Gaming and the Public

Traditionally, Gaming was seen as a pastime that was reserved for people who are socially awkward, the kind of person who would find it hard to make friends. Obviously this has been an inaccurate assumption from the outset as not all 'Gamers' are this nerdy stereotype, but it is true that this gaming culture is has certainly been a niche market  in the past, reserved mainly for people who are software savvy and in the know with technology. 

However, with advances and technology and in culture, it would seem that the lines between a conventional gamer and the rest of the world are blurring. World of Warcraft is currently the largest MMORPG to grip the gaming world and has brought more people than ever together, further bluffing the line between hardcore gamers and casual gamers, and even people who class themselves as non-gamers.

Even in everyday life, games are all around: in the playground, in the office, at home, everyone is a gamer, just not in a conventional sense. You do not have to be behind a computer screen or throwing dice to be a gamer. 

Life for Sale: Is Facebook compromising our privacy?

The vast majority of people nowadays are registered on the site Facebook, it has at least 500 million users and has become a part of most peoples daily routines. Everybody uses it: we check up on other people through it, message people through it, play games, make groups and pages and generally stay connected. Most people think this is a great thing, not only is it the cheapest way to keep in touch (minus the cost of the internet connection) but it also a multi-purpose communication tool, better than any mobile phone. Sounds fantastic yes?

But what about the darker side of Facebook? If you try to read the privacy statement on the terms and conditions when signing up to Facebook, it will detail anything concerning what other people may do with your information but nothing to with what Facebook themselves will do, which strikes me as peculiar. So does this mean Facebook is hiding something? Every piece of information you type, every photo you upload, every video you post: It is no longer your words, your photos, your videos, they now belong to the Facebook.  

It's a scary thought, knowing that a website you thought you could trust and put into part of your routine owns all of the thing you tell it. But really, we shouldn't be so surprised. We are giving Facebook this information for free, They give us a way to communicate and keep in touch and have fun and in exchange they take our information, compile it and process it. Why? Advertising. Facebook generates most of it's revenue from advertising and by using your information, the can tailor the adverts on your Facebook page top be of your taste, according to what you tell them. After all, it is a business, They need to generate capital somehow.

The information you have given to Facebook can be used by third parties too. Your information can be used as evidence in a court of law and is held for at least 7 years. Even if you post it and then delete it, it's still in their records and if it details anything bad, they will find you. Employers now also use Facebook to gain a profile of you, as well as judging from your CV (unless, ironically, your privacy settings don't allow it). With this in mind, Do you think this invades your personal privacy?

Honestly, no it does not. Facebook is a public website, ANYBODY can view your profile and you knowingly sign up to this place where information of your choosing can be broadcast anywhere. If you are foolish enough to post something that could land you in court or without a job or worse, then it is entirely your own fault. I personally do not fell like Facebook is invading our privacy as technically, we signed for them to do so. However, I do believe that perhaps Facebook could have been much clearer with their privacy policy about using your information for advertisement. All it takes is a little research and common sense sometimes to avoid invasion of privacy it would seem.

"Would you like to live in a world without advertising?"

Imagine a world where every product you bought was in a white, plain box. The product name and other texts are printed on the box in a bland, black font and there is nothing to identify it colour wise. You walk out of the shop and every billboard, every item clothing, shop front e.t.c. is black and white. Nothing is identifiable. Welcome to the world without advertising.

Advertising and branding come hand in hand. If you don't have a brand to advertise then there is no point making an advert. So what defines a brand? A brand can be identified by any colour, name or graphic that you can identify as a product, for example is you see a can that is turquoise blue and says Heinz on the front, you can guarantee that it is a can of beans. Brands give us something to distinguish between product and is one of the main tools that advertising uses to promote brand names and products.

So without brands there would be no point in advertising anything? To answer this question you will need to look at the goal of advertising. Advertising is a tool used by competitors in business to promote their product as being better than their competitors product, therefore ushering the consumer to purchase a product made by the company with the more convincing advert. People are going to want to buy a product more if it is being sold to them as something that will completely change their life, and if it fails to do that, then the brand that 'lost the fight' in getting the consumer to buy will ultimately do financially worse and possibly go bust if they were to suffer more 'defeats'.

