For Easter – A Chocolate Cthulhu
Here’s what I wanted for Easter – a chocolate Cthulhu!
Choc-thulu
How Twitter Users Respond to a Crisis
This is really interesting initial research (also see here) looking into the earthquake in New Zealand and how users of social media, in this example Twitter, responded to the crisis. What seems to happen is users turn to social media as a means of self-organisation (information sharing) and self-informing (forwarding news deemed salient):
So, this would seem to support the ‘ambient journalism’ idea: in the immediate aftermath, Twitter users’ focus turns to making sense of what’s happening, by sharing information and amplifiying (through retweets) the material coming from key news organisations; later, attention turns from news to more practical advice on how to respond to and recover from the disaster.
As you can see, the term used to cover this duel-role of self-organisation and self-informing is ‘ambient journalism’. This seems to be a mix of activity that includes retweeting news (esp. news from local and/or major news organisations) as well as a degree of discussion. There also seems be be a rapid identification and then amplification of those social media users who are in an important positions, in the middle of events. The analysis of twitter users showed:
Before 25 Feb [the date of the quake], it’s news organisations like @nzherald and @NZStuff who get the most @replies (including, I’m willing to bet, a vast amount of retweets as users share the breaking news being posted by these organisations); additionally, interested individuals who are active in passing on information about what’s happening – such as @anthonybaxter or @georgedarroch – also receive substantial numbers of @replies or retweets. There are also some immediate advisories (especially from @TelecomNZ and @vodafoneNZ) getting a substantial number of retweets, of course – and a few more general messages of support (especially that from @stephenfry) are also highly visible.
(Also posted on blog.p2pfoundation.net. Hat-tip to Michel for the links.)
PSPgo, Goes. I’m Sad :(
The Guardian are reporting the end of production of the PSPgo:
Sony Computer Entertainment has seemingly ceased production of the PSPgo, a smaller, lighter version of its PSPhandheld console, which did away with providing games on physical media, requiring players to download titles from the PlayStation Store. The manufacturer has yet to confirm speculation, but according to VG247, a message on the company’s Japanese home page yesterday simply read “shipment ended”.
I’m sad about this. The PSPgo was a great games platform. It had lots of pros – good controls, clear large screen, good battery life, powerful graphics processing (relative to its size). I’m biased here because I worked on a game on it I’m really proud of (Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign). But the device had potential that was never fully exploited for various reasons. Here’s why according to the Guardian:
The main problem was price. The device retailed at £220, putting it just shy of PS3, while game downloads were in the region of £20-£25, which angered gamers used to paying a fiver or less for smartphone digital apps. Meanwhile, retailers weren’t happy that they’d be stocking a piece of hardware with no means of generating revenue from software sales.
And of course, technology just overtook the machine. The irresistible rise of Android and iOS handsets tempted potential buyers away to where games were cheaper and much more plentiful.
Cthulhu Thursday: More Images of Horror (and Fun)
Following on from last time’s post, I’ve got more images to share with y’all!
Lets kick the evil off, eldrich stylee…
Lovecraft and some evil things
(Hat-tip to Bonesniffer)
So where does Cthulhu live? R’lyeh most of the time, but he also has a holiday apartment here:
Cthulhu's Flat
(Hat-tip to Thelovecraftsman)
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also for more Cthulhu news, sign up to the cthulhuHQ twitter feed. Enjoy!)
THQ and Transmedia
This is an interesting interview with THQ’s Danny Bilson about how they see themselves going forward… Note the nods to transmedia:
THQ had to find a new focus; to get some perspective. And while licenses are still a big part of its world, the company is now all about creating new IP, building great games and nurturing a creative environment that can yield artistic greatness.
…
Just about every word coming out of THQ these days conforms to this narrative. We’ve got new prices, new ways to conduct marketing campaigns, a new logo, a huge new studio, new deals with fellow transmedia devotees.
…
In the end, THQ and Bilson will be judged on their ability to deliver world-class IP and beautiful gaming experiences. And it’s this search for IP that is consuming the company’s resources during this difficult, expensive year of investment.
