The program for the Sydney Writer’s Festival has just be released. It includes lots of great talks, workshops and discussions, including one I’ll be having with game writer Matt Costello. I’ve been asked to conduct a live discussion with game, TV, book and film writer Matt Costello for one hour at the Festival on Saturday May 24th. It should be a really interesting chat about game writing, and writing for entertainment in general.
In retrospect, I’ve actually conducted a few public discussions with game designers and writers. A couple of years ago I toured Australia chairing discussions with Obsidian Entertainment’s Chris Avellone for the Australian Literature Board; toured Australia with ARG designer Evan Jones for Film Australia (as well as interview him for my podcast UC101), and I interviewed Chris Crawford for the first and only Writer Response Theory podcast (I’m a giggling maniac on it). I must say, my favourite cultures are game designers (ARGers in particular), cross-media creators, transdisciplinarity scholars, and entrepeneurs, so it is great to have this opportunity to hang out with an experienced game writer, who is very good at articulating the unique aspects of game writing.
I went to BarCampSydney 3 yesterday as an attendee, not an (un)organiser, for the first time. I pulled out of (un)organising because of the time needed to commit to the preparation, time which I had to put towards finishing my PhD. So, it was a real blast to be able to turn up when I felt like it and just move around listening to whatever talks I wanted. Previously I had blogged writeups of BCSs that spoke about the spirit of entrepeneurs and facilitating and feeling the effects of participation. This year I’ll just give a short run down of some of the highlights for me and a handful of observations.
Some Highlights:
Joseph Gentle’s talk about object-oriented operating systems. That isn’t what he called the idea (he hasn’t got a name for it yet), and it isn’t the first time it has been attempted, but I really liked hearing someone talking blue sky about making computing better.
Ryan Cross’s sensible talk about Drupal (Drupal Asia Pacific Conference) and Project Pier (open source project management and community system) and then sharing villager tactics during Werewolf.
Laim Hodge (Nick Hodge jnr) talking about Anonymous. I was really curious to find out some more information about Anonymous.
I have to admit, I only found out about them for the first time in January when the Chanology Project launched:
Laim said that he is a member of Anonymous (yes, you can be known and unknown at the same time). He explained that Anonymous began in Japan with the chan image sites (and have grown to English sites such as 4Chan and 7Chan and so on). [Warning, there are no restrictions on what is posted and you may need to clear your cache afterwards.] Anonymous has at least 20,000 members worldwide and is not governed by any leaders. There have been many events undertaken by members that are not accepted by the others, but there is no control or repurcussions within the community. Fox News did a report on Anonymous after Anonymous accessed Fox’s ftp site and changed the file names to those of a song.
And then Anonymous apparently posted a response (which it should be noted is authored by an individual or a small group — Anonymous does not speak as one voice):
Many members of anon and non members of anon (!) have also posted their extreme views on the Foxx11 report:
The BCS Anonymous member explained that some of the events mentioned in the Fox11 report were not the work of Anonymous, some were denounced internally and others were just for laughs. Well, it was no surprise to find out that the main demographic of Anonymous is high-school male geeks (ITers). Project Chanology seems to be the only project they’ve done that attempts to do some good. It seems such a waste to have all these skills and dispersed power being used on destructive activities. I cannot help but juxtapose ARGers with Anonymous: both have alot of Net skills and are quite cyberculture literate, yet ARGers channel their skills in a more creative direction than Anonymous, whereas ARGers are perhaps not as proactive as Anonymous; ARGers have a strong sense of community whereas Anonymous are unified by their anonymity…I think perhaps it is an unfair juxtaposition but I find it interesting culturally nevertheless.
One thing I want to add to my comments about Liam’s presentation is his attitude. I spoke with Liam afterwards and he was sincerely interested if he got his message across. I believe he got up again on the second day and attempted to improve on his previous presentation. I just love that: being sincerely interested in getting your message across and improving yourself over and over again to make sure that happens. Impressive life skill to have so young Liam. Good on ya.
