Licence to Roam

Jane McGonigal Keynote.

• The Lost Ring Video played. A call for help. Being going a week - are you in?
• going to talk yo you about alternate realities. instead of trying to make games more realistic, trying to make the real world more like games.  we need more alt. realities and the real world needs to be changed to function more like a game. it will start on a game designers perspective on the future of happiness. I work at the Institute for the Future. we look at interesting things that are happening today and imagine what the future will be like.
• Happiness - the last year has seen a lot of growth and attention to happiness. there has been the launch of a new field - positive psychology, to look at brains working well, the good stuff. what makes us happy, what is the best case scenario.  good books, one thing that really interests me, is the parallel between what makes us happy and the core tenants of game design.
• Last month, book Against Happiness came out. this is not about warm fuzzy feelings, it is about the trying to capture the best experience possible and using research to define it, how to make lives more worth living
• there are many metrics for measuring, to implement and insert happiness making things in your life. 
• what i wanted to ask if you think you re in the happiness business.?  I don’t think we are quite yet imaging product as happiness, but you will be in the business very soon.
• It’s coming faster than we think.
• Predictions - quality of life becomes a primary metric,. Positive psychology will be used to design tools; communities will form around different visions of a real life worth living.  Value will be defined as a measurable increase in real happiness or well being - the new capital.
• Happiness is the new capital. you need to be explicitly generating some positive well being for them. happiness does not mean what it used to..the internets has changed. Happiness is not a warm puppy. 
• researching for a while..so will distill the 4 key principles
  • satisfying work to do
  • the experience of being good at something
  • time spent with people we like
  • the chance to be a part of something bigger.
• nothing in the world gives you these things better than games,
• Multi-player games are the ultimate happiness engine.  as the rest of the community starts to catch up, then more of us will be in the business of this happiness venture/
• Signals for things changing? Some graffiti in my town…’I'm not good at life’. for a lot of gamers their experience of life is that it is not sufficiently designed for them to be good at. we can be really good at them, at games. In real life there is not the collaboration as there is in the games. you get visualisation in WOW of all the data, help that you use ingame.  you don’t gain speaking points for presentations in life. you gain points in game.
  •  So you have better instructions in games.
  •  Games are giving us better feedback all the time. we know how we are doing.
  • games have better community. shared rules and story give you better time.
• there is a global mass exodus..started in asia…towards virtual worlds and game worlds. I’m not critical of the mass exodus as I understand it. it is a rational decision to spend time and money in virtual worlds as those environments are set up better for them to succeed. there is a better chance for them to learn.  An MMO players spends 16 hours a week and that is average.
• we could make better and better online and console games to take what we have learnt from  there and do something in the real world.  for many people, quality of life, virtuality is beating reality.
• us here are lucky compared to many who play the games we do, real life is not as exciting as virtuality, it does not make them as happy. if I was as good at life as I was in my games, what would it be like.
• I think games are awesome..it is like we invented the writen word and we only write books. why are the games not in the real world, to use the games to navigate, meet people…
• ChoreWars  -experience points for housework.  you get to claim XP for chores.
• zyked - in alpha. exercise is the  target, give points and skills for working out
• Seriosity - for games at work. an overlay of virtual currency for work. you have to pay people to do things at work.  you can set priorities. it creates flows of virtual currency, you can watch it. you can see who is important, connections.
• Citizen Logistics - missions to help other people. knows where you are because of GPS etc, people can tell you what to do. mobile co-ordinations.,
• Good news as some people are trying to make the world into a game.
• What do they mean? to imagine the future it is important to look backwards at least twice as far as you are looking forward.  the best analogy is soap, in 1931. ‘Soap kills germs’ was a headline. games are like soap..we should install them in every building, in our pockets we are killing boredome….games Kill boredom, alienation, anxiety, depression,
• AR designers are trying to embed these happiness engines in everyday life.
• So, AR comes from Science fiction.  the community names it. it is not an alternative, it is an alternate way of experiences this reality, these are immersice experiences in this reality. one of the earliest OED entries for AR is 1978 - another way of experiencing existence.  they sit and exist in your real world, the game is there at the street corner.
• World Without Oil - won an award at SXSW. we told the players that we had run out of oil and they players had to run real life as this was true. we would give you updates in your area about the gas and process and impact on food etc. levels of chaos, misery etc.  you would know what the fictional parameters and you would document what it was like.  we had a soldier in iraq on LJ about what it would be like it would be like without oil.  people changed trucks, people were interviewing non players. it’s all archived. it lasted 32 weeks, it got really dark at times,  then the players got it together and kind of fixed things.  there;s a lot of info all still there. worldwithoutoil.org. still have people doing it.
• so how do args amplify happiness., they deliver 10 superhero capabilities to people who play.  10 kinds of happiness that match up with research.
  • mobbability. the ability to collaborate and co-ord really large scales. 
  • cooperation radar - the ability to detect who would make the best collaborator for any given mission.
  • Ping quotient measures ability to reach out and respond to other people in your networks
  • influency - the ability to adapt your persuasive strategies to individuals and media and environments….understand communities require a different motivation.
  • multi-capitalism - understand that people are trading in different capital systems.  so how do you get the different capitals trading?
  • Protovation - big companies get scared of this. rapid innovation, that failing is fun and that is when you are learning the most. fail rapidly and often…
  • Open Authorship - naturally to blogger age. comfort with giving content away and knowing it will be changed. it’s a design skill about creating something that won’t be broke by others changes
  • signal/noise management. he ability to handle noise and know which clue is relevant.
  • longbrading - the ability to think in much bigger systems - the zoom out.
  • emergensight - this is the trickiest. the idea that you can spot patterns as they come up, comfortable with messy complexity.
  • lost ring game is in 8 languages…a lot of content, players will create more. it gets really big, so how do you spot opportunitiy etc.
• they amplify our tendency towards the optimal human experience doing lots of research.
• so how can interactive systems amplify happiness?
• so where to next?
  • twitter is a good place to start, a natural interface.
  • the nike ipod. I love it. want to make a game.
  • planes - comms sytems. would love to play a game on a plane.
  • dogs..need a game to fix it….i feel guilty for playing. how about an MMO when you avatar is your dog. you have to get them all working together.
  • a friedd said - ‘my car is a video game’..a Prius using games
  • trackstick - records GPS every 5 secs and follows you. 
  • neuro detector, hook up to games. an idea for a game about people I don’t like and using my brain to destroy them
• the Lost Ring is for the Olympics. we are going to give people the opp to have an AR at the Olympics. a game that no one has played for 2000 years. thelostring.com. learn a lost sport and be an olympic champions.
• The important stuff  -
  • I believe that most of us will be in the happiness business, study it and be ready for when the public demand it
  • game designers have a huge head start. we have been trying to optimise human experience. 
  • AR signal the desire, need and opp for all of us who design interactive systems to redesign reality for real quality of life.
  • jane    at avantgame   com

• Questions. DOD/war…using gaming language. do games help prevent wars
  •    i would want to differentiate the types. games make soldiers easier to fight. that’s not the best direction for blurring the line between reality and games. it is extremely powerful ..do we design games to draw people to benevolent action.,  i think game devs should be trying to win noble prize by 2032. if we are playing games together than much harder to hate each other.
• to what extent that gaming etc are substitutes to things that are missing..
  • for some things..blogs can work better than conversation for many people. games work better for some people. not everyone who plays games has a life that needs fixing. I do worry that some gamers do replace, and it is something we should talk about. we need a real conversation
• interested in the idea we have more forms but a lot less social. ARGS narrative story and not necessarily with people.
  • a lot of the press for args are online…but they have a real history of real life stuff. ie SF0. all mission in real world. a lot of stuff going that way
• args..successful ones are productions, narratively intense. they are temp and they go away how do you…when do have continues things
  • business model needs to get fixed. it was seen as marketing and budgets fixed. tried as pay to play, lots of people trying to figure out new models.  it has to happen, i want my nike+ to run for my life
• I’m interested in the whole business model things….Macdonalds is one of the sponsor for lost ring..how do you reconcile that with the game considering the relationship with mcdonalds
  • we don’t actually have a sponsor, we had a group of people who wanted to get involved..IOC, McD, AKQA. it’s a different model, it’s like P&G when they invented soap. I’m thrilled to be working with orgs that are big enough to get the game in may places. it’s going to be tricky to walk the line…where do you get the money,.it is moving more to TV…it is the ecosystem…
• i played the game to reclassify books.and when i go to bookshops I do the same things. is it changing how people look at the world (ministry of reshelving)
  • its one of the most powerful things…we had 40k people doing this.  I love Tombstone Holdem, we designed games that allowed people to play serious with tombstones…
• SF0 does a geat job of balancing creativity and real life..how do you script vs openness
  • it’s a combination. if you are trying to solve world problems, you need a bit of a harder top down approach at the beginning
  • The x2 project, with scientists, playing games about future of research and science. we use real world science scenarios. our players inhabit the AR. we guide it with a story, we are interested in a particular reality. do research first, get people to solve the problem, then let them figure out of you are right or wrong.
• The Game - pick up artists…evolutionary pyschology…people are gaming each other in life…
  • it is important to define the game you are playing. any game is collaborative as you are playing the same rules. in real life is they do not know there is a game playing then a problem. AR announce them selves as a game, it is better. rules are explicit.

