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Links for July 2nd 2008
Interesting links for June 30th 2008 through July 2nd 2008:
- The Internet Has the Power to Transform Your TV Show into a TV Brand [Deep Focus/Yahoo!] – New research (from a survey of 2000) which shows viewers under 35 treat the TV show as part of a franchise or brand, and that engaging with the franchise online strengthens brand ties (viewers > 35 see the TV show as the main event). [Via Nancy]
- World’s Best Presentation Contest [SlideShare] – Online slide sharing service Slideshare are running their annual competition to find the best slides (ppt, keynote, whatever else in pdf form) from around the world. We need many examples of powerpoint done better, so get sliding! (Entries close July 31st 08).
- Fast-talking Fred is the toast of YouTube [The Age] – Fourteen year old Lucas Cruikshank and his online persona, 6 year old Fred (with anger management issues and a chipmunked voice), is YouTube’s latest (and very annoying) micro-celeb. Visit Fred’s Channel.
- The romantic appeal of the “long tail hypothesis” [PopMatters | Blogs] – An interesting critique of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory: “With our identity riding on what we consume, we come to believe that there’s something valuable about having unique tastes, but we don’t actually pursue such a course in practice.”
- That Violet Blue thing [Boing Boing] – Boing Boing respond to accusations of censorship, stating their own position (they can retrospectively delete whatever they want) and getting quite a few comments in response!
- MySpace suicide: new law outlaws cyberbullying [The Age] – “Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed a bill today outlawing cyberbullying, just kilometres from where a 13-year-old girl committed suicide nearly two years ago after being harassed on the Internet.”
- EA Grabs Your “Spore Creature Creator” IP [Clickable Culture] – “Talk about harshing my buzz. Electronic Arts is going to let us design creatures with its long-awaited Spore game and stand-alone Creature Creator, but in using the game and creator, we agree to hand over all rights in our creations to the megalithic publisher…”
- swedish teenager making millions off her blog? [jill/txt] – Jill Walker Rettberg looks at the fascinating case of a Swedish teenager who appears to be making a very healthy sum blogging by inserting paid ads and editorial comment without disclosure. [More links here.]
Links for June 27th 2008
Interesting links for June 21st 2008 through June 27th 2008:
- Simpsons Map for Quake III Arena [YouTube] – A fantastically detailed mashup, bringing 3D textures from the Simpsons into Quake III. [Via Waxy]
- Is YouTube truly the future? [SMH] – Henry Jenkins and John Hartley give their take on the “pre-history” of YouTube, looking at DIY culture more broadly, including punk, zines and fandom, arguing for a deeper conception of participatory culture than just YouTube.
- Monster mash gives ad boss nightmares [The Age] – “More than 6000 spoof ads made by viewers have been uploaded to the website for an ABC television series about the advertising industry, delivering the state broadcaster the kind of viewer participation that would be the envy of the commercial world.”
- Half UK web videos are from YouTube [WatchingTV Online] – Comscore:”During March, 48% of the 3.5 billion web videos watched in the UK came from Google sites, of which 99% were from YouTube…. The BBC only has 1.2% share of the video viewing market despite the launch of the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service. “
- Spore Creature Creator Trial – Download the first tool from Will Wright’s next gaming masterpiece … Spore! Make your creatures now and be ready to unleash them! (Check the specs – this one’s resources hungry!)
- Star Wars Crawl – Make a custom Star Wars Intro – Make you own opening crawl, Star Wars style. Come on, who hasn’t thought about doing this at some point in their (geeky) life? 🙂
- NASA spacecraft finds ice on Mars [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “The Mars Phoenix Lander has found ice on the surface of the Red Planet, NASA scientists say, in a key discovery for the spacecraft as it searches for water and signs of life on Earth’s closet planetary neighbour.”
Links for June 19th 2008
Interesting links for June 17th 2008 through June 19th 2008:
- Study: 82 Percent of Consumers Accept In-Game Ads [Life from Wired.com] – “… according to a recent study crafted as a joint venture between the Nielsen company and in-game ad entrepreneurs IGA Worldwide. “82 percent felt games were just as enjoyable with ads as without,” the study reveals…”
- NSFW: A Beginners Guide To Sporn [Rock, Paper, Shotgun] – (Contains Images Only Intended for Adults!) “You give humanity a creative tool, the first thing a human will do is – well – make a tool with it. Since the Spore demo?s release, it?s become a bukkake wave sweeping the web: comedy pornographic images via Spore. Spornography – aka “Sporn”.”
