More Articles that I would like to write

Round Two of articles that I would write if I were employed by various websites

Proposed website http://www.kotaku.com.au/
Warfare on Modern Medium

image: infinityward.com

Anybody slightly interested in video games or censorship could not have missed the old media debate about a certain segment of 2009’s biggest game Modern Warfare 2. The level ‘No Russian’ involves playing as a CIA undercover agent infiltrating a terrorist group. The gang of eastern European freelance terrorists decides to go on a shooting rampage in an airport in which scores of civilians are killed. The game places you alongside the terrorists in your undercover role and you are free to mow airline passengers down with a machine gun.

See someone play through the level here. (NSFW)
You are not required to participate in the massacre, and you are given a choice to skip the level entirely. There are no points or ‘achievements’ given if you decide to fire on civilians

The calls to ban Modern Warfare 2 for the ability to kill civilians (in one isolated level, elsewhere in the game you are highly penalized for shooting civilians) highlights the huge inconsistencies in the Office of Film and Literate Classification’s handling of video games ratings. In the famous Grand Theft Auto series you have had the self generated option to kill as many civilians as you care to, including at airports. GTA, GTA London 1969, GTA II, GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas and GTA IV all have plenty of opportunities to kill civilians. Deus Ex and Fallout 3 provide similar freedoms.

Recent GTA titles and Fallout 3 have had run ins with the OFLC for allowing sex with prostitutes and morphine use respectively. Except for the bizarre fact that the latest GTA not only didn’t cut out the ability for the car to bounce up and down when hooker got in, but treated the player to the sight of the protagonist receiving a pantomime sex act. And you can still kill the woman afterwards, the main issue the government had with the game in the first place. Yet the game seems to have raised no red flags with the OFLC who seven years ago banned the uncensored version of GTA III for ‘sexualised violence’ because it could be seen to encourage murdering prostitutes. In another backflip, this review board document is more concerned with the amount of violence and gore in the game and describes the prostitute killing as an unintended consequence of the game’s open ended structure.

It seems like video game are the new paperback novel, comic book, popular movie, rock and roll, VHS horror tape, death metal or gangster rap depending on which decade you might compare the issue to. Video games are relatively new, the young people are into them and they support their own sub-culture and thus must be responsible for a great deal of society’s ills.

The fact that the politicians and media figures will hold some games will up to harsher scrutiny than others with near identical content suggests that they either don’t understand video games or video gamers. This kind of attention seeking behavior is at least somewhat excusable in crusading attorneys general and lobby groups; the same flippancy is frustrating and disappointing when exercised by the OFLC.

Proposed Website: http://boingboing.net

The Webby Awards top 10 ‘Internet Moments’ of the decade.

image credit Ivan Walsh http://www.ivanwalsh.com/

The international Academy of arts and science’s
Webby awards have decided to commemorate the end of this very web dominated decade by announcing their picks for the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 Years.
The format they have chosen is very synonymous with current internet trends and it’s obsession with top 10 lists of everything (there are websites which literally offer nothing else)

What is an internet moment? Isn’t the appeal of the internet the fact that it can be as individual as the user? It’s not like listing most influential moments on television when millions were watching the same disasters and triumphs at the same time. If the moon landing happened forty years later I doubt everyone’s internet moment would be as uniform or collective as when the first steps were broadcast. Hence, there is only one item on the list which could really be considered a ‘moment’ as in a shared experience. Cutting edge social media vs. aging theocracy in Iran is quite an event but some on the list are a bit puzzling.
The Webbys say that the shutting down of Napster opened the flood gates for legitimate online content distribution. Nobody gets their music illegally nowadays right? (NSFW, and I do not endorse copyright infringement).

They credit the shutdown/legitimation of Napster with helping to create sites like Hulu, the collaboration between different US free to air networks to stream their shows with commercials over the internet. Hulu is not accessible outside the United States. This list is beginning to look a little biased towards America, which is understandable since America has retained de facto control of the internet throughout this decade since it was American institutions which gave birth to the initial network. Interestingly, this situation is set to change a little bit.