Jane’s post on the speech, also Slides on Slideshare

Tags: jane mcgonigal, args

Deborah Schultz, Chris Heuer, Jeremiah Owyang, Tara Hunt, Hugh MacLeod, David Parmet

•  DP: Brian Oberkirch put this together - he asked 2 questions. How to market into community without being too marketer like. And how do you build a community around what you are doing?  What does ‘no marketing’ look like? How can we use social media?
• DS: None of this is about tools or technology, but is about the customers.  Here to talk about some of the subtleties, not about the tactics. It’s about marketing, customer service, product development. the marketing silo needs to be changed, why are they afraid of the opps. This is not telling or selling, this is being in the trenches.
• CH: what is really bugging me right now is the number of people who are saying to me ‘build me a community’ but this does make a community, it is the interpersonal connections that make it. Social media is not new media, it changes how we relate to each other. You have to shift the way you think about participation. have to change mindset from stop trying to sell me to help make me buy.
• JO: I do a lot of research on this, such as online community best practices.  it was clear that the ones that let go and let their customers take charge have the thriving communities.
• TH: "marketing is the price you pay for creating mediocre products". this was a big part of the reason for this panel. [history of her and move and Citizen agency] Looking at social capital - relationships and reputation.   It’s all about whuffie in these communities, what you can give away.
• CH: you need a patronage model, where there is money, in corps, it needs room to do it in there. there has to be a genuine spirit of giving in there .
• TH: we talk about doing things that are good for the world alongside the product that will sell.
• HM: [wine, blogging stormhoek story.] Social objects help drive conversation. when we talk about community, when a corporation talks about it, it’s liek a lever they think they can pull, which is not there. you have a bunch of people who use and talk about the product. they are not the company community.
• DP: the concept of giving it away for free is a powerful one, that scares the companies away.  Have used Stormhoek as an example, suggesting that companies do this.
• DS: there are lots of companies for 100s of years…this is a new skillset that is an art rather than a science.  if you are at a small company, where you have a certain amount of control, then you have to get out of the ivory tower. get out to conferences, find the edges.  Larger companies have the problem that they only listen to the complainers, how about listening to the people who love you.   Why do small companies put up an FAQ? why not bring in people who can answer the questions? this is marketing and customer support. get out and flatten it.
• JO: you can give away things for free, I give a lot of my knowledge for free, make people nervous.
• HM: James Governer, gives away 90% of ideas, sells 10%. he can only execute on 10% and it works/
• TH: you can tell people you have knowledge and they will see what they are talking about.  It’s a smart calling code.
• CH: it’s the because effect. Will It blend gives away entertainment.
• HM: there has been a paradigm shift from message to social gesture and that cannot be faked.
• TH: a lot of traditional marketing aims to do a generic spread of message. you throw the net out wide and hope to catch as many. with stormhoek HM saw a great opportunity, of people who were doing a lot of events - its niche, opportunities,
• CH: it’s not the message, it’s not the brand logo, it’s what it represents. We have to think about the human connections, about being of service to fellow human.

Audience Questions

• Q: JO - when selecting brand evangelists, how?  And HM - what about Cooler?  A: JO: tools to find them, who is talking online, goign into communities, finding out who is talking the most, customer support forums. go to brand monitoring companies, who do good job of mining the whole place. the main point is that you can find the people, great people to start with.   HM: Kula is South Sea shells that had a story. Talking about the iphone with Tara, what matters is that tara is a friend, we talk about shared stuff. stories are key. tech is still about socialising around objects.  DS: this is about a cultural shift - getting out. Traditional marketing..is not a relationship. in a relationship you can’t ignore until you have something to say. giving away things for free, the whuffie payback comes back way later. this impacts all lines of your business.
• Q: I understand giving away the small things. what about the big stuff?
  • A: CH: audi are doing a great things. doing a lot of things around the experience, the educational classes, spa treatments.
  •  TH: some people give amazing support and service. 
  • DS: you have to break it down to smaller segments, go local. 
  •  HM: great brands have lots of little small brands, like starbucks. it’s not just about the big thing, it’s all the small things. 
• Q: how do you actually get some money in the short term? (ref a movie, document)
  • A: HM: put half out there, and if people want to learn more they will buy it. 
  • TH: start telling the story, getting people to start telling his story.  
• Q: giving away for free reduces perceived value?  what’s the rebuttal. 
  • A: DP..when selling things, I had a client for selling to teenage girls. they wanted to ‘go viral’. I had to remind them they can’t the product can only go viral.  I suggested we find people to talk about it.  My response is not to go to an intermediary. go to the customers.  put it to the people who would actually use it. 
  • TH: it’s not giving products away for free only. It can be the things around it, the experience.
  • DP: audi, free wifi, breakfast, things to do
  • DS: now everyone has a different perspective on audi. it’s nuanced. 
• Q: can you distill this into a takeaway?
  • HM - social objects ate
  • TH: turn it around, be part of the community, listen, embrace the chaos, find your higher purpose
  • CH: passion for people and product
  • DS: technology changes, human behaviour doesn’t. nothing replaces listening, get out of tower.
• Q: I work for PETA and what we give away for free is our message? is that annoying?
  • CH: saying the only thing you have is a message is wrong. you are connecting to a higher purpose, to a felling.
  • TH: I don’t remember the emails, shows that you have not connecting.
  • DS: are you giving them something they be interested in or just what you want to sell. Think about you are only talking to these people when you need them - cultivate the connections you have.
• Q: I work for Kaboom. A lot of the things you have suggested we have done and it has not taken off as we hoped. now I have all these goals I need to reach. What can I take back to explain that this takes time.  The vision is to make a great place to play for every child in america.
  •    HM: they don’t get it…
  • CH : it’s not campaigns, it’s programmes, you have to change the mentality. get qualitative results, people who have heard online and show the stories.
• Q: Why are you doing this - because you believe or is it a fad?
  • JO: marketing does not exist to hide shitty products, there is a reason.
  • CH: marketing has become associated with sales as opposed to matching product with user.
  • DP: it’s about stories and relationships, helping them work out what they are doing. it’s been a fun ride.
  • DS: it’s a personal mission, not a fad. I’m not a marketer, but a customer advocate. I love that everyone has a voice,
  • CH: it’s about what is your intention.

HM - a story without love is not worth telling

Tags: hughmacleod, darvidparmet, chrisheuer, tarahunt, jermiahowyang, deborahschulz

discussing the aspects of Sexual Privacy online.   Violet Blue, Jonathan Moore, John d’Alderio, Zoe Margulis, Jason Schultz

• VB: fetishes…online allows you to seek this even if you did not seek in real life, but could cause issues. online can be a healthy way to let people express their fetish. Sexuality and sexuality online calls into question our awareness of the outside world and privacy. if people knew how unprivate it was, they may think differently. It’s personal information in a public space, but they may not be aware of it.  Example - Craigslist Experiment, (Justin Fortuny) putting an ad for hard core dom. Response to ads were posted online.  There have been copycats…griefers gaming online sexual identity.  The language used in the ad was very extreme, it was clear to the educators that the original user was not aware of the terms of the scene, that they were playing with their gender identity.   Other examples are a police officer who was a swinger who got fired for having a site with his wife.
• Moore - has built and worked with SN, thinks about privacy and security of sites. d’Alderio - editor of Fleshbot. Margolis - girlwithaonetrackmind, Schultz - at EFF. to talk about law and how it handles it.
• JS: Privacy Rights. (in US)
  • Sexual Activity, 14th Amendment -due process, autonomy, liberty.  Griswold vs Connecticut 1965 (contraception), Roe vs Wade  1973 Abortion;Lawrence vs Texas 2003 (home sodomy)
  • to Speak/Associate, 1st amendment. The Chilling effect. Watchtower bible 2002 - registration requirements.  Doe vs Cahill 2005 Subpoenas and disclosure of person; NAACP vs Alabama 1958 membership lists.
  • Right to Search/Read. Sweezy vs New Hampshire, 1957. about being private about research and reading.
  • Right to info privacy, 4th and 5th amendment. Katz vs US 1967 wiretapping; Smith vs Maryland 1979 third-party phone records. when third party has the info then there is no need to protect you.
  • right to be left alone. Sipple V Chronicle 1984. lots of state laws,
  • law has been built up based on fear of government.
  • so who owns info, is it provate/public, when are you newsworthy, can you ever go back if your info is out there?
• VB: John, what do you think is the most common mistake?
  • JD: my take is that there is no sexual privacy.  privacy is an illusion. we are at the beginning of exploring this medium, in the flush of expressing ourselves is the risk of being found out. Sooner or later it will come out. but we still deserve the right to be left alone. we find ourselves negotiate this daily. A few weeks ago, there was a sexual ‘celebretant’, had uploaded videos to X-tube, was building up a reputation, we got a tip that was posted on Fleshbot, he had made no effort to conceal his identity, he had 3-4 clips, but had the same account details on YouTube, same username. Some blogger had sent a tip. But then he got emails from ‘him’ asking for the post to be taken down as there were lots of people watching his videos and it was causing him problems. Someone had contacted his parents. So, does he have aright for us to take the material down? We decided he did not - he was not polite about it.  There are ways to cloak your id to make it more difficult for people to find out who you are but he did not take any of these steps. 
  • JS: what if it had not made the rounds and had minimum views?
  • JD: if you are making that step and making no attempt to hide who you are..you should expect it.  The case of the Walmart masturbator, videos on X-Tube. It was on Fleshbot and Consumerist, then on Digg., then CNN and local news. it blew up. he wa wearing a university cap and said where he was doing it, he made it easy for people to find him. He started to receive death threats,
• VB: now I want to bring in the personal perspective that Zoe brings. You simplywrote stories, you did not put photos up, so how did it leak out?
  • ZM: I don’t think I’ll ever know. I got a bunch of lowers, congratulating me on the book with my name.  I freaked out, as I was anonymous. They made me lean out as they had a photographer.   Then I started getting phonecalls on all my phones, I’m ex-directory, not on electoral role, no idea how they got the information. Then the tabloids descended, my neighbours and family were harrassed. My life feel apart, I lost my job, I was told I was not wanted. My IMDB entry has been defaced, my name was removed from the film, All I did was write about sex.
  • VB: what has changed for you, now people know who you are?
  • ZM: The blog is not what it used to be. I was 100% honest, but tried to hide identities of people I wrote about.  I felt violated, I had my finger over the delete button all the times. I could not continue to write the same way as before I had the freedom of anonymity. People ask me to not write about them. I don’t want their lives to be exposed. It is about what I’m up to. I miss blogging so much.
  • JS: would you do it again?
  • ZM: I would lie to all, not tell anyone I was a blogger, I would not trust publishers, I would hide.
• JM: it is hard. there are technologies like Tor but they are really hard to use. There are 2 ways of screwing up. You can do something stupid (and you have to know what stupid is) or someone you know can do something stupid.  Security is hard - I know of many holes in social networks.  Social Engineering can get the information. You can’t trust other people. Services will hand over information. You can’t even trust yourself.  Everytime you send an email from hotmail (or other webmails) then the IP address gets sent.  It’s like a postal address. You are exposing inforamtion you don’t know you are exposing. As soon as you make one mistake, you tie yourself to that information. It is so difficult.
• VB: so I want to know, what you think the greatest challenge is, or provides the greatest risk?
  • JA: if you take it as a given there is no such thing as privacy then you can plan your actions accordingly.  We don’t use adult performers real names. It’s down to establishing the boundaries of the right to be left alone.  The internet is mob rule, look at average YT comments.
• VB: Zoe, what kind of advice?
  • ZM: expect to lose your anonymity, be cautious.