On that note, I did a quick presentation (with no prep) to get a t-shirt and some feedback. My talk was crap, but I’m not bothered. I learnt more about how tech people think and I was reminded of a lesson I’ve had the opportunity to learn over and over again (that is the funny thing about experience, it takes time to develop). The lesson I allude to is the need to start right from the beginning when explaining a problem or solution to something. I often presume some degree of shared knowledge or understanding and jump straight to a middle or end thought. In my experience, this approach has never, ever, worked! Start from step (A) always, but you can vary how long you take to get from (A) to (Z).
Back to BCS3. I also enjoyed Brett Welch’s talk about how GoodBarry has faired since the last BarCampSydney. GoodBarry is an integrated system for running an online business. It is pretty cool the way it bundles together website management, customer database, web analytics and customer profiling. Brett’s ‘5 Lessons in 5 Months’:
1. Advertising is useful but measure it carefully. 2. Leverage PR around (before, during and after) your tech releases. 3. Take a punt on marketing. 4. Make mistakes properly. 5. Everything takes longer than you think.
Bonus: Be UnConventional. Unlike some tech businesses, they’ve created a ‘storybook‘ to share the beginning of GoodBarry. (See below)
Now, the lessons Brett has learnt are nothing new, but what I appreciated was his desire to share these lessons. As with previous BarCampSydney’s, the discussion after Brett’s talk started to move into general entrepeneur discussions with Mike of Atlassian throwing in some gems. However, the conversation was cut short to keep to the alloted time. This is something I’d recommend to change as the entrepeneurship sessions are great discussions (and since they even ran into 2 hour sessions at the last BarCampSydneys we had decided to put a longer dedicated session.) Unfortunately this lesson didn’t rollover into BCS3, but maybe the next one.
Great to have a free meal! and drinks (thanks to Atlassian for the drinkies and Tangler for putting towards the din dins)
BCS tweets
Playing Werewolf for hours was the best! (Thanks Mike!)
Stuff to change?:
In the previous BCS (do I sound like an old fart? “back in my day!”), we made sure in blog posts and on the day that everyone knew what BCS was about and primed with the spirit. I missed the intro session at BCS3 so this may have been covered.
Although the t-shirt for presenters-only was a good incentive (I did a random talk to get one), it would of been nice to just have a t-shirt. There wasn’t any problem getting people to present in the last BCSs, but maybe it encouraged newbies. I don’t know, from what I saw the majority of presentations were prepared in some manner.
A dedicated long entrepeneur discussion session (as well as the pitch session)
We tried to arrange podcasts of the talks last time (Nick Hodge did some in the first BCS), but it never happened. Hope it will happen sometime.
One thing I requested and so I’m not sure if anyone else wants it, is a way to know the handles and avatars of the people there. I know most people that way and would of loved to have been able to track them down (through a board perhaps where people bring their own avatar print out or something?). They did run a speed networking session which was very popular I believe.
Speaking of Mick. It was fab to catch up with Mick and find out about his great new business: Pollenizer. He and Phil are a start-up swat team that come into a business and help solve problems etc. Fab stuff.
Well, that is it for another few months of BCS. I had a great time. Congrats to the unorganisers, sponsors and participants…and I can’t believe I missed the paper plane session:
Oh yeah — postscript — to all those who were friendly, interesting, intelligent, helpful, generous, curious, funny and brave @ BCS3:
Yes, that’s right, my podcast at UniverseCreation101.com is now in video. In this vodcast I interview filmmaker Lance Weiler, who has been extending his films to different media platforms for years, and spearheading digital distribution & social networking for the film community. Check it out. Also, for those in Facebook I’ve started a UC101 group. It is there I’ll ping you when a new video or substantial post is up, you can post stuff you think I and the others in the group will find interesting, and you can heckle me.
My latest articles to be published include an academic book review and two opinion pieces/reports about a film festival panel and a new media art panel I participated in.
