augmented reality: sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

reality is bad enough at times without bloody augmenting it, you say. agreed. now get over it. we get you don’t need more stuff to follow in this digitally cluttered world. but suddenly there is a rash of new augmented reality (AR) mobile applications on the street which actually work. these aren’t science experiments nor expensive either. most are offered on a lite/freemium software download biz model basis for mobile apps from the apps stores out there at apple and google as well as the vendor’s own sites. there’s an avalanche of them… with a zillion of cool to gimmicky potential ways to use it them all. it is early days yet on great uses for this but it’s here to stay so get with the program. we will only discuss a few here. that’s why god invented google… you can track the others… unless you are clever. if you are “clever”,  you probably also walked out on minority report.

mobile AR apps work by recognizing a pre-established pattern you design or select using your mobile, tablet or laptop camera and “trigger” what we have termed a rich media “overlay.” it can augment the image you are pointing your camera at in ‘real time’ through your mobile camera with a video clip, a 3d image, animation, or architectural model  etc. on the scene on which you are focusing  your mobile or tablet or laptop camera. point, click and augment it… snap! you have mobile AR!

the stakes:

the future of the human/machine interface is changing very quickly whether it’s apple’s siri voice app or microsoft’s kinect gesture metaphor. now comes mobile AR for mobile & tablet apps. this new mobile AR stuff lends itself to a wide range of mobile and geodetic advertising/marketing and business applications to entertainment, gaming, interactive, mobile-specific, education, and government and military mobile applications. one of the coolest entertainment apps is action movie from bad robot which allows you to overlay special effects from mission impossible onto your relatively boring life to blow things up, crash cars and helicopters and place tornados on, well, anything. on the geek front, you already know that Google’s project glass is playing with an AR glasses prototype so we can all possibly become uber-geeksters. (remember, “can’t hit a kid with glasses!”)  Google‘s goggles are not commercially  available however. sighs. 

one small company doing interesting AR overlays is total immersion who did rayban’s virtual mirror site where you can try on cool rayban shades with AR using your laptop, tablet or mobile phone camera. this is great for lots of cool game apps and marketing brand applications. we also like one of the newest yet most well-backed kids on the block for advertising applications – aurasma. they debuted at sxsw a few weeks ago and are owned by autonomy who, in turn, are owned by hewlett packard.  there is new york city-based goldrun which develop rich media overlays for marketing and other promotional campaigns. one of the coolest companies we have found is metaio, a german company who has built stuff for mercedes benz and others. metaio seems to be trying to position themselves as the apple of AR and have a wide range of applications from marketing to architecture and industrial applications which you need to see on their site where you can download the software SDK for free.

the dea takeaway:

in a mobile world of apps vying for attention, AR promises to provide a huge range of useful and fun applications across an entire spectrum of uses where a visual real world environment can be augmented with a rich media overlay. and isn’t that, in the end, all we are all really looking for in life? stay bewildered… it is early days on all this. if not excited by it, listen to france’s magician version of david copperfield, marco tempest at TED this last month.

full disclosure: we have no business or economic interests in any of these companies.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

see our interview with richard garriott… father of RPGs… and… “lord british”

See our interview published in “World Gaming Executives Magazine”on page 24, with Richard Garriott, a founder of Portalarium and inventor of the “Ultima” franchise in RPG gaming… reflect upon the future of gaming, RPG and immersive worlds in a social, mobile world…

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1vpkr/WGEMAGGameDevelopers/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http://free.yudu.com/item/details/479025/WGE-MAG–Game-Developers-Magazine-Issue–3

http://wge.assets.moshenltd.com/wge-mag-version-3.pdf

Richard Garriott - a/k/a "Lord British"

serious games…seriously ?*!? get out of here, really?