Charlene Li about the changing  of corporations and social media.

• Examples of the change: the HD DVD key and Digg. Jericho and the peanuts.
• Shaun Daly was a fan of Jericho drove the change - you had to have something physical that CBS could not ignore. They bought it back, and it’s doing OK. CBS had nothing to lose.
• New book - the Groundswell. A social trend in which people use tech to get things from each other, rather than traditional institutions like corporations.
• This has been going on for a while, we have been talking about the revolution for ages and finally corporations are getting it. It’s too easy for people to feel they need to get involved..but they do not know how.
• we are at a new stage, so are you going to be a radical like Thomas Paine, a founding spark for the US revolution.  Or a revolutionary like Thomas Jefferson. Instead of railing against the problem, he went to solve it, pushing the problem to solve it. The first had hte vision but could not deliver, the second had the process and framework to pull it together.
• To make revolution stick you need to have frameworks and process.  There are many corporations that want to be part of the revolution but don’t know how. It’s up to us, he have been living it.
• So going to look at the processes, who are the revolutionaries and some case studies
• Use POST
• PEOPLE - who is it, and what are the activities
• OBJECTIVES - what are you trying to accomplish
• STRATEGY - plan for how relationships will go
• TECHNOLOGY - what are you using. this is last.
• People - we think about a ladder of participation. Inactives. Spectators. Joiners. Collectors. Critics. Creators.
  • Joiners - in the networks, with their friends etc
  • Collectors - collect the good stuff, collate
  • Critics - comment and assess
  • Creators - create the content
• People - It’s a different mindset between the types. 48% are spectators, 18% are creators. These are categories, not a split. People can do different things in different place. With youth, 39% are creators, 43% are critics. 58% are joiners.
• People - Age is a major driver of adoption.  (see the data on Slideshare). As people get older, they get less active - it takes them longer to adopt and the content is not necessarily geared for them. But that is changing.  39% of 51-61 adults are spectators though, and they will move to critics or creators. Not everyone participates in all areas and it changes. but you need to know the roles your audience have.
• Objs - what do you want?  Research can be a lot of listening in the Groundswell. Marketing will change from shouting to talking.  Sales can change to energising, to getting people involved. Support needs to carry on supporting, to listen. Development may change from closed to open. Embrace the customers in the process.
• Objs: the Talking Objective.  example is Blendtec. Videos on YT, viewers responded. Blendtec have increased sales by 25% to consumer market.  it was George Wright, VP of Marketing, spent $50 on first video.  He had started thinking about how to show people.  Dan Black, Director of Campus recruiting for Ernst and Young. Uses Facebook to recruit college students. Created the page, students were asking questions on the wall. He went to answer them back, in public. He is the head of Recruitment, not staff, not agency. He realised that this is one of the few channels he could have a direct conversation.  There are few people doing this - having a real conversation.  Next. Best Buy Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt. They started blueshortnation.com to connect with people on the front line.  They found it was not great for creating insights for their marketing, but great for understanding the people,, for helping staff.  It has enabled customers and employees to support themselves. Josh Bancroft, at Intel, a geek blogger. They were looking at doing their own wikipedia - corporate were delaying, think it would take a long time. He just went and did it. Got the server and started the process.   Steve Fisher, VP of platform at salesforce.com. They wanted to get customers of salesforce to contribute in how to improve the system. In the system, they had banners that announced marketing stuff. They got 6000 people to say they hate it, which gave them the drive to remove the thing that was not liked.
• So how to start the change?  Follow the process
• Case Study - Lionel Menchaca. At Dell. Started off as a product technician, became part of product review PR team. connected with everyone at Dell. Then Dell Hell happened, he started the blog resolution team - to solve the problems, to connect the people. Dell then started the blog and lionel led the team.  Initially it did not go well, lots of issues. But Michael Dell supported him, and Lionel decided to change the way they were doing the blog.   He talked about the flaming laptops, in a real way, sorting it out. this is when it started transforming itself.  Slowly, change happened in the company, looking at what people were saying.  Lionel did not keep it isolated, spread the mindset through the organisation. IdeaStorm was another change - getting feedback into products and innovation. They also have a blog for their investor relationship teams.
• So how do you find and support the revolutionaries?
  • Find the people who are the most passionate about developing the relationships
  • Educate the executives. What it is, what are the benefits
  • Put someone in charge. It has to have priority, has to someone to be accountable.
  • Define the box with process and policies.
  • make it safe to fail.
• So you need a framework and policies; start small but think big; make social strategy the responsibility of all; be patient - cultural change takes time.

Audience Questions

• Q: what are your recommendations about success and assessing impact?  A: we get asked this. you can use a blog to do any of the objectives. make the measures based on the objectives.   Is it supporting, is it energising, is it talking. what are you doing?
• Q: any pointers for regulated industries?  A: some of the most active clients we work with are pharma and financial. the people who are writing it are the ones who know exactly what they can say
• Q: how about smaller companies A: B2B is also there. it is more focused, that is an advantage.
• Q: what about virtual worlds? should companies explore them?  A: it should be avoided, but large marketing spends. it’s a unique environment. there are some great uses inside corporates. 
• Q: you said that change comes slowly. You showed stealth adoption and education as two methods. Any others?  A: I have a whole bunch of tips (in the books). Executive input, get all involved. you have to communicate and get people to live it every day.  It can be easier internally, marketing has a lot of culture to get through, they want to keep the message pristine, customers do messy stuff which causes issues with marketing.  you need to feel uncomfortable, if not then it won’t move forward.
• Q: Internal to companies, how do you convince internal leaders. What are you seeing other people do?  A: they can all happen internally.  You have to focus on the benefits. What are you afraid of with information flowing. start small.
• Q: How do you get people to contribute. A: the companies give feedback about what has been implemented. it shows that they are listening. You have to close the loop.
• Q: you have mentioned benefits for SEO? Can you expand?  A: search engines weight inbound links. Simple tools are out there. Do it on the main domain
• Q: all these platforms and tools, what are other things. Q: Buzzlogic, visible technologies to monitor. Forums and bulletins are best - really good and robust tool. It’s not about the technologies but it is how you use them.

Tags: sxsw, charleneli, groundswell

Dan Hon, Tony Walsh and Dee Cook

• Tony Walsh, Phantom Compass, Toronto, Games design. Fallen, Regenesis.
• Dee Cook, working on ARGs, since 2003. Worked on World without Oil
• Dan Hon, Six to Start. worked on Perplex City, working with Channel 4 education

