Lucasfilm chooses CMS alum's agency for digital business
CMS alum Ivan Askwith, who is director of strategy at the digital creative agency Big Spaceship, tweeted some stellar news yesterday. Big Spaceship landed a deal to do the digital creative work for Lucasfilm. From Ad Age:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Lucasfilm, the entertainment production company behind the "Star Wars" franchise, has picked a shop with a fitting name, Big Spaceship, as its new digital agency of record.
The New York-based independent agency beat out a handful of undisclosed digital shops pitching the business, according to people familiar with the matter. It will handle websites, social media and mobile for Lucas Online, which also includes work for film franchises such as "Star Wars."
Lucasfilm confirmed the relationship, though declined to elaborate. Kantar Media does not have ad spending data for the movie production company. Big Spaceship also declined comment for this story.
Over the last 10 years, Big Spaceship grew up largely handling digital production work, building websites for traditional ad agencies on a contract basis. These days the agency, which is run by CEO-founder Michael Lebowitz, says it only works with clients directly, with no agency middlemen.
The agency also counts General Electric, Wrigley, Microsoft and Google as clients.
Big Spaceship had $8 million in U.S. revenue in 2009, up 33% from the year prior, according to Ad Age DataCenter. The 50-person shop was also one of Ad Age's Best Places to Work in 2010.
Podcast: "Communications Forum: Humanities in the Digital Age"
Alison Byerly and Steven Pinker
What is happening to the intellectual field called the humanities? Powerful political and corporate forces are encouraging, even demanding science and math-based curricula to prepare for a globalized and technological world; the astronomical rise in the cost of higher education has resulted in a drumbeat of complaints, some which question the value of the traditional liberal arts and humanities. And of course, and far more complexly, the emerging storage and communications systems of the digital age are transforming all fields of knowledge and all knowledge industries.
How has and how will the humanities cope with these challenges? How have digital tools and systems already begun to transform humanistic education? How may they do so in the future? More broadly, is there a significant role for the humanities in our digital future? Our panelists will explore these and related questions in what is expected to be the first in a continuing series on this subject.
Alison Bylerly is provost and executive vice president and professor of English at Middlebury College.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and previously taught at MIT. He is the author of many essays and books including The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and How the Mind Works.
Podcast: Jing Wang, "NGO2.0: When Social Action Meets Social Media"
Professor Wang discusses the genesis and implementation of a civic media project that she conceptualized and launched in China in May 2009. The project, titled NGO2.0, is a social experiment that introduces Web 2.0 thinking and social media tools to the grassroots NGOs in the underdeveloped regions of China. How has new media complicated social action and civic engagement? What are the evolving stakes for social change proponents? How are change agents coping with governmental intervention in a country where social media is held suspect? Professor Wang speculates on the emergence of a new field of inquiry -- social media action research -- while sharing insights and findings about her involvement in shaping an NGO 2.0 culture in China.
Alum Sam Ford talks with Mashable: "Why Does the Web Love Cats?"
Seems that every time we stake our claim as preeminent academics, we get sucked back in by LOLcats. CMS alum Sam Ford spoke this week with social media blog Mashable on The Million Dollar Question: Why Does the Web Love Cats?"why the web loves cats":
"Juxtaposing surprising meanings over cat images, a la the LOLcats phenomenon, allows us to engage in an activity humans have long been doing: projecting our thoughts onto the mysterious countenance of felines," says Sam Ford, director of digital strategy with Peppercom, research affiliate with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, and co-author of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media.
The money quote eventually belongs to Jack Shepherd, though followed by more thoughtfulness from Ford:
While dogs have had a few notable successes online, they nowhere near match their feline counterparts for popularity. Jack Shepherd, community manager at BuzzFeed has a theory why.
“Dogs are the equivalent of a creative professional trying to manufacture ‘the next viral sensation’ to advertise a brand – sure, they’ll have a hit now and again, but unless it’s really exceptional work, you’ll just ignore it, because you know they’re doing it to get your attention,” says Shepherd.