(eyeball time: 1.5 minutes but you might read much faster if you took evelyn woods’ speed reading course in 1961…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.seriousgames.org

when you think of video games you thing of…well, fun. entertainment! yeah, that’s the ticket!  but there is a whole other world of  “serious gaming” out there.  a “serious game” is one that intends more than entertainment for its players. “serious games” focus on simulating some part of a real world system. according to dr. jane mcgonical, author of  reality is broken (buy book), they include business training games, marketing/advertising (known as “advergaming”), disaster preparedness games, flight or driving simulations, games that help patients understand how their bodies work, and so on. they allow players to test and experiment with systems.

an “alternate realty game” (a/k/a an “ARG,” you buzzword aficionados) on the other hand, is an interactive, trans-media narrative that evolves in response to what its players do. an ARG is truly a trans-media game in that it often involves multiple media and game elements and game mechanics to tell a story which evolves based on participants’ responses and with characters designed by the games designers. ARGs are internet-based an interesting because they have been able to attract large numbers of players in collaborative efforts to solve very difficult puzzles and challenges. jane mcgonical built an interesting game at institute for the future almost 4 years ago called “world without oil“ in which participants gamingly collaborate on solutions to live without oil. ARGs tend to have a pro-social “change the world” focus in many cases, although not always.

the  serious game initiative is focused on exploring how the public sector can forge productive links with the electronic games industry in projects involving training, health, education, and public policy. several members of the initiative produced an initial and highly useful taxonomy of serious games which mapped out the landscape as they see it in a presentation in 2008 [ their presentation may be downloaded here on the “connections” page of our site].

the stakes:

this newly-emerging niche in the game world is very powerful. today, for example, the u.s. department of defense spends $5 billion us annually on building “serious game” simulation games, according to the defense acquisition university. that includes everything from large u.s. air force flight simulators to warfare strategy  “kill” simulators developed by the u.s. army. “full spectrum warrior,” a commercialized “shooter” game was originally developed for the u.s. military. ea games’ “medal of honor” and a whole genre of single and group shooter games like bungie studios’ epic  “halo 3“are part of that military simulation game genre tradition.

but there is a gentler, perhaps more peaceful set of serious games in the marketplace today in a large number of categories: heath and wellness, training, education, science & research, production and work used by a variety of organizations such as corporations, government, healthcare, industry and ngo’s trying the save the world. while the u.s. government is by far the largest spender on serious gaming ($ billions), the corporate business market is spending much less (under a $1 billion u.s.), this space will be expanding quickly in categories like “advergaming”. car companies like mini cooper and jeep have games on their sites to promote brand experience, as do insurance companies such as progressive. increasingly, serious gaming and ARGs will be woven into our lives everywhere with tie-ins to facebook, google and yahoo games and many other trans-media venues.

the dea takeaway:

“serious gaming” will continue to evolve in the government and defense community on a massive scale and probably set the pace for major large spending efforts on complex simulations. they have the seemingly unlimited fountain of government money to fuel it as well as an entire “beltway bandit” group of private sector companies clustered in washington, d.c. and government-sim biz city orlando, florida, sucking up billions of our tax dollars. we have, in effect, what we are calling a gaming industrial complex, to paraphrase dwight d. eisenhower, when he coined the term “military industrial complex” in the good old 1950s.

the ARG movement, which is very new and still being born, may take major steps over time to accomplish what dr. jane mcgonical is seeking….games to change the world.  after the arab awakening in spring of 2011, which lead to political change and turmoil in tunisia, libya, eygpt and syria as well as the english rioting and looting, which occurred  in the summer of 2011, new attention is being given to the power of crowd-sourcing tools like facebook and social media. maybe ARGs will become effective tools to change reality as well. why not gamers?

see our presentation,Transmedia Gamification Opportunities for Serious Gaming dea Presentation @ Serious Play Conference, Seattle 08-23-11 and under our “connections” page.

e3 & the state of the game industry (and why sony gets it despite hacker issues)

e3 2011

(eyeball time: 3.0 minutes but you might read faster…but if you check the cool video links …god only knows… you are on your own…)

full disclosure: we have no business or commercial interests with sony. this is an independent assessment.