• DH: ARGS are a new way of telling stories, using all forms. People consume lots of different kinds of medium, there is a different kind of narrative and gameplay experience that you can give people. You don’t have to learn a different control scheme. Interactions are typically the same things you would do in everyday life. you use text and emails.
• DC: There are no rules about what an ARG is, it’s like playing a murder mystery dinner theatre, for weeks and months, online, in person, on the telephone etc
• TW: the players can be extremely voracious, hungry for content and always coming up with things that designers may not have expected, coming up with the new story lines.
• Q: who are the players?
• DH: the demo data (Perplex City) was 12-80 year old, 50/50 male/female. Live events were surprising, families, etc, the typical audience is not the hardcore gamer.
• TW: there are different elements that appeal to different types.
• DC: skillsets can be different for each game,
• DH: they are a form of entertainment, so the broad questions can be answered in many ways - a broad classification
• TW: videogame players are very different to ARGs…args can be research based
• DH: there are differences between the types of gameplay.  ARGS can be more predominately storyline based, punctuated by game-like play.
• TW: so what are they looking for in an ARG that they are not getting in a videogame.
• DH: a lot of the successful ones have been toed in with deep brands, deep stories.  Halo 2 (with I Love Bees) can be looked at as a FPS or as part of a real deep story, really good world building. For those that buy into the world, they get passionate about finding out anything about it.
• DC: In ARGs, people feel they can affect the game world, they can interact with a ‘real’ person. An ARG is often a one shot, have memories and history.
• DH: WOW as a single player is a very boring game, but playing with friends is a completely different experience. ARGs is similar - large groups, social gameplaying mechanic.
• TW: so can we talk about some early ARGS
• DC: Majestic - EA, they started to advertise the game that played you, how it was going to become part of your real life, shut down
• DH: the Beast - from Microsoft. tied into AI the spielberg movie. it set some principles which some people still think control what an ARG is. It did not say it was a marketing campaign.  The game created a universe online.  In terms of gameplay, there was not really any traditional gameplay mechanic in there. There’s puzzles and collaboration,.  the gameplay that tends to emerge is very social based, than conventional console games. 
• DC: a big community builder.  
• TW: the form is always evolving.
• DH: ILovebees was more of a radioplay, that seemed to be the intention of the writers. it was an audiodrama.
• TW: a promotion for Halo2. MS did try to do something with Halo3,
• TW: there’s a huge grassroots community that produce their own games.  barrier to entry is a lot lower than computer and videogame development.
• Q: what’s the reach and success of ARGS. What are the business models.
• DH: a lot of the examples have been marketing for brands.  Majestic was a subscription model. Perplex City had a series of collectible cards, which would have clues etc.   I think that everyone is still trying to work it out, there is a lot of scope for brand sponsored content.  In terms of self-sustaining independent it is something that we are working on
• DC: we still run into the internet should be free idea, so subscription based anything on the web is a dicey problem.
• DH: it is possible to do so when people spend a lot of time.
• TW: a lot of teens are looking at free to play games, that can be a model, say in Korean.
• Q: is what teens expecting in terms of free to play, is paralleled by people wanting to find themselves in a game, eg Lonely girl
• DH: it did not start out as an ARG, the whole suspense was ‘was to real’. the follow up is Kate Modern on Bebo. the back and forth of setting up tasks, and responding can add a lot of value to the entertainment.    Viral marketing will not get you your mass audience, you have to push people there [RC: it's my understanding the ARG was started by a fan and then adopted by the creators]
• Q: How are they useful
• DH: with channel 4 we are doing an educational game, for 14-16 yos, around online identity and privacy. they can learn important skills.
• Q: I research storytelling; I look at what is going on with ARGs, what concerns me, is the freakiness of ’stalking’. blending reality with fiction you get into sueable area.  there is a huge community of susceptible people
• TW: this question comes up everytime. there is are fine line.  It’s up to the game designers to think about how the game mechanics work. you can’t control, you also need lawyers.  It’s what insurance is for,
• DC: you can’t anticipate everything, but you can be prepared to react.
• TW: in videogames you can predict, but the more massive MMO become then less controllable. 

Tags: dan hon, tony walsh, dee cook, args

Keynote at SXSW Saturday. Notes, not a true live blog. Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson

• SJ: have you seen another wave of the backlash, the dumbing down?
• HJ: these things do come in waves and we’re probably overdue. Never underestimate the desire of parents to see their children as dumb, it’s easy to imagine our children as failures as they do things that were unknown to us. Young people are adapters of new media, outside of eyes of their parents. There’s a sense of fear - I said to my some everything i said I wouldn’t. It does not take much, a decline in test scores, a Columbine and that gives a moral panic. There are new literacies that are so powerful but parents do not understand. People want me to tell them it is OK.
• SJ: I’ve always wanted to see the development of ways of measuring these new technologies. have you seen anything?
• HJ: the evidence has moved from the anecdotal to the local and we start to see some national stuff. the model is wrong, it started from the assumption of the individual learner, but as we move to the era of collective intelligence, it changes. It is a very different model of how we process information. It starts from the assumption that everyone has some expertise, but not that all know everything.  The challenge is to measure the skills we have to measure the ability to share knowledge.   I had respect for expertise until I got asked to write for Encyclopedia Britannica, then I relasied that wikipedia had got it right.  There’s more brainpower in the collective than the individual. How we work and play is polling knowledge, but that is not how we test young people. It’s about processing knowledge, not acquiring it.
• SJ: if you spend lots of time in front of new tech, do you ever look at a new tech and say that is just stupid
• HJ: it’s a momentary flash in my mind. my graining shows me that people don’t do things that are meaningless. the challenge is to find out why things are meaningful. what I think is interesting up to a point only.  You have to start from premise that things are meaningful.
• SJ: since last time, TV has changed - Lost and the Wire. so which is better? What criteria do we used to evaluate?
• HJ: the wire has created a layer of complexity over the years. with Lost, much of it takes place online, through the transmedia extensions, through the fans.  the complexity of engagement is part of what makes that compelling. Wire may be the last gasp of an old style TV, whereas Lost may be the first glimpse of new TV. pushes us in new directions in how to engage with TV.
• SJ: when you look at those fan creations, it’s amazing how much time people have.  One person does this thing, then they upload it, put it in the discussion.  Clearly these people don’t have kids!
• HJ: we should reverse this. What’s wring with America that these incredibly bright people don’t have opportunities to do this in the workplace. I study pink collared workers-  need quals but their job does not give opportunities and they get this outside. why are those skills so underutilised. how can we harness that creative energy. What we are seeing right now is that people are getting skills in their play that are being applied to the rest. As we learn to live in a knowledge culture, as we develop the apparatus to trust and share knowledge, how do we turn that back into something that can change society.
• SJ: there’s a Harry Potter fan fic documentary you are in?
• HJ: I get involved, I talk to lots about this. There is a feeling that people are learning how to read from HP, but there is also people who are learning how to write, via fanfic novels. Also social network learning - through wizard rock/ They are learning to become political through Harry Potter, about rights to write stories, on fair use. It’s a global network of people who connect through their love of the fiction. In a hunting society, kids play with bows and arrows and in an information society, kids play with information
• SJ: when people talk about this generation, talk about they are under some kind of attack from their media, lets look at what are they like. this is the least violent generation since 50s, the most political engaged, the most entrepreneurial. so do we have a crisis or an opportunity.  People are more engaged in general, on different levels. The idea that there is some kind of reason for a moral panic is very strange.
• HJ: I’m a total Obama boy (massive cheers). Yes We Can is one of the things that fascinates me. A friend tracks language use online - politicians use ‘I", young people use ‘we’. It is a language of social networks and collective intelligence.  It has a history, it reflects Obama history. It’s a different way of modeling society.  Looking at a recent speech of Hilary, it was all ‘I’, but Obama  - it’s about the process by which he collects information, about how we build this together.  Through the SNS, it’s about a circle around the candidate.
• SJ: I’ve been involved with OutsideIn for a while, to look at the geographic internet. It was thought that the internet would drive people away from the cities, but the opposite is true. We saw how many local bloggers there were, that blogged about the neighbourhood and community. My one plug, we are about to launch OnMyRadar, a facebook feed, local information. tied into FireEagle. Show me things that are happening here and now. Trying to enable local experts, to pass the knowledge.
• HJ: the challenge is how to harvest community to share information. We have underestimated high school kids, how many have Lj accounts, learning to write. Can we free young people up to write things up.  Can people contribute to the botton up news. How do we give them the tools to do so,

Audience Questions:

• one thing i talk to my kids is about the ratio of production and consumption? do you think new media changes this?
• HJ: Yes. it is increasing. % of young people producing is astronomical compared to others.  Look at Soulja Boy.  He tapped into social networks, got people to share the videos and music. The challenges are 2fold, if 57-60% are producing, what about the ones who do not have access, who do not feel empowered. those inequalities are things we need to talk about.  We have the media being circulated and things can go wrong, what happens when the adults don’t know what go wrong. We need parents to watch their back, to support.  We have to take responsibility to support them.
• SJ: Create vs Consume is a good way. Parents were coming up to me saying about limiting screentime - the difference between watchign and creating, it is the kindof things that they are doing.
• Q: how literally should I take the idea of collective intelligence. what individual skills are useful?
• HJ: collective intelligence - 2 ideas. one is wisdom of crowds, an aggregate model, all independently add info and it is averaged out. the other is about consensus. the levi model depends on diversity, without diversity then the outcomes is flat.  In that model there is no tension between individual and collective, they have to have their own contribution and input.  The difference between wikipedia and youtube.  YT is majoritorian, Wiki, is collective and diversity. On YT different voices are there but are hidden from view.
• Q:How about cyberaddiction, how people sit in front of a screen for hours and hours.
• HJ: the minute we use addiction language we are getting the wrong start. stay up all night reading a book then I’m learning. so what do people find so compelling about these activities. Can we make school as compelling. Addiction experts say that what we see are symptoms of depression, the challenge is to separate out tech from real problems of mental health. In China, the government use the word addiction to control access.
• Q: how are the online relationships change the social fabric.
• HJ: the social fabric was damaged in 50s - mobility, etc, the internet is part of repairing that damage, it gives us ways to maintain the connections. we meet more people than we ever did before, that is a large social force. we use tolls like sns to manage those relationships. Facebook now sends the CV with it, so it helps.
• Q: transformative abilities for creation - so how do we balance democratic and commercial.
• HJ: I’m an optimist. I believe in participatory culture. but if we take it as given that we have it then we will lose it.     we have to challenge the terms we are given. we have to hold companies accountable for their terms they give us that prevents participation.  when communities are commodified, when gift culture becomes UGC with no value, no revenue for creators. I’m excited about the organisation of transformative work, pooling knowledge of lawyers.  We can;t assume the interest of company owners and consumers are the same.
• SJ: because we come a the world as an optimist, we have used our writings to push for this, we are progressives, in thinking about the world, about where the progress is coming from.  There is reason for hope, looking at positive and empowering trends.
• Q: pink collar workers - hi level education, not using capacity in the job. what could be done?
• HJ: we need a workplace that harnesses the skills of these people.

I asked Tony what his favourites were - World of Warcraft.

