My 80th level Ranger will pwn you, n00b!

My experience with the Irgo2 Unconference got off to a rocky start, but I managed to shake of my frustrations and enjoy the workshop: Are video games the ultimate training camps for resistance?

The panel chair Christine introduced a slide from the top rated games of 2010, many of which had themes of resistance along with the idea that video games help increase children’s cognitive, problem solving, and special orienting skills. She also introduced the US Armies recruitment and training video game America’s Army. which has been freely distributed to teenagers in malls and has had some accusations of the morally and ethically ambiguous  practice of placing real soldiers in the game world to converse with the young players. 

America's Army 3 (Youtube)

The next panel member Sarah, who is a regular player of the game Lord of the Rings Online  enjoys the Player vs. Player (PvP) aspect of the game.The experience for her is aesthetic, as well as competitive, and she finds a sense of community with the other players with which she interacts.

The Last panelist Ben Phear discussed how many gamers hack their consoles and games to allow them greater freedoms. Ben commented that hacking was in essence resisting the control of the large companies, who monopolize and dictate what can and can not be done with a game, or console.

PVP Fail? (Very De-motivational)

In my opinion a rather vital part of the topic of the workshop seemed to be underplayed: the aspect of video games as a training camp for resistance.  While it was shown that video games can and are being used as training grounds; otherwise the US Army would not have invested in the video game franchise of America’s Army, I would suggest that this is a tool for conforming to, rather than resistance to control!

So do games actually train us?  Large companies (Fedex, Microsoft) etc. require team members to play games like WoW to build teamwork, and bviously, the US Army feels this is a valuable exercise as they have put a percentage of their budget into America’s Army, and using it as a training tool. However, games are imposing forms of control of their own, players typically sign a ToS agreement (for example WoW), which will include an acceptable behavior code, not to dissimilar to societies.  These ToS agreements have preprocessing for violating them, which again making resistance.... um... futile.

Resistance is futile (lolcats)

The effect of violent video games on youth has long been debated but in the aftermath of the Columbine high school massacre the media was fast to blame violent video games for contributing to Harris and Klebold’s psychological issues. Lt Col. (Ret) David Grossman co-authored a book called Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence in which the author comments that violent media (including games) are exposing out children (some as young as 10 or 11) to “training” in violent or criminal acts. It is interesting to note that in the early 1980’s roleplaying games like Dungeon and Dragons were blamed for the same things, as were comics in the 1930’s (and this produced the ultra restrictive Comics code). 

A danger to the very fabric of society? (Roleplayers at Gen Con)

During the group discussion, it was mentioned that games like the Grand theft Auto series encourage rebellion against social norms (viz. stealing cars). I would debate that however as modern media has portrayed the “bad boy” and "anti-hero", in a positive light. So are we really resisting society, if many of the characters we see positively portrayed in our media, are the antithesis of what society claims to aspire to?

Heroes don't Kill? (X-men #132 Marvel Comics )

I  suggest that, as with violence, video games are only a training ground for resistance if a person has a predisposition to wanting to resist. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I feel I’m living proof of this….

My Age of Conan Ranger Enech

"Random freak "   

   (Dunedin (Feb 2003))

......Ummm, perhaps not!

The Media are just another virus? Quick pass the Tamiflu ™!

Given my new line of research (Bioinformatics) the “viral phenomenon” sounds a little unhealthy to me and makes me wish I was wearing a hazmat suit, and had a nice dose of antiviral pharmaceuticals on hand, “just in case”. Actually, come to think of some of those viral marketing campaigns it might have helped!

This “viral phenomenon” also known as guerilla marketing, viral marketing or word of mouth marketing is not really a new phenomenon, but it does use modern tools. The idea is that a “marketer” can cheaply and effectively disseminate their “product” using non-traditional media (e.g. blogs, social networking sites, tweets, emails, SMS messages etc.) either in conjunction with more traditional advertising methods or often only using these nontraditional methods.


An early predecessor to modern viral marketing might be considred the famous Superbowl commercial Apple computers used to launch their new Apple Macintosh line. Apple seems to were begining to understand the concepts of viral marketing even from this early date, and it has become one of their standard methods of marketing.

                             Macintosh Superbowl 1984 commercial (Youtube)

Viral Marketing techniques began to be first applied and studied in the early 1990’s. Douglas Rushkoff wrote in his book Media Virus! talks of reaching “susceptible” potential users, and “infecting” them with the idea. This user then shares these ideas with friends, thus spreading the idea. He implied that the rate of this idea spreading is akin to the epidemiology of an organic virus.  Orson Scott Card in his 1994 book Enders Game predicts the impact of such viral techniques, when the characters Valentine and Peter Wiggan (as children!) use very similar unconventional techniques to shape the course of world history.

