Brand Noise

Retooling Virtual War to Help Heal

(from the New Yorker) Currently, the Department of Defense is testing Virtual Iraq—one of three virtual-reality programs it has funded for P.T.S.D. treatment, and the only one aimed at “ground pounders” in six locations, including the Naval Medical Center San Diego, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., and Weill Cornell Medical College, in New York. According to a recent study by the RAND Corporation, nearly twenty per cent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are suffering from P.T.S.D. or major depression. Almost half won’t seek treatment. If virtual-reality exposure therapy proves to be clinically validated—only preliminary results are available so far—it may be more than another tool in the therapists’ kit; it may encourage those in need to seek help.  Video  Read full article

GTA Marmite Modding

According to Stuff.co.nz a New Zealand kid, Stacy O'Callaghan is in some trouble for adapting Grand Theft Auto to suit his domestic conditions - complete with detailed images of modern New Zealand police cars and uniforms.  The police are not amused and are threatening legal action. Police national headquarters spokesman Jon Neilson said its legal team was investigating whether the modified version - which lets armed vehicle thieves bash and kill police officers - breached regulations concerning the use of police insignia.

Games Activate Men More Than Women

Why does it often seem that men enjoy playing video games more than women? Perhaps because they do, says a NY Times article. The new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.

To that, I quote my husband's reaction to my brother's engagement, "How about a simulated two-year marriage wearing VR goggles before the wedding day? Or like Second Life."

Have video games (or technology) become our new sex? If you open your mind to "sex" as defined by reward and addiction, it all seems to fall in place.

Sports Gaming is being Redefined

Proving that respected sports involvement has gone beyond physical participation vs. the couch potato to a more cerebral holistic involvement that allows for real participation and is buoyed by technology:

As reported by AdAge, sports video gaming used to mean sitting around on couches frantically punching buttons on a controller -- with the only other minimal exertion being smack talk. Then came the Nintendo Wii. Suddenly, sports video gaming meant getting up off the couch to virtually play by actually jumping, running, swinging and pitching.

Now, Nintendo is tying its active game play to real-life sporting events. Its winter marketing plan includes a slate of baseball, golf and monster-truck sponsorships and events that put the Wii and DS in sports fans' hands.

Photo: The 'Nintendo Fan Network' allows fans to get stats, player info, watch extra videos, order food and drinks and interact with each other during games.

Funneling is Not Sustainable Branding

Mekanism recently announced the launch of the Rockband.com social network. We first heard about the plans for the network back in October. We were hoping for a bit of evolution in that time. Rock Band is a great game. Rock Band as a social network is not. Not to say there is anything wrong in its execution, but the premise of a destination channeling people is not the direction to head in. Conde Nast came to that realization with Flip.com, which is now available as a widget on Facebook. And American Greetings approached its Kiwee brand from the get-go as one to work in tandem with existing, fabulous properties. Even Second Life only becomes something interesting when it becomes part of things outside of itself. Hmmm...maybe Guitar Hero is getting a handle on that now that it has launched Guitar Hero 3. Sustainable branding means working with resources that exist and function well among their users.

(Photo: 'Rock Band' set-up with 110" screen from a Panasonic PT-AX100 Projector. Onkyo 605 feeds the sound from the Xbox 360.)

US Girls Playing Indian Arranged Marriages

Online research of nearly 2 million gamers by Indian gaming portal games2win has found that girls aged between 13 and 17 years make for almost 80% of its US traffic. What’s intriguing is that these girls are playing games related to Indian customs: dolling up like brides or playing roles in an Indian arranged marriage.

games2win CEO Alok Kejriwal says: “Our research has found that an average user would be on our site for over 10 minutes, which is almost like watching half of uninterrupted telecast of a soap opera on TV.”

Girls love to engage in stories. Girl gamers are no exception. Indian culture offers an exotic fantasy appeal that girls don’t get from American pop culture. Reason why manga and anime are so appealing. American teens are too old and too cool for Disneyana, yet they still want the dramatics.

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Scrabble Pirates Back Its Game

Scrabulous, clearly a knockoff of the board game Scrabble, was developed by two brothers in India. Its popularity is a major driver of traffic to Facebook, where a reported 500,000 members log on to Scrabulous each day.