- This is Sparta! ? Facebook prank or political statement?[ Examiner.com] – When 30,000 students taking a literature exam all write “This Is Sparta!” somewhere during the test and cross it out again, examiners discover there’s a Facebook meme at work, 300 style.
- Mum pleads not guity in web suicide case [PerthNow] – “A US woman who prosecutors say drove a 13-year-old girl to suicide with a cruel MySpace hoax has pleaded not guilty. Lori Drew of Missouri, who is accused of creating the fake MySpace persona of a 16-year-old boy…”
- Hollywood relying more on franchises [The Hollywood Reporter] – June 16, 2008: Hollywood is using more and more existing franchises and ‘superbrands’ in an effort to capitalise on existing consumer demand rather than risking new material in an era when promotion is harder and harder.
Videogames, Storytelling and Sex … all in 10 minute animated lectures!
Thanks to Boing Boing, I’ve just discovered two excellent animated mini-lectures from Daniel Floyd looking at story-telling and sex in videogames. The first one argues that videogames have an extremely exciting potential to be story-telling spaces, but that potential is rarely fulfilled and, at present, is largely discouraged by game distributors:
The second animated min-lecture is sure to prove a little controversial as it argues that in order to be taken seriously as an artistic medium, videogames need to have more sex in them. Floyd isn’t arguing for more sensationalised and sleazy games, but in contrast points out that every notable artistic medium is full of explorations of sexuality. If videogames normalised sex as part of character development and stopped using extremely large-breasted women killing things as a marketing tool, then sex would become part of the fabric of games, normalised not demonised (Floyd also reminds us that many gamers are adults; he’s not suggesting sex has to be part of all games):
I really like these videos: they’re an accessible and entertaining entry point for thinking about some big concepts in relation to videogames and they’re creative ways of engaging students on a topic beyond the traditional lecture style.
Links for May 19th 2008
Interesting links for May 18th 2008 through May 19th 2008:
- Positive or Not – Think you can tell if someone has HIV? – An educational game in the style of ‘Hot or Not?’ which challenges preconceptions about people with the HIV virus. [Via NY Times]
- Ikea Stuff Pack for Sims 2 Confirmed [Ad Lab] – When an IKEA extension pack is released for The Sims 2, it’s hard to tell where the game ends and the advertising begins … or if that distinction means anything at all at this point!
- Dollhouse – FOX’s second trailer – Joss Whedon [Dollverse] – The trailer for Joss Whedon’s new TV series, where the best bits of Blade Runner, Minority Report, Dark Angel, The Pretender and Buffy merge and mix in the questionable tales of ‘programmable’ humans!
Links for May 16th 2008
Interesting links for May 15th 2008 through May 16th 2008:
- From Atari Joyboard to Wii Fit: 25 years of “exergaming” [Boing Boing Gadgets] – A fascinating look at the ancestors of the Nintendo WIi Fit system, from excercise bike/game hybrids to Dance, Dance Revolution.
- US ‘cyber-bully’ mother indicted [BBC NEWS] – “A Missouri woman who allegedly used a fake MySpace profile to bully a girl who later committed suicide has been indicted by a federal Grand Jury. Lori Drew, 49, allegedly posed as a boy on the website to befriend Megan Meier, 13…”
- Google fuzzes out faces in privacy push [SMH] – “Google has rolled out a new technology which automatically blurs any human face appearing in street-level photographs taken for use in its mapping services by its fleet of camera-mounted vehicles.”
- Dr Who fan in knitted puppet row [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] – “A Doctor Who fan is embroiled in a row with the BBC after she published knitting patterns for the sci-fi drama’s monsters on the internet.” (Sicking the lawyers on fans? Never a popular plan. Dare I make the pun: it’s Ooderous!)
Links for May 14th 2008
Interesting links for May 12th 2008 through May 14th 2008:
- Twitters scoops media in reporting China quake [The Age] – "The world had real-time news about China's massive earthquake as victims dashed out "twitter" text messages while it took place, in what is being touted as micro-blogging outshining mainstream news."
- Sightseeing in Liberty City [Flickr] – A fantastic set of shots by Matthew Johnston which compare GTA IV's Liberty City with New York City (on which it was based). The level of detail in the GTA modelling is just amazing!
