-
Toys
links for 2007-10-31
-
WWW Generation: Whenever, Wherever and Whatever they like: “MediaSnackers is a site/weblog/project/call to action for people interested in how young people consume and create media across the globe.”
-
“77% of gamers are married…. collaboration, encouragement, improvement, validation… THAT’S HOW WE LEARN!”
-
Robert Sutton: “In order to foster creativity we should hire misfits, goad them to fight and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture.”
-
“Xbox and Playstation commercials have got nuthin’ on this old classic. Even the theme song rocks!”
-
“The Sierpinski triangle is a fractal named after Wacław Sierpiński in 1915… this is one of the basic examples of self-similar sets, i.e. it is a mathematically generated pattern that can be reproducible at any magnification or reduction.”
-
Video: 12:00-> (KNOWLEDGE + EXPERIENCE = SHIT)
Transmedia vs Crossmedia
Google Trends comparison: Transmedia vs Crossmedia.
links for 2007-10-30
-
“horror-movie music on heavy rotation… It was terrifying. I’d recommend it to thrill-junkies: just whack the Halloween soundtrack on to your iPod and listen to it while walking around your own house in the dead of night. Try it tonight. It’s great.”
-
“if you want to work on a cool brand, go and create one. Or, as a second best, work for one. But don’t ‘Plan’ on one or hope you that you will have any real affect on the brand you Plan for. It is a (admittedly amusing and entertaining) waste of time.”
-
“Failure is our most important product.” - Robert W. Johnson, Founder, Johnson & Johnson
-
“Rock Band will allow people to form bands over the net, featuring avatars that you can personalise to a high degree.. it will also automatically create webpages detailing achievements… you’ll eventually be able to buy merchandise based on your band.”
-
Dev TiddlyWiki of TiddlyChatter
-
“Add notes to tiddlers without modifying the original content”
-
“a uniquely self-shot and self-directed show sees the gorgeous ‘bite’ girls driving around the country in their Ford Ka’s & Fiesta’s to bring you
all the latest trends.” -
“Proboscis is an artist-led studio which combines artistic practice with commissioning, curatorial projects, design and consultancy.”
links for 2007-10-29
-
Video: “Will Wright: Toys that make worlds”
-
“Recent research suggests that right-handed people monitor their dominant hand visually but keep track of their left hand using proprioception.”
Play/Time
I’m back from a rather excellent week-long Play/Time workshop at 01zero-one (Machine City?), as part of the London Games Festival Fringe.
All good fun and I got to meet some amazingly talented people from all corners of the ‘cross-media entertainment’ industry, including Adrian Hon (Perplex City/Six to Start), Dan Hon (Perplex City/Six to Start) and Guy Parsons (Perplex City/ex Mind Candy) i.e. proper games designers!
I wish it hadn’t ended. The constant brainstorms and refining of ideas were completely energising. I love that stuff! We (Adrian, Rain, Tassos and myself) were developing a satirical shopping game in the final few days. We’ll see if that’s going somewhere in the follow up meeting in few weeks time. Also, I can’t wait to play one particular ARG-style game that was brought to the workshop for further development. The concept is amazing!
The presentations from industry folk were great. I particularly enjoyed the no-nonsense attitude of Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor for Channel 4 Education, and the things he looks for in projects: PLAYFUL, SOCIAL, USEFUL, CONNECTED, FUN!
Also his belief that you should design experiences that satisfy each of the 3 Levels of Gaming (which you could also call the 3 Levels of Participation) : IMMERSED, ENGAGED, CASUAL.
Some other scribbled notes from his presentation… “Make your audience your heroes.” “Give people power-ups.” “Messy is good!”
You should have a look the Six Spaces of Social Media for more of his widescreen thinking.
What else did I do?… I got the opportunity to use ‘The Diagram’ (more on that later). Plus I picked up a great pitching/presentation tip that really worked for me. Gotta love that! And had the opportunity to share some experiences with developing projects for mobile. I kinda forgot about the ‘MMS-based ARG for school kids’ prototype I did for NESTA Futurelab a few years back. I need to think on that some more…
So, yeah, lots of play, scribbling, and mucking about with rope! Of course, I want to do it all over again and never stop!