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.e3expo.com

o.k. so we are at e3 in los angeles with all the pimply gamer geeks and tons of scantily-dressed video game demo bimbos hired to make geeks-who-can’t-talk-to-girls feel better about themselves and buy more games and looking at everything and finding no big breakthroughs this year. you were smart to stay home. sure, there are more microsoft kinect-enabled titles. sure there astounding looking 3d/hd graphics making major video titles look like, well, movies you direct. and yes, there are hand-held 3d nintendos and new psp (psvita) units coming out as well as the 100th. version of “medal of honor 4” and “halo 4” with ad-on pack features as well as a million new shooter games which all look the same. blah, blah, blah. sighs.

the bigger picture is this: the entire video game industry had negative growth this last year, down 2-5% depending on whose unreliable numbers you look at. and that is because it is in the middle of a major disruption, moving from a predominately console-based world of $60 games to cloud-based free-to-play cloud based, mobile social games and a much more complex gaming audience being fueled by older baby boomer and women. yes, the blockbuster shooter titles will always be there and aren’t going anywhere soon. but interesting enough, traditional players like ea are finally get it and are doing something about it as are brick-and-mortar-but-on-online retailers like gamestop who are transitioning their business models brilliantly so they don’t become the next blockbuster video roadkill in the game retail space (more on them later and elsewhere).

but for us, sony is one of the most interesting companies navigating this transition and is best-in-class at managing the elephants-can-dance paradigm shift, tipping point, black swan, creative destruction transition thing (enough cliches there for you?) going on in the video game world today. despite all the hoopla around the playstation network security break-in (don’t gloat buddy, you are next on the hacker’s list- just ask Nintendo), and its slow growth on psp game console sales, sony is well-positioned to play on multiple tables with different content, service and hardware offerings: traditional console games for the trans-media living room (ps3+), mobile gaming devices psp (new psvita), pay-to-play games on the Sony Playstation Network and the newer Sony Online, sony’s MMO cloud offering you have heard about lately for all the wrong reasons.

the stakes:

the key ingredient for success for managing through an industry disruption, like the one facing the video game industry today, is the ability to build new franchises while preserving or actually cannibalizing existing franchises. what makes sony different from others with its 75+ million plus subscribers on all their gaming platforms (compared to Microsoft’s XBox’s console-based approximately 25+ million users)  is that they have separate segmented offerings by platform type. they are playing on many tables and are ready if the MMO cloud world takes over beyond their current small base of around 800k users. but what we also love the most is sony’s ability to make bets on new, innovative indie game developer video game content (such as “flower” discussed on this site and a video preview is available to your left on the video menu). they provide developers with a free set of game development tools and support indie game developers more than any other major industry player. (see www.indiecade.com) their virtual world capabilities on the playstation network enables your Sony avatar to enter and play different game in different virtual worlds, something only once-promising star “second life” enabled. in short, sony, unlike any other industry player is well-positioned on many tables to dominate over time.

the dea takeaway:

for general management & biz dev people: we get that making millions is very, very hard to do and that established cash-cow franchises are hard to move off of in order to explore seemingly much less certain bets in new spaces which your management team may not believe in or support. the old cash cow franchise always dwarfs the potential new one almost every time, even when the cow’s milk slows down and stops flowing, ergo no interest in anything but short term thinking. but all the evidence shows that when companies or product lines fade, die or fail, it is because everyone is in collective denial and running to the legacy revenue mattresses. net net, make some wide-ranging bets like sony has and think deeply about where things are going. think partnering on a revenue-share basis or licensing if new spaces are spooky to you.