Click To Play

I went along to the Social Breakfast organised by Ewan Spence this morning at Magnolia. I asked the table my question of the week. Will, from Austin, CC Chapman, Eric Skiff and VinVin

Click To Play

Aaron talks about Holiday Inn Express and Loren chips in with a comment about Geico

Some more interviews.

Hugh Macleod on Dove

Ewan Spence on Playstation Portable Games

Click To Play

Anastasia Goodstein brings together a group of teenagers to talk about how they use mobile and the web.

• they are early adopters but the tech needs to meet core needs. This is atalk with a panel of teens from ages 12-17
• What do you like? 
  • Goodreads.com, cos a social network site, plus reviews of books, purevolume.com, signed and unsigned bands, get a taste of a lot of stuff
  • myspace and facebook, cos create own layout and put pictures, customise the design, to communicate with friends and family (sisters)
  • myspace and facebook, more facebook cos it has addons - can make own superhero.  to be connected with everyone at school. Also Digg, Newsforgamers
  • myspace, hi5, to keep in touch with friends and family - especially on holiday times.  Looks for bands/music. Meet new people from school that I don’t know.   (is 12, and is 16 on myspace)
  • myspace, mixmatters - a music website, has artists, plus a mixtape website (datbizz)
  • 17.com, to keep updated with styles, not too good, does not tell you how to do the hairstyles. hipster.com, for playlists and new music.
  • myspace, to talk to friends and family. runescape. chat to people all over the world. (12, but 99 on myspace)
• What annoys you?
  • ads everywhere, distracting ones. They slow down the computers. On nba.com, ads for Miller between each vid that got annoying - the same things everytime.  Viral attack on myspace. Insterstitial ads are really annoying. Sound files on ads. Taking 6000 years to load - so much crap to load, 800000 video ads that pop up and stay there
• Are you getting social network fatigue?
  • not changed for me, I just check periodically. With facebook I use more, due to the add-ons
  • when first on myspace, I was checking every hour, going to everyone’s pages. Once added all the pages, then just check occasionally.
  • . when I got myspace (you had to you were a total social loser). They keep updating things to try and make it better but they do not need to  - messages and pictures but it’s not my life.
• It sounds like myspace is email for you? do you use email?
  • I created my email just to get into myspace. use it to register on sites.  for fanclubs etc.
  • I use email for my sisters, and teachers at school. I email to ask for homework etc.
  • The campus has email to contact teachers and school friends.  For business I have a ‘professional’ address, to get interviews, for reporting.  You have to be able to write an email, as myspace and IM abbreviatyeswords etc. we have to keep the writing skills.
• Do you use IM
  • no - when younger to talk to school
• Phones. So what kind of phone, did you want that kind of phone. What do you have on it?
  • Don’t have a phone
  • LG Music phone. Unlimited SMS, I have to text. play tetris a lot, no ring tones, as can;t use web on phones, occasionally bluetooth it.
  • TMobile Blackberry Pearl. It’s connected to email, unlimited testing - use it a lot. Like to play pacman. A lot of ringtones, get them from phonezoo - you can do their own. No web as too expensive.
  • Trakphone - no plan, cost. only for emergencies. so it’s never charged. no ringtones or wallpaper.
  • A older sprint phone, in about 4 pieces on my pocket. nothing special - calls and SMS.   Have emergency games if I was bored out of my mind.
  • A sony exersion. Listen to music, text. I plau games - pacman and dinerdash
  • Verizon LG camera. I use texts (500/month) I pay for this. I need the texts. I have ringtones, $3 and have tetris $5. Don’t have the money for a lot.  Use camera a lot to take pictures and send to friends
  • I can record videos and watch them
  • They said they could not live without (those who had had it a while)
• How about virtual worlds?  Social networks with avatars?
  • I have one in runescape, a lot of places are trying to copy this. I spend about an hour or so working to be rich in runescape
  • Xbox live is the closest. I play people on Halo.
  • I used to use Ziwinkie, It’s really dull and boring, about 2x a year. It’s noting different.
  • Runescape, Gaia online, played many different MMOs, the cost $50/month is a problem.  the pay to play is dying on me.
  • Ziwinki, I don’t use it anymore.did not want ot play anymore
  • Don’t really use it avatar stuff anymore.

Opened up for questions?

• I’m from marketing, trying to sell. With UGC, have you done these and what do you think?
  • I did something for YouTube, for AirJordan.  It was pretty easy to use (windows movie maker)
  • If I had a camera I would do
  • I had a video camera, I have done them, just never enter as miss the deadline. It’s cool, when you interact with something they are trying to sell, it is good makes you have a little feel that you have influence?
• Does it make you respect the brand?
  • If you open up, it makes me respect that company more - makes you feel better that they think you can do as well
• I’m curious about content -news, political, cause? do you consume that? What would make you do that?
  • reading Digg for news, getting things I’m interested in. YouTube and Digg etc.
  • Interested in the debates, keep up with that. On YouTube, and google news. Wikipedia (they all use wikipedia)
  • The Onion. It’s a kind of spoof..they bring me the paper.  Things that catch my attention are funny, or give a different angle. the news is so dead sometimes, you want to turn it off. Also the Human Rights Campaign.
  • (No one goes to main news pages)
• (From PETA) do you think you can effect change online, for causes.
  • Grain of Rice donation, I did
  • The school is growing vegetables to sell and donate to a (hepper?). The school donates money to Bhopal, we send cards etc.
• Would you rather do something physical?
  • Yes, cos you get to interact with people and find out about them
  • I liked the grain of raice, as it hid the cause behind the game
  • Things that are easy to do as far as websites, they can do it from their own home, an easy out to feel like they helped.
  • I have a couple of friends involved with peta, they leave bulletins on myspace. Doing stuff online gets my attention. eg posts about drunk driving, with graphic images. etc
• (Disney) are you watching shows on tv or computer?
  • I like dramas, Veoh, crunchieworld, a lot of foreign dramas. subtitled
  • ABC family to watch it there - go to the channels sites.
  • I watch the disney channel - TV and phone. Also on web and play games
  • Usually use the DVR.  Also the web
  • Veoh
  • Watch the disney online.  Also ABC family
• Are their any shows you have to watch?
  • Wrestling. they’re really cute. CSI
  • KyleXY when they on, my mom won’t record.  CSI - love to watch as there never anything else on.
  • anime - if I miss I go to veoh, if they don’t then go elsewhere.  Some spanish drama
• I’m from the antimarketing world, trying to stop companies in selling you stuff? Would you be interested in pushing back?
  • advertising is always going to be there to help fund the website. I would help a little bit, if I did not see any progress, then back off ;)  Some advertising - a new game of course
  • They need to go with what you are going to. on nba.com I don’t want to see beer. they have to stay on websites like ebay - where you are trying to buy things.
  • it’s bad enough, it’s on TV and billboards, it is important to sell things.  There needs to be in someplaces and not in places. mysp[ace when there are 600 banners around your page is really annoying.
• I work for an interactive advertising agency. we build a lot of teen and tween brand.coms. do you visit websites like that and what types have you gone to. for online ads, do you play games which are ads?
  • I do like to play the little games,
  • WhatNext - on tv and I had to go to the site.  Maybe.
  • Tropicana - they were giving away free xbox points.
• I’m from Gamelab. how about little flashgames?
  • addictinggames.com, I like doing that.
  • the computer I use is too old, so won’t work. I like them, but can;t really play them. I think they are cool.
  • go to game sites, play new games,
  • newgrounds. a flash portal to submit games. albinoblacksheep, ebaumsworlds. not blocked on school I will go.  lots of flash games.
  • (they all know how to get round the blocks)
• Do you go outside?
  • yes. still have friends, go outside, play on basketball team
  • I go to camp, I have a job
  • football. but always on the computer, there’s nothing wrong with that, right?
• when you make plans with your friends - online, phone or person.
  • sms.
  • in person during school
  • in person or on the phone.
  • there’s a reason they invented the phone - in person or text.
• have any of you gone to a party base don a bulletin
  • no
• what don’t marketers get about the web? If you could have a greater say in how brands appear on the web would that be better
  • most adverts are very annoying, unless they are clever. I don’t like ads
  • I like give aways,

Tags: sxsw, teenpanel

Read this from Ewan, notes from a SXSW Music Panel on Is Google Evil? With no consumer representation on the panel and no questions from the floor without being written down and screened by the moderator

and I forced my question into the discussion flow. “Can we ask who represents the consumer on this panel?” The answer? “No you can’t ask.” (Eric Rice has a chain of thought blog posts starting at the above link as well). I’m sorry, I’m going to debate strongly that it should be asked. Turns out the audience was on my side and wanted the question answered as well. Result? End of Panel, thank you for coming.

Again my rough notes; this was one of fun ones here, i recommend you grab this podcast when it comes out.

Blogger Hugh MacLeod has espoused the notion of “The Global Microbrand” or a small, tiny brand that sells globally. The Global Microbrand is nothing new but with the advent of the Internet and blogging it’s much easier for merchents and even consultants to reach a global audience. For many, blogging is an avenue to creating a personal Global Microbrand and getting off of the corporate hamster wheel. This panel will focus on the two most well known stories — English Cut and Stormhoek — showing how blogging has changed the rules and allowed small players to break out and play to a global audience.

