets. Sometimes you watch the TV, because something you like is on. Mostly, it just chunters away to itself, pleasing human noises filling your lounge.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">TV is the second screen.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social TV is bullshit</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A recent blog at <a href="http://www.tvgenius.net/">www.tvgenius.net</a> started with these words. “We love watching TV and more than that, we love discussing it with our friends.” Well sort of. How about we try “We love talking to our friends, and TV gives us something to talk about.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social TV is a non-starter because it’s not about TV, it’s about social. We want to talk to our friends and TV is as good a subject as any. We’re already talking to our friends and the TV is on in the background and if it’s on in their backgrounds too, then hey, why not talk about it. That is social TV. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People talking in big letters. About TV in little letters.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8Dt5El6r1Q/TmdF6zLyc5I/AAAAAAAAAE8/ebMBZiTN01s/s1600/Degnq_preview.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8Dt5El6r1Q/TmdF6zLyc5I/AAAAAAAAAE8/ebMBZiTN01s/s320/Degnq_preview.jpeg" width="229" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Oh christ, I didn't expect you back so soon.'</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The assumption that the TV bit is more important than the talking to friends bit could only come from inside the TV industry. Think about it from a normal human’s perspective for even a second and it instantly becomes obvious what the hierarchy is. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">TV is the second screen.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look around you</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I straddle the worlds of gaming and television. That’s my job, introducing them to each other, laying on some drinks, some sweet music, subtle lighting, then nipping out of the room and hoping they’ll make babies.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I go to gaming conventions and seminars, I feel like an outsider, because all anyone cares about is games. Everyone is standing in a big metaphorical circle, all facing in, all looking at each other, completely ignorant that there’s a whole world of other stuff out there, ripe for the picking.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I go to television conventions and seminars, I feel exactly the same and I see exactly the same thing. Apps, second-screen, marketing, advertising, gamification - I mix with all these incredibly close disciplines, all of which share considerable space on the Venn diagram I’m not going to draw, and they’re all looking inward, all trying to understand the world in their own terms and no other.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well that’s some serious bullshit. Stop doing it. It’s dumb.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wYekqh746s0/TmdGVb50nBI/AAAAAAAAAFA/IcnVmKV1c3w/s1600/baby-sloth.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wYekqh746s0/TmdGVb50nBI/AAAAAAAAAFA/IcnVmKV1c3w/s320/baby-sloth.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>As if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The future of television, the same as the future of games, the same as the future of advertising, marketing, media, content itself, is a big, interweaved basket with bits of all of these things working together. Open your eyes, look around you, try, at least a bit, to understand the world in terms of the world and not your tiny bit of it. It’s not about the future of television, it’s about the future of entertainment.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And remember, TV is the second screen.</span></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-27226225602352770672011-09-05T15:56:00.001+01:002011-11-10T09:28:26.334+00:00Everything Is Already Gamified<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Opening statement</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You have already gamified your product (or service). You’re probably not pointsifying it in any meaningful way, you may be considering doing so, you may be considering more literally gamifying it. But in a not insignificant way, it was probably a game to start with.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are rules to the way your product (or service), its marketing and its monetisation work. There are rewards for buying it. All products (or services), all marketing and all monetisation has some kind of ruleset and some kind of rewards. It costs this much, you use this many, this quickly, it makes you feel this way when you don’t have it and this way when you do. </span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m-5ML8CEM1g/TmThiYXi9GI/AAAAAAAAAEs/GQIeswqSX1A/s1600/Panda.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m-5ML8CEM1g/TmThiYXi9GI/AAAAAAAAAEs/GQIeswqSX1A/s320/Panda.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Panda-ing to my audience</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You are already pushing people in one direction or another, making them feel one emotion or another, tell themselves one story or another. Games are, on some basic level, systems that make people feel and behave in particular ways. Gamification, in its populist form of pointsification, uses points and badges to do that poking and prodding around inside your brain, but its actual aims are no different to any of the other techniques used in product (or service) design, marketing, advertising or business strategy. If I make you do this, you’ll feel this way. If I make you feel this way, you’ll do this.