Month: December 2006

Alternative Reality Gaming Whitepaper

Jane McGonigal on ARGs

The ARG SIG has written a whitepaper for Alternative Reality Games – ARGs.

This is the first paper from the ARG SIG, and provides a full introduction to the genre as well as a wealth of practical and analytical information on design methodologies, business models, and current and recent games.

The ARG industry is consistently producing multi-million-dollar games for tens of thousands of players at a time, and generating interest across the entertainment, broadcast, and advertising industries. In the last few years, successful games have received widespread recognition, winning awards from the gaming, media and broadcasting industries. As well as these critical success, there are already several businesses with long-term sustainable revenue streams.

Although new to many people, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are still far short of achieving their full potential, each new wave of games bringing major new innovations and increased understanding of what works and what doesn't. We hope you find both inspiration and real practical help in this paper, and look forwards to playing the next wave of ARGs you come up with.

The word in the communities around ARGs is that it royally sucks. As Christy points out in a note BBCi did Jamie Kane not Crossmedia entertainment and there's meant to be lots more errors and mistakes. For the full low down listen to the ARGN podcast 25mins from the end.

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The end of screensavers?

Widgets everywhere

Something I picked up somewhere today. The concept of a screensaver is quite simple.

A screensaver is a computer program originally designed to conserve the image quality of computer displays by blanking the screen or filling them with moving images or patterns when the computers are not in use. Today, screensavers are primarily used for entertainment or security purposes.

So with all the best screensavers now being RSS or internet connected and widget engines being common on desktops now. Doesn't it make sense to do away with screensavers and go for a special widget mode. For example it would be really cool if instead of going to a screensaver, the computer simply moved all the windows and applications back and showed the desktop and an array of widgets. Like most widget engines, it could dull the background so you avoid the burn-in effect. I'm also thinking the widgets in that mode would be either be locked or ones which are informational only. So you can't bypass security through a widget. Anyway it was just a thought….

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Flicker music podcast

Minimus EP cover

My friend Paul Crowley has created a flipping awesome podcast for his and Gareth Cole's exclusively online music lablel Flicker Tracks.Yes Flicker with an E not without the E. Anyway his just launched a new EP called Minimus and decided the 30secs preview you get from the Apple iTunes store wasn't enough for slow building arrangements which you find in a lot of house and trance music. And he's very right, there's tracks which sound nothing like the first 2 mins because thats your build up period (or mix period) then the track comes alive with something amazing which suprises the listener. Paul says it much better that myself

We decided that it is important that anyone interested in our material can hear significantly more than the 30 seconds currently afforded by iTunes. This is particularly important with club focussed music, where lengthy intros facilitate equally lengthy and seamless DJ mixes. Slow-build arrangements don’t necessarily reveal the true nature of the track in the opening bars, or in fact, in any given 30 second sample.

It’s always been true that the medium has dictated the format and length of mass produced music (from wax cylinders through to compact discs) but in this instance, the promotional method is creating an artificial limitation – the medium is not at fault. It is as if when writing material, you should now produce the musical equivilent of the elevator pitch to have the greatest chance of commercial success.

Were we to write and arrange our material so that the first 30 seconds gives the casual listener a more representative sample of what’s to come, we would then risk rendering the material less appropriate for the intended context – a club (which of course is creating another restriction on form, but one that we choose intentionally). Anyway, all this technology is supposed to be about creativity and freedom of expression, right?

Your damm right Paul. I've added the podcast to this entry which I hope will give it even more visability and I don't think Paul will mind. It would be easier for others to do the same if there was a creative commons licence like Attribution-NoDerivs License attached to the podcast. Then people could play it, copy it and even play it on a commercial radio station. I would also add – it would be great to have included a little tracklist (maybe linked to the direct track on itunes) in the blog post. But it was great to hear louise's voice over the music, very professional sounding.

So about the actual tracks.

1st track minimus – is damm fat and heavy, I like it and might have to get it for net Saturday's Bash.

2nd track bring you too – is a nice rich leader track. Something I would use to bring the crowd to a new place. This is certainly what I think of when thinking progressive or tech house.

3rd and 4th tracks are not quite my style but sound like something I would dance to in a house club.

5th track skidmark – is another fatty track perfect for playing in a bar, warm and smooth, perfect for a slightly upbeat lounge club. Saturday is calling its name.

So Paul it worked, your elevator pitch of a podcast has made me considered buying some of your tracks. Now if it wasn't in itunes encrypted mpeg4 audio (AAC) I could use it in a DJ set next weekend. Oh well…

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Finally got my conference proposal notification for Etech 2007

So I finally recieved what I suspected already…

Dear Ian,

On behalf of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2007 program committee, I want to thank you for your recent proposal:

“Web 2.0 down the spout (or how web 2.5 will be about plumbing)” and
“The community inside and outside your firewall”

We were very pleased with the uniformly high quality submissions we received. Thank you for your interest in sharing your work with the technical community. While your proposal was considered closely, we are not able to include it in the program this year.

In most cases proposals are declined because the topic of the talk or tutorial was already covered in another presentation, or the subject matter was too narrow or vendor specific. This year we also had far too many great talks to fit into the number of slots available.

Ben made a good point a while ago. I should be asking why they didn't make the cut. Get some feedback so I can take all this into account when submitting to Xtech 2007.

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