Sam Anderson of The New York Times explores the world of addictive games, the people who create them, and how “gamification” is being used in the real world.
The article provides an interesting overview of the popularity and evolution of gaming and what Anderson refers to as “hyperaddictive stupid games.” He also examines the current definition of “games.”
For example, he suggests that Zynga’s games such as “FarmVille” and “FishVille” may need to be defined as something other than games. “They are click-machines powered by the human need to achieve progress by a predictable path and a willingness to pay small amounts of money to make that progress go faster. They are not ‘games,’” wrote Nicholas Carlson of Business Insider.
“But you could argue that games like ‘FarmVille’ are in fact just the logical end of gamification: gamified games,” comments Anderson. “They have the appearance of games, they inspire the compulsions of games, but for many people they are not fun like games.”
Anderson spoke with Frank Lantz, the creator of “Drop7” (which Anderson describes as addictive). “Games, he told me, are like ‘homebrew neuroscience’ — ‘a little digital drug you can use to run experiments on your own brain.’ Part of the point of letting them seduce you, as Lantz sees it, is to come out the other side a more interesting and self-aware person; more conscious of your habits, weaknesses, desires and strengths.”
“It’s like heroin that is abstracted or compressed or stylized,” he said. “It gives you a window into your brain that doesn’t crush your brain.”
Try out the “Asteroids” game embedded on the article’s first page. You can fly across the story!
Samsung is working with OpenX Technologies Inc. to offer an ad service called Samsung AdHub Market that will enable advertisers to run targeted messages on Samsung phones and tablets.
“The move is part of Samsung’s broader push to bring targeted advertising to electronic devices, including Internet-connected television sets,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “It also will pit the company against other mobile-ad services from Apple, Google and Millennial Media Inc., which held an initial public offering of stock last week.”
“This is the first time any device manufacturer has entered the ad tech space in this way,” said OpenX chief executive Tim Cadogan. “It is becoming very clear to the principals in the mobile space that advertising is going to be a very important part of the revenue mix.”
“According to data provided by eMarketer, spending on mobile advertising in the U.S. is expected to reach $10.8 billion in 2016, up from $2.6 billion this year,” reports WSJ. “Cadogan said he expects that OpenX, which has focused on advertising within desktop computers and is now generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, will move further into the mobile market in the future.”
The number of Windows apps is growing steadily. At the current rate of development, the 100,000 milestone could be reached by late May.
According to All About Windows Phone, the Windows Phone Marketplace now adds 340 published apps each day. There is currently a catalog of 80,000 apps for the Windows platform, up from 50,000 in December.
TechCrunch points out that the number of published apps is more than the number of apps available to consumers because Microsoft and developers will remove some applications and because not all apps work in every market. In the U.S., Windows Phone users have access to around 69,123 apps.
Even so, the Windows Phone 7 is “an excellent new mobile operating system” and “it would seem that the Windows Phone Marketplace is growing at a steady pace,” TechCrunch writes.
YouTube is already on set-top boxes and Google TV, bringing free, ad-supported videos to big screen TVs. As of yet, no boxes or even Google TV have offered YouTube movie rentals for viewing on televisions, so the service remains online — with the exception of connecting your PC to your TV.
This may soon change, according to recent rumors that suggest Google TV will support the movie rentals.
“The reality is that, right now, for all the content YouTube is collecting, it simply is not on a level playing field with Apple and Apple TV, Netflix and Amazon’s Prime,” Mashable writes. “These services are on set-top boxes (Apple has its own) that plug directly into your HDTV. No concerns about whether or not DRM rights will prevent movie playback. The experience for renting a movie on any of them is seamless.”
If the rumors are true, it remains to be seen whether other set-top boxes will get access to YouTube movie rentals.
“YouTube’s legacy is free, bite-sized content supported mostly by ad overlays, no one will want to pay for content that was originally free on, say, broadcast television on YouTube — unless, of course YouTube offers an ad-free network,” suggests the article. “Then viewers might pay a monthly fee for the privilege.”
Despite YouTube’s deals with studios to gain access to more content — such as the Paramount agreement, announced Wednesday — it is still primarily used for watching viral videos and Google could have a hard time getting consumers to view the site as a competitive alternative to other popular VOD services.
YouTube will provide online rentals of nearly 500 Paramount films under a new licensing agreement. Consumers will be able to rent movies via YouTube ($2.99 to $3.99) or through the online media storefront Google Play.