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some examples</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The link between games and stories is incredibly close. Games can be seen as machines that tell stories, or more accurately, let their players tell stories. Stories can be seen as the results of games already played by the story’s creator. This makes sense of stories both as personal anecdotes and as professional content.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writing a book is, in itself, a playful activity. Writers toy with your emotions and play with your expectations. An author knows what they want you to do, to keep turning pages, to stop reading and consider what you just read, to laugh, to cry, to fear, whatever. They play a game which involves them arranging concepts and words into an order that will produce that behaviour in their reader. If they get it right, they win the game. Well done them.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Businesses themselves are definitely games. Ted Turner’s famous quote on the subject, much beloved of gamification presentations, is ‘Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.’ Business is definitely a game where money is the score. There are high score tables and badges and ranks and levels and level-ups. The stock market itself is a meta-game played on top of the games of businesses. Gaming rules and conventions are present in every aspect of the economy. And hey, that includes your product (or service).</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o0ONgXFCAPI/TmThsPDUJrI/AAAAAAAAAEw/kseUZ89TGe4/s1600/Ted-Turner.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o0ONgXFCAPI/TmThsPDUJrI/AAAAAAAAAEw/kseUZ89TGe4/s320/Ted-Turner.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ted Turner owns the world's largest herd of bison. Should have used them to keep score.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So regardless of your feelings about the very literal and narrow practice of pointsification, recognise that gaming’s purity, its drawing out of the basic concepts of internal narrative, of self-determination, still has an awful lot to teach your business.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conclusions</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See there’s an opportunity here. Your product (or service) may well already be like a game, but it’s unlikely that it will be like a very good game. If you make it a better game, it will be a better product (or service), a better business.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eric Schmidt recently gave <a href="http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-watch-live-here-eric-schmidts-edinburgh-keynote-and-twitter-reaction/">a talk in Edinburgh</a>, where he said that companies should be hiring engineers at all levels The future of everything is software, so you need people who know how to make software in the DNA of your company, advising at every level. He was quite right to say so. Everything is becoming software, or if not, it’s becoming a computer. And you need people who understand software and computers on a meaningful level at all stages of your business, to aid its strategising and decision making. </span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yqzw5FAKvDo/TmTimnBvBzI/AAAAAAAAAE0/2JzVZYgnf6k/s1600/OH+HAI.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yqzw5FAKvDo/TmTimnBvBzI/AAAAAAAAAE0/2JzVZYgnf6k/s320/OH+HAI.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Eric Schmidt (l) speaking to Edinburgh (r)</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What I would suggest is that, since everything is already, on some level, a game, you need game designers at every level of your company, just the same as you need engineers. You need to have game thinking baked into your entire business strategy, just the same as you need technological savvy. Everything is software, so everything needs engineers. Even more everything is a game, so even more everything needs game designers.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Future of Television Part Two: Part Two has been cancelled due to whatever.</i></span></div>
Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-53922952857438411402011-08-31T12:23:00.001+01:002011-09-25T02:53:56.470+01:00The Future of Television Part Two: Part One<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will never own the conversation</span></b></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most TV shows are pretty shitty. If, for some reason, you’re not happy watching the same eight episodes of Top Gear on an endless, hateful loop for the rest of time, then you’re either desperately trying to work out what it is that everyone seems to like so bloody much about The X Factor, or wondering when the next season of Father Ted is going to start.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because most TV shows are pretty shitty, most people don’t really pay them very much attention, much like when someone on the street asks you for a few pennies to alleviate their life of inhuman squalor for a few precious moments and your offhand ‘no’ barely registers in your conscious as it flaps out of your mouth, your brain too busy dwelling how much you hate your stupid wife’s stupid face.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The producers of shows like The X-Factor and absolutely all US broadcasters already understand this idea well and make their programs as easy to follow as humanly possible. Twelve seconds of content can, will and indeed must be stretched out to fill an hour in a rolling sequence of what happened then and what’s going to happen next, flicking from past to future, never meeting the metaphysical challenge of living in the now. If you are trying to actually watch what’s going on, the process can be tortuous, but if the TV’s on while you’re manhandling food into your children or trying to persuade your boyfriend to maybe, occasionally brush his teeth, it still allows you to absorb the content of the show.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d6ZT10qMvuE/Tl4ZaYqcj3I/AAAAAAAAADo/HHcbl1k4oSA/s1600/MessyKids11-6.