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This “bookend” approach proved to be the most challenging aspect to designing the LARP, as I constantly asked myself not just, “will this be fun for the players?” but also, “if I design it this way, will I be able to easily bring it back into the Gallidon world to close the narrative loop?” Indeed, it’s months later, and I still haven’t decided how to bring the story full-circle. Fictionalize the LARP (if so, how much gets included and how much “extra” story do I add)? Edit the audio and post it? Now that the LARP is behind me, I’m reconsidering some of my earlier ideas.
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Gary Hayes shared this post on Twitter. (January 29, 2:37 AM) |
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Gary Hayes shared this post on LinkedIn. (January 29, 2:37 AM) |
Pervasive Entertainment Times
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Here’s me putting on the record what I’ve been telling clients behind closed doors for more than a year: Apple should sell the world’s first non-TV TV. Instead of selling a replacement for the TV you just bought, Apple should convince millions of Apple fans that they need a new screen in their lives. Call it the iHub, a 32-inch screen with touch, gesture, voice, and iPad control that can be hung on the wall wherever the family congregates for planning, talking, or eating — in more and more US homes, that room is the dining room or eat-in kitchen. By pushing developers to create apps that serve as the hub of family life — complete with shared calendars, photo and video viewers, and FaceTime for chatting with grandma — this non-TV TV could take off, ultimately positioning Apple to replace your 60-inch set once it’s ready to retire.
There are endless examples of MTV’s innovative multiplatform engagement, the most obvious being its relentless and exclusive Facebook (content from behind the scenes videos, intimate cast photos, insight into season two, social badges for sharing specific content, etc.). Other social platforms include Teen Wolf’s twitter handle @MTVteenwolf with 86,928 followers, Tumblr and more. The MTV team even invites members of the Wolf Pack Girls, the official name for the show’s female fans, to broadcast behind the scenes access and info on its official social networks. 
Inside one of the biggest social TV ad campaigns ever... The Integrated Media partnership with Unilever drives engagement in a new way and puts the power of storytelling in the audience’s hands. The campaign, which was developed internally with Barbara Blangiardi and her Creative Partnerships & Innovation team, creates a cycle where the on-air vignettes drive to the online video, and the user’s choices within the digital story impact the next installment of the on-air spot. It’s a highly compelling way to integrate a brand’s message.
Defiance the game takes place in the bombed out ruins of a post-alien-invasion San Francisco, while Defiance the TV show is set in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Despite the location differences, Trion says that the events of the virtual world will affect those of the show and vice versa. How so (and how much)? That remains to be seen, but Shacknews has a game preview that sheds a little light on the subject. See Shack news for game preview http://www.shacknews.com/article/73902/e3-2012-defiance 
This reality has caused a morphing of the role of social media; it has now become cause-oriented. After the initial excitement of reconnecting with elementary school friends fades, most users of social media find themselves "friending" people who share a similar cause or passion. Twitter is perhaps the maximum expression of this -- where those with whom one interacts are most often anonymous and where the interactions of 140 characters are thematic and usually trivial. Republicans deliver YouTube videos, Democrats ask for money. Nameless, faceless people hurl insults at each other across the digital divide. Activists rally others to their cause -- and one's popularity is determined by "likes", "follows" and "views." The entire process is utilitarian. 
PNC has announced the launch of its new PNC Finder mobile application. The app makes use of augmented reality as a way to help consumers find the location of a PNC bank or ATM. Using GPS coordinates, the application is able to guide users to these locations using digital displays, which is akin to navigational systems used in vehicles. PNC has become enthralled with the idea of appealing to a new generation of consumer who has been steeped in mobile technology since a young age. 
The Carrozzeria Cyber Navi AR heads-up display puts an augmented reality-style graphic in front of the driver allowing him to see the streets overlayed with real-time GPS mapping information and directions. Unlike the scene from Ghost Protocol, the overlay isn't on the windshield itself and cannot be manipulated by touch, but this is still a nice start. The system is scheduled to hit the streets of Japan in July, but there's no word on when this might get to the U.S. You can see the system in action in the video below. 56% prefer communicating through the social TV app/service, 53% through Facebook, 50% through individual or group texts and 38% through Skype or Apple FaceTime, the study found. For those that use check-in services, 71% check in to a show to let their friends know and 64% check in to let other fans of the show know. As far as devices, smartphones dominate the use of social TV apps at 82%, trailed by tablets at 18%. For services that are delivered via HTML websites and associated apps, 52% of usage occurs on smartphones or tablets, followed closely by desktop or laptops at 48%. 
