What does it mean for game producers to become media producers? What happens to users?
I think it means that game producers will need to consider how the games the make will be interpreted with different cultural contexts and how then these games will be socially connected so that they allow online fan based communities to form, and whether or not they will allow their communities to generate their own fan driven content using tools supplied the producers. By doing this they will allow users to investigate different contexts of the game and thus create game driven pop cosmopolitans allowing for different gaming genres and culture to converge, and holding the attention of a broader base of gamers in the proves as their cultural world views expand as they become more deeply involved with gaming interactions.
Can we think of ‘Alternate Reality’ or ‘Viral’ games as akin to console or computer games?
I think we can as I see them as a convergence between the offline and online gaming worlds. Instead of going to different areas realistically constructed by the game designer, players are going to different websites constructed in the offline world, both of which relate back to some central media source. All of these are best played within a networked community to solve problems and share information.
What does it mean for traditional media when games and TV/Films converge?
I think it means that it becomes harder and harder for traditional media to maintain attention of consumers on a single media artifact if there is no method fans to interact with the media or derivatives of the emdia then attention will be quickly lost to those that do. Fans will look for expanding narratives though these derivative medias and socially network with other like minded people on a global scale free of the restrictions of time and space.
Traditional media will thus need to look to move from a digitally divided push media model, to a globally networked pull media model to maintain audience attention.
I think it means that game producers will need to consider how the games the make will be interpreted with different cultural contexts and how then these games will be socially connected so that they allow online fan based communities to form, and whether or not they will allow their communities to generate their own fan driven content using tools supplied the producers. By doing this they will allow users to investigate different contexts of the game and thus create game driven pop cosmopolitans allowing for different gaming genres and culture to converge, and holding the attention of a broader base of gamers in the proves as their cultural world views expand as they become more deeply involved with gaming interactions.
Can we think of ‘Alternate Reality’ or ‘Viral’ games as akin to console or computer games?
I think we can as I see them as a convergence between the offline and online gaming worlds. Instead of going to different areas realistically constructed by the game designer, players are going to different websites constructed in the offline world, both of which relate back to some central media source. All of these are best played within a networked community to solve problems and share information.
What does it mean for traditional media when games and TV/Films converge?
I think it means that it becomes harder and harder for traditional media to maintain attention of consumers on a single media artifact if there is no method fans to interact with the media or derivatives of the emdia then attention will be quickly lost to those that do. Fans will look for expanding narratives though these derivative medias and socially network with other like minded people on a global scale free of the restrictions of time and space.
Traditional media will thus need to look to move from a digitally divided push media model, to a globally networked pull media model to maintain audience attention.