“When a dog gets in a box, it’s because he desperately wants you to think he’s cool. When a cat does it, it’s because it suddenly felt like the right thing to do at the time. More often than not, it totally was. I think it’s the very aloofness of cats that makes us want to caption their thoughts, or put them in front of a keyboard and see what happens. The many Keyboard Dogs were a failure not just because they came second, but because they were enjoying themselves far too much.”
Sam Ford, meanwhile, suggests that dogs are just too easy to read: “Throughout the history of civilization, humans have had a deep fascination with cats. While dogs’ forms of communication — and understanding of language — are more closely aligned with humans, cats are particularly fascinating because they are not necessarily as easy to read.”
“Thus, watching a cat’s exploits on YouTube can be all the more surprising, because we all know it’s harder to train cats to do something. Seeing video of The Moscow Cats Theater leads us to marvel, ‘How’d they do that?’” says Ford.
"Sharing Vs. Selling: A Lesson From Gospel Music": CMS alum Sam Ford in Fast Company
Sam Ford, a Comparative Media Studies alum, is a long-time researcher with our Convergence Culture Consortium, through which he's been working on a book entitled Spreadable Media. If this post from his Fast Company blog is any indication, the book should be great:
I grew up in a Baptist church, where my father was a deacon. Most Saturday nights when I was younger, we would go to our own church or a church somewhere else in the community to listen to a gospel singing. Often, my grandmother would come along, and we would listen to a quartet perform for a couple of hours in a little country church somewhere. While I didn't realize it at the time, there was a fascinating struggle between market and non-market logics at many of these gatherings. The church was primarily governed by non-market logic. There was no cost of admission. Generally, these bands were not paid to sing at the church. And no concessions are sold at a church gathering.
However, most gospel quartets made money on the side by recording cassette tapes of their most popular songs and selling them to churchgoers. Since a crucial tenet of the teachings of Jesus Christ advise separating the church from market logic, however, these transactions were considered unfit for a church sanctuary.
[...]
Most interesting of all, however, was the "love offering." Churches did not pay groups to sing, but the audience would take up a "love offering" for the group who came to sing. A collection plate would be passed around the congregation, and many would anonymously drop a contribution, not all that unlike the model used by street performers. The love offering was often presented as a spontaneous happening, but of course everyone in the congregation had come prepared for the moment of the love offering and probably had made sure they had they the appropriate cash quick at hand. And the love offering was also a point of potential contention, as the non-market logic of the moment collided with financial compensation.
Games can again engage with issues of the day: GAMBIT's Philip Tan speaks with USA Today
In a USA Today piece last week about the wartime realism of video game "Medal of Honor", the director of our Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab was asked to speak about game-makers' use of current combatants--in this case, of the Taliban.
Tan argues you have to play the game yourself to come to a judgment:
Insurgents still look the same and the single-player story mode doesn't change, ["Medal of Honor" developer Greg] Goodrich says. "As I have said a number of times, this is not a game about the Afghan war. This is a game about a community of warriors, individuals we wanted to pay tribute to and honor. It's telling their story from their point of view, and everything else is the backdrop."
Still, it is understandable some would misinterpret the game's intentions, says Philip Tan, executive director of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Video games may be helping games regain their pre-Industrial Age importance "as something that could engage with issues of the day," he says. Over time, games became frivolous, "so now when you have a game that is actually engaging with the issues of the day with a war that is actually currently going on, people are surprised."
It's unfair that the game was judged before its release, Tan says. "The game may be making a very poignant and important point about war with the Taliban," he says, "but the majority of people who are commenting haven't engaged with the game itself. ... It also seems like we are judging modern combat games by the visual and audio fidelity. These are things that actually push games in the direction of Hollywood. What they are trying to be is more like movies, and movies are allowed to do that."
