Open Media Review

Flotsam and Jetsam

Several years ago a US television network tried to promote rerun season as, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!” Back then I scoffed, but now I abashedly claim the same thing.

I’ve been absent, and I apologize (and am very grateful to my other bloggers for keeping this thing afloat.) But I was looking through Google Reader today and discovered several things from late ‘07 that I starred and wanted to blog about on the now-dead Open Media Watch site, only things went downhill at the job and I never got a chance to do them. So I’m going to blog about two of them here, and if you haven’t seen them, well, it’ll be new to you.
Cory Doctorow writes on Pixel-Stained Technopeasants vs Webscabs: As a proud Technopeasant, I found this argument (that seemed to stretch through half of ‘07) a fascinating one.

I confess that I don’t understand Howard’s argument — it seems to be that a world in which free text-files circulate is one in which readers stop paying for printed books. This isn’t supported by the facts — indeed, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the biggest problem writers have is that readers don’t go to bookstores, and that books compete with MMORPGs and other networked activities for time. Giving away ebooks puts them on an equal footing with all the other online activities, and puts books in serendipity’s way, where non-bookstore-going readers might find them. (Howard also seems to labor under the misapprehension that writers are being pressured to do free online releases, when the reality is that writers have to fight and spit and pitch tantrums to get permission to put their work online)

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Eric Rice discusses What does social DIY bring to the future of game design?: Something I’m very interested in, as I started in the pro gaming industry where you’re nothing if you don’t have a publisher and promising developers get gobbled up immediately. I was also told that I couldn’t design games because I was in marketing.

Everything I learned spending countless hours on the microphone or promoting music can be compared to the radio station network visible in Grand Theft Auto series of games. The things I learned from being a videoblogger (old world term pre-Youtube era), can be applied to machinima, the genre of digital filmmaking powered by video game engines. Existing in various hypersocial, always-connected networks of blogs and friend-me lands, allows me to compare and contrast the behavior of groups (how IS Twitter or Myspace socially different from hordes of players in MMOs?). And virtual worlds (the very open sandbox ones), enable me to rapidly create a 3D place and instantly attract people.

As I work my way through this hellish cyberpunk project known as Saijo City (where everything around me is so cheerfully dystopian and oppressive), I can’t ignore each of these elements when writing the story. Because in my own head, I can hear what the state-sponsored radio sounds like and I can make it (or at the very least, mock it up). I can visualize the faces of the people of the city. I can imagine what music swells as we pan across the city. And finally, I can already imagine what people will love and hate, especially as a group.