Hugh MacLeod Blogger, gapingvoid.com
David Parmet Owner, Marketing Begins At Home LLC
Gabe Rivera CEO, Techmeme
Kathy Sierra CreatingPassionateUsers

David: please give us some a definitions

Hugh: a small business, but instead of local community stuff, it has a global community of customers and users and people who care about them. as a blogger it is tempting to think you could not have that with out the web. but not true, look at holland and holland, shotguns, that cost about $120k; their reputation is world wide and everyone buys from there eventually, if a shotgun geek. make 200 guns a year. they do not want to grow further with guns, but are extending in other ways. been around about 200 years. now you do not have to wait that long to be there with the web. now I’m recession proof, income from all over the planet. can build community with a blog. I don’t have a boss anymore and no-one can tell me what to do. i have a constituency of several thousand people, some give me money and some don’t. it’s not about how easy it is to make money, the key is freedom and personal sovereignty. I don’t have to work in a cube in a glass building with a dickless boss.

David: so how does techmeme fit in?
Gabe: it’s fueled by people’s global microbrands (GM). it’s a news site, there’s a lot of news sites but a lot of other kind of people who are not really trying to report news but are also writing stuff ..with an identity that transcends their job, that translates into excellent future opportunities. a lot of these people have great first hand knowledge, or axe to grind (which can make news interesting). Robert Scoble is an excellent example of a GM, a following that moves with him. he has a personal brand. look at Jeremy Zawodny and Matt Cutts, they got into a war about who was copying whom [their respective companies]…an inside account about what it was like to complete in these companies. they come out as voice of companies even though not their day job. do this to promote own GM, but provide content that is for the good of the web. As a GM you are not going to advertise, so you have to create content that people will link to and value. create stuff that people want to repeat, that people want to augment, put stuff out there that people want to attack or bash.

David: Kathy, on tips on how to grow GM

Kathy: i was inspired by Hugh, 2 years ago, the big moment for me when I had a higher ranking that my publisher. (O”Reilly) on Technorati I would not have started if I had not lost my job at Sun.. now I would not go back. the rules I follow may not be agreed with, other people have had success with some of the things I say not to do. they come to me all the time, asking how to get readers. so here are the 7 virtues of the GM

Be grateful.. the single most important one. every moment people give us attention to read us…so with 55m blogs..for someone to spend 30 seconds on yours..i never stop being grateful, it is a gift and the day I forget this is the day it stops.

Be Humble: a lot of people find this difficult. don’t make it all about you. you have to give something back. our job is to make people feel better about themselves, not us. we want people to think that they rock. you want the reader to say that they are brilliant, not that the product or company is brilliant.

Be Patient: we did not think about monetising, we thought about giving what we could give. give them info that is helpful. see what happens. you have to wait. took about a year, year and half to have bigger ranking than hugh

Be Brave: you need to grow thick skin, the critics come out with popularity, they can be brutal. I got slammed and I started pulling back..I needed to take own advice, do stuff that is love or hate, not mediocre.

Show respect: recognise the value of time you give me is really worth a lot. enchant your users. give your readers superpowers. respect what people are coming there to see.

Be generous - giveaway your knowledge, what i get paid to do, is the stuff i do online as well. I help people with presentations, send them slides, will talk and advice. tell people how you do what you do. Do a learning blog..if you can teach people how to do it. we give away what we can, be inspirational and motivational. it;s the outside expert syndrome..f someone says says it it is more meaningful. remember talk to the brain not the mind, therefore don’t blog the cat..dont; name drop! It;s not about you. the people who have taken it, have been pretty successful.

David: the blog is a resume. you will piss people off who may be potential clients…but there is a flip side.

Audience Questions:

Q: how do you demonstrate that you are grateful.

Hugh: if they leave a really nice comment, then I will quote it. readers can tell whether you find them interesting. I’m bad a responding in comment section, I wish I was better. you try and be nice. I don’t put up with trolls, I will tell the to fuck themselves. I quote in follow up posts, I”ll link to URL, I’m comment. you get all these interesting people and you can learn so much from them. link to people who read rather than the a-list.

Q: you don’t have time to respond all…so how give back without an overload point?

Hugh: with great difficulty. I took Stormhoek to bloggers. i want people to think it is real. offered to all bloggers. you don’t have to be an influencer, we sponsored geek dinners. we wanted to start a conversation, believe good things would happen down the road. 2 years ago we were selling 40k cases a year..and now we sold 40k cases last week.

Kathy its been quite some time since I could keep up with comments. I’m trying to respect peoples time with posts I make. I do graphs so that people can get idea without reading post do it, get the idea, respect the time, I don’t post all the time; if I’m busy and can’t add value, I won’t clutter the feed with posts for posts put quality not just posts.

Q: (Tara Hunt) it s a problem of volume, of being important, you read too much, have followers…it was an important step when I stopped reading techmeme. the more readers I got, the less care I took. I had to let go of the drug. the relationships are more quality.

Hugh: before stormhoek, I was working with Thomas, tailor. I built him a blog. his business tripled inside 6 months. now he gets 3 more suits for every order..he has 6mnths waiting list to get on waiting list! he does not care about Technorati rankings, trackbacks. he does not care about the technorati mafia. he cares about making the best suits in the world and his customers. when I talk about a GM, I’m not talking about consultants with blogs, I’m talking about people who make products.

David: it’s not about reaching the most people, it’s about reaching the right people.

Hugh: at the beginning we were following the numbers with English Cut…then we focused more on the business. Tara’s transition from numbers to letting go is the same.

Gabe: forget metrics and then you find your own footings..then you do better.

Q: (Brian Overkirk) can you talk about the other things that come from it. stories about the tiny victories that mean a great deal

Kathy: i year ago I posted about my seizure disorder, i blogged it, and a reader wrote to me with advice and a new drug I would not be here without that advice

Hugh: David was a blog reader, left comments, he lost his job and blogged about it, so I blogged about it, asked people to hire him. with english cut, i started a traveling service where thomas would visit in NY hotels. we needed PR, I knew nothing about PR so I asked David. David was them working for us, we got in NYT which tipped the scale and we were taken seriously. he’s not this fantasy tailor blogger. next thing Scoble and Shel Israel were righting a book, talking about Thomas, David and I hooking up in the book. and now David has the reputation of being The Suit Guy.

Gabe: when I launched in 2005 I was reading a bunch of blogs I found useful, I had a lot of respect for people writing the, over time, every single one of those have said they have found my site useful and that is personal success for me.

David: its about meeting people..it;s about being able to convince my kids they don’t have to works a the big glass building with dickless death…

Q: I get a kick out of being here…a kick because you come to know people, it may be a one way relationship; you can figure out that you have similarities,in cube land you forget there are people like you.. it;s not about how often you publish…snot sure how long you have..so do it with quality. I appreciate what has come out of panel, i see so many people trying to be popular..2 quotes come to mind…Jerry Garcier - at first you worry about copying and then you get your own sound. and the other quote was stop worrying about the best you can do and start being the only one. so, you are all awesome

hugh: go back 2-3 years…we all started hitting critical mass, we’d spent a few years writing and then we had a business week article and the next thing you know this may be real. i get to write what want, i have the readers I want and I am grateful for that. it makes me happy when other people make a good go of it. and real jobs do suck the more people who find something remarkable and can express it to the world the happier this would well be.

Katthy: i always try and take it one step further…my job is to make someone be kick-ass at what they do. take focus off myself, i did not want it to be about me, it’s about helping others. I’m happy now, I reaching more people and that is what is rewarding to me.

Q: (Chris Messina) i find helping people kick-ass the better I feel. I wanted to share an anecdote….I started at LesBlogs in Paris…I thought i had to sound really smart, be really articulate, but then I went out (drinking heavily) with Tom Rafferty and he had told me to stop thinking about having an audience and think about 3 or 4 people you are writing to, as an email.. once is abandoned the idea of writing to a large audience…I was able to get a lot more out of it personally and were able to speak with a clear voice. I used to work for Flock…the work I was doing there represents me, the people i work for reflect what me is. once flock stopped representing me and my values. , I left

Hugh: questions for you.I think the best way to get approval is not to need it

Chrsi - I had to give myself permission.

Q: you say that blogging is a great way to make things happen indirectly, look at twitter, social objects etc. what is your take is.

Hugh: a had this idea, i did this cartoon. ” if you talk to people the way advertising people talk, they would punch you in the face.” [one of the cartoons I rotate as my desktop at work] you start a conversation, you start rather random. i started putting cartoon out in hi res. they can be printed. is ell things, but you can still download. you’ve taken the time to read my stuff and I want you to enjoy it.

It’s all about love!!! and don’t forget to google social object.

These are the live notes from Will Wright’s Keynote. no context or analysis yet.

Some insiders believe that SPORE may be the most ambitious most highly anticipated computer game in history. USA Today calls it “gaming’s giant leap.” The New Yorker says it explores the “limitless possibility of life itself.’ And the New York Times, suggests that SPORE ‘deserves to be seen as a work of art.’ Drawing on inspirations that range from the SETI project to the Eames movie, The Powers of Ten, SPORE takes gaming to an unprecedented scope and scale to the concept of life itself. You begin as a microscopic cell struggling to survive in the primordial soup. If you can evolve, growing and gaining intelligence, you can travel a vast galaxy deciding the fate of entire planets. Join us as Will Wright, the visionary game designer behind SPORE and arguably the most celebrated game designer of our time will discuss his plans to bring to life vast beauty and possibility offered by our universe, and create a game that encourages every player to consider his or her place in the galaxy. He will also address the challenges of developing a narrative in non-linear and linear mediums, and explore his inspirations for the game. This session should not be missed.

I was not intending to present Spore, I was preparing a presentation of story. But then read the speach notes…so I will mash them up.

I’ll tell you I hate the stories my computers try and tell me. Novels have been the model, I’ll tell you about the nature of story. I look at the world as a simulation, things cause changes in other things, a dense web events, but a story is a causal chain. stories are unchanging and linear. games are mesh, many interactions. movies are visual, games are interactive. when we take control away from player we take the most important thing away. moving interactive to passive. games are a branching tree. we try and find the compressed rule set to give all the possible options when we design and build games for computers.