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d6ZT10qMvuE/Tl4ZaYqcj3I/AAAAAAAAADo/HHcbl1k4oSA/s320/MessyKids11-6.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is how people watch television</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the state that most people are in when the television is on. They are not deeply engaged with engrossing, must-see content. They are filling up the few hours before bed in a way that ensures they don’t have to talk to anyone, or they’re talking incessantly over the television in a way that ensures they don’t have to listen to anyone.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The kind of TV that people do actually watch with attention and care, they are happy to watch with attention and care and probably aren’t splitting their attention with anything else, like loved ones or pets, while it’s on. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t furtively check Twitter when The Trip was on. During Cash In The Attic, I hold my computer up to my TV so that it can see that I’m ignoring it, as some kind of shameful lesson.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hate television</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So two-screen TV is likely to sit in the Live and Ambient end of the TV spectrum. TV that you’re not so engrossed by that you have no spare attention. TV that’s maybe just a little bit shitty. Two-screen TV is all about enhancing that not-as-good-as-it-might-be TV with interaction. There are two basic kinds of interaction to consider, people interacting with the show and people interacting with each other about the show.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most two-screen activity at the moment is the second kind, people talking about shows they’re watching on the communication network of their choice. Tweeting about how they hope the entire cast of Celebrity Big Brother are eaten by jackals on their way into the house. Posting on Facebook during Question Time about how ironic it is that the Secretary for Education looks like a paedophile. Anecdotally, I’d suggest most two-screen activity is looking up on Wikipedia which film you saw that guy in that one time but to be fair, that’s not what it says on Wikipedia.</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zoPIuODL_N0/Tl4UYBb0UuI/AAAAAAAAADg/H9oSr8pN0bQ/s1600/Amy+Childs+%25281%2529-772224.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="301" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zoPIuODL_N0/Tl4UYBb0UuI/AAAAAAAAADg/H9oSr8pN0bQ/s320/Amy+Childs+%25281%2529-772224.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Who wouldn't want to see her torn apart by wild dogs?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If people want to talk about what they’re seeing, there are already some great tools for doing so. Tools for communication in general. Talking about anything, not just TV. Putting into context those completely hilarious comments about how you hope a bunch of real people, with lives and families and hopes and dreams, are torn apart by wild animals for the pleasure of the viewing public. That part of social TV already exists, stop trying to re-invent it. I’m happy to state baldly, right now, that there will never be a TV based social communication platform that actually has any measure of success.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What can a TV-only communications platform actually give to the viewer? What do they get out of it? They already have their friends on Facebook, Twitter or G+ (ha, not really) and they can already talk to them about the TV they’re watching through those methods. Why would they want to move to a new platform?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we're honest, isn’t the idea of a Social TV platform more about control for businesses than benefit for viewers? For data about who is watching what and what they think? People are already happy to talk already and maybe you, as a business, want to own that conversation, but do your viewers, your users? Probably not.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The TV business wants to make as much money as possible by slicing the rights to the show up as thinly as possible, and selling them to as many other businesses as possible. And the businesses who are willing to pay the most are businesses who want to have that content exclusively, so that they can use it as a stick to beat more customers into using their service.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Putting the desires of the business above the desires of the users is the same issue that makes piracy happen in the first place. The kind of users that have the technical savvy to be able to pirate the show they want, want them now, good enough quality and cheap. By making this content available in only a few places, dependant on geographical location and at wildly variable price points, the TV business is serving itself, not its users. It's a battle it is destined to eventually lose.</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This failure to follow a user focussed approach also applies to trying to own the conversation about your content. Inspire that conversation, lead that conversation, monitor that conversation - these are all things you can and should do - but don’t even try to own it. You won’t beat Twitter at their own game. Leave it, walk away. It ain’t worth it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oranges are not the only fruit</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other kind of two screen, the kind where producers and broadcasters should be getting involved is the kind where the viewers are interacting with the show itself.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the bit where game design becomes useful, or indeed essential.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it’s also the topic of my next post! </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why did I even bother trying to make a blog? I should just write an incredibly depressing book and be done with it.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2RcAeesLgUM/Tl4Uq1i9NvI/AAAAAAAAADk/U7EDiOn_FiI/s1600/bananas.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2RcAeesLgUM/Tl4Uq1i9NvI/AAAAAAAAADk/U7EDiOn_FiI/s1600/bananas.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Actually, bananas are the only fruit</i></span></td></tr>