My review, in the latest issue of Cyberculture Studies, covers Anne Friedberg’s very interesting book about the history of windows, screens & frames in film, art, architecture & philosophy: The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. The review is also graced with a response from the author: Anne Friedberg. As an extra note, the man behind CyberCulture Studies — David Silver — included the online augmentation to my essay on Tiering & ARGs (and Sean Stacey’s article on ‘Undefining ARGs’) as reading material in his class on Digital Literacies, which was guest lectured by Bryan Alexander. Ah, the world is getting smaller and smaller.
I participated, chaired & organised a few panels last year, and as I intimated in an earlier post, I was commissioned to write opinion pieces on two of the panels I participated in. The first is a short review/opinion piece about the ‘cyber-born film panel‘ at Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival. Here is the blurb about the panel:
The revolution will be downloaded… It’s an exciting time in filmmaking right now. Using Four-Eyed Monsters as a starting point - the superb ’YouTube feature’ - our panel will explore how online and digital culture has r/evolutionised and challenged traditional means of production, distribution and exhibition. Has the internet made these conventional methods all but redundant? How? And where are things moving to? A range of viewpoints will be heard across the spectrum - from filmmakers and producers to artists and web designers.
The article, ‘Cyber-Conceived/Cyber-Birthed Films: Christy Dena on Making and Distribution at DestFest’ has been published in RealTimeArts (an Australian arts magazine) and has been edited somewhat. Of particular significance (regarding the editing) is the listing I included of all those who participated in the panel. So, here it is: This panel was organised by film critic, journalist and director Megan Spencer. The panelists included Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters fame (via video Skype); remix artists Dan & Dominique Angeloro of Soda_Jerk ; highly regarded film producer Rosemary Blight; Rachael Lucas, the director of cult hit Bondi Tsunami; DOP, Producer/Cinematographer Streetsweeper Toby Ralph; director and composer Jason Sweeney and me.
So was it the mobile phone or changes at the OzCo? Why has new media art apparently disappeared from the cultural landscape? Key cultural institutions such as ACMI have made the transition from pixels to Pixar. Games criticism is thriving at a time when discussions of media art histories recede into the background. Or do we need to revise our definitions of what is new media art? Does anyone really care about interactivity any more? In the age of machinima and Second Life, is there still a place for “new” media art?
In this panel discussion key media artists, curators and writers will debate these issues.
Interactivity may, or may not, be present during the discussion.
For those interested in a bit a background to the debate: recent notable essays & discussions include Steve Dietz’s 2004 ISEA essay ‘Art After New Media’ and 2006 Olhares de Outono Symposium essay ‘Just Art: Contemporary Art after the Art formerly known as New Media’. In 2007 Steve Dietz was in Australia and continued the discussions there (here): ‘A Meeting with Steve Dietz’. For an Australia-specific (though internationally relevant) article about Art & funding bodies etc, see Keith Gallasch’s (the editor of RealTime) 2005 essay: ‘From Art in a Cold Climate’.
So, in light of such history new media arts critic, academic and educator Darren Tofts organised the ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ panel. It included educator, critic and curator Shiralee Saul; director, critic, writer and curator Philip Brophy; new media artist Marcia Jane and myself.
As an added bonus, a participant on the panel and long-time (well for me) colleague of mine Shiralee Saul also has an article about game art in the just-released: SwanQuake: The User’s Manual. Also, one person who was in the audience of the panel (but who participated in the panel I organised for Interactive Entertainment 2007) — Christian McCrea — is participating in this months’ empyre discussion ‘Game Off’:
Whether we play or not, whether we live in the moneyed west or not, games occur.
Using the rubric of ‘game off’, our stellar guests will tease out and map intertwined threads of play culture, game art, game theory interrogating the frictions and fissions of experiential pleasure, avatar uprisings, the game engine medium, collection and archiving, futility and joy. Join Marguerite Charmante, Daphne Dragona, Margarete Jahrmann, Max Moswitzer, Julian Oliver, Melanie Swalwell, David Surman (and maybe Helen Stuckey) in multi-streamed dialogues moderated by Christian McCrea and Melinda Rackham.
