Everyone like to play
Greetings from Helsinki, Berlin and Malmö! I have been enjoying good company as well as joined interesting seminars and conferences lately. Here is a short sum up of the last few weeks.
In Berlin I enjoyed Rodeo Club/Restaurant and checked out Typical! Chichés of Jews and Others exhibition held at Jewish Museum in Berlin. From there the exhibition will go to Chicago and Vienna. Even though I didn't find the exhibition that strong as a whole there were several very good examples of preconceptions and differences in perceiving foreign cultures. One of my favorite artwork was a wall-projected collage of hilarious posters and advertisements from the past.
In Helsinki I joined
Varjomaailma (Shadow world) seminar held by A-Clinic Foundation. They developed a web site, cartoon and teacher’s material for all (but focusing on children of alcoholics). The cartoon was distributed to ~70 000 primary school children in Finland. They hope Varjomaailma type of approach would make it easier to talk about alcoholism and the type of situations children might have in their homes.
Varjomailma website tries to make it easy to share stories and create a cartoon of ones own. Sisko Salo-Chydenius gave a nice talk about stories and storytelling and highlighted factors which are important in games too. Story (or a game) is not a reflection of the world as such but a view, vision where the action is often presented in a form of a battle between good and evil. Story can help children to think of their actions and consequences. One can also get consolation or different experiences from the stories. Described setting is not univocal truth but stories are space for dreams and magic (in comparison to real life as “work”). I think that was nicely put and would also work for games.
The last few days were well spent at the
Nordic Game conference. The biggest benefit from the conference was to hear from lessons learned from other game developers. One of my personal favorite was Fumito Ueda's presentation of the development of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.
Harmonix, the creator of Rock Band gave really nice performance before their presentation which was also quite ok. They talked about design decisions and what type of challenges they had when developing hardware and software in parallel. I also loved the cosy atmosphere of the conference even though there were some 1200 participants this year (!).
There was quite a bit of talk about casual games and the shift from "1980s game genres" to novel ones which might also interest non-gamers. The change of games industry came through in various panel discussions and presentations. They discussed about a games as performance, as containers, as services, games as a way to socially interact with people, as a hobby... and so on. If nothing else, games certainly are in the mainstream and innovative game concepts can evolve outside Japan, too ;)
Brand embassadors in virtual worlds
Yesterday Finnish online entertainment company Sulake arranged an event focusing on "harnessing youth to act as brand ambassadors". The evening was kicked off by Mr. Jonathan Epstein from in-game advertising firm Double Fusion. Mr. Epstein highlighted five issues that are important when targeting to youth in this entertainment rich, networked society:
1. Include, don’t intrude
2. Keep it personal
3. We are what we shop
4. Fuel the aspiration
5. Focus on ROO (return on objective)
A couple of successful cases were also presented where Sulake products IRC-Galleria and Habbo Hotel were used to reach the right target groups. My absolute favorite was Stabilo case (
Lindell). Heli Vainio, brand manager from Lindell gave really inspiring and heartened talk about their experiences at the IRC-Galleria. They looked for new ways to market Stabilo highlighting pens for youngsters. They had their message, the product, manga-drawing competition and some ideas about utilizing the web. They brainstormed with IRC-Galleria guys and came up with an idea of focusing on their Manga drawing competition (banner) and offering "ihq-sälä" (virtual swag) to youth.
They got huge number of drawings to the competition and 30 000 individuals joined the Stabilo community to get virtual Stabilo-branded swag. Lindell increased Stabilo sales to a big bookstore chain by 50%.
MarketingExperiments blog has related post about virtual swag.
Microsoft has also learned to be brave and utilize virtual worlds when launching their new applications. Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will be launched at the Second Life on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 9:00 A.M. PDT. Microsoft promises to show the applications in action but they also understand the possibility to bring together product experts and techsavvy peers and to enable open discussion.
Labels: digital games, digital media, irc-galleria, online community
...and we have the Pelixi winners!
Pelixi is a game concept and demo competition for Finnish children and youth under 21 year of age. The competition was arranged by
The Centre of School Clubs.
The best game concept and game demo were awarded today at Heureka Science Center. Game concept Nivium won the grand prix of Pelixi concept category and Kiertoradalla (On the Orbit) game demo category. The idea of Nivium is to generate snowflakes from crystal pieces. The game is a rhythm game where the player has to tap the buttons at right time and at right order. There are various shapes, colors and sizes of crystals and different shapes create different sounds. The player will be awarded by the complexity, aesthetics and musical aspects of the snowflake. For Toshio Iwai fans Nivium most likely reminds a bit of Electroplankton game made for Nintendo DS and influenced by Toshio Iwai's earlier media art pieces such as "Composition on the Table" and "Sim Tunes".
