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Posted on 05.17.10 by Alexandre Maron @ 16:50
Last year, I finished my dissertation and got back to work one week later in Brazil. It made it almost impossible to go back to my work, unfinished and unpolished as it was at that point, regardless (or because) of the deadline. This is how it works. At some point you just let it go, and send the work to the university. But if you really have something good in your hands, should go back and revise, expand, evolve your work. That is the point here. I am coming back, revising it point by point, questioning it, and getting ready to release it in digital and open form. I am working right now with the mobile operations of the company i work for, Editora Globo. I can´t disclose some projects for obvious reasons. But i can assure that some of the concepts i believe in will guide how some of my projects will end up looking like. The last one is open to the public now, the iPad project for Época, the weekly news magazine from Globo in Brazil. We released the first version of the app and our plan is to evolve for a full fledged digital magazine that will change over time. It will have more and more Play Factors added as it gets new features and the journalists, deisgners and advertising agencies create content for the platform. Our goal is to make it as flexible as possible. Anyway, the point is: I am back. Check back here or just subscribe to the RSS feed and we will talk about how game design concepts can help the world to make better media. Before the breakfast. Filed under: General Statement andMagazine andMy Projects Agree? Disagree? Want to report an error? Comment: None |
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Posted on 03.05.09 by Alexandre Maron @ 02:05
Is it possible to build a framework of concepts, tools and techniques capable of make media content more engaging? Is there an identifiable play factor, a layer of playability that could be embedded in the content, using techniques developed for games, interaction design and social media? What I can say is that it is not branding. Branding comes before and helps you develop the “rules” of your game, the type of play. But there is no doubt that it is a tool for branding. Filed under: Definition andGeneral Statement Agree? Disagree? Want to report an error? Comment: None |
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Posted on 02.22.09 by Alexandre Maron @ 17:19
It is easy to acknowledge, today, all the chages that the social media tools are making on the market as a whole and the media in particular.We live in a world where a whole generation that grew up surrounded by video-games, internet and TV has come to take command. Everything now works through interfaces that were deeply influenced by oour gaming background. So, banking, bloggin, commenting, buying look a lot like playing a game. And it is not a coincidence. It happens in part because we are playing animals. We look for engaging ways of doind thigs. We want to play all the time and we enjoy when it happens in various levels. It could be the thriller that PLAYS with our expectations, the game tha we PLAY, the music that (stupid as it’s lyrics may seem) make us have fun trying to reproduce a combination of sounds (woma-woma-nizer, woma-woma-womanizeeeer…). We KNOW that things changed, we see the changes but most of us don’t have a clue about how to take advantage of all that. Most of us know that we need to “have a conversation” and not a monologue anymore. We need this and that. Cool! But how exactly are we going to do that? Whatever that “that” is? So, this project aim is to develop a set of tools and framework techniques that will help the manager, the editor or whoever is ih charge in the hard task of engaging their audience. I want to do that through a series of tasks. 1. Bibliography – Reviewing, quoting and commenting on relevant books. This will not be a conventional list of texts, because we don’t live a conventional life anymore. I am reading about social media, game design, architecture, interaction design and the list could go on and on. The keys to this research are spread across a vast landscape. 2. Cases – Well. Let’s look at who is doing what and how. What works and what doesn’t. And the examples could come from anywhere. Music, movies, TV shows, websites, newspapers, books, magazines… Your help is appreciated. 3. Field work – I plan to visit people and talk to them. Get their points of view and put them here. I want to visit organizations too, of course. And they will come from many places. 4. My thoughts and comments (of course) – Oh. I will just stop and say what is in my mind. I hope I will miss lots of points publicly and, please, let me know if you see that. As i said above, your help is appreciated. Deeply. IN the next posts, I will try to explain what exactly I am trying to do. What is the play factor. Does it work, is it really usefull at all? Stay tuned. Filed under: General Statement Agree? Disagree? Want to report an error? Comment: 1 Comment |