Empyre is an interesting new media arts listserv that I had the pleasure of participating in as an invited guest about Second Life art a few months ago. Ah yes…cyberspace can seem really small at times. Then I wake up. There really is no end of the Internet, though the idea is funny.
Last year and this year I was a guest lecturer at the De Montfort University’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media — run by Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger among other notables. Well, after my lecture last year I had the luck to be a mentor for a talented writer: Alison Norrington. Alison created what she calls a ‘cross media work of fictional blogging’. Basically, she created a fictional character, Sophie, and had her come alive across the web — conversing with people through her blog, Twitter, Bebo, Second Life and other sites. I wrote a bit about Staying Single at my CME blog. It was the first time Alison had explored this type of media design and she was quite taken by it…and I loved exploring it all with her.
Recently pervasive game designer & researcher Jane McGonigal’s idea about ‘Alternate Reality Business’ mades the Harvard Business Review annual “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas”. Here is a snippet from Jane’s blog:
In the coming decade, many businesses will achieve their greatest breakthroughs by playing games—specifically, alternate reality games, or ARGs. Custom-designed ARGs will enable companies to build powerful collaboration networks, discover solutions to specific business problems, forecast opportunities, and innovate more reliably and quickly.
Why? ARGs train people in hard-to-master skills that make collaboration more productive and satisfying. Playing an ARG teaches 10 collective-intelligence competencies. These include cooperation radar, a knack for identifying the very best collaborators for a given task, and protovation, the ability to rapidly prototype and test experimental solutions. Using these skills, players amplify and augment one another’s knowledge, talents, and capabilities. Because ARGs draw on the same collective-intelligence infrastructure that employees use for “official” business, games will map directly to a familiar reality—no translation required.
As these competencies mature within a business, ARGs will provide a truly stimulating framework for doing everyday work. Few meetings are as engaging as an ARG, whose emerging narrative evokes players’ shared sense of urgency and whose puzzles and clues deepen their curiosity. The structure for collaboration is clear, with players rallying around explicit goals and continually sharing theories, tactics, and results. Playing also generates compelling momentum: The puppet master monitors and rewards participants’ efforts, and times the release of new challenges so that players experience multiple cycles of success.
Of course, Jane was also involved in the design and community management of the biggest serious ARG World Without Oil. There have been many examples of small-scale ARGs being created for education and training though. Well, recently, ARG designer Dave Szulborski was involved in the design of an ARG for the military. Here is some info from their release:
This is the scenario behind a new ARG created by BBN Technologies and Dave Szulborski, author of This Is Not a Game and creator of five well-know ARGs. ARGs have been used with great success to promote books, movies and television shows and BBN scientists proposed that the method could be applied to serious training with equal success. Now, the US military is testing that hypothesis with the first evaluation of an ARG as a tool for training military personnel. In a month-long demonstration, a group of 124 participants made up of active duty military, reservists, government staffers, and university students is working together to cope with the tsunami scenario. This is the kind of situation that is most difficult to train for; not an acute, episodic crisis than can be simulated in a short course or in a classroom, but a longer term situation that changes as the circumstances unfold. ARGS offer the benefit of allowing trainees to practice the skills needed for such exceptional situations while they continue to do their regular jobs and to develop real relationships in a virtual scenario that will help them respond effectively when they are required to cope with an unexpected situation such as the tsunami scenario.
Bill Ferguson, division scientist at BBN Technologies, one of the partner organizations for the demonstration, said, “The military needs a training solution for longer term, intermediate intensity situations that involve multiple agencies. Because ARGs are inherently distributed and built on complex, engaging scenarios, they are an effective and cost efficient way to train for the long duration, large-scale problems that require individuals to respond both collectively and individually.”
Jointly funded by the Joint Forces Command and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the demonstration is being executed by BBN Technologies, Dave Szulborski, and Aptima. BBN, which was contracted to develop the tools and pedagogy and administer the demonstration, provides tools to support ARGs under its trademark, Helical Training. BBN engaged Szulborski to develop the ARG’s initial scenario and to build on the rich content as the responses and changing circumstances affect the fictional situation. Aptima will evaluate the demonstration and measure participants’ responses against specific learning goals.