for game developers: think about the fact that while building casual games for Facebook and the apple and android app stores looks attractive and easy, realize that your odds of making it are probably slightly worse than getting signed as an indie rock band at SxSW with 10,000 other bands playing at the same time. check out the big players like sony and see how you can fit in their ecosystems.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

the trans-media convergence future and “pervasive experience”…from Corning

(eyeball time: 5.3 minutes for the cool video clip…)

you may not know it, but corning was a stagnant usa rust belt glass company until they pioneered the development of high impact glass for mobile devices, large flat screen tvs…and yes, even that “telestrator” blackboard wolf blitzer and everyone at cnn uses non-stop to show you election results to earthquake data…today, they own the world…look at your phone…your computer…your video screen…corning is in your face… with practically bullet proof glass… and wait till you see the new flat screens we saw at ces this january in las vegas which will hit the market by june, 2011 at a best buy store near you…

our transparency moment about our relationship with glass companies, with a nod to madoff’s folly: we have no economic or business interests or relationships with corning (they don’t even know we exist, much less care)…so we show you this blatantly wonderful visionary video made by corning that shows one of the many ways we believe that trans-media/convergence is entering our lives…sooner than you think…  we call this the world of “pervasive experience…” we remember the first apple visionary video from the 1990s…visioning an iPad-like device…and tablets…they are here now and the technology curves are much steeper…so you get things much faster…

so as the perfume ad for obsession perfume says…”share the fantasy”….

nothing else to say…

why the“flower” user experience changes everything for everybody…

(eyeball time: 2.0 minutes but you might read faster…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

while the mainstream anemic usa game industry plugs along trying to woo new viewers with hd, wireless, 3d technology and interactive gizmos like wii and microsoft’s kinect, a quiet but potentially seismic revolution has been taking place elsewhere. it is a “game,” rather, an experience called flower, and it is not about gaming…it is about user experience. ask your local hipster about it. they will know.  thank the people at sony playstation for trying to take the whole industry in another direction with this innovative move. this affects all user experience design because it implies an entirely new design paradigm: human emotions. and that is powerful stuff to be messing with.

comes a company started by 2 people out of university of southern california’s usc games institute… thatgamecompany led by two geniuses, kellee santiago and jenova chen, who we visited and interviewed in their santa monica studio. their idea? make user experiences based on human emotions. whadda concept. forget stupid categories like “casual gamer,” “hard core gamer” and “gamer.” their games (ahem, experiences)  are designed around a single emotion, amazing images, music and free exploration with mind-blowingly simple interaction. there is no “objective” except an amazing experience of chasing flowers across a landscape. you need to see the two video clips on our site to see what this is about. the first is an interview with kellee santiago, ceo of thatgamecompany which created it, and the second is a clip of flower. you need to do this now to get it.

several years back, kellee and jenova went to sundance and showed cloud, their first graduate-level “student” game done while at usc. next thing you know, enlightened executives at sony playstation sign them and cut a 3 game deal and place them on the sony playstation network. now you can download flower from the sony playstation network for just under $10us, making the purchase of a playstation3 worth the entire purchase just to get the ability to play this game alone. it is ground-breaking and will make you experience intense happy emotions. whadda concept, but we said that before! some users have reported literally tearing-up emotionally, it made them so happy.

as kellee says, flower is a video game poem that asks something different of the “player” with “no score, no time limit, no death.” their company tag line is “life in balance”  and they have another game under development for sony called journey to augment their other titles flOw and flower. hopefully sony and others will sign them to keep things flowing out of that game company in the future.

the stakes:

the future of user experience. what they are doing has much wider implications for anyone and everyone in trans-media. think about it: if you can deeply touch feelings, emotions in a user experience, this has many touch points way beyond gaming. it is about experience design.

kellee, jenova and their crew of ten+ others at thatgamecompany in santa monica are trying to push the boundaries of what games can do. but they are pioneers in developing new ideas about what a user experience can be: there is a simple interface which makes the experience immediately accessible (apple kind of made some hay with this concept, ‘ya think?), a user navigational experience that feels explorational without boundaries, a use of images and music that provide an intense emotional experience that alters your state.

besides altering user experience, thatgamecompany represents the game-changer almost-a-do-it-yourself-production small company which can make games at a fraction of what the big boys and girls like our friends at ea or lucas games spend. no mocap, hd or expensive cgi. but highly competitive with around 10 employees right now… as such, they represent the shift to network-based game delivery which traditional game companies are only starting to explore with sony, xbox and wii.