There is topology difference btw games and story - dense to open. you can present a dramatic arc with movie when all viewers feel the same. the game arc is very different, it is not a dramatic arc, you can repeat things all the time. we think linear drama is more compelling than interactive.

Stores based on language, empathy, imagination.

actors are emotion-sims, emotional avatars

Film has a rich emotional palette as they have avatars - joy etc, games appeal more to the basic instincts. pride accomplishment, guilt, expression.

Appeal is empathy for film whereas games are agency, i can chose what happens in games. both build models on different ways empathy vs agency

you are stuck in a timestream but we want to move experiences outside either outside place or time. story allows learning

experiences - play or story - an abstraction - models - help predict further and change behaviour

the best way to prevent the future is to predict it

stories start out, with characters, the structure is fuzzy at this point. once it starts you see the sequence and all acts narrow the range of possibilities. In your head you imaging eh the possibilities whilst watching films,

at the end, you start amplifying, dramatic amplifications, at the end of start wars there are 2 major possibilities. - will the rebels be blown up or the Death Star.

the biggest obstacle in interactive is that in linear the director knows the end state; interactive you don’t they are chaotic systems, Stories show causal chain as it is relevant, with interactive you can’t. film makers are playing with this causal chain; much in literature, films such as magnolia or timecode show multi threads. I like films that take a massive left turn, change the expectations. Momento plays with causal chain. each point causes you to reevaluate what you know. deeper in the story you were having to reconstruct what happened.

Groundhog day is a brilliant film, it felt the most like a game. goes through he same things again. with restarts. the director knew future and past, you could skip over things you filled it in. we should do this in games. let players skip levels if they keep failing. The real world does not have a restart, but it makes games interesting

Game stories can be branches or gated; early adventure stories…pick your pages. branching models. they get expensive if you deepened the story

Gates - within level have freedom, then have to get to next level etc. have different topologies. you have subgoals etc. and you have hybrids btw gated and branches. all of these things just throw data at problem.To double experience you need 4x as much work

New approaches are generated stories, have story fragments, have a trigger and result conditions, you can put the bits together to put story together. got more potential than has been explored; not clear what level we want to do.

Player stories…they are unintentional, subversive, expressive. players have stories about how they were playing in a game, describing what they did. Players come across bugs etc and they make the back story for it. Subversive stories are where players are trying to push out the envelope. they get excited about finding exploits. Expressive…they are like the sims, they have an intentional message, I developed a character in GTA, I hung around, finding what I wanted. I did not like messages, just wanted to hang and tell stories

With Sims, players they would be verbalising the story as they played it. they were dealing with parallel simulation but turning into linear stories. players were good at creating stuff and showing off; we put a site to collect the stories. they were like small novels. Then there’s the whole machinima movement. They are entertainment and meaningful stories, allowing people to express what is happening in their life.

so we have storytelling and story listening. with interactive entertainment, it’s more interesting to me to think about listening to stories, teaching computers to listen. let computers get understanding, understand the theme. the computer learns the story that is in the players head. you can look at stories at different levels, have the computer understand, is it girl meets girl or teen slasher etc. if we know the goal states we can present obstacles, to amplify the drama. if we can parse, present, influence/assist and then replay as a movie. we can change the the environment, drive events to clarify he story. I suspect this is more likely to happen with a lot of parallel learning, watching millions of players. this is close to truman show. the computer is like the director of the truman show. It can control environment but not violate freewill. the truman show and groundhog day are both closest to games,

Looking into the future there is this concept called the magic circle; everyone respects the rules of the game, those outside the circle do not ness respect the rules. in the circle you agree to follow them.

stories are similar, they sit around together and have similar things. storytelling has evolved, as has story.

We went from small groups, to epic with films and then started circling back to home, ipods etc, back to being a small group. we can do fractal stories, 3 min things from YT. stories circles change in time space. diversifying across platforms. there are many game niches and story niches.

Linear entertainment is watched at a fairly similar percentage across ages; interactive participation has a strong peak in the younger groups. Games are not just about story and sports, are now evolving as hobbies, tools are increasing and we start to fulfill design aspirations. players love making content. They like making, sharing and collecting, people like organising the power of collective effort is amazing, there is a quality vs quantitative; most is crappy, some OK, some great. as tools be better we should be able to increase the quality of what they are doing.

Players are building mental models in their head and we now have chance for the computer to build models of people, how they play, what they do, how they move, what they buy, what networks do they do.

We can build fairly elaborate models predicting behaviour. give tools when they can build things and then get the computer to amplify…the asset they build has value.

So take what they have made, see what other things they may like and bring it back into he world. move player away from being Luke Skywalker and playing a role and to George Lucas and making a story.

With Spore, we wanted to make the universe a game. There has been a lot of friction for players to create, so in this case the process of creating is the process of playing the game. we want the game to share automatically. we can build an infinite sized worlds.

[there followed a demo of the world, building, creating, moving between the dimensions of gameplay]

i want the game to bring up issues for players, history and future of life. philosophical implications are huge. i think of the games as elaborate montessori tools. how can they learn. this is a phil tool so that you can think about life. so what happens when you have your planets - we have weather, geology. climate etc. you can terraform. and you can destroy. game play at certain levels based on my favourite science fictions, eg the monolith tool from 2001 to raise intelligence etc. As I travel I can build up an encyclopedia of everything I have seen. over time you can explore larger and larger areas, se the entire galaxy, things are built b the players.

technology is an extension of the human body, computers do a lot of things, but importantly they extend our imagination. we use for entertainment, education communications, etc. so how does this impact? we go through a major shift every now and again, social changes, etc technology is driving paradigm shits more often, the rate is more frequent, political changes, social issues, environment issues, warnings etc about what is happening,

games have a reputation as a time waster, but they can much more, they can change how we see the world, how we behave. we can navigate the future with a little more intelligence than we could before.

Over the years, Central Texas has emerged as the mecca of massively multiplayer game development. Why did this happen and what does this mean? How will the massively multiplayer market change in the next five to ten years — and, assuming such changes occur, will Austin be able to retain it’s position as the geographical leader of this genre?

Moderator: Gordon Walton Co-Studio Dir, BioWare Austin
Gordon Walton Co-Studio Dir, BioWare Austin
John Blakely VP of Dev, Sony Online Entertainment
J Todd Coleman Dir, KingsIsle Entertainment Inc
Shannon Cusick Orbis Games LLC
Richard Garriott NCsoft Interactive

Q: what advantages does Austin have?

Cusick: networking, companies already here, relaxed attitude, environment, resources. College students; existing gaming industry
Blakely: about 30 or so known game companies in Austin. talent base is here; getting people with that experience is invaluable. lots of support from state government. talent pool is stressed and this is a great place to attract them.
Coleman: talent pool is the biggest attraction. and austin is pretty sticky, people want to stay even if move away from your company. Austin is also ripe for deals - known, resources, community leverage etc.
Garriott: agree with everything said. and there is another special aspect - thought technically competitors we are all very friendly, especially in MMO space. these games are big, take a long time, relative infrequent and so rarely head to head. also no signs yet at being at saturation, so successful games help each other. Churn rate is under a year, so all these games out for multiple years, every game that has had over 100k subscribers still has that, even after 10 years for some year. each new release does not cannibalise. it’s a rapid growth segment, and with good conscious we can root for each other.
Walton: talent is mobile, people get brought in. it is totally environment based; we have high tech meets creativity meets tolerance. you can be weird here, there is tolerance for it. a lot of places that were making games are making less than before, we used to be spread out and now we cluster

Q: what are the disadvantages?

Garriott: i see a problem, our demand for certain education levels, skill sets and experience has tapped out the market and cannot find a wide variety of people, such as 3d artists, 3d software engineers. in some specialties we have to compete, with outside town, state and country. have opened large office in china to get talent pool. definitely not cheaper and easier but truely cannot find staff I need.
Coleman: harder and harder to find people which I why I keep stealing them from you richard. need to educate people in general about how big the games industry is in Austin and how much an impact it will have. music and film get the press but games is a staggeringly large impact and does not get press.
Games are growing and this will continue to be a burden.
Walton: we need hits to attract talent, as we have not had a lot recently. Financing side, we only have small publishers in town. we are not where the money goes but we are where the work goes. the digital distribution gives us an advantage

Q: who are our competitors
Cusick: california, (SD/LA) and east coast. Baltimore etc.
Blakely: seattle, consoles etc. WoW growth, people will go there. I keep a close watch on Blizzard.
Coleman: I don;t spend a lot of my tome thinking about competition in this space. the job os to come up with a creative vision and see it through. who is doing things, similar, is not as important, the biggest thing is losing people and then they would have gone to austin not another city
Garriott: our biggest competitor is ourselves, we will live and die on game quality and how we educate how big the industry.
Walton: West coast, aligning with Asia which is a centre of gravity.

Q: Where do you see the MMO market going 5-10 years?

Garriott: that’s one product cycle?? it eveolves slowly; I hope my new game shakes it up a little; most MMOs are built in model of everquest, they are refined but in similar. that is the first thing that needs to change. we need to bring in elements of other kinds of gameplay.
Coleman: you’ll see different business model, ads, freeplay and pay for powerups etc. you will see some implosions, there us a lot of money coming in, attracting investment, you are starting to see deals going to teams that have not done it before. and what we do is not easy, you have all these problems. every hard problems is there to solve. as well as the tech issues it still needs to be fun. we will see a lot of large losses, with really dramatic wins, and interesting play out of places we do not expect.
Blakely: the console..what does MMO mean on console. there is a shared experiences etc so how d we tackle that. we need less traditional play and we need to deliver the new stuff.
Cusick: want it to be as big as hollywood and this the place to be.
Walton: they are still in their beginning as our iteration cycle is slow, so when we think about MMOs they are part of one big landscape. there is opportunity to branch out. The tools are getting better which means that smaller teams can do stuff; only huge hi cost teams have been able to do things for a while. those are the opportunities.

