He just sits and listens to the people in the boxes

OK, so here's an idea for a campaign. I don't care who does it, I'd just love to see it in action, so if you work on Nintendo or a major cereal brand, listen up.

We're long past a place where kids are interested in putting together dinky little toys made from plastic parts in cereal boxes, but there's something there about the notion of the prize inside which i don't think is going away. I'd like to see Nintendo collaborate with someone for the next big Pokemon release. Except rather than put a toy in the box they produce a series of cards which trigger an augmented reality game when placed in front of a camera.

Let's say I have my cereal and I get a card that displays Pikachu. My friend gets his cereal and he gets a card with...well...one of the other ones on it (Pokemon was more my little brother's set). When I put just one card down in front of the camera, I can interact with my character, and perhaps get additional cards or items in other boxes or products that allow me to do different things to them (in a less kinky fashion than on the example below - it's just for effect people).

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JOM6Y_88Nc"]

When my friend puts his card next to mine though, our Pokemon proceed to fight. Now, as in the game proper, I can play (read: place) additional cards down that give me character different attacks and abilities. So instead of just playing cards or controlling it on a screen, I can physically interact and play with my friends while needing to purchase product from someone to expand the available repertoire of moves available to my character.

The downside is it would be horrendously expensive to produce, the upside is of course that it would be effortlessly cool.

Even if only for me.

In our private universe

From the "No-that's-not-right-here-let-me-show-you" Department, Blizzard and Future Publishing have announced a World of Warcraft magazine, hoping to leverage an additional $40 a year out of their 11.5 million person base of players. At a time when I can't imagine too many other companies entering a paper-based publishing medium, I actually think the move is genius and hits a few really key things, primary among them all is a hark back to Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans.

Of course in this case the fans number in the millions.

The premise is simple: your biggest fans will go above and beyond to have every ounce of content and information about you they can get their hands on; these people are not the mainstream, but they're a profitable niche that usually go uncatered for, making do with what everyone else gets most of the time.

The World of Warcraft example above stems nicely from selling access to a service for everyone and then breaking away additional offerings for the hardcore within your audience (as I write this BlizzCon is concluding, in-person church for the faithful but also available as a pay-per-view event online...you couldn't write this stuff!).

Mark Earls made a similar link to the music industry, referencing this piece in the New York Times and saying:

maybe this marks the end of that really selfish buy-to-own model ("it's mine, all mine") as opposed to pay-for-access?

Mark was referencing some interesting visual data showing the decline of physical music sales over the past 30 years (shown below). Personally the games industry leading the way here doesn't surprise me; it's a relatively young industry not bound vehemently by outdated models and able to flex with the times. It was the first to take user-generated content mainstream, I imagine it will be the first to do many, many other interesting things. But take note: create something genuinely of value to an audience, treat them right, and reap the rewards. Rinse and repeat.

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• World of Warcraft: The Magazine | Bye Bye, Bei Times | Lone Wolff | Alternate Universe (mediabistro.com)

Best digital work this week - June 7th, 2009

Hi,

This is an ongoing series I'm doing rounding up the most interesting digital work I've come across in the past week. Sometimes it won't necessarily be new, it's amazing what can slip under the radar. If you find something you think is worth checking out, please leave me a note in the comments!

Cheers,

David

P.S. This post is best enjoyed with some Motown on in the background and a glass of wine/ice-cold beer.

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This week has been somewhat of an odd one, I've been fixated on augmented reality (henceforth referred to as "AR") and have thus been scouring the web in search of the latest and greatest while trying to concoct ways to foist it on clients. Aside from just geeking out over it though, I really think there's an opportunity to tell some interesting stories in ways that have previously eluded marketers. Mini started off with a cute but ultimately shallow AR spot, I like what Ray Ban have done though, upping the stakes ever so slightly and making sure to use the medium to do something others can't (THE rule of ANY advertising: what can we do here that our friends in other disciplines can't?).

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAHYadYNz0w"]

As has been called out in other places however, not offering the option to "BUY NOW!" is a wasted opportunity.

In the interests of pushing things forward, I also came across a mad genius Russian raising the interactivity stakes, creating an environment virtual characters could interact with and makign it accessbile from your mobile (if your mobile happens to be a Nokia N95).