Terms of the partnership were not released, but in a few weeks consumers in the U.S. and Canada will be able to rent films like “Hugo” and “The Godfather.”
The rental partnership arrives despite long-running litigation. Paramount’s parent company Viacom Inc. is currently trying to overturn a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and parent company Google for copyright infringement of programs including “SpongeBob Squarepants,” “The Daily Show,” and “South Park” that it claims were uploaded to YouTube illegally.
“The Paramount deal means that YouTube now has movie rental deals with five of the six major film studios, as well as more than ten independent film studios, giving it access to a catalog of nearly 9,000 films,” reports Reuters.
Grooveshark is hurting. The music streaming site no longer has legal access to the majority of licensed music after EMI terminated its contract.
Of the major music publishers, EMI was the only company that had made licensing agreements with Grooveshark; however, in January, EMI filed a lawsuit against the service, claiming Grooveshark hadn’t paid licensing fees since 2009.
“Grooveshark was recently forced to make the difficult decision to part ways with EMI due to EMI’s currently unsustainable streaming rates and EMI’s pending merger with Universal Music Group, which we consider monopolistic and in violation of antitrust laws,” Grooveshark announced in a statement to CNET. “To date, Grooveshark has paid over $2.6 million to EMI, but we have yet to find sustainable streaming rates. In spite of this, Grooveshark’s dedication to artists and rights holders remains the same.”
Florida-based Grooveshark says it has more than “30 million monthly users who stream more than 15 billion songs per year,” reports VentureBeat. “In November, it rolled out a new design of its online music player that includes a social layer.”
A research report from Toronto-based Convergence Consulting Group Ltd. found around 1.05 million people canceled their pay-TV subscriptions in 2011. Web-based services have led 2.65 million subscribers of cable or satellite TV to cut their services since 2008.
However large the numbers seem, they are only a fraction of total subscriptions. The report suggests that by 2012, 3.58 million will have cut the cord, which only represents 3.6 percent of all subscribers.
The rate that people are opting out will slow this year as pay-TV services will actually see a boost in adopters, Convergence Consulting predicts.
Cable, satellite and services from telephone companies — like Verizon’s FiOS and AT&T’s U-verse — will add a net 185,000 accounts this year, an increase from 112,000 in 2011.
Stuart Green, Rutgers Law School professor and author of the upcoming “13 Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age,” addresses emerging trends regarding copyright infringement and intellectual property in a recent New York Times op-ed.
In doing so, Green provides a compelling examination of the concept (and evolution) of “theft” in the digital age.
“For starters, we should stop trying to shoehorn the 21st-century problem of illegal downloading into a moral and legal regime that was developed with a pre- or mid-20th-century economy in mind,” writes Green. “Second, we should recognize that the criminal law is least effective — and least legitimate — when it is at odds with widely held moral intuitions.”
“But framing illegal downloading as a form of stealing doesn’t, and probably never will, work,” he adds. “We would do better to consider a range of legal concepts that fit the problem more appropriately: concepts like unauthorized use, trespass, conversion and misappropriation.”
“Treating different forms of property deprivation as different crimes may seem untidy, but that is the nature of criminal law,” suggests Green.
Two analysts are predicting that Apple’s stock will hit the $1,000 mark within a year or two.
Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets says the introduction of the next iPhone and the iTV, paired with expansion into China and the TV market, will surge the stock to more than $1,000 bringing the company’s value to $1 trillion. “Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world,” he said.
“Shares can reach $1,000 based on our belief that Apple will continue to win in global mobile devices,” Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray wrote in a note.
The company has grown over 60 percent since Steve Jobs’ death in October, so these predictions may not be unreasonable. In this year alone, the stock has risen 53 percent.
“Apple investors also are benefiting from a $2.65-a-share dividend, starting in July, and a $10 billion stock buyback plan,” reports Bloomberg. “The company announced both initiatives last month.”
Rumors are circulating that Apple is working on a gaming controller for the iPhone and iPad. The new product could launch Apple into the gaming industry, allowing developers to create apps that go beyond touch controls.
Currently, iPhone users are downloading more than five million games each day. This figure continues to grow with the success of other iOS devices such as the iPad and iPod Touch.
“The touch controls in these games played a part in the dramatic success of iOS as a gaming platform, but it has also held Apple back from truly conquering this market,” Mobiledia writes. “The success of gaming on iOS devices slowed sales of portable gaming systems like the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, but hardcore gamers shun Apple’s devices because they do not offer the traditional control scheme necessary to play games like ‘Madden,’ ‘Call of Duty’ and other popular console titles.”
