Great Summary from Tom Sawyer of Power to the Pixel's tips for cross-media entertainment / pervasive game creation « The Tom Sawyer Effect

We’ve already shared some of the best case-studies Power to the Pixel cross-media conference as part of the London Film Festival, here is the promised round up of the insights and advice that were given on the night.We’ll add in our own thoughts following another pervasive Winterwell event last weekend soon!

Liz Rosenthal – CEO of Power to the Pixel

The way that consumers are consuming entertainment is changing… stories are being told, delivered, and shared across different platforms but also the viewer is being given different degrees and types of influence on the story. there are more ways to tell a story than ever before, but there are many more ways to receive one. New audiences are accessing and switching between different platforms – but most broadcasters are still looking for delivery on just one channel. It’s time to change that…

Michel Reihlac - Executive Director at Arte France Cinema

  • Play is circular – you can start again at any point;
  • play is open – you can become something or someone different
  • play is freedom – you don’t have to do anything that is asked of you
  • The most powerful tool to get people interfacing with a story is status. Cash or material rewards are ineffective
  • There are four types of players – achievers (use fair play to win); socialisers (are not playing to win, but to be playful); explorers (like to experience the game for its own worth) and killers (don’t just want to win, but want everyone else to lose)

What defines a game? it needs to be

  • fictitious (different to real life somehow)
  • separate (limited and contained within its own world)
  • regulated (by rules. obviously)
  • unpreddictable (with different outcomes possible)
  • fun (possible in many different ways)
  • free to join or leave (opt-in)
  • non-productive (not commercially based)

Mike Monello – Co-creator of the Blair Witch Project and founder of Campfire

Gave us an overview of designing for communal experiences

  • Make it tangible
  • Foster a sense of discovery
  • Make it personal
  • Build a world larger than your characters

From what he was sayin he seemed to have a sixth rule which he didn’t list:

  • To allow the players room to add to the experiences themselves (there, I just added that!)

Maureen Mchugh. Veteran cross-media writer and leader of – Nomime media

We are a young and naive artform. We copy older artforms – videogames, and – *even older* – film.

As a result we dont have our own conventions yet. we rely on conventions from these older platforms in order to make people comfortable and not be overwhelmed by the noise from multiple platforms.

Maureen said a lot more, but I was too wrapped up in it to make so many notes.

Lance Weiler – writer, director and one of the best known game-makers in the business

  • Story gameplay and community come together to create a social entertainment environment.
  • Stories have been controlled for a long time by the few.
  • the player wants to put their finger on the pond and watch the ripple
  • Take time to evaluate the story
  • Ask hard questions – why should anyone care about what you’re doing?
  • Let go of a single point of view
  • consider how to show not tell
  • make it easy for the audience to become collaborators
  • dont let the world get in the way of the story

 

Adobe's Mobile Consumer Study: Mobile Web For Media and Entertainment, Apps For Social Media and Music

Other key findings include:

  • Accessing maps and directions is the No. 1 mobile activity (81%) followed by social networking (76%), accessing local information (73%), and reading news (68%). The top mobile finance activity is reviewing bank account information (67%)
  • CDs, games and DVDs comprise the second largest mobile purchase category, accounting for 43% of those surveyed 
  • Males 30-49 years-old tend to be the most active content consumers and mobile purchasers; 31% of men spent $499 or more through their mobile device in the last 12 months, versus 23% of women
  • Men also spend more time than women on financial and travel content, while 80% of women engage with social media on their devices compared to 70% of men

more useful data below on mobile ad spending & predictive growth of spending

Great Share: The Kickstarter Blog - Tips from Creators and Beyond

Tips from Creators and Beyond
Posted by Daniella Jaeger

We get a lot of questions about how to put together and run a great Kickstarter project, and we’re always happy to share whatever insights we have, either from personal experience running a project or from simply seeing what works well on the site day after day. But we’re hardly the only people worth asking. There are more and more great write-ups from project creators and media outlets alike popping up all the time. We’ve blogged about some of these articles in the past, like Craig Mod’s wonderful piece about his experience — a must-read! Here are a few more good ones.

Grassroots Funding with Kickstarter.com

Jason Brubaker blogged some seriously relevant tips about his successful campaign for his graphic novel reMIND. It touches on everything from making a sweet video to spreading the word to keeping organized. Check out his nifty graph for tracking his project:

I especially liked his insights on rewards:

“Don’t make too many pledge options. I strongly believe that the more options you have the harder it is to make up your mind and a person will likely leave before deciding what to do.”

and

“Your pledge rewards should be better than what you normally offer your product for. I think this is really important. Many people make their rewards so lame for the amount pledged and nobody pledges. The pledgers are doing us a favor by giving money so they need to be rewarded with better prices and offers than someone just buying our product after it’s finished.”

He also touched on something we wish every project creator would do: Look at other projects for inspiration and get a sense of what works well.

“Study the successful and the unsuccessful. Look closely at the campaigns that are ending soon. Here’s a link. What’s interesting is they’re either fully funded or have next to no funding; there’s very few in between. If you can’t make a splash when you jump in then nobody will notice, so study which ones work and which ones don’t.”

Much more in the post itself; check it out here.

Kickstarter and me: What I learned from my mistake, and a friend’s success, using Kickstarter for crowdfunding

James VanOsdol tried his hand at a Kickstarter project to fund his book and got an impressive 139 backers on board. While he didn’t quite reach his goal, he now has a slew of lessons learned under his belt (great bait for a future project, perhaps?). He writes about his friend’s successful (and still live) project for the Rogues Gallery in particular and gets right to the point:

“The simple reason for the project’s success is that it’s a great idea which appeals to a talented and passionate community of artists and fans. Beyond that, Patrick asked for a relatively modest amount, making the funding all but guaranteed.”

James then outlines the careful budget he prepared for his project and his strategies, followed by what went wrong.

“I had asked for too much money to fund a fairly niche book…in a recession. My book strategy of ‘doing it right’ led me to not doing it at all.”

We often remind people that funding is all or nothing, so while of course one should choose a goal that will cover costs and allow for reward fulfillment, it’s probably a good idea to be conservative as well. You can always raise more, but never less. At the end of the day, each project is different and has its own needs and its own audience.

Trust, mobile, and money: New focal points (and hints for applicants) for the new Knight News Challenge

We were excited to find this article from the Nieman Journalism Lab. It’s not about Kickstarter specifically, but it provides tips on applying for a tech grant called the Knights News Challenge that can be useful when thinking about how to approach a Kickstarter project as well. The article profiles one of our more successful tech projects, LocalWiki, and I found this point to be especially telling:

A working prototype is great. When the creators of Davis Wiki … applied for grant funding to expand their project, they weren’t just pitching a concept. They could point judges to a thriving local website which collects community insight and serves as an open forum for residents to deal with everything from scam artists to lost kittens.”

Kickstarter audiences respond to this kind of work-in-progress evidence too. People are much more keen to support a project that has something exciting clearly brewing.

Any personal experience of your own you’d like to share, or something you know you’re looking for as a backer? Drop it in the comments!