On the Orbit is a game where the player has to do various tasks at the Space Ship. Some of the tasks will be carried out in a quiz format. The game could be interesting "learning environment" for space enthusiasts but also pleasant casual game.
Eight game concepts or demos were awarded at the competition. It was interesting to see how many game concepts obviously were influenced by Pokemon, The Sims or different racing games. It was also a bit pity that only four girls participating the competition but interesting to see that girls' games were quite stereotypical "pay it forward" friendship adventures where as boys' games were often versions of their favorite games or game types.
The results of the competition
in Finnish.
Labels: digital games, girl games, user generated content
Helsinki Media Conference 2008
I attended the Helsinki Media Conference event for the first time. The event is mainly for journalists and marketing people. This time there was a lot of talks about blurry concepts such as web2.0.
If you can Finnish, there are excellent
Jaiku reports available from the event. For the rest of you here are some points I found interesting.
Andrew Keen talked about web2.0 but never really explained what he meant with it. He was upset that people upload videos to YouTube but do not get any money out of it. Perhaps people are after other ways to "benefit" from their videos?
It was also a bit worrying to hear that (as far as I understood his view) Mr. Keen saw bloggers as an alternative to mass communication. I would say they are primarily an addition to mass media and enrich the data by sharing their personal opinions about something.
Sami Salmenkivi talked about funny
social networking / viral marketing case. It was exciting to realize that it would only take a small group of enthusiasts to get into the game and ready to go out and do whatever the Joker asks AND they would get hundreds of thousands of viewers to the "real life episodes". Impressive.
I also learned that you can reach half of 12-19 year old Finnish teenage girls via Demi magazine & website and 75% of 15-24 year old Finns use IRC-Galleria. For Demi magazine online community has become a vital source of information about trends, interests and phenomenon. I am more and more surprised that for example music magazine Suosikki or techie-mag Tekniikan maailma do not utilize communities and/or different groups of users any more efficiently.
Erik Norin gave a really nice presentation of
FarFar ad agency. He gave examples of "ongoing marketing campaign model" and talked about
Heidies but even more interesting example was a campaign their did for Nokia. They created quite funny Stavros character who is into "
position art". Check out the website and you'll get the point. Ongoing model focuses on flexibility, adaptivity, discussion and creating a relationship with the customer. Mr. Norin showed how one could extend the lifespan of a campaign by enabling the consumers to take part of it for example by contributing questions, suggestions, answers... to the campaign.
In my presentation the main points were:
- the "information and communication layers" are flattening both contact and demand-wise. Facebook and Google HomePage both flatten the layers. Facebook does it by including various ways (both public and one to one) communication under one "community" and by flattening different acquaintances to one level. Google HomePage by giving the power to the user to mix and match various sources from information to one level and one layout -- anything from web diaries to personal blogs and official web news portals.
- There are three characteristics how youth use digital media: 1) communication acrobatics, 2) multitasking and 3) snack culture.
- My presentation:
All Finnish girl gamers unite!
The third "girl gamers" night was organized yesterday. The first two sessions were actually Rock band sessions at the REAL bands' rehearsal studio at Iso Roba in Helsinki. I loved the idea of having those plastic instruments in the studio and see what the "real" guitar heroes say about it (!) I actually asked about that but apparently the guys were not too interested in finding out what the girls were doing there and who the F*** is playing Ride the Lightning at full volume (with plastic instruments ;)
Anyhow yesterday there were 10+ of us present at Microsoft office in Espoo. Games like Halo, Scene It?, Rock Band, a dance game, Viva Pinâta etc. were played amongst enjoying good food, drinks and company.
It was nice to see such a range of girls and women present from 15-year old game geeks to women working at game stores, to marketing specialists, journalists and researcher/designer. Besides game playing we also talked (enthusiastically!) about women's role in game communities and prejudices towards girl gamers -- but also about the pleasure women get when they can show their superior gaming skills over boys and men :D Especially when those girlgamers who were present yesterday were not "the typical casual, social gamers" or The Sims fans but Rainbow Six, flight simulator or Halo players, guitar hero gurus and shooter specialists.
We had a lot of fun! The next session will be Wii-evening organized by Nintendo. If there are Finnish girl gamers who would like to chat with like-minded, you are most welcome to join us. Send me a message or join FB group "Pelinaiset".