If Apple did create an iOS controller that worked universally with all Apple devices, developers would likely jump on board with games that support it.
Amazon came into the tablet market a little late after Apple and Android had already developed their app stores. Now the online retailer is taking a stab at its competitors as it tests an in-app purchasing system designed to strengthen the Kindle Fire’s ability to make money.
Amazon will receive a 30 percent cut from in-app purchases like add-ons or game extensions to existing apps.
“This new development is likely to attract app developers to Kindle Fire, as they will keep most of the revenue. The profits for these kinds of sales are growing, and analysts expect they will make up 64 percent of app revenue by 2015,” Mobiledia writes.
Although it is a step towards larger profits for Amazon, the company still has a long way to go before it will be able to edge out Apple of its strong market share — especially after Consumer Reports named the new iPad the best tablet available.
A recent TVGuide.com survey found that TV viewers believe they can influence business decisions by using social media.
According to Lost Remote, the survey determined that 76 percent of TV viewers indicate their “main motivation for engaging with social media is to prevent their favorite TV shows from being canceled.” That number is up from 66 percent a year ago.
Viewers also use social media to let their friends know what they’re watching. The survey specifies that 95 percent engage in social media after the show concludes, 40 percent participate while the show is airing and 53 percent engage beforehand.
It’s also worth noting that 69 percent use social sites to see other viewers’ opinions, whereas only a third actually post something themselves.
“The most entertaining question from the survey asked the simple question, ‘What is social TV?’ which is even difficult for TV execs to define,” comments Lost Remote. “But 61 percent had an answer: ‘Another stupid marketing term for how people have always watched TV’ said one, ‘liberal biased media crap’ responded another. But among them, there were some great definitions, such as ‘Being hooked into communities online while watching TV’ and ‘a connected atmosphere of television.'”
Sony announced it has made Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video available via its PlayStation 3 console.
The new addition offers Amazon’s nearly 100,000 movies and TV shows on the PS3 as well as about 17,000 streaming items available with a $79 Amazon Prime subscription.
The PS3 app is downloadable from the console’s XMB menu, but users won’t be able to buy content using their PlayStation digital wallet. Instead, they’ll have to connect Amazon’s service to the console over the Web.
“One benefit of that is cloud sync, however,” reports The Verge. “You can start a movie on your PS3 and resume on a Kindle Fire, or vice versa, for instance.”
“The announcement may not be as exciting as a live TV service, but it’s a major video service that the Xbox 360 doesn’t have… unless you count the grueling process of downloading shows in advance on a Windows computer and streaming to your Xbox using Windows Media Center,” The Verge points out.
Tablets running Facebook and Twitter are emerging as the long-sought second screen that could steer the success of social TV.
According to survey results from Informa, more than 41 percent of executives said tablets are the most important platform for watching TV interactively. Additionally, more than 21 percent suggest that social networks can help sell paid content.
“The big content winners are likely to be entertainment, cited by almost 40 percent of executives as representing the greatest opportunity for increasing viewer engagement,” reports MediaPost.
“Sports and news and weather were seen as the biggest opportunity by 27.5 percent and 14.8 percent of respondents, respectively,” explains the article. “But movies (9 percent) generally were not regarded as a strong content type around which to generate social engagement.”
Informa recommends that instead of relying on their own apps to develop social TV strategies, television stakeholders should create a portfolio of external partners such as Facebook, to maintain relevance in terms of viewers’ needs. “Informa also recommends that programmers build viable social TV ad models that work off of the main TV display,” suggests MediaPost. “The second screen is where advertisers can more precisely target and segment the TV audience.”
Highlight Hunter is a free app for Macs and PCs that takes your unedited video and creates highlight clips ready for downloading into your favorite editing program.
The app requires you to cover the lens after you shoot footage you want highlighted. The app automatically looks for those clips and includes the preceding 30 seconds. The company claims it can reportedly reduce editing time an average of 80 percent.
A later version will enable the software to scan, edit, upload to the cloud and make clips available on YouTube.
“Highlight Hunter is free to use, and unlimited, but the free version applies a small watermark to videos,” reports TechCrunch. “Users can switch to a $29/year premium version, which removes the watermark, supports faster scanning speeds, priority support, among other things.”
The article also mentions HighlightCam, which has facial recognition and other software that can create mini-movies.