a recent report suggested that as many as 38 percent of mobile Web users in China go online from their phone or tablet device only. With more than one billion mobile phones in China, that’s an awful lot of mobile-only browsing, and it again illustrates the importance of mobile, which is set to become (or already is) the primary Web access platform in many emerging markets. While the Statcounter data is likely to have its anomalies, the overall trend clearly shows that the number of mobile Web users in India will soon overtake those accessing from PCs. Will Wright, Bruce Sterling, Mark Billinghurst, and Daniel Suarez caught with their "pants down" as Oriel Bergig from Ogmento demonstrates "X-Ray Vision tank", during Augmented Reality Event 2012. The tank can also be witnessed on Minesta street in New York City, showcasing the coming revolution Ogmento brings to real world games. It is the first time in history such an experience is demonstrated on a mass market smartphone device like an iPhone. 
While Google+ chief Vic Gundotra didn't say much about the Glasses during an interview this morning, a later discussion with another spokesperson confirmed that the popular prototype model, as seen on Gundotra as well as Google X Lab founder Sebastian Thrun in a Charlie Rose interview, shows information above the wearer's usual line of sight, "about where the edge of an umbrella might be." 
1It seems that interviews aren’t the only things that are being done through the internet these days. While interactions and meetings are increasingly relayed through digital mediums such as Skype, it appears that medical training is also adopting digital technology in regards to training future doctors. Prescriptions are now including virtual reality gaming to treat things like phobias and geriatric-related issues. If you thought that digital addictions like “jacking-in” existed solely within cyber-punk fiction, think again. Virtual Reality Drugs offer users the ability to relay the world around them in a more visually pleasing way. It appears that the future is set on the partnership between virtual reality and medicine. 
I keynoted at the Media140 conference three weeks ago (26 Apr 2012) wearing my ABC Exec Producer TV Multi Platform hat. Now responsible for non-kids ABC TV online & mobile offerings & TV mobile and social strategy my 20 minute talk was rather focused on the high level challenges for broadcasters trying to truly integrate fiction, factual and entertainment with social, mobile and 2nd screen (or synch services). The transcript, slideshare and more ore detail follow |
Like the Kinect, the peripheral tracks human body gestures, and translates this movement into corresponding motions on a video display. According to Leap Motion, its input device is 200 times more precise than Kinect or anything else on the market. It’s a bold claim that’s difficult to test. So we sat down with Leap Motion co-founders Michael Buckwald and David Holz to wiggle our fingers at the new device. The first thing we noticed is the system’s lack of latency. If you’ve ever drawn on a touchscreen tablet, you’ve noticed the lag between quick finger strokes and the tablet’s slower registration of those strokes. But the Leap’s lag is imperceptible. Finger movements, swipes and taps in mid-air instantly registered as onscreen movements. For example, a spirited Fruit Ninja session delivered nearly real-time fruit cocktail-building action. According to Buckwald, the system’s latency is so low, it’s effectively imperceptible. As for any latency the system does suffer (however imperceptible it may be), Buckwald says half results from the refresh rate of the connected display, and a quarter comes from the hardware’s USB 2.0 interface. The final quarter of system latency comes from the Leap itself. 
Early AR used very distinct markers to position (and trigger) the visuals for the user, but the development of better cameras and image recognition has allowed for the use of product shapes, logos or other imagery to act as the trigger for the event. Over the past year and a half, brands have been expanding AR experiences into larger environments, typically using a large digital screen to present the layering of the camera view with pre-recorded 3D or video content. Examples include the Lynx Excite Angel Ambush, or Disney’s Times Square AR event. Last fall, European creative agency Appshaker helped the National Geographic Channel launch in Hungary with a mind blowing augmented reality experience allowing people to interact with dolphins, leopards, astronauts, dinosaurs and more. 
The company is "just getting started" with its mobile app, said Zuckerberg, who appeared on stage in a grey T-shirt and dark trousers at Palo Alto's Crowne Plaza, flanked by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and finance chief David Ebersman. With 900 million users, Facebook is the world's dominant social network. Zuckerberg was Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2010 and was depicted in the fictionalized 2010 movie "The Social Network". "Over the next 10 years or so, every consumer category should be transformed to be built around people," Zuckerberg told fund managers and Silicon Valley glitterati such as Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. 