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Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-47758009779527438752011-08-18T13:58:00.006+01:002011-08-23T23:08:20.782+01:00The Future Of Television Part One<div class="p1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking at the radio</span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to old people, families would once gather around this thing they called a ‘radio’ to listen to a man tell them about the Queen in an accent that disregarded vowels entirely. “Hrs th Qn”, he might say. The radio was the centre of rapt attention, for through it, the world entered your house. It provided laughter, news, music, entertainment and information of all kinds, delivered wirelessly to your home. Then suddenly, BAM, television, right in the kisser. </span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Remarkably, the television had a rudimentary screen on the side and by looking at it, observers could discern crude images of the Queen. This new glowing object was much more visually interesting, more stimulating than the inert, squawking, radio box. Thus the family’s attention moved from the radio to the television and no-one listened to the radio ever again.</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z_JZG0xxeI4/Tk0Il-z_aKI/AAAAAAAAADQ/sH2pcjXn3xw/s1600/queen--126074874865441800.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z_JZG0xxeI4/Tk0Il-z_aKI/AAAAAAAAADQ/sH2pcjXn3xw/s320/queen--126074874865441800.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What the fuck are you looking at?</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not really. Actually, people are still quite happy to listen to the radio. What radio did when it lost the attention battle to television, was retreat back to its lair for some biscuits, and decide that while it might not be as sexy as it once was, it still had a use. Radio had ambient powers, perfect as a thing to be enjoyed while baking a lemon-drizzle carrot cake, driving to Southampton in a Rover 75 or having a wee. This let it relax into a position of being really very good entertainment for people whose attentions, and specifically their eyes or hands, were somewhere else right now. And that was that and nothing in the world of entertainment technology would ever change again. </span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not really. Actually, since then, the rate of technological and cultural change has only increased. And the speed of change will keep increasing until the planet Earth sets on fire, crashes into the Sun and we all die. The internet happened and it was better than television. It took a while for everyone to realise this, but thanks to pornography, cats and pornography, they eventually decided that the internet was pretty much rad. </span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u0zpvefFGPc/Tk0JLlDnstI/AAAAAAAAADU/7ryogIsBWks/s1600/cat-on-computer.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="297" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u0zpvefFGPc/Tk0JLlDnstI/AAAAAAAAADU/7ryogIsBWks/s320/cat-on-computer.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sweet, sweet pussy</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like radio before it, television is now facing the attention deficit. But statistics currently show that people spend more time watching television than ever before! They also spend longer on the internet than ever before! And longer playing computer games than ever before! </span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can this possibly be?</span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My television also serves as an excellent source of warmth</span></b></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are now three kinds of television. They are live TV, appointment TV and ambient TV. Live TV covers any event that is best watched live. Obviously this includes sport, but it also includes shows like Big Brother and X-Factor that are about viewer participation, teenage boys that look like girls and racism. This kind of TV is fine and dandy and pretty much has nothing to worry about. If you see more and more previously not-live TV becoming live, it's because then it’s an EVENT and people will WATCH the EVENT and then also the adverts. Mmm, adverts.</span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Appointment TV is the kind of TV you watch on catch-up or download from internets because it’s not on in your country yet because the companies involved in its production want to make more money. No, I don’t really understand that bit either. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Louie. This kind of TV is probably better thought of as video. It has nothing to do with the concept of broadcast. Waiting for the new series of Game of Thrones to be broadcast on TV makes as much sense as waiting for a particular movie you want to see to be broadcast on TV. It’s been observed by many folks that the top TV dramas are better than most Hollywood blockbusters anyway, god damn it. The future of this kind of TV is likely to be much like the future of movies. I have no idea what that is! Why do I even bother?</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--uewBo3GlhA/Tk0K2-sWLFI/AAAAAAAAADc/1kRhnc0xaVA/s1600/Louis-C.K.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--uewBo3GlhA/Tk0K2-sWLFI/AAAAAAAAADc/1kRhnc0xaVA/s320/Louis-C.K.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Louis CK. Mad, broken, bad and a man.