We’ve already seen Homefront which flared briefly as a possible IP giant. Even if the reviews were underwhelming, the sales performance has been satisfactory with one analyst predicting lifetime sales of 3 million. Brands like Saints Row, Darksiders and Red Faction offer promise but they must do more than merely build upon previous incarnations. inSane from Volition, created in collaboration with movie director Guillermo del Toro must be seen as a central pillar of the company’s creative future. And, of course, there are plenty of games we just haven’t heard about yet, particularly coming from Montreal.
Smartphone Wars and Console Wars
The war of the big tech companies to dominate the smartphone market seems to be turning into a 2-horse race:
New figures provided exclusively to The Guardian by Kantar WorldPanel Comtech shows Nokia’s market share for smartphones dropping from 10% to just over 1% in the US over the past six months, meaning it sold only about 160,000 top-end devices there. The story is the same for the troubled Finnish phone manufacturer in every country over a 12-month or six-month period, with a collapse in market share that bodes badly ahead of its quarterly financial results due this Thursday.
The story is no more encouraging for RIM, which according to Kantar has seen a huge fall in the number of sales in the US, the world’s biggest smartphone market. There its share has fallen from 32.5% in June 2010 to just 10.6% in March 2011, meaning that it only sold an estimated 1.4m devices there.
Apple is also being rapidly eclipsed by Android devices, though Kantar notes that the introduction in the US of its iPhone to the Verizon network provided an uplift to sales, so that it actually increased its market share there. But in other countries, notably the UK, Germany, France and Japan, the iPhone saw double-digit falls in market share – which could mean that even if it is selling more phones, it is not growing the number as quickly as the market is expanding.
Not only that but smartphones (and tablets) also seem to be eating into the current 3-horse gaming race between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo:
The traditional home console business is quickly losing revenue share to the smartphone market, according to a new report from mobile analyst firm Flurry.
The report is based only on publicly available data and the company’s own estimates, but appears to show that the revenues from smartphone and tablet games rose from 19 per cent of the U.S. portable game software market in 2009 (iOS only), to 34 per cent in 2010 (iOS and Android combined).
At the same time the market share for the Nintendo DS family of consoles fell from 70 per cent to 57 per cent, while the PSP dropped from 11 per cent to 9 per cent.
However, both portable consoles were nearing the end of their lifetime by 2010 – when their revenues might naturally be expected to fall. It is also unclear whether the smartphone revenues represent a true loss in market share on the part of consoles or simply an expansion of the whole category.
However, Flurry characterises Nintendo as, “struggling with its own burning platforming: Nintendo DS”. The report is also adamant that smartphone revenues are increasing “at the expense of portable gaming”.
Flurry’s data for the video games market as a whole in the U.S. suggests that the smartphone and tablet market has risen from 5 per cent in 2009 to 8 per cent in 2010. This is estimated as an increase of $500 million to $800 million.
Monday Morning Gamification: A Word of Warning…
This is an interesting sort-of critique of the idea of gamification:
Unless I’m talking to a quantum physicist, I don’t trust people who argue for multiple versions of reality. That is why I’m wary of “gamification,” an idea that’s been blowing strong through confabs like South by Southwest and is championed by authors, consultants, and startup gurus like Jane McGonigal, Seth Priebatsch, and Gabe Zichermann. The basic idea arises from how engaged people are when they play games, even if they’re doing mundane things like running a farm or mining ore. If we make the world more like a game, the thinking goes, we can harness all that energy to solve real-world problems.
It’s a compelling idea, certainly. I’ve been covering video games for more than 10 years and am especially interested in the “serious games” movement; I believe whole-heartedly that wonderful things can happen when people play. But gamification advocates do not preach the beauty and power of play. Perhaps without knowing it, they’re selling a pernicious worldview that doesn’t give weight to literal truth. Instead, they are trafficking in fantasies that ignore the realities of day-to-day life. This isn’t fun and games—it’s a tactic most commonly employed by repressive, authoritarian regimes.
Not sure I agree with all this. Adding play to something does not avoid the truth of that thing. It’s just another way of us engaging with and processing a subject. Gamification is not just about creating fantasy and escapism; its about the fact that play is a very, very human thing. So making important things play is a way of re-interpreting them in a way that some (not all) will find more appealing. For some its the competition, for others the peer recognition and others still the satisfaction of codified achievements (or indeed a mixture of all three).