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWVH6jkDHg"]

And I couldn't bring this up without of course pointing you in the direction of a video I found and lost a long time ago, bless the Japanese for all they have brought us:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JOM6Y_88Nc"]

Experiential markteters: take this and run with it. Please.

Now, as I am a big proponent of brands getting more into the facilitation of experiences and services in more of a sponsor sort of way, I was a big fan of this new webservice, Supercook. The premise is simple: punch in the ingredients you have lying around and let Supercook display recipes that match what you already have in the pantry.

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMAr8p6UdQY"]

Dear Heinz,

Why are you not all over this?

Hugs and kisses,

Gillespie.

Moving on, in a great example of transparency, however cultivated I'm sure it is, I had no idea the Obama White House was running its own Flickr photostream. All companies who sell people-powered service please take note: putting a human face on what you do will always, always bring your customers closer to what you do. Next thing you know there'll be a Get Satisfaction feedback form on the official White House page.

Adding another section to platform cold war going on right now, a game called Spymaster has launched a closed beta. "What is so special about a game being in closed beta?" I hear you ask. Well, not much, except it has been built on and is to be played using Twitter. Mashable have a great round-up of it, and while this shouldn't be all that surprising given the myriad of web services already available, it's interetsing to see people extend Twitter's platform into a realm of sheer entertainment.

Last but not least, I couldn't help but share this Brazillian site encouraging people to...errm...urinate while in the shower as opposed to the toilet. I can't say it's a practice I'll be indulging in, and while I risk exposing myself for the hypocrit I am by including this site even amidst the lack of meaningful interaction between the site and its visitors beyond obligatory links out to various social networks, the execution is lovely and put a smile on my face.

Really, what more can we ask than that?

Ambiguity in narrative, in advertising

Yesterday I was at my friend Tim's place where we waxed lyrical over beers on how we can make a squillion dollars - look for an announcement on retirement shortly. While there he fired up GTA 4 on his Xbox 360 as I hadn't actually seen it in action (the gamer kids are asking for my dog tags back, it's really quite tragic). I was incredibly impressed, it seems all the learnings about the balance between a sandbox and a story had been compounded into an experience equal parts open ended and focused. The biggest issue in games like GTA 4 (aside from the mammoth amount of technology they have to wrangle of course) is giving the users who want it an open ended universe to explore while at the same time delivering a taught experience for people who just want to play a game.

Tim actually took exception, saying it hinted at a completely open universe but didn't actually deliver as he couldn't run into any shop he wanted, rob them and then go next door to rinse and repeat. The pragmatist in me thinks that is unrealistic, but only because I'm coming from the perspective of a person who once had to generate content for people like Tim to run into every nook and cranny they could find; that is not a fun job to have.

I digress though. Ambiguity. Who did their homework and checked out the HBO Voyeur site? If you haven't please go look at it now.

OK, what did you think? What did you see? A series of apartments spread across New York City, all with their own narratives going on. To my mind, what the agencies involved have done is take the essence of what they were promoting and asked themselves what the best way to tell the story would be. The other day I said the best examples of narrative in games are the ones where people think first about the story they want to tell and then settle on the style of game that suits it best; marketing can learn a lot from that approach, one of being platform-neutral and making sure the main thing is the main thing. No egos, no hidden agendas, just the desire to deliver the work in a way that suits the project best.

Sure, saying no egos in advertising is like asking the Pussycat Dolls to share vocals equally, like it was a vehicle for five careers and not one. The point remains though: we overcook so much on the way to delivering creative, we lose sight of what the brief was in the first place: to get the brand, product or service talked about.

Not the advertising around it.

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Image courtesy of xeophin, with thanks to compfight.

I've got soul but I'm not a soldier

When I was in the games industry I spent a lot of time writing and thinking about how to deliver narrative in an environment where the progression of the story depended entirely on the end-user's ability to navigate the obsacles we put in their path, all under the guise of gameplay. It sounds counter-productive, but some of those games can go for upwards of 60 hours, and running in a straight line while a plot unfolds is fun for about 67 seconds, so you have some space to fill.