- From Production to Produsage: Interview with Axel Bruns (Part One) [Henry Jenkins – Confessions of an Aca/Fan] – Very useful two-part interview in which Axel Bruns gives an overview of 'produsage' and the project behind his new book. (Part 2)
Links for May 12th 2008
Interesting links for May 9th 2008 through May 12th 2008:
- TimeTube – “Creates a timeline for any YouTube keyword search–very handy for visualising the activity around particular topics–and iterations/transformations of particular videos–over time.” (Via Jean)
- Victorian Liberal staffers sacked for blogging [gatewatching] – Two staffers in the Victorian Liberal Party were fired after they were outed as the writers of a blog highly critical of the party’s leader. Jason Wilson: “blogs revealed once more as a politically disruptive technology”. (More from the ABC)
- Storm Troopin’ – a set on Flickr – An absolutely wonderful set which tells the convoluted tale of Star Wars StormTrooper (toy) TK-704 and his many adventures in our world, from his quest for love, the arrival of other Troppers, and their shared love of doughnuts!
- Grand Theft Auto IV smashes sales record [theage.com.au] – “Grand Theft Auto IV blew away video game and Hollywood records as its creators reported that it raked in an unprecedented $US500 million in its opening week.”
Links for May 1st 2008
Interesting links for May 1st 2008:
- Free game hopes to save gorillas [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “Campaigners hoping to preserve Rwanda’s endangered mountain gorilla are attempting to raise awareness of its plight by making a game simulating the lives of the animals free to mobile phone users.”
- Sweet Hollywood hoax with Aussie actors [TV Tonight] – All of the hype built for a supposed new TV show called Scarlet, complete with an over-the-top trailer starring Gary Sweet and Sharni Vinson, turns out to be a viral effort by LG to launch their new Scarlet line of TVs!
- Radiohead says no more music freebies [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “It was a pivotal moment for the music industry which many thought sounded the death knell for recorded music sales, but Radiohead will not be repeating its initiative to let fans pay what they want for their downloads.”
Grand Theft Auto IV
Looking from certain corners of the internet today you’d be forgiven for thinking that the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) had caused all other events in the world to pause. There has, simply put, been an avalanche of press for the video game. Apparently it might just clock upwards of $US400 million in it’s opening week (yes, that’s a lot of money). And to keep commentators on violence in the media (and specifically videogames) happy, somebody in London obligingly stabbed someone else in the line to buy one of the first copies of GTA IV. If you prefer something equally silly but a whole lot less violent (except, perhaps, to themselves) someone in the US is trying to set a record for continuous gameplay by enduring more than 25 hours in a row of GTA IV (and, yes, it is of course being streamed live across the net, complete with Twitter updates).
However, one of the more interesting subjects to emerge in the press frenzy surrounding the game’s launch is the revival of the synthespian (or synthetic thespian) debate, which last raged seriously when Gollum and his contemporaries proved CGI folks could give their flesh and blood companions a run for their money. Nowadays, it’s videogame (anti-)heroes getting the limelight. As Asher Moses reports for The Age:
He’s the biggest name in entertainment but you won’t find him striding down the red carpet or cavorting with Hollywood starlets under the watchful eye of the paparazzi. No, Niko Bellic, set to become the most high profile Slav in entertainment since Borat Sagdiyev took the box office by storm 18 months ago. He is among the new breed of entertainment personalities who, rather than being cast, are built from scratch by a team of programmers and graphic designers. He’s the protagonist in Grand Theft Auto IV and, just days after hitting the streets, is already giving flesh-and-blood Hollywood stars a run for their money. Launched around the world at midnight on Monday, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is on track to become the biggest entertainment launch in history. Analysts have predicted the title, which has inspired near-perfect reviews from most gaming magazines, will sell at least 6 million copies in its first week.
Sure, the synthespian issue is wedged amongst hype about sales and violence, but it’s certainly an interesting question: to what extent do gamers ‘inhabit’ the characters they play and to what extent will they idolize these characters (provoking some interesting notions about the changing nature of celebrity culture … do we actually need celebrities to even have a supposedly ‘real’ version to idolize?).
For Australians, one of the other notable features of GTA IV is that, thanks to the fact that we still don’t have an R18+ category for games, our version of GTA IV has been toned down to get rating approval.
Update: Australian Game Pro reports that Australians attempting to import the international version of GTA IV (which doesn’t meet Australia’s MA15+ game rating limit) would be guilty of importing prohibited goods and could be fined up to $110,000!
[Photo by Rappzula CC BY NC SA]
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