No eBay? The site that helped invent a mainstream way to make real money off the internet that is only distantly related to pornography? (Mildly NSFW)

Google takes out three spots thanks to its acquisition of youtube.com and twitter gets one and a half. A little unbalanced considering the Webbys own press release calls Google “the most dominant and influential company of the decade”

Wikipedia’s inclusion is something you really can’t argue with, but for a defining internet moment I would nominate the announcement that Microsoft was pulling out of the reference business and retiring its former market leader Encarta (The Wikipedia page has apparently been taken over by Microsoft Public Relations and is doing its damnedest to promote Bing, Bill Gate’s ‘Google Killer’) . The electronic dictionary was king back in the CD-ROM days and commanded a serious price. The decision by Microsoft to cease publication was widely interpreted as a surrender to Wikipedia, who had been claiming over 97% of North American users searching for online encyclopedias.

AFP’s summary of the entire list

- Craigslist online classified site expands outside San Francisco (2000)
- the launch of Google AdWords (2000)
- the launch of online encyclopedia Wikipedia (2001)
- the shutdown of file-sharing site Napster (2001)
- Google’s initial public offering (2004)
- the online video revolution led by YouTube (2006)
- Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter launches (2006)
- Apple’s iPhone debuts (2007)
- the use of the Internet in the US presidential campaign (2008)
- the use of Twitter during the Iranian election protests (2009)

The active consumer’s dilemma

I use Mozilla Firefox as my internet browser, an open source, highly customisable alternative to the default Microsoft Internet Explorer or Apple Safari . I also use a third part ‘add-on’ to rid myself of virtually all internet advertising which I have stated my distaste for in an earlier post. The program is called Adblock Plus and it’s also open source and seemingly effective from my last few days of using it. Herein lies the dilemma: By removing the ads that I hate, I am potentially depriving the publishers of works I consume of an income, no matter how teeth-whitening and weight loss based that income may be. I’m not doing anything illegal, I’m just using the power of my computer to analyse and filter images, animations and videos that I find offensive and annoying. I’m sure to have Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy on my side for that one, what with filtering being all the rage right now. Your basic website doesn’t have that much say in how you use its services, It’s like a TV station that blasts out information and hopes you sit through the ads rather than flipping channels. On one hand I feel a bit bad, but then again I haven’t seen pictures of rotten teeth for days now.

I also use programs to download from video sharing websites like blip.tv, bypassing their main ad delivery system whereby a short ad is played to your before every video. I actually don’t have a problem with the ads on Blip.tv as they come from reputable companies and are usually intelligent and engaging (by advertising standards). The case for my defense is that I am an internet user in Australia, which means I have to watch my bandwidth meter like a hawk lest I be throttled to a trickle of internet. If someone is offering a 30 minute video to download, I want to save it in case I have to refresh the page and half the video is loaded again. Also, the ads on Blip.tv are for Americans and I have yet to see a ‘JC Penny’s', ‘Chilli’s’ or certain Tequila brands around where I live. No harm no foul, right?

The ABC lays down the ‘Do nots’ of Social Media

photo: books.google.com.au

ABC managing director Mark Scott, who has been in the news over a somewhat similar topic lately, has again cropped up with his public announcement of rules for all ABC employees governing how they use social media. Interestingly, ABC online defines Youtube as a social media site. I guess you could count posting comments such as “OMG LOL ROFL Great Vid!!!11!!1″ as socialising on some level. Here are the rules quoted from the ABC Online

1. Do not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute.
2. Do not undermine your effectiveness at work.
3. Do not imply ABC endorsement of your personal views.
4. Do not disclose confidential information obtained through work.

Mr Scott sent out his decree to staff via email. Oh how Web 1.0 of you Scotty. How will those damn kids at Hungry Beast get that message? You may as well have used a carrier pigeon.

The list seems fairly standard stuff and mostly common sense. That said, at least the Australian ABC didn’t screw up like the American ABC and tweet out some off-the-record quotes from Barack Obama (even if they were only insults aimed at Kanye West)

So that’s a case in point for why you need rule number 4 on the ABC’s list. For those at the more serious end of the media spectrum it is of course important to maintain at least the illusion of objectivity and dignity, a case not helped by putting up last nights party pics or using twitpics to tell everyone about a funny photoshop of Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull. But you have to love rule number 2. I get the distinct impression that Mark Scott is the sort of boss who gets really irritated when someone ‘sneaks on’ to Facebook. Just look at him.