What next? Umm… Expect a few game/play/storytelling posts from me in the coming days as I try to catch up with Dino and the guys.
links for 2007-10-28
-
“I am a practicing activist. To me this means everyday action. I take personal responsibility in trying to make this place a little better every tomorrow. Because it makes me feel good. Because its fun. I have a lot of karma credits to make up!”
-
How to use a TiddlyWiki to organise your thinking. (If only I could organise tiddlers spatially like stickies.)
-
Brilliant! A book as a wiki. Damn! Some day all books will be made this way.
-
“Type about:config in the Firefox address bar and search for the term: ‘browser.sessionhistory.max_entries’ Set lower to 5 (or whatever works for you)”
-
“TiddlySnip is a Firefox extension that lets you use your TiddlyWiki as a scrapbook! Simply select text, right click and choose ‘TiddlySnip selection’. Next time you open your TiddlyWiki file, your snippets will be there, already tagged and organised.”
-
“We’re a BT-owned company formed in 2004 and acquired by BT in 2007. Osmosoft is helping BT learn how to harness rich innovation within open source communities.”
-
This is interesting: ‘“TiddlyChatter” is the idea of opt-in, decentralized collaboration. This follows Twitter’s model, where someone can follow you without you taking an interest in what they have to say.’
-
“As marketers, we often forget that consumers are people too.”
-
Video: “What’s the worst that can happen?”
What A Brand Can Do
These thoughts are just notes towards another post I’m procrastinating about.
As much as I like the notion of Brand = Platform, I think that description is a little too abstract. It’s a bit like ‘Branded Utility‘. Utility to do what?!
What I think is really meant by platform is a ’something’ that people can both read and write to using its own materials. That ’something’ needs better defining. I’d prefer it to mean Culture, since culture is a concept usable and ownable by everyone.
But the danger of using ‘culture’ is that is sounds like an exclusively arts thing. I’m thinking in more organic terms, such as cultures of community, cultures of speed, cultures of causes, etc.
This read/write action is, to my mind, better described as Participation. It’s a do-ing thing.
What a brand can do is give people more tools to better participate in their own culture.
Technical tools, conceptual tools, tools that beget yet more tools…
Kinda reminds me of that old Chinese proverb:
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”
Brands need to teach people how to fish??!
IMPROVE THIS: What Is An Insight?
[The Riddler - The Planner's Planner? Or just a real pain in the arse?!]
I’ve been wrestling with this since yet another, “What is it you do, exactly?” scenerio.
Planner-types get this all the time. “I write stuff on stickies,” is my next best answer.
Riddle me this…
Rather than the regular Planner navel-gazing: ‘What is Planning?’, how about, What is an Insight? A bit more specific and potentially useful to a wider range of people.
My attempt:
“An insight is a thought that unlocks a latent need, emotion, or value.”
(This is an adaptation of What is a trend? by Trendwatching.com)
I’m not sure whether ‘need, emotion, value’ is a large enough range from which to draw from. My rationale, as suggested by Trendwatching, was to look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and to roughly map them like this:
Physiological - - - - -> Need
Safety - - - - - - - - - - - > Need
Social - - - - - - - - - - - > Need / Emotion
Esteem - - - - - - - - - - > Emotion
Self-actualization - > Emotion / Value
Too functional? Too narrow?
Actually, maybe an insight is more like an incite - an incitement - to stir, encourage, or urge on; stimulate or prompt to action.
Put me out of my misery and please help to IMPROVE THIS!
links for 2007-10-22
-
Video: “Goodby Silverstein web video talk switch from traditional to digital” [Via Nitmesh] — “Art that serves capitalism” - honest but a bit naff
-
Exceeded my YouTube favourites limit of 500 (?!) so I’ll have to save them here.
-
“Success is not solid. That’s part of the weird fascination with Gawker—it’s about the anxiety and class rage of New York’s creative underclass. It supplies a Manhattan version of social justice.”
Joe Chip
Joe Chip is a Psionic talent scout, recruiting on behalf of an secretive ‘prudence organisation’, specialising in Anti-Psi abilities.
Joe’s ‘deep cover’ is a middle-management job at the Ferris & Brockman Retail Credit Auditing and Analysis Agency.
(Unbeknownst to Joe, his own Psi report has been marked with two underlined crosses, meaning: Watch this person. He is dangerous. He is a hazard to the firm.)
Image: ThrillChip by Lyndsay Williams
-
Nodes