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span id="goog_1602674277"></span><span id="goog_1602674278"></span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lastly, ambient TV is the kind of TV you put on in the background because you’re all alone in the world and if you didn’t get to hear another human being’s voice for even an entire minute, you’d bludgeon a screwdriver through your skull and into your brain, twisting it around until you collapsed face first into your coffee table, enveloped at last by the loving warmth of infinite death. While you’re staving off the inevitable realisation that not even you care that your life is a hateful series of painful nothings, you use the internet to look at pornography, read the Thundercats’ wikipedia page and play Angry Birds. The television bleats on and on, filling the air with soothing sounds while your eyes and hands are elsewhere.</span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With ambient TV, the television is now the radio, and the internet is now the television because as well as showing images of the Queen, it also lets you talk to the Queen and send her pictures of your cat wearing mittens.</span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m quite depressed now, can we stop please?</span></b></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a little bit of panic in television towers. Sure, things are fine right now, but for how long? Television people don’t want to be left behind. Like the radio people before them, there is a sense of fear, a sense of change and a sense of needing to be ahead of some curve that can’t even be seen. There’s also, much as it pains me to admit it, some kind of vague desire to make new and exciting things by multiplying TV by internet. Probably.</span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a near infinite number of buzzwords being banded about in varying amounts by various television people. Participation TV, Interactive TV, Connected TV, Smart TV, Internet TV, Social TV, So On TV and So Forth TV. What they all boil down to is a variety of ways that TV will continue to be fine in the future and no one need worry about having to skip their second Tuscan holiday of the year. What do they all mean? What is the future for TV?</span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tune in, same time, same place, next week to find out! </span></span></div>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6609084580606464400.post-91671461904956977402011-08-12T11:04:00.002+01:002011-11-10T09:28:26.336+00:00I Blame Riots For Grand Theft Auto<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nee naw nee naw</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The people who blame videogames for violence, especially for the sort of riot based violence the summer of 2011 specialised in are fucking idiots. I have no intention of getting into the giant clusterbomb of discussing why riots happen, or how you stop them because I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I’m an awesome game designer, not a sociologist/politician/gobshite.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What I know about isn’t poverty or depravation or education or crime. What I know about is fun and games. See, the thing no-one really likes to talk about with riots is that they are, you know, a riot! They’re chaotic, social and, at the time, fun. They’re incredibly stupid and if you’re on the receiving end of one, completely terrifying, life-destroying and potentially fatal. But if you’re in one, in a huge, anonymous crowd of people being terribly naughty and doing all the things you kinda want to do but would never dare, then they are great. A carnival with free stuff and running and hiding and shouting and breaking stuff and standing still. Awesome!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cjMEIUvs2IM/TkT50ZxEV5I/AAAAAAAAADI/_-xqyEdPMsA/s1600/police.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="219" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cjMEIUvs2IM/TkT50ZxEV5I/AAAAAAAAADI/_-xqyEdPMsA/s320/police.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fuck the Police</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>We had a smashing time</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blaming games for riots, or indeed any anti-social or criminal activity gets the entire thing back to front. Riots aren’t fun because Grand Theft Auto is fun. Grand Theft Auto is fun because riots are fun. Doing what you’re not supposed to do, is fun. Smashing things up is fun. Setting things on fire, is fun. Running away from a slow, heavily armoured opponent is called kiting in computer games, is called fucking with the police during a riot and it too, is fun.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most people would never actually do a riot because they understand that their bit of fun comes at an incredible and hideous cost to all concerned, same as most people would never commit murder or steal some shoes and run away or set fire to a policeman’s hat. But it’s not because we don’t want to do those things or because those things aren’t enjoyable at the time. It’s because we understand the implications and costs of our actions. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8dgYjih6aFE/TkT5-eGcEBI/AAAAAAAAADM/yLFnZv1gW2U/s1600/GANG.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8dgYjih6aFE/TkT5-eGcEBI/AAAAAAAAADM/yLFnZv1gW2U/s320/GANG.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Damn, it feels good to be a gangster</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Computer games take those costs away and allow people to indulge those fantasies without the horrible implications, pain, death and moral vomit that they would otherwise cause. They isolate the fun part and present it alone, without care or worry for the player. Don’t blame the thrill of computer games for violence. Blame the thrill of violence for computer games.</span>Mark Sorrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05073823684975353199noreply@blogger.com1