Labels: digital games, girl games
Wikinomics and collaborative publishing
I spent the afternoon at a workshop organized by
Sitra. It focused on the future of the Internet. This was actually our second workshop out of four. We are building a foresight "report" which will be ready in summer08. This time Anthony Williams who is the co-author of
Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything book (2007) started the session.
In his talk he focused on four aspects:
web2.0, Net Generation, social revolution and economical revolution. Before getting into the topics, we learned that his company New Paradigm is currently focusing on anything and everything ending with 2.0. It is a bit annoying to hear these version numbers while at the same the speaker stresses the role of the users. Why they do not talk about change in mode or style of use instead of empty/multifarious catchwords and 101000110-language? Also is this (the current web) really the second version of the Internet? I tend to disagree.
Anyhow, the talk itself was too overall, too obvious and not too innovative from my viewpoint. BUT it did raise some ideas and questions which I am just going to list here.
NETGEN- Is it useful to coin different terms for generations (x, y, c, Millennials, iGen, NetGen...) or perhaps try to describe the change in how people have learned to use the net, what are the factors for cultural change, how much that actually is a question of generations of users?
- Don't get me wrong, I like to categorize youth into generations as well (to be able to focus better on one mass and/or highlight some changes) but that should not be the only thing to look at because there are clear differences within youth which might e.g. relate to location (country side/city, central/remote, cultural differences etc.)
- Is it cool to say that you do not read newspapers?
- Is it because of the medium or wrong type of content? Both?
- What will be the generation after Net Generation? When? How does it differ from NetGen?
- Demographic aging in North America & Europe vs. India, China and African countries
- Is the number of youth in correlation with innovativeness?
- How much innovativeness is related to cultural atmosphere and various enablers?
3D WEB- Mr. Williams was convinced that the future of the web will be "multimedia 3D". I totally agree with multimedia but what's the case with 3D? Aren't we expecting to get involved real time, anywhere, anytime and as conveniently as possible?
- What is the role of 3D environments in the business life?
- Companies certainly look for ways to utilize blogs, wikis, Jaikus, etc.
- Does the new modes of operation include 3D?
- Open innovation in 3D?
- Who would like to use 3D via a cell phone?
REVOLUTION- Isn't revolution intially social?
- Why it has to be revolution [instead of e.g. evolution]?
- Paradigm shift.
Labels: open innovations, social media, social networking, web2.0
Carbonhero & friends at PixelAche08
I visited
Pixelache University ´08 on Saturday at Kiasma (Helsinki Finland). It was nice to see a lot of buzz and people at the sessions. Just to contribute the discussion I would like to rise a few details from the "Travelling without moving" session.
Videoconference system works nicely WHEN it works. This time most of my energy went to filtrating the message from the echo and noise caused by some technical problems. Two of the introductions were held from the distance. First Matt Jones on Doppler and then Daniel Peltz on "
Response Call" international video dialogue project.
The presentation on
Dopplr (a service for frequent travelers) focused on social networking and linking Dopplr with AMEE platform to calculate ones personal carbon footprint. Call and Response is an international video dialogue project that has engaged media makers in Cameroon, Sweden, Korea, France, South Africa and the U.S. in collective productions aimed at exploring the potential of networked video environments.
After that John Thackara talked briefly about "From Myspace to fakespace". He also put the presentation to
his blog. Andreas Zachariah talked about
Carbonhero. It was pretty nice mobile app utilizing existing technologies in a novel and innovative way to reveal to its user their own unique Travel Carbon Footprint.
One of the nicest new terms was "brand parasite" coined by Niko Punin. Indeed there are already business "parasites" in virtual services (e.g. Second Life). In this world of open networks, WoM and viral marketing, brand parasites are not that far fetched alternative for the future.
That also reminded me of Virtual World 2008 which will be held in New York at the beginning of April. There is one session focusing on branded virtual goods. That is not really connected to Niko's idea but anyhow... made me to think of "real" and "virtual" brands as well as openness as a part of brand development or brand image.
Labels: branding, digital media, social networking
Greetings from Helsinki, Berlin and Malmö! 
There was quite a bit of talk about casual games and the shift from "1980s game genres" to novel ones which might also interest non-gamers. The change of games industry came through in various panel discussions and presentations. They discussed about a games as performance, as containers, as services, games as a way to socially interact with people, as a hobby... and so on. If nothing else, games certainly are in the mainstream and innovative game concepts can evolve outside Japan, too ;)