the dea takeway:

if you are a game company, think about exploring this space or acquiring a company that can do these things. it will improve your legacy product lines on a go-forward basis. it may push your offerings in entirely new directions.

for everyone else, including chief marketing officers at fortune 500 institutions or any company providing user experiences on the web, look at how you can re-position your current offerings and make them more emotional. much more.

application designers of every type should look at flower, cloud, and journey and determine how they can simply their user experience design and make it emotionally pleasurable. there are a million ways to do this.

for advertisers and brand managers in all walks of life…well, this is what you do…manipulate emotions to get people to buy your stuff. look at how you can leverage emotions on the web around your brands. this is the key to brand management. strong powerful emotions. (btw, we have already seen a tv ad done which literally ripped off flower to sell some financial services product…come on people…let’s have some original thinking here!

may all your user experiences flower. to everyone at thatgamecompany we say: BRAVO!, BRAVO!, BRAVO! and THANK YOU! you move us emotionally  bigtime.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

e3 and the future of gaming (for maybe the next 12 months or so ;-)

(eyeball time: 3.0 minutes but you might read faster…but if you check the cool video links which take forever to load…god only knows… you are on your own…)

e3 los angeles 2010

dea is LIVE FROM E3 in la

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

http://www.e3expo.com

in case you didn’t get the tweet, e3 is the big momma of all industry gaming shows in the usa. every major game developer, hardware platform provider and distributor shows up at this huge industry show in los angeles each year to show their wares. this week, we attended e3 and notice several longer term patterns in the video game industry. overall e3 looks like a 1950s automobile show in detroit. mostly all men with scantily clad blonde barbie dolls doing demos. ironically, women are the fastest growing segment of the gaming market but the testosterone geeks don’t get this in the industry. (check out www.womeningamesinternational.org) and because we are americans, the shooter/killer games rule. but there are amazing new directions starting to emerge (check out the flower video and interview with kellee santiago, ceo of thatgamecompany in our video gallery…that is where it is going!)

what is most notable also was the absence of zynga, the popular facebook provide of social networking games like farmville, mafia wars, etc. this show is very old school, mainstream industry, brought to you by the entertainment software association.

also duly noted as missing-in-action were all the mobile game players – publishers and cell phone, tablet and mobile device industry players. just not there and they represent the fastest and largest gaming platforms out there…according to the un’s itu, there are nearly 5 billion mobile phones worldwide. and not a single vendor of note at e3!

1. major publishers continue to take names and kick ass with mega titles in hd

you need to see the new games being rolled out..they look like movies you control. take the time and click on some of the links…(the commercials are a pain but the demo’s worth it) the use of hd tcnology makes old time game look obsolete. we are on the primitive edge of full simulation machines. check out lucas star wars II: force unleashed, (you remember the film maker…now games are his main activity), activision’s call of duty: black ops, or square enix’s the third birthday (featuring a new woman here ala lara croft but realistic). Yeah, they are all killer games but that misses the point about the technology and the direction simulations are taking. reality is really real these days…

2. user interface experience is morphing

ok, so the big headline at e3 is microsoft’s xbox 360 release today of its new interactive user interface called kinect (project code name “natal”). this is redmond’s answer to nintendo’s wii interface except it is more revolutionary….no devices! users simply move in front of the set and infrared sensors pick up movement and are incorporated into the game. it is pretty primitive  today but one can see where this is leading. sony playstation 3 is appealing to hard-core gamers with 3d technology although the jury is still out on 3d displays (due to side effects of headaches, etc.) and tv content producers and networks are dragging their feet on 3d programming which will affect adoption. but these are the first primitive steps into immersive user experiences at low price points (kinect is $150) and have deep implications across all industries for applications involving interactive use experiences from product sales and customer experience to education.