The Last Ten Feet

photo: archrecord.construction.com

The internet has been incredibly successful in crossing huge distances but has had mixed success crossing the smallest yet most important boundary: the last ten feet between the bedroom computer and the loungeroom consumer. The concept of ‘the last ten feet is usually discussed in regards to television, movie and music transactions over the internet. In America, companies such as TiVo and Netflix have had some success in selling media to the couch dwelling consumer. The concept can be expanded to all internet publishing and some other important distances that need to be crossed. The picture at the top of this post is the LG Internet Refrigerator, a commercial failure because of it’s high price and the fact that most people found the concept ridiculous at the time. The underlying principle, that the internet should blend into our lives like any other appliance, is now considered a worthy goal for electronic content providers. The iPhone is one example of internet publishing that not only follows you into the lounge room, but everywhere else you go to. Coupled with an iTunes account the iPhone user can become a mobile money stream by removing the barriers to impulse buying. Run out of music on the train? just purchase and download another album on the go.

Companies like Telstra have set the bar pretty low for basic mobile internet. Common complaints for years have been that mobile phone internet is too slow, expensive, too hard to read, and awkward to use thanks to tiny keypads. The latest touch screen smartphones offer some hope for a faster, smoother mobile internet but there is a price to be paid in battery life and money. In the end you will be doing a lot of searching for power leads and free wifi networks to give your lithium ions and phone bill a rest.

The Amazon Kindle may be the answer to bridging e-books and newspapers from the internet to you (and your money in the opposite direction). There have of course been the usual arguments over copyright and the worry of creating a monopoly on these kind of things. Perhaps it is now only mindsets and not technology which holds the internet down on your desk?

What price a human being? 8.7 cents.

Or more precisely what it will cost you to have a Australian company uSocial (makes me proud to be Australian) get you followers on twitter. They promise to spam people until you get the followers you want with a 20% bonus if they can’t deliver on time. The value of your audience drops to just under 3.5 cents per head if you take out the largest possible order of 100,000 followers. It will take the intrepid spammers at USocial up to a year to find you that many peole to hand on your every 140 characters but you will get a 30% bonus if they don’t. Somehow, I don’t think uSocial will still exist in a years time and I think that may figure into their business plan when they ask you to pay $4,000 up front.

Interestingly, if you follow the curve set out in their pricing plan then in about twenty years time you could have all the current active users on twitter following you for under $80,000. If you wanted to knock Ashton Kutcher off the top of the follower pile it might take you the better part of a century and cost as much as a decent sports car. And that’s without calculating the cost of keeping up with the man’s meteoric rise in followers that seems to average at least 5,000 a day. This is nearly 40 times a higher rate than even uSocial can claim to deliver but if we hypothetically assume that for a 4,000% markup they will deliver that increase that Ashton can manage by simply tweeting his desire for baseball stand hot dogs. You’ll now be paying about $1 a follower which is thousands of dollars a day. Some days will be tough for your budget when you consider that Kutcher gained 24,000 followers in 24 hours on 11th of August 2009.

Phew! gaining an ocean of twitter followers by using a third party instead of fame is tough. Instead of real live teeming masses, why not cultivate an army of machines like Skynet in the Terminator movies? Though many people accused of automated follower accounts have simply fallen victim to autofollow spammers who follow as many people as possible in the hope that they will follow them back and receive their commercial messages.

So how to spot the fakers, spammers and uSocial salesmen lurking in the shadows with trench coats lined with shiny packs of 1000 followers? With more moderation of course which, to their credit, twitter seems to be doing by hiring more people and kicking out those who might usurp a future twitter business plan which sounds a bit similar.

The rotten state of internet advertising

If you are an independent web producer and you want to earn revenue from your internet endeavors then it is mighty tempting to use an advertising service like Google AdSense to help make a bit of money. If you decide to go down this path then it is a good thing to remind yourself that the majority of internet ads are terrible. Most web advertising programs will deface websites with the most base, lowest-common-denominator, puerile, bottom feeding, scare-tactic-using, offensive and back alley ads you could possibly imagine and then some. Even Google like to get into business with these purveyors of snake oil.