Dozens of Facebook groups have been created to “save Scrabulous.” The biggest had more than 23,000 members late this week, days after the letter from Hasbro and Mattel was made public. Most group members seem to understand that the companies are merely protecting their rights, and many think that the game makers will reach some sort of understanding with the developers of Scrabulous, allowing the game to stay. A Hasbro spokesman said as much in a statement, asserting that the companies are seeking an “amicable solution.”

Josh Quittner of Fortune magazine’s Techland blog thinks that is just what should happen. “If I were an evil genius running a board games company,” he wrote, “I might do this: Wait until someone comes up with an excellent implementation of my games and does the hard work of coding and debugging the thing and signing up the masses. Then, once it got to scale, I’d sweep in and take it over. Let the best pirate site win!”

There's defending your intellectual property, and then there's admitting that you dropped the ball. What we have here are two companies focusing on the negative, annoying their consumers, and ignoring an opportunity.

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GM Denies Hummer HX Inspired by Halo

A lot of Halo fans think Hummer's new HX concept SUV looks quite a bit like the Warthog all-terrain vehicle from Bungie's hit games. The designers must have been thinking of the Warthog when they built it, right?

Wrong. Carl Zipfel, GM's director of exterior design for the HX concept, says the Warthog was not an inspiration for the new compact SUV.

Zipfel emphasized the futuristic look and off-road capabilities of the HX at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit today. But he says the design comes from modern-day ATVs, not Halo's heavily armed military vehicles.

Zipfel says he saw the buzz about the HX in video game blogs, and he seemed flattered by the the comparison. He even said he and several of the vehicle's young designers play Halo.

But as for the Warthog resemblance — that's just a coincidence.

GM's dismissing this too quickly. I see shades of the Coke/Mentos denial. GM, time to introduce yourself to the gang at Bungie and maybe connect with the Rooster Toothers.

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Model of the Future: Collaborative Existence

In 2006, a conversation started on CIO Insight in answer to the question of "Am I a bad parent if encourage my child's musical pursuits rather than encourage a technical education?" Posts flooded in flaming about on both sides of the issue: Music=starving artist. Tech=guaranteed income. This made us here at scenarioDNA wonder: Is the issue truly that cut and dry anymore? We don't think so.

Take our own world of planning. Here the best lessons learned come from a wide breadth of disciplines. But Wired Magazine brought it all home however in this latest article:

Video Games Live is a 135-minute showcase of music from arcade, computer, and console titles, arranged for and performed by a 66-piece orchestra and a 16-person choir. Its creator and emcee is Tommy Tallarico. When he was 10, he'd use his Commodore 64 to splice together his favorite sound effects and then invite friends to come by and watch him play air guitar over the tracks. As an adult, he has written scores for games like Advent Rising and Earthworm Jim, and today he hosts The Electric Playground on G4 TV, a cable network devoted to gaming.

Videogame music first invaded US concert halls in 2004, when Jason Michael Paul, founder of Play!, brought Dear Friends, a program of music from the Final Fantasy catalog, to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

To date, these venues are more fun than profitable. But the collaboration that is thriving among these worlds mixing pop culture with art with things people love breeds a model for success. Our hope is that someday no one will have to make the choice between what they love vs. what makes them a living—however modest. Already no one from Gen X and beyond is willing to sacrifice design for cost. Why would they sacrifice their careers?

Self-Defining Heroes Make the Game

When it comes the “rhythm music genre,” aspiration holds the key to the Guitar Hero franchise. Smith professor Steve Waksman explains, that Guitar Hero isn’t simply about keeping up with a game: “You’re keeping up with specific songs, by specific artists, who are marked as heroes.”

This meshes with the somewhat contradictory guitar-hero idea, which is hierarchical (the hero is better than you) but also implies more of an invitation to join in (start your own band) than, say, classical music does. That is probably part of what makes the guitar such a potent symbol, even as music making itself has gotten steadily more digital: once an emblem of modern sonic rebellion, the guitar now represents a kind of tradition and a “way of making music that’s more physical,” Waksman says.

Yet, no matter how good you may get at Guitar Hero, if you decide to take up the real instrument at some point, you’ll be starting from scratch. This isn’t to say that Guitar Hero doesn’t require the steady acquisition of a measurable skill. It does. It’s just not a skill that involves creating music.

Read the whole story.

Our talks with gamers fall right in line with this thinking. For them, there is fine mix of skill, sociability and competitive nature that comes into play with their choice of Guitar Hero. That includes statements from some LaGuardia high school students. This is less about musicians, than it is about social networking.

(Image from Dr. Snafu.)