March 2009 Archives

A few weeks ago, Tom Clancy and Ubisoft released the latest addition to their arsenal of military themed games.  This particularly game, titled H.A.W.X. (which stands for High Altitude Warfare Experimental Squadron) is based on tactical air combat.  Or put another way, its about fighter jets.  Awesomesauce.

I've only played through the demo of HAWX, so I can't comment too much on the game play itself.  Of course that works just fine for this post as I'm not writing to talk about what is going on in the air anyway.  Because its what is happening on the ground that makes HAWX so interesting.

In order to make the game as realistic as possible, Ubisoft negotiated a deal with GeoEye - a high resolution satellite imaging company - to provide real world data for use in game.  If GeoEye sounds familiar to you, its because they are the same people that provide satellite imagery for Google Earth. The result of the Ubi-Eye partnership is that Rio de Janeiro in HAWX is not an artists rendering, but is the real deal complete with the real landmarks, real topography, real buildings and even real trees down to the meter.  It takes EA's old saying "if its in the game, its in the game" to a whole new level.  Or should I say altitude.  Lets go to the video tape!


 
Despite the fact that HAWX takes place well above the ground (at least as far as I've seen) the attention to detail is immediately noticeable from the virtual pilots seat and it adds an impressive depth to the game play experience.  The fact that its a pretty cool mashup (which seems to have been the topic of choice around here of late) doesnt hurt either.

But taking it a step further, I'm also getting a delicious whiff of educational pie here, and it comes in two flavors.  Obviously this sort of realism gives HAWX immediate potential as a geography tool for whatever cities are depicted in the game.  But thats pretty vanilla.  Lets take it the extra mile.

The majority of Clancy's games take place on the ground, from the perspective of an individual soldier or squad.  And given the fact that the Ubisoft-GeoEye partnership is already in place, its not unlikely to assume that the next Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon game will bring the realistic satellite images of Hawx back down to an ground pounder perspective.  Now, imagine Ubisoft providing level editor tools to let you create your own maps, based on real world satellite data... 

Put away the M-60 machine guns and F-22 raptors and you have just created a framework to allow anyone, anywhere, to explore any city in the world, any time, by foot or by air.  And did I mention that these games are all already built for multiplayer experiences?  Now just let your mind wander through the educational and collaborative possibilities of that kind of freedom.  It could change the way we think about everything from language learning to home buying.  Forget about virtual worlds.  This IS the world.  All from the framework of a game.  At this moment we shed a single tear for what Google's Lively could have been.

As excited as I am about the possibilities, the path I've gone down here is probably more than a little overly optimistic.  But I like where this is going.  And if Ubisoft doesn't run with the ball, you can bet someone else will.

Very cool stuff here.
 
 


Image from ign.com

Mashup culture may have found its Beethoven. 



This is my favorite of seven tracks, mixed by a DJ named Kutiman.  His goal?  To scour YouTube for totally unrelated clips and mix them to create original music.  He called it the ThruYou project.... 

If you're not blown away from just listening to to the song (the title for which is "I m new"), visit ThruYou.com, start up a song, then check out the credits and jump out to the individual component videos that comprised each song. In a far off land, an exorbitantly paid record executive's soul just died a little.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

Absolutely amazing.
 

Skittles.com, the website for the popular fruit flavored candy, has recently undergone a bit of a makeover.  This in and of itself is none too surprising - product sites can be counted on to shake themselves up on an almost perpetual basis.  But whats interesting is just how Skittles decided to manage their new site.  Or perhaps more accurately, how they decided to stop managing it at all.

If you're not one to click on links to candy websites for fear that its sweet temptations will corrupt you, then you should probably seek professional help.  But I am a sympathetic soul, so I've provided non-tempting screens for your viewing pleasure.  The image to the right(ish) is the new skittles.com.  So whats the big deal?  The big deal is that this "website" isnt actually a website at all.  It is just a hovering box that serves as a jumpoff point to every major skittles web 2.0 presence.  Clicking the media link sends you to the skittles YouTube channel.  Home or product links drops you off at the Skittles Wikipedia entry.  Friends?  The Skittles Facebook page.  And chatter?  None other than a search feed of every tweet that contains the word "skittles" in it.

What does it all look like when it comes together?  A little something like this:



Or this:



There are two reasons I like this move.  First and foremost, it conveys the message that the consumer/ customer is a critical piece of the product.  Participation is essential.  Setting the new skittles "homepage" to be its own wikipedia entry is not only a request for active involvement, but a literal acknowledgment that the community will and should determine the fate of the brand.

Secondly, it shows a confidence on the part of Mars Candy to step back and relinquish control of the message.  The community would be perfectly within its rights to slam skittles on the Facebook page, the YouTube channel, or on Twitter.  And without any real web presence to speak of, the disparaging remarks would be all that would be seen should a curious buyer visit skittles.com.  That fear of "what people might say" would (and still does in some cases) cripple organizational efforts to embrace Web 2.0 and its exciting to see a company toss such fears to the wind.  

You can almost taste the rainbow of social technologies.  But will it blend?  For that answer, we'll just have to wait and see.




Screenshots taken from skittles.com
 

There is a great post over on Bre Pettis' website that recently came to my attention courtesy of the Twittersphere.  The post is titled "The Cult of Done Manifesto" and it contains 13 rules to follow to by god get stuff done.  Its not a perfect list, but I do think its a reminder of the kick in the pants we all need sometimes.  I'm particularly fond of #9. 

"Doing shit is hard".  But that doesnt change the fact that sometimes you just need to saddle up and get 'er done.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Sometimes people, particularly those in positions like mine, forget about just how good we have it as far as technology is concerned.  Sometimes, as comedian Louis CK suggests, it might even take a recession to make us stop and marvel at just how spoiled we really are.  Well worth a listen.