Podcast: Communications Forum: "The Online Migration of Newspapers"
David Carr and Dan Kennedy
The fate of newspapers is an ongoing subject for the Forum. This conversation explores the migration of newspapers to the internet and what that means for traditional concepts of journalism. Amid the emergence of citizens' media and the blogosphere, newspapers are adapting to a changing mediascape in which print readership is in steady decline. David Carr, culture reporter and media columnist for the New York Times, and Dan Kennedy, professor of journalism at Northeastern University and author of the Media Nation blog, explore these developments with Forum Director David Thorburn.
Among their topics: the best and the worst examples of news on the net, online-only news sites, hyperlocal news and collaborative journalism, business models for online newspapers, and the impact of social media on journalism.
Gambit Call For Abstracts: Summer Program Projects, 2011
Via Sara Verilli at the Gambit Game Lab comes your big chance to put game research into practice:
Call for Project Abstracts: Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab Summer Program, 2011. Abstracts are due October 13th, 2010
The Lab seeks researchers who are interested in seeing their mature research put into practice as a game. In particular, we seek research which poses questions best answered through games, or innovative designs or technologies which are uniquely demonstrated in a game. Participants must be able to devote several hours a week participating in the Summer Program at the MIT Campus Lab from June 6th through August 5th, 2011.
Eligibility:
Singaporean researchers, researchers funded by GAMBIT, and researchers at MIT are all invited to apply.
What is the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab?
The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium. GAMBIT sets itself apart by emphasizing the creation of video game prototypes to demonstrate our research as a complement to traditional academic publishing.
What is The GAMBIT Summer Program?
Interns from the Boston area and from Singapore collaborate on development teams each summer to create prototype games which demonstrate concepts based on accepted research topic proposals. Each team is required to create a 5-30 minute polished gameplay experience which demonstrates or explores a research topic. In addition, the game must target the production values of commercial casual games and be distributed online.
Depending on the research topic, the games created might apply some theoretical concept about design or development (e.g. new game design methods, new management methods), use a new technology that has not been used in games before, be an implementation of a specific set of innovative game mechanics (e.g. modeling a system that has not been implemented before), be an analytical tool to study players, or be an educational game to teach a topic.
Each development team will need an expert who can explain the core research and assess whether the game is effectively exploring it. Thus, research topic proposals will be required to select researchers to participate in the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab summer program for the entire duration of June to August. Researchers will be required to visit Boston for at least the first two weeks of the summer program; applicants who will be available on site for the entire 9 week program/development period at the MIT Campus will be given preference. Selected researchers are also expected to collaborate with GAMBIT towards publication of the finished product: be it in academic venues such as conference or journal submissions, or through the professional game industry via festival submissions, commercial development or licensing opportunities.
Application Process: Download the abstract application here. Abstracts will be reviewed by the GAMBIT lab, and the applicants with the strongest proposals will be invited to work together with the GAMBIT staff to create a project proposal. Abstracts are due October 11th, 2010, with invitations to continue work on proposals going out October 25th, 2010. Final proposals will be expected by December 6th, 2010, and final selection of projects will be sent out on January 10th, 2011.
Contact akiru AT mit DOT edu with any questions or concerns.
Application Timetable & Deadlines:
Call for Abstracts: October 11th, 2010.
Written Proposals: December 6th, 2010.
Final Decisions: January 10th, 2011.
"Taking an Axe to Dialogue Trees", more from GDC Online 2010, this time with Gambit's Marleigh Norton
"High-tech solutions, when they work," Gambit Game Lab interaction designer Marleigh Norton said at Game Developers Conference Online 2010, "are often trading one set of problems for another."...
The first idea was small talk. The rule of thumb when meeting people is to stick to small talk; stay away from sex, politics, and religion with people you don't know well, as it can lead you into trouble quickly. Turning that into a game mechanic, Norton looked for a way for gamers to consider the eloquence with which they have to discuss a topic to avoid having it blow up in their faces. She pointed to PaRappa the Rapper as an interesting way to handle the issue, with a beat-matching game determining how effectively the player is communicating.
