Muji always bring the design heat at Christmas. My favourites this year include the Solar System, the London/Paris/New York playing cards that form a map, and of course their city blocks (Edo is a lovely recent edition to the “street”). An honourable mention must also go to the penguin skittles.

If anyone wants to buy me something for Christmas, check out Muji’s website

Useful reference of “interesting” and “creative” things currently being memed around the internet.  The usual augmented reality, word-clouds, projections and interactive videos are paired with new examples, grouped into areas of Audio, Movies, Visual, Art, Physical, Light, Tech, Politics, Sport, Books, History, and of course straight up, old fashioned, Advertising.

Nike Grid

London is your gameboard.
You have 24 hours to claim your streets.
40 postcodes across London.
North. South. East. West.

Grid phone boxes in each postcode.
Run between them. Score points.
Run more. Score more.
Badges awarded for speed, endurance and stamina.
Play for your postcode.
Get the glory.

Claim the crown.

Game starts at 8pm.

Friday 23rd April.

It’s like Foursquare meets Nike Plus.

Become a fan

The easiest way to change behaviour is to make it more fun to do.

You might have seen the piano staircase video before, but now it seems that The Fun Theory (the guys behind the “guerrilla” piece of interactive media) was in fact part of a bigger Volkswagen initiative.

Some very good, original and no doubt successful work emerging there… but then there’s the question about originality, ownership and more.

It’s Nice That writes:

I loved the work VW produced in it’s fun theory initiative, it reminded me of Miranda July’s LTLYM project in a lot of ways… VW’s world’s deepest bin and the musical stairs had all the things I like about interactive work – invisible tech, no learning curve and something that brightened up your day… then I remembered Fabrica’s project Tuned Stairway in 2006 and Tom Hanks in Big and Sony’s stairwell in Tokyo and all the debate around creative ownership that have raged the past year came flooding back… for me there’s a place for all these things but may the debate continue…

I reckon Postman’s book would go nicely on your reading list with “Everything Bad Is Good For You” by Steven Johnson.

UNICEF 2 AIG 0 (Homage to Catalonia)

I was one of the hundreds of millions of television fans who watched the 2009 European Champions Cup Final between Manchester United and FC Barcelona, a football match that the Catalan giants deservedly won, mesmerizing Manchester United with the wizardry of their brilliant passing game.

Those watching the Champions League Final might also have noticed that each team wore logos on its shirts.

Barcelona wears the UNICEF logo, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund which is dedicated to improving the lives of billions of poor children and women throughout the world. In 2007, its annual revenues which largely come from governments, were US$ 3.013 billion.

By contrast, Manchester United wears the logo of AIG, American International Group which is listed on the stock exchanges but in effect is now owned by US taxpayers. AIG was the largest insurance firm in the world when it collapsed in 2008. Since then, according to BBC figures, it has received a total of US$180 billion in bailout funds from the US Federal Government: a sum almost 60 times the annual revenues of UNICEF.

AIG was one of the many Wall Street corporations that engaged in extremely risky and highly leveraged financial derivatives and it was at the very heart of the Wall Street Crash of 2008-09 that almost brought down much of the US and world economy.

There are a couple of other things that we might highlight with respect to the logos.

First, AIG corporate security has warned its employees not to wear the AIG logo in public because it fears they may be subject to violent attacks from members of the public. Presumably this does not apply to the MUFC players?

Second, although Barcelona have no shirt sponsor, they are still a wealthy club and one of the most heavily sponsored teams in world football.

Nevertheless, again according to BBC reports MUFC will receive around £14m per year from AIG until 2010, whereas Barcelona make a 1.5m Euros annual donation to UNICEF as part of their agreement.

A tale of two teams

No single entity, and certainly not a private business, owns FC Barcelona. Barca is essentially an association with 155,000 members, who each pay up to 140 Euros annually in membership fees, fees that entitle them to privileges and discounts on tickets. They govern the club by electing a President to the Board of Directors every four years — making Barcelona one of the most democratically controlled football teams in the world. In addition, randomly selected members become delegates who participate in the general assembly that approves the annual budget of the club.

By contrast, Manchester United is controlled by an American billionaire, Malcolm Glazer, who bought the team in 2005 against fierce opposition from the team’s supporters. The BBC has listed Glazer’s net worth at US$2.2 billion. Glazer also owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an American football team that benefits from a favourable lease agreement on a state of the art local stadium that was built at public expense. The stadium cost US$200 million and it was funded by an increase in local sales taxes. [Americans call their national game of gridiron "football" and the beautiful game "soccer"].

Glazer turned Manchester United into a private company, saddling it with large debts when he took it over. In protest, thousands of fans did not renew their season tickets, arguing that the club should be controlled by the supporters, and not by a private businessman. Since Glazer took control at Old Trafford, in a period of very low inflation, ticket prices to the so-called “Theatre of Dreams” have increased by 42%.

