This week I have mostly…

January 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Over the past few weeks and months I’ve been on a major de-cluttering spree, which has particularly focused on my pop culture addiction. I’ve sold, donated and binned a fairly substantial amount of books and videos, with CD’s and DVD’s either ripped and archived or in the queue to be added with the next external hard drive purchase.

The net result is that I’ve made a small amount of cash by letting go of books I’d probably never read again, I’ve gained some space and perspective on what is actually most important to me, and I’ve been investing in more digital formats for the future. The only downside is that one of my favourite habits is to check out the books/films/cds whenever I visit someone’s house, which doesn’t work so well in the digital age. Hence a quick top-of-the-head list of my entertainment for the previous week (For more comprehensive lists, you can always check out Last.fm, Goodreads, etc, but some items either don’t appear or get forgotten…)

I’ve been reading:

Since getting a Kindle, I’ve devoured Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which I’d meant to read for ages, and finally picked up. Not only is it extremely interesting for those with an interest in medicine and science, but it should also be essential reading for any journalist and writer who has ever had to deal with a press release containing data, technical terms, or plain BS. And it’s a pretty damning report on the state of national news reporting when it comes to big medical stories.

I also raised through With a Little Help by Cory Doctorow. Like Bad Science, I’d meant to read it for ages, and indeed had started via the Creative Commons edition that Cory makes available for free via his website, but to enjoy it outside of a PDF on my laptop I figured I’d pay the ‘Lazy tax’ to have the Kindle version.

It’s a great collection of short stories, and although some did appeal more than others, what is always consistent is that every Doctorow tale comes with insight and inspiration for the future of the internet/society/technology etc. Even an average Doctorow story gets you thinking, and there are a number in here which are way above average. If there were two authors I’d subscribe to for all future work sight unseen, it’d be Cory and William Gibson.

And finally I’m just finishing the Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee – something which I’ve always meant to read but never enough to make it to the top of my list when in a bookshop. But it seemed like good timing, having rekindled my interest in actually practising some martial arts again by The Pajama Game, rather than just watching the occasional film. It’s interesting because it’s not a ‘how to’ guide for individual punches and throws – it’s a sometimes random collection of notes loosely structured after Lee’s death into the philosophy and approach of a fighting style which has no fixed style. And I also happened to read this post by Charles Frith which features an interesting interview with Lee.

I’ve been listening:

In a shocking lack of awareness, I’d seen Laura Kidd occasionally being mentioned in reference to her fanbase on Twitter, but hadn’t actually got around to listening to her music until she recently released an album of remixes in aid of charity. That prompted me to check out her album Disarm (on Amazon, and on Spotify), under the name ‘She Makes War’.

Turns out I’m an idiot, she makes brilliant music including a free downloadable cover of ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ which is now the version I’ll hear when someone mentions the song.

I’ve been watching:

Aside from catching the odd episode of Big Bang Theory and a passing interest in Man vs Food, the only thing I actually wanted to watch when it was being broadcast was Sherlock Holmes. At which point my parents decided to have their weekend telephone call, so I haven’t really watched anything this week. And luckily my strange soap opera obsession with Ice Road Truckers Deadliest Roads ended just before this week so you’ll never find out about it.

I will get around to watching Borgen, but will probably end up waiting for the complete series to become available rather than watching weekly – I’ve increasingly found it’s easier for me to spend a weekend immersed in a series rather than waiting impatiently for scheduling to mean that I get out of sync anyway.

In terms of films, there hasn’t really been anything grabbing me – I did catch random bits of films I’d already seen being broadcast yet again, such as watching Oceans 12 for long enough to remember why it was such a letdown. But I did end up watching the Smurfs, which combine Neil Patrick Harris with what has to be the best role Hank Azaria has played – normally his appearance in a film is a guarantee of slight irritation at a slightly annoying pastiche. One that kept a 3-year-old entertained enough whilst his parents could also enjoy it.

I’ve been playing:

Rather than television, any leisure time goes into the Xbox. The social side of Xbox Live defines most of this, with my current Forza Motorsport 4 obsession combining a group of friends and the still-present ambition to find a way to race regularly. I’ve also had a very short blast on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but it still hasn’t grabbed me as addictively as the previous games in the series.
Besides that I’ve finally been catching up on the downloadable content available for Grand Theft Auto 4, particularly now I know there’s a new one on the way, and also been slowly making my way through the Wild West version in Red Dead Redemption. Both are massive, epic games with enough storytelling elements to replace television and films, with the added advantages of interactivity and being able to pursue the areas and choices that interest me.

Filed Under: Blogging, Recommended Books, Videogames, xbox 360 Tagged With: , , , ,

A great opportunity for Nokia that no one has mentioned…

July 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

The news is full of reports on the abysmal second quarter results posted by Nokia today, which saw such a massive drop for the company that it has been surpassed by Apple in smartphone sales for the first time (16.7 million Nokias, compared to 20 million iPhones).