As an example, she brought up a conversation with a barista at a coffee shop who happens to be wearing a T-shirt featuring the Flying Spaghetti Monster (an atheist answer to creationism). Asking for another napkin would represent a low-risk interaction, and the beat matching would similarly be simple with just a few face buttons on a standard controller. However, a line like, "A fellow Pastafarian! All hail his noodle-y appendage!" would require a more complex series of button pushes and directions to reflect the riskiness of such an interaction with a complete stranger. The player's performance on a risky line could lead to a subsequent dialogue tree that gives players the opportunity to come out ahead or dig themselves in even deeper.
"How Hitler's downfall mocks your ideals": IDG covers Alex Leavitt's Open Video talk
Alex Leavitt, researcher with CMS' Convergence Culture Consortium, spoke at the Open Video Conference last Friday to offer some perspective on the ubiquitous Downfall meme:
Leavitt estimated that the first use of this clip appears to have been posted in August 2006, in which it was used to communicate criticism about the Microsoft Flight Simulator software. The subtitles were in Spanish.
It has been difficult to estimate how many times this video has since been repurposed. Leavitt said he had no idea how many actual variants of this video have been made. "The fact that we can't measure how many there are across multiple video sites, communities and personal servers tells us how popular it has really become," he said.
In the clip, "Hitler's passionate anger [works] as a means of expression" for a wide variety of causes, he noted.
Podcast: Francisco Ricardo, "The Aesthetics of Projective Spatiality: New Media as Critical Objects"
One theme in the contemporary use of space involves the shift from production modeled around a physical, centralized "locus" to new virtual, extended and multi-axial modes of "projective" organization. We see this in new sculpture, new architecture, and, in electronic art, an expressive embrace of geographic dispersal. Although new materials, methods, and media have been central to modernist optimism, many of their resulting physical and actual constructions have been dismissed, discredited, misunderstood, or attacked. Using physical and virtual examples, Ricardo examines the strange tension between unanimous acceptance of new media and materials and the frequent rejection of new forms and structures they have made possible.
Francisco Ricardo is media and contemporary art theorist. A Research Associate at the University Professors Program and co-director of the Digital Video Research Archive at Boston University, he also teaches digital media theory at the Rhode Island School of Design. His research examines historical, conceptual, and computational intersections between contemporary art and architecture, on one hand,and new media art and literature, on the other. Recent publications include Cyberculture and New Media (Rodopi, 2009) and Literary Art in Digital Performance (Continuum, 2009).
Talk by Gambit's Clara Fernandez-Vara covered by Gamasutra
Say the phrase "puzzle games" and many people think of games like Zuma or Tetris -- but add in everything puzzles have to offer wider gaming experiences, and the broad and storied genre encompasses everything from the classic Secret of Monkey Island to Ico and Portal.
How can games approach puzzles as successfully-integrated components of their experience? At the Game Developers Conference Online, Singapore MIT GAMBIT Game Lab's Clara Fernandez Vara says puzzles have something crucial to add: "that moment when we realize -- 'I got it' -- we feel clever, and feeling clever is fun."
In the aim to challenge players, she says, many designers can get bogged down trying to prove what good designers they are, but it's giving the player that sense of satisfaction and clever-feeling -- what Vara calls "insight" -- that should be the goal.
"High-tech solutions, when they work," Gambit Game Lab interaction designer Marleigh Norton said at Game Developers Conference Online 2010, "are often trading one set of problems for another."...
One theme in the contemporary use of space involves the shift from production modeled around a physical, centralized "locus" to new virtual, extended and multi-axial modes of "projective" organization. We see this in new sculpture, new architecture, and, in electronic art, an expressive embrace of geographic dispersal. Although new materials, methods, and media have been central to modernist optimism, many of their resulting physical and actual constructions have been dismissed, discredited, misunderstood, or attacked. Using physical and virtual examples, Ricardo examines the strange tension between unanimous acceptance of new media and materials and the frequent rejection of new forms and structures they have made possible.