3. the network is the game not the box now

“the network is the computer” sun microcomputer’s then-ceo and founder scott mcnealy prophetically stated well over 30 years ago. well, it is true now. the game console is slowly going the way of the doodoo bird. even giant activision get 70% of it net operating profit games from non-console games. new companies are rolling out network device independent online gaming platforms where you simply buy a subscription for multiple  gaming experiences, much like buying a movie ticket. check out onlive.com for an example of one of the new players….and they are cross-promoting with at&t…why? because scott mcnealy was right. online gaming has HUGE implications for network providers as well as all pc and chip makers…

4. the asians are doing amazing things but the gringos don’t get it (as usual)

ironically, the biggest publisher at e3 is a korean company named nexon. they dwarf everyone else in terms of users and represent the future of the gaming, social networking, promotion, advertising, micropayments, branding and the attendant infrastructure for years to come. how big?  try this: today microsoft brags it has 20 m users worldwide on xbox 360. nexon has a huge portfolio of “free to play” games (you play free games and make small payments of $1-3 us for accessories like clothing, cars, etc.) one of their games, dungeon fighter has 200 million subscribers and 2.5 million simultaneous users. their second biggest title maple story has 100 million subscribers with 1.5 million simultaneous online users. american game executives right this off saying it is china which is in one time zone and doesn’t matter. hey dudes, the world is flat and nexon is making billions of dollars and growing exponentially in a market whee us gaming was down 10% – 20% and it wasn’t the recession that did this. wake up and smell the coffee you auto-centric americanos. to dismiss this under the banner of different cultural adoption and usage patterns misses the point completely.  you need to get out more and see the world. something is going on and you don’t know what it is…ok…rant over…you get the point. asia is driving gaming innovation ni this space. check out tainengmiao.com, d2home.com, and cddmb.cn to get  a sense of this. there is a major game industry in chendu, sichuan province and all over china, as well as nexon’s native korea.

the stakes:

huge. billions. and the biggest thing is that the us gaming industry is a laggard. there are major opportunities in all segments for layers within the traditional gaming inustry and outside it….advertisers, sponsor, hardware and communications infrastructure and more…in all the categories above.

the dea takeaway:

1. major publishers continue to take names and kick ass with mega titles in hd

the increased use of high rez image and motion means major opportunities not for just chip makers like intel, amd, and nvidia, but also for all processor-related industry players at the hardware level. for network service providers it is a double edged sword..more revenues for more bandwidth-management players like cisco (good) but more major capital spending for players like telcos such as verizon, at&t, sprint, t-mobile, etc. (bad for telcos but good for cisco).  for content players like major film studios, there are obvious trans-media tie-in’s and licensing plays (see “prince of persia” piece we did on this). ditto for brands, advertisers, etc. and there are myriad niche service and digital advertising integration lays as well too numerous to go into here.

2. user interface experience is morphing

this area is very exciting and has deep implications for game industry developer and hardware and chip manufacturers. but the largest and most interesting opportunities lie in adapting his technology for new customer experience and cross-industry applications. imagine an atm or online service experience where you interact virtually as one of a set of optional user interfaces. microsoft’s kinect (based on the root words ‘connect’ and ‘movement’) says it all. citibank already uses video conferencing at its drive through branches. this could be the next wave and applied for many net-based interaction applications. 3d…not ready for prime time.

3. the network is the game not the box now

game over. the net wins. if your business is console based, those thin, cloud-based client interfaces spell the inevitable day your consoles will not be needed except as game controller interface hardware devices and that, my friend, is a zero-margin business over the long haul. with all respect to everyone from activision to ubisoft, get in gear to transition. this has radical implications for our product distribution strategies. now you can go distribute directly over the net to millions of subscribers worldwide like nexon already does and cut out your distributors! it is a scary world out there! the network providers need t be ready for this growth and for mobility, in particular.

4. the asians are doing amazing things but the gringos don’t get it (as usual)

hey, get out and get educated. book a trip to china, korea, japan, and india. ’nuff said. monitor developments in these countries even if it is difficult and things look too “hello kitty” for you at times. hey, we told you about nexon. this is truly where the innovation is taking place, not the usa. we will try and help there also.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!