The context of the earth in PulzAR is this – the planet you call home is in great peril, where a bunch of colossal asteroids near the earth are spinning ever closer on a deadly collision course that will take out mankind. All attempts to divert these asteroids’ trajectory have fallen short, and you seem to be the earth’s final hope, relying on a network of explosive rockets that should break down the asteroids into far more manageable bits. Sounds a whole lot like Asteroids, don’t you think so? Save for the fact that this one comes with a modern twist. 
Nicola Hill, marketing director for Penguin Press, is optimistic about the opportunity to turn static print into an interactive experience. Hill describes this partnership as an “inventive” and a “fresh publishing idea.” But managing director for Zappar, Caspar Thykier, said augmented reality is in its nascent stage. According to Thykier, publishers should take AR with a pinch of salt. “We are taking a measured approach to this,” he said. “It would be crazy to say that we are revolutionizing publishing.” Still, Thykier said there are limitless possibilities for AR. “It’s a bit of magic isn’t it?” he said. “It’s about exciting and surprising people with additional layers of content.” 
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t watch live TV anymore, for the most part. It’s not that I have anything against live TV, although I know plenty of people who do (mostly the commercials, it has to be said), but just that … I want to watch more shows than I have time to each week, so my DVR is constantly full of options, meaning that I can pick and choose what I’m in the mood for, versus whatever happens to be on whenever I find myself with enough time to sit down and turn the television on. Not that that’s the only way I watch shows; thanks to mobile devices and various apps, I can watch entire series without going anywhere near a television (I’ve seen all of the second season of Happy Endings via the ABC app, for example; reading that it’ll now be on opposite New Girl brought a reaction of “Oh, that’s right, it’s actually a television show that’s on on prime time, it’s not just this fun thing I watch on the iPad at weekends” more than anything else). It’s possible that I’m a complete aberration, but I’m not convinced that that’s the case; ABC’s upfront seemed as interested in online clicks and real-time ratings. 
With almost 40 unique, interactive, re-purposed petrol bowsers on display, people are free to walk up and have a play, then vote online here for their favourite. 
One solution to the head-mounted-computer user interface conundrum involves hand gestures. Enter a new Google patent that seems to be the search giant’s answer to controlling its Project Glass augmented reality system. Titled, “wearable marker for passive interaction,” the patented system, which just went public Tuesday, would use a reflective infrared identifier placed on a user’s hand to track and identify the user’s gestures. 
May 17th LIVE I'D HIDE YOU IS AN ONLINE GAME OF STEALTH AND CUNNING LIKE NO OTHER. JUMP ONBOARD WITH A TEAM OF RUNNERS LIVE FROM THE STREETS OF MANCHESTER AS THEY ROAM THE CITY TRYING TO FILM EACH OTHER. SEE THE WORLD THROUGH THEIR EYES AS THEY STREAM VIDEO: DUCKING AND DIVING, CHATTING TO PASSERSBY, TAKING YOU DOWN THE BACK ALLEYS TO THEIR SECRET HIDING PLACES. AND PLAY AGAINST YOUR FRIENDS ONLINE AT THE SAME TIME. USE YOUR WITS TO CHOOSE WHICH RUNNER TO RIDE WITH. GET A SNAP OF ANOTHER RUNNER ONSCREEN WITHOUT GETTING SNAPPED. 
For half a century, signals came over the public airwaves, and we gathered around the glowing appliance in groups at preordained times. Cable created a second wave of choice and split the model into paid and unpaid streams. Now, DVR penetration will approach 50 percent of American homes next year, while half of American homes already have video on demand. With the Web offering alternatives as well, the programming controls have been reversed: we watch what we want, when we want to watch, and by the way, we aren’t going to watch much in the way of commercials. My house is hardly the bleeding edge: Nielsen estimates that there will be 350 million Web-enabled television devices sold worldwide in 2015. 
"This means that the overall proportion of U.S. adults who get location-based information has almost doubled over that time period, from 23 percent in May 2011 to 41 percent in February 2012," Pew found. 
Veteran transmedia producer Jackie Turnure (Fourth Wall Studios) joins J.C. and Steve in this jam-packed episode. Their discussion spans her past Alternate Reality Game projects for LOST, Flash Forward, Salt and more, and leads up to an in-depth conversation about Fourth Wall Studios’ just-released project, Dirty Work and their new transmedia platform, RIDES. Jackie talks about what makes Dirty Work different, and the unique challenges that a transmedia entertainment studio faces. |
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