However that said I think there are points in this worth taking on-board. Gamification is no magic wand, its not going to generate success everywhere. Not only that but all gamifcation is seen to do is give shopping vouchers, then it will be a bit of a waste…
P2P Distribution Model Working for Yes Men
This is an interesting article. The activist-pranksters, the Yes Men’s recent film The Yes Men Fix the World only obtained a limited cinema release and because they had attracted the threat of a lawsuit from one of the groups they had pranked (the US Chamber of Commerce) the overall attraction for distributors was impacted. But a conversation at a film festival lead them to move to P2P group Vodo, to distribute the film and the results were very promising:
While Vodo now hosts scores of documentaries, all available as P2P downloads, its library started with [Vodo founder, Jamie] King’s own work. He’s a filmmaker, as well, and shot Steal this Film with the idea of distributing it online through P2P. After it was downloaded millions of times and brought in $30,000 in donations, King decided to bring P2P distribution to other filmmakers. The Yes Men were among the first people he spoke to.
“We come with some pedigree,” says King, “in the sense that we know the people who funded their film. We come with a recommendation. It’s a way of distributing that’s increasingly relevant to documentary filmmakers.”
There are two big positives in the Vodo P2P system. One is the reach, and one is the chance for donations. King knows that for activists such as The Yes Men, the reach, the chance to get their work in front of new faces, is the most important thing.
“[The Yes Men] make their films partly as a way to bring certain messages to audiences and they want that message to be seen and heard. We’re a good platform for that to actually happen,” says King.
Of course, the money is nice too. Twice, Vodo has helped raise funds in the $25,000–$30,000 range. While that’s not much to a Hollywood budget, it’s a nice amount for a documentarian.
“That’s an amount that compares very favorably with traditional television acquisitions for documentaries,” says King, noting that $20,000 is the standard acquisition fee. “We’ve already reached the point where we’re a viable new business model for filmmakers.”
This seems to be a practical confirmation of a study that have shown that for smaller artists, P2P can be a very positive distribution option:
According to Blackburn who investigates this issue the ‘bottom’ 3/4 of artists sell more as a consequence of file-sharing while the top 1/4 sell less. Second is the first tentative estimates (by Waldfogel and Rob) of the welfare consequences of file-sharing. Waldfogel and Rob’s dramatic result is that file-sharing on average yields a gain to society three times the loss to the music industry in lost sales. While, as they emphasize, this result is preliminary and based on limited data it indicates the urgent need for more research on this issue as well as the possibility to have a win-win situation in which both creators and the public get a better deal, for example by using an alternative compensation system such as a levy.
(Also posted on blog.p2pfoundation.net)
Voice Control and Kinect
Kinect has done well, both in sales and in pushing forward interactive and interesting uses for gaming technology. So it is with great interest that I read this article on how Rare (the developer) sees voice control as being key to the future of Kinect:
‘We have only scratched the surface in voice recognition’ says new studio boss
Kinect Sports studio Rare believes voice control will be instrumental in the future of Kinect games.
“We’re going to make using your voice much more front and centre – we’ve just scratched the surface on that,” Rare’s studio manager Scott Henson told MCV.“The ability to say ‘Xbox Pause’ and it pauses is just the beginning. It’s magic, but it should be just like having a conversation moving forward.
“We’ll continue to advance and continue to make it better for both your body and your voice. I would say we’ve only scratched 10 per cent of the possibilities of what we can do with Kinect.”
There is also a PC SDK out for this – find out more here.
Super Sized Pacman
Goodness knows how many hours of work were wasted to this yesterday, but it looks like The World’s Biggest Pac-Man is becoming a internet gaming phenomenon. Announced yesterday at the Microsoft MIX Developer Conference, this is a fascinating new version of Namco’s legendary arcade game, which links together hundreds of fan-made levels. Users need to sign-up via Facebook Connect if they want to construct their own mazes, but anyone can visit the site, click on a map and enjoy some retro-flavoured pill-scoffing fun.
World's Biggest Pac-Man
A Great Becoming... 