Some are suggesting that it’s a sign the move to Windows Phone 7 was the right one, but most analysis and opinion is that Nokia might not survive long enough at this rate, given that we’re only likely to see one WP7 handset by the end of the year, and although the operating system is a nice one, it might not be nice enough to make any impact into the growth of Android and iOS. For a full and complete analysis of how far Nokia have floated up the creek without any propulsion, Tomi Ahonen is as comprehensive as ever in his figures, predictions, and critical analysis of Microsoft and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

But I think I may have spotted a big opportunity for a core of growth for Nokia, and it’s all based around Windows Phone 7 and their relationship with Microsoft

Here’s where Nokia, Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 could nail it:

  • Microsoft posted record quarter profits for Q4 last year, and record annual profits of $69.94 billion.
  • The biggest growth has come from the Entertainment and Devices division, which includes Kinect, and the Xbox, which was picked out as contributing significantly to the record profits.
  • Whether you prefer WP7, Android or iOS, you can certainly see that WP7 is a good enough OS to on a par with the others, but the perception is that the huge app catalogues of Android and iOS and the continued increase in developers devoting time and effort to them make their leads pretty unassailable.

But here’s what I think would give Nokia, Microsoft and WP7 a significant core group of growth from which to build….

  • Xbox is growing and making significant revenue.
  • Kinect is a record-breaking success.
  • Integration with Xbox Live and gaming on mobiles has been mentioned by senior Microsoft staff for years, even before the Xbox 360 launched (One of the chief people involved in the Xbox project, J Allard, talked about it in-depth in an Edge magazine feature back in 2005).
  • The biggest selling entertainment product of last year, which broke records for all videogame sales, was Activion’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, which is currently time-exclusive for the Xbox, meaning all updates etc are released way earlier for the Microsoft Console.

Non-gamers may still be asking why this matters, but consider the fact that there is a huge group of Call of Duty gamers who have bought an Xbox purely to play Call of Duty. And these generally aren’t 15-year-olds – these are mainly late-20s and early-30s men (and some ladies) who also bought an iPhone when they became cool and fashionable because a guy at work showed them Angry Birds.

These are people with limited time, and limited interest in comparing operating systems, or app inventory. There are plenty of other great games on the Xbox, but they’ll possibly buy a football game (Fifa for English football, Madden for American football, or maybe a golf game, and that’s it. They’ve spent £200 for a console, £40 for a game, and £30 for additional content, plus a £40 annual Xbox Live subscription to play one game online with their friends.

 

  • Now most manufacturers using Windows Phone 7 also produce Android handsets which have a much, much higher rate of sale and adoption at the moment by a massive margin, so Nokia is in a position to be a massively preferential partner with Microsoft.
  • If Nokia hardware, which is still trusted by consumers, and Microsoft WP7 could be put to Activision in a way that gets exclusivity on the Call of Duty franchise for mobile in addition to the Xbox console, or if they’ve already set up the contract that it’s Xbox Live exclusivity regardless of device.
  • Suddenly you have hardware people still remember as trustworthy, even if Symbian was perceived as stone age compared to smartphone rivals. You have Xbox Live which is doing massively well as the established online videogame network, and you have the game which gets a large audience of adults with a disposable income in a position to spend £300 plus just to access that game. If they can figure out the right way to get CoD onto a mobile handset in a way which is enjoyable, ties into the console game as well (Most likely feeding into the new Call of Duty XP social network/stats package), then they’ve got a strong and solid core from which to build.

And given that the mobile/console interaction was being discussed 6 years ago, and increased Xbox Live connectivity is constantly being mentioned in every WP7 upgrade, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was announced pretty soon. Given the fact that one Nokia WP7 handset is out this year, and the next installment in the series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is due in early November, marketing for such a phone and app would have to begin pretty soon, but having work on a launch app for a previous Nokia handset, the turnaround times for actually producing something were relatively short in that case.

Now the one thing that would probably scare anyone inside of Nokia from the idea would be remembering the ill-fated N-Gage – the gaming/phone ‘sidetalking’ abomination which ranks as one of the most notable gaming hardware failures of all time (and also produced the stil funny ‘sidetalking’ meme of imitating the N-Gage will all sorts of objects).

Nokia NGage

Just pretend the sidetalking taco phone never happened...

Fortuntely we’ve come a long way since then, with the Sony Xperia Play as the ‘Playstation Phone’ and the success of games including Angry Birds lifting simple mobile games. At the same time, most big games publishers, such as Activision and EA, are already publishing their games on the bigger mobile OS platforms.

If I was Stephen Elop and wanted to grab an established userbase which has disposable income for both hardware and digital content, and already has a strong word-of-mouth community with an established property, I’d be trying to get in a room with Ballmer and Robert Kotick in days or hours to get a deal done.