Jeffrey Y. Kim, Jonathan P. Allen and Elan Lee have written a short peice on ARGs and specifically I Love Bees for the latest issue of Communications. It provides some great insights into the ILB design. Check it out.
Jak Boumans is very well-known in industry for his work on digital media. He is the General Secretary of the European Academy of Digital Media, writes, reviews, audits and consults. I was a cyberspace lurker on his activities until I had the pleasure of meeting Jak when I gave a keynote at the First International Conference on Cross-Media Interaction Design (which Jak talks about here). After that I travelled to The Netherlands where Eric Voight invited me to give a talk at Noordelijke Hogeschool, Leeuwarden for their Crossmedia Minor. Eric also invited myself, Jak and Monique De Haas (blog) to hold a panel together. Chatting with Jak and Monique about all things cross-media (that is: talking with people who have been working with this area for years) was an absolute delight. Well, Jak has been blogging every day for years. He is up to his 1000th post and asked me to contribute some info about my upcoming thesis. I was honoured to do so. So, without further delay, here is my little contribution to Jak’s amazing online resource (of which he has more to come). Congratulations on 1000 posts Jak and all that you have contributed!
Last year DIY filmmaking pioneers Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma, WorkBookProject), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and M dot Strange (We Are The Strange) got together and came up with the idea for a film festival in which audiences can watch films they choose in theatres, in their living room, online and via mobile phones. Not only does this give audiences choice and the filmmakers a global audience, all filmmakers are welcome to submit, they retain their rights, pay no fees AND get revenue directly from the distribution outlets. They’ll also be running virtual panels. Here is some more info about their goals:
The festival’s goal is to create a direct connection between filmmaker and audience. There are no submission fees for filmmakers. FHTA attempts to create multiple revenue opportunities for the festival filmmakers by providing a platform that enables distribution across multiple outlets - mobile, online, living rooms and theaters. Filmmakers retain all their rights and choose how to price their work.
In an interesting twist we’ve decided to put the programming of the festival directly in the hands of the audience. By harnessing the power of social tools, audience members will be able to discover, share and assist in programming the festival.
FROM HERE TO AWESOME consists of four main parts.
1. Discovery – filmmakers and audience members use core features and functions of youTube and myspace to submit and select projects that will be showcased in FHTA.
2. Education – audience members learn filmmaking in an engaging and fun way that has them interacting with their peers and directly with showcased filmmakers.
3. Sharing – audience members enjoy interesting feature length and
short form entertainment which they have helped to program.
4. New Models - the goal of FHTA is to experiment with new distribution models for filmmakers that give them realistic options for reaching global audiences and seeing a return for their creative efforts.
In their generous style, they’re already sharing tips and tricks:
Eighteen months ago I submitted an essay idea to Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze for their special issue of the Convergence journal. The essay, titled ‘Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games’ is in the publication and is now available online. I’ve created a website to go with the essay for a few reasons….some of which is to provide general-reader designer-oriented content, to provide the basic info it wasn’t appropriate to put in an analytical essay and because the copyright agreement is that I cannot publish the essay on my site for a year. Here is the full list of contents:
Hector Postigo > Video Game Appropriation through Modifications: Attitudes Concerning Intellectual Property among Modders and Fans
Daren C. Brabham > Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases
Larissa Hjorth > Being Real in the Mobile Reel: A Case Study on Convergent Mobile Media as Domesticated New Media in Seoul, South Korea
Gunn Sara Enli > Redefining Public Service Broadcasting: Multi-Platform Participation
Samantha Lay > Book Review: Barbara Klinger. Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home
Melissa Gregg > Book Review: Mark Nunes. Cyberspaces of Everyday Life
I look forward to reading the other essays. I hope this issue provokes some conversations, please send through your thoughts on the comments here or via email. I’d love to hear them.
Jeffrey Y. Kim, Jonathan P. Allen and 
