Are We Losing the Ability to Read? Is Video the Last Resort?

We played a whole bunch of board games over the holidays and something struck me – we just can’t read rules. Is this a sign of the end of humanity?

I’ve always been sensitive to “rules” as a board game publisher – I hate the idea of having to defend my own rules and fortunately have rarely had to do so. Nobody ever says your rules are good, but if they are bad they get mentioned loads. The Science of rule writing is the subject of it’s own blog post.

Here is one that we found: Game Rules as Art

We all know people play Monopoly wrong (house rules!). I always thought that was because we learn Monpoly by osmosis, it’s almost part of our DNA. Can you ever remember reading the rules (don’t try they are long and horrid). Fortunately most games aren’t too sensitive to the odd irregularity so in most cases everyone still has fun.

We played three games that I can highly recommend; PowerGrid, Alhambra and Pandemic. There were severals groups playing and each had played these games independently. What we discovered was that we’d all been playing them incorrectly in one way or another. In the end with PowerGrid we typed up our own summary so we don’t fall back into bad habits, and I think I’ve now played as intended.

The details of what we played wrong doesn’t matter here, but Pandemic was the funniest. We didn’t win once and that seemed wrong as I’d won it when I’d played it before at game club. On rereading the rules we’d completely misread how to cause an outbreak, so our diseases were spreading faster than intended – hence our losses.

I think the biggest tip is don’t let anyone read rules in front of other people – the social pressure is to much and our brain and reading skills breakdown. With rules, once we get it wrong, we keep going and we establish our own version of the game. It’s well worth re-reading rules and even writing summaries or annotating your rules sets with mental triggers.

Beyond gaming I wonder if we actually read anything correctly anymore. We’re so tuned to skimming emails, articles, even blog posts just like this one. If we can’t read and consume well written text society faces some serious problems. If reading is failing, what is next?

Is video the answer? You may be unaware, but there is a huge trend on the Internet. Every statistic you read points to the dramatic uptake in the consumption of video as the preferred communication. With the dramatic rise of video, I wonder if this is either the solution or the cause. It’s a good question for which I’m not quite sure of the answer. I’m sure thinking about that question may lead to a few more posts.

How about you? Do you think we’ve lost the ability to consume information? Is the board game dead? Is a simple card game the limit of our comprehension and attention span? Is this post too long? Would you rather watch a video? Does the answer vary by generation? Lots of questions!

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Twilight, Twible or Twinsight

The below three comments happened to be the first customer reviews I found on iTunes regarding the 2008 release of the movie Twilight. What I find interesting is that if these were reviews for a restaurant and we read them we would probably never consider going to eat there. But as we all know unless we have been sleeping under a rock the second movie of the twilight franchise “New Moon” has just reached all-time box office record history. A movie costing a mere $50 million to produce took in $200 million on its opening night.

Twilight…hmm…
So, I was watching this movie with my friends at a theater, and having been previously reading the books I was expecting a lot from the movie. The sad truth is that, the movie wasn’t that great. In fact, it was horrible. I have to give credit to whoever picked the filming location because the scenery is/was beautiful. When it came to the acting, I wasn’t drawn in at all; and there was no chemistry between the actors. (Robert Pattison is not that hot by the way, he’s okay). The graphics and visual effects were bad, directing was bad too (thank goodness they’re hiring a new director for the next movie.) My point is, this movie could have been better, and the acting could have been better as well. The only reason why I think this movie is so popular because of those Twihards, it wasn’t that great, though the books are a must read.

In the middle
I’ve heard that there is no in-between with regards to this movie. Girls are either wallpapering photos of Robert Pattison to the bedroom walls or viciously attacking the actors on a “Twilighters” website. Today, I speak for those of us smack in the middle of those two extremes. Was Twilight so terrible that I sent hate mail to the director Um no. What is so good that I saw the movie six times in two days and vowed to marry Robert Pattison or no other? Definitely not. So what was it? A movie targeted at teenage girls with the intention of making money sorry.

Yes, I might be biased and was never a fan of the books or the attitude of if I can’t be with him then what is the point of living. Last time I checked, that was called separation anxiety, not true love. Anyway, I digress. The movie is a movie, stick to books if you can’t stand to have your vision shattered. Rent it, and then buy something worthy of debate.

Terrible by all standards
It’s not enough to get actors who look like the characters from the book, they have to know how to act to. I don’t know what Catherine Hardwickle was thinking but she can do wayyy better than this. The story fell flat, rushed. The acting was terrible my God I didn’t know KristenStewart could sink so low in acting standards and the camera work was terrible. Anyone who said this was way better than Harry Potter in B.O. terms are really really really dumb and immature. The screenplay needed way more work because the relationship between these two characters was really bad. Chemistry? What chemistry? Sorry Twilight fans… this movie is an epic fail in all standards.