The internet banner ad industry is the new late night TV infomercial, only much worse. The worst that could happen with a late night purchase of a ‘Super Chop Chop 2000′ or some such technological marvel is that it wouldn’t work. With the new banner ads I get the distinct feeling that if I engage in business with those offering me techniques to lose weight, kill an attacker with my bare hands or make billions of dollars a day while i sit by the pool that it will end with my credit card/identity/kidneys/all of the above being stolen.

I just can’t see how anyone more than half awake could take them seriously. take a look at this gem I pulled from the Failblog. I hope and pray that the ad was just a joke to fit in with theme of the website.

“Calm down”, you might say, “such things are surely for amateurs only and the main media players must be able to do better.” That’s true, in Australia the big websites have managed to eliminate most of the offensive and replace it with annoying. Case in point are the damn video ads that keep appearing on skynews.com.au and the fairfax network. These pesky buggers sit in the corner of your screen and play videos with the sound on by default. That means you have to look at the damn thing to find the mute button. At least they have the semi decency not to connect a pop up ad to the mute button, but it can only only be a matter of time. Thanks guys for wasting my bandwidth and slowing down my browser. For an added bonus, open multiple tabs at once and enjoy a mix of different ad soundtracks at once. Top tier American websites appear to have discovered pretty fast that audio ads are a turn off for users. They have video ads but audio is off by default and the user can click for sound if they are interested . I am now strongly considering removing skynews from my news feed because of these ads. They are so annoying that they even pop up over other ads.

Did I claim the professionals were lacking in the offensive department? TheAustralian.com.au has proved me wrong.

Doubly offensive when you consider this recent story on the Australian’s own website

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Good Game: Viewers vs. management in online soap opera

Good Game is the ABC’s video game reviews/culture show and is also one of its most innovative users of streaming video and online forums. The show has its own video delivery system separate to the ABC’s iView . While the quality is not as good as iView it does have every episode from the show’s history available online and the makers of the show have enjoyed a close relationship with the fans via their ABC hosted forum which is the most active of any ABC show.

This special relationship seems to have come to a grinding halt with the surprise sacking (in effect) of the most popular host. Junglist (real name Jeremy Ray) was taken out of his on air role and replaced by a 24-year-old female presenter Hex (real name Stephanie Stephanie Bendixsen). The move was made without much prior notice and in the middle of a season. The new hosting team jokingly put up their ‘fanboy flame shield’ at the end of Hex’s debut episode but I don’t think Hex and Bajo or the ABC’s management were quite ready for how much fanboy (and fangirl) flames were to come.

First there were incredulous posts on their forums and then there was the obligatory Facebook protest group and now a dedicated website with a poster campaign . Fans have been extremely vocal and angry as general consensus has been that Junglist was the one ingredient which brought the whole show together and prevented it from becoming like the few failed attempts at an Australian games show in the past. The noise generated by the fans has helped the story get onto major news websites. The ABC itself has covered the story on ABC News Online and closed comments on the story after 49 comments were posted which were exclusively negative towards the ABC. Rumors have spread wildly in the information vacuum created by the ABC when it enforced confidentiality agreements on everyone in front or behind the Good Game Camera. The situation only got worse once the official silence broke. (for a detailed breakdown of the flow of accusations and counter accusations got to this blog ). The consensus among many fans is that Good Game chose a new host who was younger and female and flew in the face of the nerdy stereotype embodied by Junglist to captitalise on recent high ratings and expand its mass appeal. The very fans who created the initial high ratings now feel betrayed and locked out. Some fans are also angry at the ABC for making a young, recent beginner in the TV industry such an obvious target for the viewer’s rage.

What is to be learned from this internet fueled PR disaster? Maybe its that if you ask for highly involved feedback then you are generally expected to respond to it rather than just look at what’s been said and have executives override the decision (for example the Vegemite iSnack 2.0 fiasco . However this ends, it seems that if you are an internet active television production you can’t just change direction out of the blue and expect your viewers to follow you by the nose, especially if they had once been helping to improve the show.