Audience Questions

Q: traffic and housing will impact life quality…would like to understand…content creation in SL, is this a way to bring in creative types? what is your comment on SL environment and is anything going on in Austin about this?

Garriott: when thinking UGC I think of pen/paper and D&D. the early adopters were all good story tellers, small audience. as it expanded you lost the storytellers and it was no longer fun. the majority of UGC is not exceptional and is abhorrent to wade few. but we only employ a small % of the talented people. so provide a tool set and let the creative excellence bubble up. the largest MMOs who have tried UGC have failed in the sorting process..we need to solve this. we need to filter and push the good stuff. there needs to be an economic feedback loop to drive to the good stuff.
Blakely: We announced our Home at GDC; we need to provide tools that allow people express themselves. still a puzzle we are trying to work out.
Walton: the concept of ownership is very sticky. if I won something in a game I am stuck in the game, so tapping into it is important.

Q: Perplex city - we are sending people on quests, we have developed a permanent large world. everyone seems to be ending up in the same areas but approaching form different areas.

Walton :not everyone is going after massive audiences, may 80% of us are. mass markets are not where most MMOs and ARGs are going forward, a lot of niche markets.
Cusick: most of our stuff is niche, but we would like to do mainstream stuff.
Blakely: gameplay has roots in a community of shared story. It;s a new thing about story telling, all mediums coming together. Look at the Heroes community. we will see more of this across all mediums.
Garriott: as attractive as find metaverse games, but it is never going to be a best game as a particular niche, ie games are cool in one part of offerings that are out there.

Q: it was difficult to build games and have a life outside how do you ensure the workers have a life?

garriott: I spent many years with 12+ work days 7 days a week. once i could afford it, but now I have many more interests. for the last game we have a policy against crunch mode, we keep demands low, no more that 8-10 hrs a day. I think we have a well managed overtime policy; we manage the crunches well, we think lifestyle is important
Cusick 0I’m a firm disbeliever in crunch time
Blakely: we try and be smarter about how we do games, looking at new techs, educate the investors, publishers etc. mange the efficiency. Keeping it measured and predictable etc. in an increasingly competitive environment you need the talent to stay around.
Coleman: if you kill people up to launch, then when it launches it is dead, you need people on top form then.
Walton: yet to see creative business that can run to a schedule; we have good intentions, the challenge will remain to do what we set out to do; there is never enough time or money. we are purely managed, have little foresight about times and crunches are always a possibility. have to be s,art enough to minimise it, years away from being able to build a plan
Coleman: not sure you ever can build to plan.

Q: you made a comment that austin is where the work goes not the money - can you elaborate why and what can the city do to help?

Gariott: we are one of the publishers, compared to west coast we have close to zero publishers. They go through investment and withdraw from outside publishers. we have to get them in town to keep them here. None of the things for other industries have been offered to hi tech industries etc have not been offered to the game industries, eg tax benefits.

Q: the film board has said the same the other day, the same thing that the game industry are looking for, can someone do the same thing?

Garriott: I’m a convergence sceptic, but while there are some concept artists that can do art, that is the beginning and end of convergence; the same people cannot do both industries.
Coleman: skillset is difficult to cross over but IP is not. there are some cross overs from distribution, PR etc. but a lot of key differences.
Blakely: we are part of Sony Pictures..we find it tough to cross over. look to invest here, but money will always go back to west coast.
Walton: he who has the money makes the rules. the money is not here, it is Dallas, Houston. you need to finance it here or you just be a job shop.

Q: Are Sony doing a good job of promoting the games division?

Blakely: yep. our chairman has done an amazing job of letting us run our business. They are hands off, but look for opportunities to leverage IP. we have shared resources on recent products. Still a challenge internally figuring out the corss overs.

Pervasive Electronic Games

Julian Bleecker (USC/Near Future)
Dennis Crowley (Dodgeball/Google)
Aaron Myers (USC Interactive Media)
Kevin Slavin (Area/Code)

This panel presents and discusses unique aspects of the design issues and technologies involved in developing “pervasive electronic games.” Pervasive electronic games are experiences that move game play into the real world, outside of the usual venues in which electronic gaming occurs. Moving from sedentary venues (living room, video game parlors) into more quotidian spaces is made possible by the proliferation of mobile communications devices, ubiquitous network access, global position sensing and electronic location tagging.

Julian: motivaton for these come from play forms, from children’s games, before electronic games etc. Been looking at different kinds game gestures; noticed that gestures are similar to electronic games. the RL gestures can inform online games. also been looking at how game interfaces have evolved. looking at how RL activities can them become a game.

Aaron: representing MobZombies, a game with a simple premise. you are guy with an exposed brain being chased by a bunch of zombies. you move around in RL to move character in the game world. Use 2 sensors to co-ord motion - a digital compass and an accelerometer. there is a continuing growing hoard of zombies you need to avoid and bombs to stop them. we are working on a version that can work i=on a mobile form. it works on a Sony Vaio thing now but looking for a phone version and a streamlined version of the sensor rig. looking to release as a kit for people to build own games etc.

Kevin: (reprised his PSFK talk - but the audience seems to be more appreciative). underneath pervasive games is an instinct to lie radically about where we are or to develop instinct. Games meet a need; most places are real, most stories are not. But places are becoming fictional. the need for stories does not stop with tech. You see geocaching, superstar, Games with computers in them, not the other way round.

Dennis: Dodgeball is about knowing where your friends are, where they have checked in, encourages rendezvous behaviour. Developed as my thesis project, working on games with Kevin to pay the rent. tried to take some of the game elements and add them to Dodgeball. mainly stats. introducing some of these competitive elements drove usage. Grew up on games; competition with brother. So how do you make real life into a video game; made Pedometer wars; record the stats and see who ‘wins’ by walking the most. has potential to change the way you experience a public space. got to elevator or stairs…then you may win more..walk more. condition you to change behaviour. but the pedometer was dumb, not networked, got boring. At the same time or so Nike+ came out; tracking through shoe, you can see your runs etc, lots of stats so I’m in love with this. then started adding multiplayer stuff, can make challenges. Extra motivation to run! Then started to be able to plot runs - but not really location aware so have to plot on maps. One day I was running and saw a graffiti and thought about the ability to run at graffiti and get super special powers…but got lazy and did not work out. Now go skiing most weekends…now in competition for skiing, eating, runs etc. Bought GPS, on phone and garmin. Got data off..every 15sec takes a reading and gets a download. Collected all the points, mapped out the mountain. now I can map myself or others to the map and turn the skiing into a game. Thought about RC PowerAm…putting those powerups and putting on the mountain…play games about getting to the powerups etc. No real time feedback etc but looking for it next year. Waiting for NIke+ plus GPS plus connectivity to enable this game to go to next level.

Audience Questions

Q: when is Dodgeball coming to SaltLake City
Dennis: don;t know but looking to expand all the time!

Q: How much does it cost and what traffic. are they happy with ROI? (Sopranos)
Kevin: yes, rest take offline
Q: what were the measures?
A: a new way if talking about it etc..take offline

Q: there are blurring of lines between these and ARGs?
Aaron: our games have tighter link to digital games; response to your actions. ARGS typically don;t have this dynmic, physical to digital
Kevin: 2 things that are different - a lot of args focus on puzzle solving, collective intelligence, not ness the types of things that we focus on, we look at systems that people use to play instead of constructing distributed narrative.

Q: How do you solve the discovery, how do you let people know it is OK to play?
Kevin: one is event based and one is pervasive in on all the time. and there is something all the middle, ie an infrastructure for ad hoc events, always available for people to take part. so how do you discover you have tetris on phone? it;s business problems; another is to have a physical aspect.
Dennis - it;s difficult to do as pick up games at moment as equipment is niche, as they tech becomes more ubiquitous its gets easy
Aaron: not sure if mobZombies can be pickup. one of our motivations was to make people look silly and not sure where to go now.
Kevin: with Plunder, the resolution of real world is large and the likelihood of people being together is low; so proximity foes not have to synchronous, it can have what happened here at some time.

Q: where do you see this going?
Dennis: I see NYC as a whole bunch of magic squares, geographic triggers, when you go by something will happen. van get more people to interact with the world, with people in same areas. it;s all about location, all the work I’ve being doing is on this. We are still closer to this, but soon devices will be location enabled.
Kevin: the phone is location aware, but we cannot access. it is not tech problem but a business problem. I want to see the business problems solved.

Q: any general principles to bring people between real and virtual?
Dennis: nned to get dots on map and then you can start things happening.

Q: will location based devices stop you from exaggerating and lying about where you are. any thoughts about this?
Kevin: the goal is to misrepresent yourself, not to lie to others. the question is about how to harness for imagination, not flase information.

Q: In Perplex City we started looking at location etc, in the UK we can get access to data but in the US there is a major business problem that means we could not do it here. we started looking at making it ourselves.
Kevin: you have to understand how retarded we are in the US with all this stuff. there are very few reasons to be optimistic in the short term. the handsets have gps, but a problem in city. we like wifi positioning its free and you can get pretty accurate.

Q: a lot of these games are multiplayer, looking at engaging communities. what about multiplayer for mobZombies and how can running across a mushroom augment your running
Aaron: single player etc, tech reasons affect multiplayer.
Dennis: for a single player it can be power up…but still applicable as compete against yourself. Potentially looking at interactive, letting location elements give me a different experience.