Filed Under: Gamification, mobile, Videogames, xbox 360 Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Will Microsoft and Xbox rule online identities in the future?

March 22, 2011 By 3 Comments

A really interesting Microsoft internal team video has appeared on the web, showing the ambition of the Windows Gaming Experience team for your Xbox avatar to become your identity and persona in the digital world.

It’s really interesting in light of some of my previous thoughts regarding Xbox Live Avatars, when I claimed back in 2008 that introducing avatars was a big mistake. And more rcently on both gamification, virtual worlds, and the idea of any company providing a single digital identity for us.

I’m a big Xbox gamer and fan, and I don’t think that Microsoft would be any worse than trusting a single identity to Facebook or Google. I also don’t think they’d be any better, despite the fact that avatars are slowly becoming better implemented and utilised in ways that are actually interesting and useful. My thoughts are probably summed up by the fact every article I see on single identities is tagged in Google Reader with ‘oneidisaf*****gstupididea’ – I’ll let you fill in the blanks. But so much of the momentum for a single ID seems to come from educated white male digital professionals who are comfortable with teir online personas and indeed often build businesse around them.

People are human, fallible, and occasionally secretive for good reasons as well as bad ones. Or will Microsoft introduce a ‘private browser’ setting that puts your avatar in a hat, shades and a long coat if you want to isit somewhere digitally that might be adults only, for example?

There is one other possibility which I’m starting to think about – the sanitised proprietary web experience of being locked into Microsoft or Facebook worlds with an ID which is tied to you for life, and a seedy underworld open web, where you can be who you want, do what you want (within reason), and actually learn, grow and evolve by mistakes as well as successes. I know which one immediately seems more fun and interesting to me.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Facebook, Gamification, Videogames, xbox 360 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Rare engagement and Kinect Sports

October 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was lucky enough to be invited along to an event held by games developer Rare, to play Kinect Sports (aff link), which has been developed for the new Kinect peripheral for the Xbox. I’ll write more about the game itself at the end, but a few other things struck me about the event.

Number one, it was the first event I’ve been to without any corporate affiliation for as long as I can remember. Even when not directly related, I’ve always been able to reference my employer during introductions, etc. This time I was purely there as a fan and independent freelance something or other, which was a little strange but also nice. It also meant that I hopefully spent more time listening and asking questions.

Number two – the event itself, #kinectsportsday, was really interesting as previously Rare had a reputation for keeping itself to itself since it began, 25 years ago. And the location of the offices backs that up – out in the countryside, hidden away behind a gatehouse and winding driveway.

But this event had been created purely to let people from ‘smaller’ sites and forums, competition winners, and fans, all get a chance to not only play the game before the next chance the mainstream press will get, but also to speak to the designers and developers all day long. There were probably 40-50 guests in attendance, and probably around 10 Rare employees, which meant an awesome amount of time to chat with the people that made the various elements of the game. And there were no limits of what you could ask etc.

It was a really nice piece of engagement – not only allowing people more access than they’d ordinarily have, but also building relationships with fans and sites which will either continue to have a strong following for Rare, or could end up being the next big thing.

Put simply, I spend a lot of time telling people how great it would be to open up to your fans and consumers – engage with them, give them access, chat and talk with them etc. And Rare let me feel exactly how great it is to be on the receiving end of that as someone who actually started playing their games 25 years ago.

Kinect Sports Day at Rare

For more pics, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/badgergravling/sets/72157625177210894/

Kinect Sports and Kinect:

So for those interested in gaming as much as marketing/engagement and my own identity crisis…

I think I’m finally converted to motion games – as fun gaming,rather than a distraction during parties. And I think the main reason for that is that the Kinect doesn’t make you hold a device to track/input motion – which means that when you become immersed in a game, it seems easier for my brain to fill in the gaps and make it feel more realistic. I’d definitely say for this type of sports game, I’d pick the Kinect version over the Wii version any day.

And part of that is down to the fact Kinect Sports is really nicely done. A total of six disciplines (Football, Bowling, Track & Field, Table Tennis, Boxing and Beach Volleyball) all contain normal versions of the sports (with single player, versus and co-operative modes), and minigame variations, which tend to be fun and frenetic.

There didn’t seem to be any lag in detecting movements and translating them on screen, graphically it looked pretty good (certainly above what would be required), and they’ve licensed enough suitable music and injected enough humour that I’d actually be tempted to play this in single player, which doesn’t happen often with party-orientated games.

I’ll write a more lengthy post concentrating on the gaming side of things for www.onlineracedriver.com now, but I think games like this are going to bridge the gap even more between games who actually own and play games, and those with a more casual interest/non-gamers as part of the overall convergence of entertainment devices. It’ll be interested to see how they continue to promote it versus the ‘celebs at home’ approach of Nintendo at the moment, as I think the Xbox platform has a lot more potential to crossover now as a media device/console/party game machine.

Filed Under: events, social media marketing, Videogames, xbox 360 Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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