If you didn't have the brand, there would be nothing to compete against within that certain market as there would be no difference. For example, if Heinz were to scrap the look of the can label, get rid of their name and change the flavour to a more bland flavour along with every other company that made beans, what would be the point in advertising a product? it would all be essentially the same thing that you were being, with no distinguishable features to sell to a consumer.

Okay, so now imagine a world without advertising, there would be no need for branding any more, as even that is advertising in itself so it would not exist in a world without advertising. Everything would very bland as I described at the start of this entry. Everything would be generic.

In a way, I think it would be a refreshing change from the constant media barrage and peer pressure of advertising as it would probably make everyone feel less stressed and pressured, the world would calm down a bit. However, in terms of economy, advertising is big business and keep products flowing, generating capital for the big companies that sell us our beans. Also, and most importantly in my opinion, it would be a bland and boring world, with no variety and no room for personal taste and creativity, which is within human nature to crave after. Besides, variety is the spice of life right?

Viral Marketing.

Advertising has been going on for many years. If human kind had something to sell, then they advertised it, ranging from a simple sign written on a piece of paper to a full blown campaign. The only difficult part however, is continually thinking up of new ways to appease and intrigue the general public, to make them want to buy your product, or visit your theme park, or whatever it is you are advertising. Clever poster designs, well made adverts and catchy tunes will only stretch so far. This is where the magic of Viral advertising (or marketing) comes in.

Viral marketing is a form of advertising that forms a kind of alternate reality for the consumer to browse and interact, it is essentially hyper-reality. For example, the band Nine Inch Nails created an entire fictional version of America for their concept album Year Zero, which tells the tale of a dystopian Earth, ravaged by totalitarian politics and economic chaos. To make this seem more real and engage the consumer/listener, the created fake websites, documents and video/audio clips to convince the listener they were hacking into some kind of  'alternate dimension' through the Internet.

By using this kind of advertising, products can be advertised in a completely unique way. It's an interactive form that makes the consumer feel like they have become part of what they are being convinced to buy, destroying the traditional values of consumerism and supply-and-demand and making advertising into more of an art form. This kind of social interaction with the masses therefore creates 'buzz': people will talk about it to other people, as the novelty of something as immersive and as 'cool' as viral advertising gives people the urge to share this information.

Another good example of a good viral marketing campaign is the Guinness stout 'Tipping Point' campaign.
Videos were posted on YouTube by a town mayor, calling for assistance to help his town prepare for upcoming celebration and a link to a website is posted at the end. By following this link, you are taken through a series of games, which after some time brings you to the latest advertisement (involving said town).

Viral marketing is a costly business however. To have a good campaign, you will need to create many websites, documents, audio clips, videos etc to generate enough 'buzz' for the masses to pay attention and be drawn in. This is where things get costly and it would appear that viral marketing is only available in an effective manner to large companies. The individual salesman would not be able to use this kind of marketing efficiently, and if they did try it, the effect would be very small. Regular advertising still has it's place in the world and is still effective, but viral marketing is slowly but surely taking over.

Year Zero related videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spw1EIn_490&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhf9RQdgucU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_oObh6VUIk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ori4KGvRoY

"Is Disneyland becoming more real than the real America?"

Hyper-reality is a state in which the medium in question is completely self referential, therefore making it detached from the reality of the world we physically live in. It applies mostly to video games, films, theme parks and other things of such a fantastical nature.

Disneyland is saturated in the mirth and merriment that is Disney's concept: A world of fun where nobody is unhappy. Therefore, in order for the theme park to work (or any theme park for that matter) it has to have that sense of hyper-reality. It's used as a form of escapism for a lot of people, to visit a reality that is so very detached from there own and has less rules that change frequently, thus making hyper-reality an attractive kind of reality to become immersed in. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find ways for us to quell the boredom of reality: chores, cooking, cleaning, work, school. These are not hyper-reality, simply because they do not work on the same self-containing concept as hyper-reality does, it is part of every bodies lives at some point, making the hyper-real look like a much better option for life.

Some other examples of hyper-reality include video games. These products are completely self referential, the rules they employ only work within the confines of the game itself. For example, a window will always shatter in the same way in a video game, or the main villain will always say the say things no matter how many times you play through it and if it does, it has been given a rule to do so. Again, this is why video games are so popular currently in todays society and culture: they have less rules than real life and do not emulate real life, so therefore become a source of entertainment.
The only reason that Disneyland is becoming more real than the real America is because the real America is no where near as entertaining to an audience as a place as densely hyper-real as Disneyland. To be able to visit a place with little confines in terms of thinking and imagination, it is the ultimate attraction for the masses, an escape route from life.