One of the best known early examples of  successful viral marketing was The Blair Witch Project which was a low budget ($500,000 - $750,000 (US)) (Young, 2009) managed to compete potential box office behemoths like Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace  and The Wild Wild West starring Will Smith. The movie was one of the first to turn to the Web using the jumpy hand held video that set the mood of the movie.

                                        Blair Witch Project trailer (YouTube)

More recently (2007) World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) used a viral marketing campaign to hype up the return of Canadian  Super Star Chris Jerico, using short  videos (which appeared "mysteriously" on the in arena screen ) rendered in Matrix style binary code with links that were, referring to various biblical passages about Jericho. This campaign was also spread over the web, on various websites and discussion fora to spread the hype.

Viral Marketers use many techniques in hopes of make an "instant" connection, and perhaps give them a sense of community. The marketer also has had to spend some time in identifying their target audience. Some of these techniques include:

·         Key word search optimization allowing a web search to return the organizations product near the top (if not at the top) of the first page of the search.

·         Use of social networking media such as Linkedin, Facebook or to a lesser extent MySpace.

·         Rapid updating services like Twitter or SMS and VMS services, run by sophisticated “artificially intelligent” programs to appear to be a real person.

·         Blogs.

Guerrilla  marketing has begun to even influence how job seekers market themselves. With the increasingly competitive and cut throat job market, authors like Levinson and Perry advocate using viral techniques to market yourself, as it might give you an edge that other conventional methods will not, showing that society is beginning to accept these techniques as something expected. 

One of the most successful viral campaigns of modern times is the campaign to become the next President of the United States by Barak Obama. The Obama camp utilized many of the tools listed, to both raise money (through small donations as well as sizable), and spread their message to as many voters as possible.

This approach was so successful it spawned a spoof campaign (The Obama Joker) and a some what punitive retaliatory campaign calling into question the authenticity of Barak Obama's campaign, claiming he was not a natural born citizen, this movement commonly called the "Birthers", who have utilized many of the same tools President Obama did to gain election. 

                                  The Hope Poster                           The Obama Joker     

So perhaps imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?                                                                                        

Asigment 1: Mashups

The term Mashup originates from the music video industry. In terms of the internet, a mashup is a web page or application that uses and combines data, functionality, etc. from several, sources that creates a new service, which is hopefully easy to use, fast, and open source materials. A mashup can also be seen as a child of the Web 2.0 environment, with the advent of commonly accepted web standards, the mixing and matching of various competitors API (Application Programming Interface) it became much easier to stitch together the various applications to create these new services. (Clarkin and Holmes)

Early mashups were took data from sites such as Craigslist, Amazon etc. and integrated them into mapping services or photo services to allow a visualization of the data. As with most innovations on the net, these early mashups were consumer focused.

                  Cycle for design (or redesign) of Mashups (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com)

There are many types of Mashup:

• Data mashups: combine data of similar types to create a web service, which would otherwise not exist. An example of an educational data mashup Interactive Map Tool from Johns Hopkins University, which allows students and staff to create custom mashups using digital media, text, and data.
• Business mashups: Allow businesses to combine their own resources with data from other web services, but focusing it into a seamless manner. One of the best known examples is a project from Agile Development.
• Consumer mashups as opposed to data mashups, consumer mashups tend to combine different data types, and then combine them into a single presentation, one of the earliest mashups housing maps is an example of this class of mashup, which allowed Craigslist for rent and for sale housing to appear on a map linked to google maps. 

                            Top ten Mashups of all time (Programmableweb)

I am a regular user of Amazon come (the 5^th most popular Mashup of all time). It allows you to search for books, music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelery, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, and yes even groceries! It should be considered a Business mashup as combines’ data from its own databases, with that of publishers, Venders, selected second hand sellers, and chains such as Toys Are Us etc.  

As can be seen if you wanted to buy Torchwood: Children of Earth,  you are able to see that it is in stock, and costs $20.99 (USD) from amazon.com, that 30 other venders sell it new for as cheaply as $20.38 or 11 used copies are available a starting at $16.98. Thus allowing me to decide if I want a new copy or a used copy, and if I do want to buy it from Amazon, or one of the other venders.

References:

Clarkin, Larry and Josh Holmes. "Enterprise Mashups." n.d. MSDN Architecture Center. 20 Jan 2011 <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb906060.aspx>.

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com. Consumer and enterprise mashups. n.d. 20 Jan 2011 <http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/feature/Consumer-and-enterprise-mashups>.

Programmableweb. Programmable web. n.d. 20 Jan 2011 <http://www.programmableweb.com/apis>.