One of the other crucial elements is understanding what stories you can and can't apply. Design is invarably driven by experiences designers believe players what to have, you almost never hear a designer say "This is the story I want to tell, what is the best way to do that?". Funnily enough, while that was my approach, very few people wanted to make my re-telling of King Lear set during the handover of Hong Kong...I can't say I blame them. Games are, for the most part, engineered so you play the hero and affect the main course of the narrative (what little there is), so the stories are constructed within cumbersome paradigms of good vs. bad, triumph over impossible odds, saving the day and winning the girl's heart (because you're almost always a guy).

This may all sound fairly abstract under the harsh light of day in marketing, but the parallels are there to be drawn and should be if we want to get better at telling stories with and through our brands, products and services. I've said hundreds of times now - experiences facilitated by but not about a brand; this is key.

When dealing with brands we need to understand the parameters within which we have the opportunity to engage narrative, both for the benefit of an audience and for the brand itself. I'm proposing that there are three types of story-telling we engage in in marketing, and each one should be employed in different circumstances depending on what the aim is:

1. A traditional, linear narrative where a single point is meant to be reached, leaving the audience with a very distinct idea of what the brand, product or service is about, what it means and what its intent is.


2. A narrative with the brand at the centre of the story but with the story being generated by consumers, leaving the direction of it loosely defined, usually through a particular campaign moving in a very particular direction.


3. Narrative with the audience at the centre of the story, narrative where the story is in fact the customer's own, one where a person doesn't inform the brand's story, rather the brand plays but a part in a much larger whole. Hardest to affect, though I'll argue the most compelling by a long way.

I'm really looking forward to getting into this. If you have any ideas or if you think there are other categories story-telling with brands can fit into, I'd love to hear from you. See you tomorrow when we tackle the first one on the list.

**Update** Tim Beveridge left a great comment below and then wrote some more on Insight + Ideas. Worth checking out!

--

Image courtesy of Doğuş Kozal, with thanks to compfight.

If you don't know me by now

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="262" caption="This is Toad. Toad belongs to Nintendo."][/caption]

I'm working my way through a great article by Marcus Brown, a guy who has clearly been doing this for a while, though I've only just found him. The article, If I Were A Client Today is actually on a blog he was previously writing and now has left behind called The Kaiser Edition where he would write from the point of view of a handful of personas (as far as I can tell, I'm still figuring it out as I'm not actually all that bright).

The piece is part analysis of where we're at in agency-land, part retrospective of his time client-side at either Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft (if he reveals which one I'm not there yet, but I have a hunch based on the litany of characters sporting mushrooms on their heads). One of the more curious revelations thus far is the Internet Department he was hired to be a part of didn't get placed with the Marketing department or the IT guys but in their R&D labs.

This is curious but also brilliant, an early realisation that the Internet and technology in general is good for more than just spitting out new kinds of ads. For me it naturally harks back to Iain Tait's 10 Reasons Digital is Better Than Advertising, in particular his first point in that series, that you don't have to do advertising.

When Iain says advertising there though, what I think he means is you don't have to do something that lacks substance, you can do something with balls, that means something and actually impacts people's businesses long after a campaign has finished. I'm not saying this is unique to digital, Droga 5's Tap Project is evidence it can happen anywhere. But I think there's a greater propensity for it to happen online, it moves things from distinctly separate operations closer to functioning as a single organism - and that's where things are going to get really interesting.

Something the boy said

Innovations are just gimmicks you happen to like.

I thought that was an interesting statement to make. I don't know if I agree with it or not, but that doesn't stop it from being interesting.

Now...as you were.

Life after the dip -or- What happens when you lose everything?

Note: This is a continuation of yesterday's thoughts.

Also note: not The Dip.

In the music industry's case, they've spent the last decade attempting to bend consumer behaviour to their will. All the time and effort put into better encryption, DRM etc. only for it all to be futile, forcing people into a dead model. Think about that. Ten years of lawsuits, of bad ideas, of attempts to stall the forward march of consumer technology. Each writ issued was an extra nail in the coffin of a decrepit business model established to confuse value and price point and foist it upon the unwitting consumer. As one of my favourite writers likes to say, the epic, epic lulz. As a complete aside, anyone know how many lawyers the RIAA has? I'm just curious...