How Come?

So how can something that had some of the worst movie ratings and customer reviews find its way into top twitter trending topic for the last two weeks and have a picture or mention of some kind in everybody’s Facebook Stream.

I even took the liberty to ask my teenage daughter and some of her friends what they thought about the original movie, and they confirmed 3 things.
1. They thought the original movie was bad
2. They most definitely would be going to see “New Moon”
3. That the promise of seeing Taylor Lautner with his shirt off was good enough

So here I sit wondering as a culture what can we learn from this, if anything? Is there some insight we can gleam.

First sex still sells and we should all go and find a hunk of a guy to promote our product, but if that fails we may have to look a little deeper.

Perhaps next one of the things that we can say is if it didn’t go quite right the first time we certainly have the opportunity to do it again and come at it with new vision and new expectations. I am not saying that the first movie was a complete and utter disaster although some of the reviews I read might affirm that. I’m just saying that a foundation was built for something major to grow from. And I think this is an important lesson in life that we should never forget. An experience good or bad should always be a learning experience.

Also I think what the twilight franchise confirms is the social media has incredible female demographic, I know this movie skews into the lower age bracket, but stats are stating

Fastest Growing Demographic on Facebook: Women Over 55
In the World of Social Media, Women Rule
This is awesome if you are using social media to promote a product or service, as you could not ask for a better-narrowed audience.

Movies are quite culturally different than a lot of other things. Like I mentioned at the beginig if you are a resturant, or a business or even your own reputation a few bad reviews and you can be done for if you are not aware of what is going on .
But with movies we have the ability to throw a new director or producer at it, and it seems you can turn the whole perception around, the new “Star Trek” is a fine example of this. However If you changed the writer of the books and suddenly got rid of Stephenie Meyer it would be most interesting to see what happened then.
We often see a new CEO arrive in a company or a new Chef at a our favourite restaurant, and perhaps as a share holder we hope that things are going to get better, or hopefully not effect the way things tasted, but we still wait very tentatively and do not accept change that well

So do you accept change, do you give something a second try, do you read reviews and take them as gold or do you make up your own mind and spread the word?

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The power of Fusion goes POP

Chartjackers Children in Need Single

So I hail originally from the UK and was brought up on the ‘Top of the Pops’ and the Top Forty. The music scene like anywhere in the world is big business and to crack an opening is well lets say an incredible task. So driving back in my Car listening to the BBC chart show. At number 36 this week is a band called Chartjackers. For those of you who have not heard Chartjackers is a bunch of fresh-faced YouTube stars who were approached by BBC Switch to see if they could generate a number one single for Children in Need using only the power of the internet.

Since the meteoric rise of YouTube and Twitter there have been several collaborative Internet projects. I think what you have to remember that this collaboration highlights the power that a fusion of traditional media such as radio, promoting a social online campaign can do incredible things, and can do it very quickly.

Charlie, Alex, Johnny and Jimmy have over 17 million YouTube views between them, a combined subscriber total that tops 200,000.  The hope is that the boys can translate their on-line fan base into real life sales of their track.

So what does very quick mean? In just ten short weeks the boys managed to get a song together by harnessing the talent of the YouTube community, and recorded the track along with the music video. The resulting single, “I’ve Got Nothing” is a cheery, upbeat number reminiscent of the chirpy pop from Alphabeat, and went on sale on November 9th

All proceeds from the single will go to Children In Need, If you fancy helping the boys in their quest for domination of the charts you can buy their song on iTunes now for the princely sum of $0.99

I have personally worked on many marketing campaigns; one of the most recent was promoting the Local Nissan Cube Launch in Canada. I always like to emphasis that social media works well, but when you have some radio promotion some paper promotion working along side a Facebook Ad campaign with 200,000 fans and 50,000 Twitter Followers behind you then watch out world. You have found World of mouth.

Listening to the tune tell us what you think, or please comment on your experience of Facebook, Twitter, Radio fusion.

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Rihanna’s interview with Diane Sawyer

5 minute clip of Rihanna’s interview with Diane Sawyer was aired on Good Morning America this morning. This time she goes into more detail about Chris Brown, the assault, and how she feels about him today:

Ew. I’m not a fan of her still loving and caring for the guy, but it’s good that she’s not holding on to hate I guess… It’s also a good thing they’re court ordered to stay away from each other for 5 years!

Can they just air the full thing on 20/20 already??

Courtesy of: Radio Announcer Bri Cook known for her sassy, witty and sarcastic way of serving you the celebrity gossip you crave with “Bri’s Cheese and Sleaze”. Often imitated, never duplicated. (“Bri’s Cheese and Sleaze” is a Bri Cook Original, created and written solely by Bri Cook.)

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