There’s been a fair amount of press associated with the apparently illegal Subway ads that showed up in Valve software’s “Counter-Strike: Source” online videogame. If I recall correctly, I first heard about it over on Clickable Culture who now has an entry (Link) directing readers to an Ars Technica story on the affair (Link) (as do a number of sites actually – it’s excellent reading; comments included). Here’s one small clip from the report:

Though the description of the process is technically true in this case, Townsend’s words suggest that IGA technology has been included in the game itself with the cooperation of the developer. For Counter-Strike, the code was “included within the game” by means of a special mod developed by IGA that displayed ads at various places in particular maps—but it was never cleared with Valve, the game’s creator. Because Counter-Strike games are not hosted on a central server, individual server operators made the decision to include the advertising mod on their servers, and this is where the story grows a bit murky. Engage or IGA apparently recruited server operators to run the mod, though how this worked was unclear.

I point to that particular part because that’s not exactly the kind of mod I was thinking of when I previously posted something suggesting game modifications and total conversions were the way to go (Link). However, it really is the obvious thing to do if you’re an advertiser looking for a quick and easy way into the game (pun intended). This might hurt Subway’s PR (emphasis on “might”), but this has put both IGA and Engage firmly on the map.

Interesting that both my previous post concerning cell phone technology (Link) and a rather longish comment of mine on Mashable referencing Stephen King (Link) should have something in common with a story now being run by ABC News called “Ads, Ads Everywhere” (Link). But it’s kinda cool because it’s nice to see he’s in the thick of things.

When I was posting that comment over on Mashable I originally started to include the fact that I emailed Mr. King with some ideas back in 2000, when he was experimenting with his online novel (see this Wired blurb on how that ended – Link). The “Stephen King VIP Club” the ABC article now mentions sounds very much like one of those ideas.

So now of course I’m wondering if the club will hold lotteries to have dinner with Mr. King at various cities during a book-signing tour; or auction off character identities in his books (by that I mean, winning readers have their names and perhaps some background information used to flesh out a character in a forthcoming novel – thus immortalizing them in literature). Who knows. But whether he ever read my email or not, it’s neat to think that maybe, just maybe he did and it got him thinking about other ways to deal with people pirating his work (assuming he wasn’t already dreaming up solutions, which he probably was).

Now before somebody rushes to puncture my balloon, let me live the dream a bit, okay?

Excellent article over on BusinessWeek (Link) discussing the coming wave of 3D animated avatars; something I discuss here quite a bit. In particular, the article focuses on cell phone implementations by companies like Motorola (that’s a nice surprise, tbh), but it includes some technical information as well; watered-down for those of us actually involved in creating this kind of content, but great for the uninitiated. And for anyone wanting to get a sense of what they’re talking about regarding lip-sync and “morphing” facial features, check out the machinima video I posted about earlier (Link).

Anyway, there’s lots of bits in the article I’d like to quote here and discuss, but I’ll refrain and instead focus on the last paragraph:

“Will the animated avatars come out on the market? Yes. Will people buy them? Yes. They’re fun and entertaining. But there’s a limit to what consumers will spend — they’re already buying games, ring tones, videos, and music,” says Julie Ask, senior wireless analyst at Jupiter Research. “The average cell-phone bill is already around $50. And consumers have shown [a willingness] to spend an extra 5% to 10% a month for data services. But they’re not going to spend an unlimited amount for more and more services.” Even on a bad hair day.

I think they’re wrong. “Games, ring tones, videos, and music” don’t communicate a user’s personality quite as well as, for example, what brand of virtual clothing they outfit on their avatar, or the quality of the “skin” they purchase for their virtual rep (I wish I could find the link to a story about some kid in South Korea who ran up his parent’s credit card bill by purchasing multiple “skins” for his online videogame race car).

Further, assuming people use their ring tone to communicate to other people their particular taste in music and – by extension – their personality, it’s worth noting that ring tone’s aren’t necessarily changed daily. However, people have already developed the social habit of changing their real clothes on a daily basis, and clothes are at least as important as ring tones in my opinion. Would it be any surprise if users mimic’d their real world behavior by changing their virtual clothes on a daily basis? Not to me. But then I’m guessing the skeptics out there thought ring tones was a bad idea as well.

There are a couple of interesting posts over on Clickable Culture that, for me at least, dovetail nicely. The first (Link) points to an entry over on Game Tycoon (edery.org? – Link) providing a recap of Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale’s talk at the GSD&M Digital America Conference (I guess that’s an advertising get-together since GSD&M is an ad agency).

There’s really nothing new in Rosedale’s talk for those of us more involved in the Second Life simulation, but CC does a nice job of listing some user statistics culled from Rosedale’s presentation. The only thing I would really single out for attention is the line item saying “$50M US dollars worth of annual transacations (based on current data)”. I’ve been watching the daily transaction and concurrent user numbers and at the beginning of the year the transaction numbers were much higher than I expected (something like $375,000/day which is closer to $140M US dollars /year). Now it seems the daily stats are broken and stuck all day in the mid $200k’s (actually, iirc the main web page isn’t a real ticker according to previous company responses to questions regarding it; but Linden Lab may be changing that since they’ve recently been adding quite a bit of real-time functionality to their website). I’ll continue to watch it and maybe someone will – or already has – ask LL if they could explain what’s going on with the ticker.

The second item over on Clickable Culture is news (Link) that BabyPhat, the highly-successful fashion brand, has licensed it’s tradename for use in cyberspace. Okay… well… a 3D instant messenger called imstar*. It really is only a matter of time before Second Life attracts similar attention (I just hope that people listening to Lessig in Second Life last night realize that this attention could also cause some serious problems).

I may have an aerospace engineering degree, but I also (obviously) have a degree in industrial design. So when I look at this automotive concept, the 330 mpg Aptera by Accelerated|Composites, being discussed over on WorldChanging.com (Link), the thing that really comes to my mind is arrogance.

It’s true that too many industrial designers don’t give due consideration to engineering issues (aka the never-ending “Design versus Style” debate). But it’s also true that too many engineers still do not seriously consider the humanistic issues involved in the products they develop. If not for someone empathetic to the driver’s useability issues, we might not today have power steering, power brakes, automatic transmissions, adjustable seats, aso. Those improvements don’t change the basic functions of those components; they enhance useability. And in turn, useability improves – among other things – customer satisfaction, product marketability and sales.

Developing successful products intended for the marketplace (which I assume is this company’s goal) is most often about compromise; a tricky blend of engineering for function and designing (and yes, even styling) for human beings. And when there is no compromise, it’s quite often due to dismissing the importance of something outside one’s field of expertise. And that most often results in failure.

I like what this tries to do, but from what I’m seeing as an industrial designer, I think this will join that long list of well-engineered market failures. As an aerospace engineer and concerned world citizen, I find that unfortunate.

{Image Copyright © Accelerated|Composites}