In the games industry's case, budgets and teams are swelling, but this is not where industry growth is coming from. The really booming sectors are taking things back to small teams and games that take hours not days to play. Respecting people's time and attention spans, you can spend five minutes doing something else entirely and then get back to what you are doing. It is a business model that is fluid, moving with the trends of its audience who are not the pimply teenagers with plenty of time on their hands anymore, they are developers themselves, they are in advertising, they're lawyers and doctors and parents whose free time has not grown with their disposable income.

Exposing what people want to engage with and burying the stuff they're not interested in is key, and it is only an issue if your business model rests on the viability of the things people don't like. Digital Rights Management for starters if a zero-sum strategy where nobody wins. I'm a big believer artists should be compensated for the work they do (indeed one day I hope to do nothing but), but in the interim we need new models that are malleable. In the words of Seth Godin:

Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.

If your goal is delivering value, then everything will be fine. If your goal is to keep the game unchanged, then we have a problem on our hands.

--

Image courtesy of maubrowncow, with thanks to compfight.

The "Bidness" Model

"I don't know how much game is here. What I do know is that they have set up a system that allows me to rent my friends on a monthly basis." - Tycho, Penny Arcade

Great quote, so succinct and apt. Sun rises, sun sets, World of Warcraft continues to do its thing. I continue to avoid it out of a desire to live a productive offline life.

For now anyway.

Checking your ego at the door

I try to avoid writing about games here as my involvement in the industry now is very much as an outsider. I still keep an eye on the conversations going on though and one that never fails to amaze me is the "code vs. art" debate and how people struggle to get teams talking to each other. You can liken it to "creatives vs. suits" in advertising or "sales vs. anyone not sales" in many other organisations, the song remains the same; a notion of "otherness" is allowed to develop in a team or company and it poisons the culture of that place, pitting people on the same side against each other.

I lead four different teams as Producer while in the games industry, and they were all marked by a feeling of inclusiveness, a notion that we were all in it together. Often it had little do to with the organisation, I distinctly recall a senior artist from another part of the company walking into the room where my team was housed (numbering around 30+ at the time) and remarking that it felt like a different company. Each team I have looked after had that same feeling, and it never took any effort to maintain.

The key is pretty simple: everyone checks their ego at the door. I affectionately called it "the no assholes rule", long before a book of the same name was released, and it gets brought about in a couple ways.

The first is quite simple: hire good people. That statement is a little intangible and open to interpretation though, so I'll clarify: do not hire people you would not be willing to spend 100 hours a week with, because at some point you will. Assuming you have a high enough barrier to entry for your company (be it a programming test, past sales figures, whatever) then all candidates who reach that mark can be judged based on the personality fit for your team. I have passed up programmers who were great on paper because I knew they would either be difficult to work with or not get along with certain team members. It is a very straight forward exercise placing morale above ability; you can learn new skills in a job, but if you're an asshole, you're probably going to stay an asshole.  I should add this has nothing to do with race or culture, my last team had eight different nationalities on it, and we all still catch up whenever I am back in town.

The second is in many ways simpler than the first. As the title to this post says, check your ego at the door. Any industry is rife with stories of senior figures who refused to spend time in the trenches; these teams are without fail mired in low morale and bitterness towards management. I would outline weeks in advance the weeknights (and on occasion weekends) when we would need to work back, but when those days arrived I went from being the team lead to the servant. If your people are working extra hours because of you, you owe it to them to make that stay as comfortable as possible. If it means driving half an hour across town to get a certain meal for someone, so be it. Talk, in that environment, is less than cheap, it is worthless.

Leading by example and showing a willingness to do anything in order to get a project across the line and a team to work together is the only way to ensure different units within a team with each other from day dot. Producers, Group Directors, CEOs, whatever, they all set the tone for the people they are responsible for. Titles (and the egos they stoke) come and go; checking both at the door on a daily basis means you can do the things that matter most. And your team stays talking long after you have left the room.

The Agony and the Apathy

As an epilogue to yesterday's post, it's amazing to see the folk that come out of the woods when you surface among a section of society you stepped away from. I haven't been actively involved in games for a couple years, but as sad as yesterday's news is, it's wonderful to be back in touch with a bunch of people I hadn't spoken to in years, even if most of them were calling to offer condolences for a job I hadn't lost.