"Are you a member of a 'powerless elite'?"

All media has some kind of powerless elite to some extent. You will always find fan-made stories, art and videos all over the internet and in various formats. It's one of the great things generated from good storytelling, original ideas and interesting concepts that are presented to us in everyday life through the various mediums we encounter day to day.

I believe myself to a member of a powerless elite simply in the way I take influence from different media when I am making a film for my course or when I am writing a song for a band I am in. I want to do those things in a certain way because it interests me, but I can't be a part of that media as it is already been created, so to take influence from it is to make user generated content, thus making me part of powerless elite.

This is not a bad thing though, nobody is stealing ideas or claiming them as their own. It is merely another way of consuming media content, by expanding on the point already addressed by shows or songs or films and creating something new as a way of appreciating the media they have grown to become a fan of.

Nowadays, this kind of community effort from different fanbases is being used to the advantage of the producers, with new styles of advertising becoming more popular. Most notable is viral advertising or 'Guerilla marketing'. A good example of this is the film Cloverfield by JJ Abrams. He deliberately with-held the appearance of the monster that appears in the film and any significant details about the origin of the creature to arouse public interest. There were many websites and forums dedicated to discovering the 'secrets' of the film, even by sifting through Abrams' other works and trying to piece together 'clues' to unlock these so-called secrets. It was a brilliant marketing trick and the film was a big success partly for this reason.

Without the powerless elite, the user generated content, the fan-made content, a lot of media just wouldnt work and wouldnt generate much interest. Nowadays, it is getting increasingly difficult to draw people into media products, more and more of the masses are becoming desensitized to conventional advertising, even ignorant of it, as they have seen it all before. On the other hand, people are also now gaining the kind of technology needed to make this kind of content, stuff that looks as though it could have been used in the film itself (if it were a film that was in question). With the power of websites such as youtube, twitter, facebook and myspace, as well as the increasing amount of technology in the form of hardware and software, the powerless elite are gaining more power. Some day, they may even be the people who generate the original content.

"Real life is becoming indistinguisable from the movies"

With regards to the above statement, I believe that it all depends on the context on which you look at it. If you look at it from a literal sense, it isn't true. You wouldn't walk down the street and see a superhero saving somebodies life, or see a giant creature destroying a city, it just wouldn't happen, which is obvious.

However, you can see the point of this statement by looking deeper. The way families are portrayed in the films is like an ideal of family life: what the movies is dictating that you should aspire to for your family: The Man providing for his wife and his children, the Woman staying home and looking after the house, the Children getting good grades at school and generally being respectful and content. Anything other than this is considered dysfunctional in the world of the movies. It is the same case with conversation, as each person takes turns in saying a statement and replying in a very linear format, and to talk over one another and interrupt is not just seen as rude, it simply does not happen in the movies.

Real life isn't like this. The point Adorno and Horkheimer are trying to put across with this statement is not that superheroes are beginning to reveal themselves, but that we are starting to get sucked in by the ideals of fiction and idealism. We are starting to look out ourselves and compare our lives to what is portrayed on screen in the cinema and it is destroying the natural progression of the individual human culture and generating what Adorno and Horkheimer refer to as 'mass culture'.

I believe this statement to be true in some aspects, but I also think that human intelligence and common sense are key factors in this. It doesn't take a lot to recognise some aspects of the movies are not like real life and In my opinion, the only people who are going to be sucked in to this kind of thinking are the people who want to be sucked in, as a form of escapism to a way of life that is better than their own. It is all down to the individual to decides against this way of thinking, then perhaps the masses will follow.

In modern times, I feel that the movies are becoming more like real life, with the creation of gritty dramas and science fiction. These kind of films only ever seem to find a cult following, as they represent real life too well, making audiences uncomfortable: It doesn't suit the escapist nature of the average person. In the end, I do not believe real life is actually becoming like the movies, I feel more that the masses are trying to emulate the movies in their daily lives, but it's a battle we will fight and lose as real life doesn't permit the laws of film.