Tribalization, Socialized TV & Games: Seriously

With my Director of the Australian Laboratory for Advanced Media Production hat on I often front our workshops and seminars with a kind of ‘trawl’ across the area being presented by specialist speakers. This means a rather high level view of services, key examples and robust case studies that provide a foundation for the other speakers and also a taxonomy, a shared language, for any later workshop elements. There have been two in the last two weeks on TV 2.0 and Documentary 2.0: Serious Games and I have just put my slides up on slideshare – embedded below. The two below are an interesting pair.

I believe that these two areas of transition clearly indicate the major shifts taking place at the moment, already predicated as you see in the Marshall McLuhan clip. The first in this post is the TV form which is now being developed and evolved by global online communities deciding on the more social, tribal (niche) and participatory video format over the regimented, formulaic, commercially focused TV we have seen unchanged on prime time in the past 30 years. The second presentation below is on Serious Games or Documentary 2.0, the nature of learning about real world issues, the evolution from passive through to play. Rather than being force fed a series of edited perspectives in traditional documentary TV style, now we immerse ourselves in the dilemma, the scenarios and understand them by (as I point out in the presentation reference to Edgar Dales Cone from 1946) Direct Purposeful Experience. First though…

Television 2.0 – The Latest Innovations in Online Video The first seminar was looking at the future of online video from a TV 2.0, participatory and socialized TV perspective. Again the issue here was a definition of TV followed by some kind of structure on which to talk about the many and various incarnations of ‘the form’ as it starts to spill out across online communities and portals.

What is TV?

• The device or screen?
• The distribution channel?
• The form, types of programmes?
• What is that form? “Popularist, often live, linear video or something far more social & interactive?”

Breaking the hundreds of examples of TV moving from broadcast to shared, socialized and participatory into meaningful categories was a problem so I stuck to three simple ones:

One-to-many broadcast

• Reversioned TV
• Socialised TV

Many-to-many & 2 way

• Participatory TV shared video content. Democratized, disintermediated, de-attached

Measurability – New Monetization models – value add & innovative services around the video content e.g.: personalization

Before my embedded slideshow (which includes ‘comic-style bubble’ commentary done quickly after the event!) I embed a short clip (which I showed from around 3:38 onwards) featuring a real futurist Marshall McLuhan whose now ancient words provided some sobering perspective to my talk about the disintermediation of TV and other media forms. We all talk long and hard about the new social paradigms but 50 years ago this was already clearly in the zeitgeist – albeit referring to rather scarce distribution channels but highly portentious of where we are close to being now (thinks ‘twitter’ as the drumming 🙂

and for those who think the decline of print is a 2000’s thing here is some of the latter part of the interview (remember from 49 years ago!) that I didn’t have time to show –

Interviewer “Look lets back up a bit Marshall. If more books are being used, more being sold, the libraries are crowded they are busy, how can it be said, aside from what ever else is happening, we are moving out of a print culture?

McLuhan “As John said books are still very important but their role is changing. The nature of their importance is changing. Remember that books were our first teaching machine and during the Renaissance our only teaching machine. Books are what gave the renaissance its peculiar stance. We had to see the world and others through the printed line on the page but today there are many media of information, many teaching machines.”

Interviewer “By teaching machines I presume you are not only referring to those found in the classroom?”

McLuhan “No, we learn everywhere. The books role has diminished. Because of all the other actors it’s no longer King but subject…Notice the shift in the image. From the assembly line stretched out, events taking place one at a time to the modern automated complex where things happen all at once. Bang. Not a line but a field. This applies not only to products but to people. The line, the individual, the event was the book. The field, the all-at-once, the tribal drum – the new medium”

Documentary 2.0 – Serious Games Seminar Workshop

My introduction to the wonderful world of Serious Games wasn’t without its challenges. Firstly the deeper you look into the area the more you discover a veritable black hole of titles. Literally thousands of console, 2D web based, 3D MMOGs, CD ROMs, locative play, connected DVD’s, Social network widgets, educational virtual worlds – endless places that serious play or games exist or have existed. But as well as the quantity problem we have the issue of how to classify them, break them down into meaningful ‘chunks’ so we can understand them. Finally there is the problem of definition – what exactly is a serious game? So before the embedded slideshow – I pulled out a little definition I came up with and more importantly a taxonomy which we used in the workshop.

Generic definitions from others

• Games that are NOT entertainment ?
• Games that are simulations ?
• Games that are: infotainment, edutainment, advergames, therapeutic, propaganda…?
• Games that are used by education, training, health, public policy, defense, and strategic communication ?

My definition

• Goal orientated ‘play’, often in real world scenarios, intended to ‘improve’ the player/s knowledge, awareness or skills

OK my definition could feasibly include ‘entertainment’ titles but it does raise the question, is a game such as GTA4 or Mirror’s Edge or Assassins Creed actually providing real world training? I would say to a large extent yes – so the field is even broader. So the taxonomy I developed is focused on the intention of the game. What did the creators ‘intend’ the game to achieve, what result would be achieved for the player/s. I developed this list and naturally found a few games overlapped across some of the areas but surprisingly a lot less than broad definitions such as ‘edutainment’! Here is the list (followed by the actual slideshow with examples of each area):

Gary’s Top Ten – Serious Game Taxonomy YOUR INTENTION WITH YOUR GAME IS TO:

1. raise AWARENESS of issues
2. train MOTOR functions
3. develop SOCIAL skills
4. develop sudden onset CRISES response skills
5. develop HUMAN CAPITAL and workforce
6. improve MIND & BODY
7. develop BUSINESS prowess
8. improve ORGANIZATIONAL management
9. improve CREATIVITY
10. impart KNOWLEDGE

View more presentations from Gary Hayes.