I was also reminded though of the volatility that exists within the online gaming community. It isn't hard for me to recall posts I made to a forum of comments I made when I was a hardcore gamer. To see some of that venom directed towards Auran and in some cases me, got me thinking about things I had said, comments I had made from the outside looking in, invariably through frosted glass, only able to make out faint shadows inside but still taking it upon myself to pass judgment on what I believed lay before me.

One of the things that I love about the Web 2.0 revolution that is currently sweeping across the web, marketing, communications in general, is the exposure of real people and real lives. Hardcore gamers players are among the earliest of early adopters of technology, but with that comes handles, alter-egos and a whole lot of posturing built upon an identity that gets donned only from behind the safety of a computer screen. Parts of this remained core to my presence online until recently, I only just finally changed my email address to have my actual name in it, and I'd change the address of this blog if I had a simple way to do that (anyone with an easy tip there feel free to drop me a line). Putting yourself online and moving beyond a pseudo-identity leaves you open in a way that my online experience hasn't been previously.

But it falls inline with the person I am when I'm offline, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Long Road To Ruin

I remember hearing a long time ago (couldn't possibly remember the source) that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. You can see it play out with major corporations who don't alter their strategies with changing markets, flying in the face of all the evidence presented to them, watching their consumer bases shrink in slow motion before them, unable or unwilling to make the turn before the iceberg collides.

I've just finished watching it play out at a company I used to work at, Auran, a game developer based in Brisbane, Australia. Those who played strategy games in the mid-90's probably came across their biggest hit, Dark Reign, which set the company up and garnered worldwide acclaim. Of course then the publisher Activision bank-rolled a start-up and took pretty much the entire development team away; it's safe to say things never really quite got back on track.

I spent two and a half years working at Auran as a game designer and producer, and I have never spent so many good, good days around a group of nicer, more intelligent people. I was blessed with teams that were passionate and inspired by the work they were doing. Leaving to chase other dreams in other cities was a hard if correct decision, but I have stayed in touch with a number of the people I worked with, and their Operations Director is my best friend.

So it is with a very heavy heart that I say the administrators have just walked into the building and the process of dismantling what was one of the great development houses in Australia begins. Thankfully the scene in Brisbane is booming and the staff will all have jobs to go to. Their publishing arm, N3v3rfa1l is likely to continue which is good news for its staff, with the continued involvement of Graham Edelsten and Tony Hilliam, the latter of who has invested a fortune over the years into a truly capable company that never quite managed to live up to its promise.

Auran never lived in the shadow of previous successes, it was always looking to break new ground and refused to rest on its laurels. Other companies grew past it in terms of size and projects, but to its credit it took on unusual and interesting projects, even when the direct ROI wasn't as clear as would have been nice. It bet the farm on a unique idea for an MMO, a game that I was involved in as a Producer on the initial pitch that won a significant piece of funding from Korean publisher Hanbitsoft. That relationship soured over time, but the companies parted ways and Auran continued to innovate and push the title down a completely new direction instead of taking the me-too approach of so many MMOs. A variety of suitors would come and go in that time, but the vision was steadfast, and thanks to Tony Hilliam's generosity, it meant they could forge a path that was all their own, not beholden to anyone else's ideas.

The game, Fury, was released to mediocre reviews on October 16th, and while many of them acknowledged a good idea and solid game at the core of it, the technical issues proved insurmountable. The game has failed to garner a large enough following to make it viable, and Auran's directors decided that the water was coming into the boat much faster than they had the capacity to bail it out. They can't be blamed, though I'm sure in the fallout fingers will be pointed in all directions. It's like the break down of a good relationship; in the end maybe nobody is to blame, and it simply ran its inevitable course.

I don't know that I'll ever go back to games, but if I did, I would seek out the culture that Auran created. Compassionate directors that valued innovation over a safe bet, the best and brightest staff from all over the world, a willingness to go against the odds even if failure means you don't exist anymore. Auran went down with a corporate philosophy focussed on leaping towards the sun; you may not reach it, but at least, for a little while, you can get off the ground.

It is a really sad day.

N.B. I appear to have been linked back to from all over the web as the "Ex-Fury" Producer. While I worked on the game initially, they were very early days and I cannot claim any sort of stake in the title it became. Many people much smarter and more talented than me devoted themselves to it for a number of years, and despite the end result, they deserve the highest of acclaim. Also thanks to Bloody for the kind words, they have been passed on to the team.