Barcelona beat another “English” team, Chelsea, in the semi-final of the European Champions tournament. Chelsea is also owned by a billionaire, Roman Abramovich, who obtained his large fortune during the post-Soviet privatizations of the 1990s that were promoted by the regime of Boris Yeltsin — a regime in which Abramovich served. According to Forbes Magazine, in 2009 Abramovich is the 51st richest person in the world with a net worth of US$ 8.5 billion, a sum that shrank by several billion dollars as a result of the drain on his assets due to the global financial and economic crisis.

Today, Barcelona as a club stands in stark contrast to a sporting world where teams are routinely bought and sold as commodities by the plutocrats, potentates, speculators and investors that are the principal beneficiaries of the new era of capitalist globalization, and that are gaining control of the “global sports market”.

Finally, we might also remember that football in Spain has never been simply a form of recreation or a cultural institution — it is also a political affair. As Orwell wrote, Catalonia and Barcelona were the epicentre of resistance to the Fascist dictatorship of Franco which took power after the Civil War of 1936-39 (Barca’s traditional rivals, Real Madrid, were the Fascist regime’s team). As many as 500,000 died in the Spanish conflict — a war that in important ways anticipated World War II, 1939-45. For Barcelona fans, football is a representation of their history, their resistance and their struggle for freedom and autonomy.

So perhaps football fans around the world can celebrate a victory of sorts, and not only for a team that epitomizes what Pele called “the beautiful game.”

Labels: Barcelona, capitalism 2009, football, global crisis, global sports market, Manchester United, soccer

posted by Stephen Gill at 3:36 PM

There’s lots of great interactive theatre going on at the moment. An interesting Brecthian shift for audiences, breaking the 4th Wall, but perhaps important as it taps in to the desire for greater engagement and experiences – which is increasing as the economy falls. Being part of a murder mystery, solving the riddle yourself only to find that you have played the part of a ghost all along certainly hightens your review!

Discover yourself:
Punchdrunk (pioneers in my experience), the Hide & Seek Festival, Firebird Ball (Punchdrunk’s next party), A Small Town Anywhere (you play the villagers in a reworking of Le Corbeau), Etiquette (played in Cafe Oto in Dalston), Shunt (the “cabaret” club in London Bridge), Rotozazza (creators of Etiquette)… if you know any more, please suggest them in the comments page.

If we’re increasingly be about story-economies and the experience economy then this is one way to engage your audience.

Read more at The Guardian
Photo from Hinius on Flickr

Image courtesy of A*A*R*O*N

Following on from our previous post, Future Lab has a blog called Business and Games and they’ve just published a myth-busting list about Men and Women and video games. Read the full report and links to papers etc here, but below are some highlights.

Among older adults 65+ who play video games, nearly a third play games everyday, a significantly larger percentage than all younger players, of whom about 20% play everyday

Online casual games bring in 150 million women every month– roughly half the population of the United States

It found that the most hard-core players are female, that gamers are healthier than average, and that game playing is an increasingly social activity.

Gamers’ body mass index (BMI) tended to be lower than the US average – with many taking “proper” exercise more than once a week

The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 13 years.

Sixty-three percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives.

Facebook gaming: Scramble which is the only game among the top three developers dominated by women(63%)

(“Facts ” may differ due to being from different sources.)

Source list as below:

PDF report by Pew Internet. “Adults and Video Games”
“Games Women Play” Sep 08 from the Edge
Online Gaming Popularity Grows Among Youngest and Oldest Female Segments in the U.S. ComScore report.
BBC 23 December 2008 “Battle of the Sexes” (detailed link here from Wiley interscience)
Industry Facts from Entertainment Software Association ESA
Women Embrace Casual Games from RedHerring “Casual Gamers Anything But”
BBC 17 Sep 2008 “Online gamers are not unhealthy“
Driving Force in Video Gaming: Women and Baby Boomers. Reported on PC World Aug 2008.
Demographics of the top 3 games on Facebook – from Bret on Social Games
Second Life demographics and usage – reported by Lost in Bananaverse
The demographics of World of Warcraft (useful but old 2005 data from Nick Yee
ESSENTIAL FACTS ABOUT THE COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY 2008 SALES, DEMOGRAPHIC AND USAGE DATA (full report from ESA at Scribd)
Women are hardcore gamers from bNet in 2006
Women Gamers Outnumber Men in 25-34 Age Group – from GameDaily 2006

vs.

TouchGrind a potentially more intuitive skate game for iPhone, but without big corporate backing

Which one will win the popularity contest? Vans‘ Tony Hawks rip-off homage with Buck Lasek and Omar Hassan, or finger flipping with TouchGrind by IllusionLabs?

TouchGrind is already out on the App Store, but Vans are running a nice competition to let you name the game and win goodies.

Download and enjoy!

A very clever interactive video animation that also seems to be promoting the Street Fighter action figure toys from Sota Toys. When you click on a relevant square (opponent, action button etc) you’re taken to a new video showing the animation, and therefore progressing the bout. A little bit clunky, but very clever interactive advertising on YouTube. I wonder when the technology will be functioning properly and we can have true interactive videos.