Is TV programming a not-so-distant cousin of ARGs? (part I)

Jane McGonigal

Last week I got the chance to read Jane McGonigal’s dissertation on Collective Intelligence Gaming. The one with the I Love Bees ARG case study.

Surprisingly, I couldn’t help noticing some resemblance between C.I. gaming and traditional television programming.

But first, let’s go over a few concepts about Collective Intelligence gaming.

McGonigal identifies 3 stages which define a game-based C.I.

1. Collective Cognition

This is the stage where players get to know the fictional world they are entering. They search, collect, compile and analise game content, putting together pieces of a story line that’s been fragmented. And eventually, once the parts are brought together, the parts reveal the central puzzle of the game. In the case of I Love Bees, this stage includes the moment where players found the flickering URL at the end of the Halo theatrical release, when they accessed the website and discovered it was hacked, when they found the timer counting down to 24 August 2004, when they found out the hidden timecodes and GPS coordinates and when they exchanged e-mails with the website’s administrator. In simple words, players where gathering data and looking for meaning.

I Love Bees in a nutshell

McGonigal points out that massively distributed content becomes a core design requirement for this type of game. The reason is simple. This strategy evokes the need for players to come forward with anything they discover, so they can exchange information and move forward together. Without collaboration, it is almost impossible to collect all the necessary clues in a viable timeframe. Massively distributed content is the key that drives collaboration.

Young Beehive Minds :)

2. Cooperation

In the next stage, players presented their own hypothesis to the group of players, asking for feedback, collaboration and refinement of ideas. In I Love Bees, players organised themselves into three different groups according to their line of thinking. The Literal Thread believed the coordinates were simple longitude and latitude defined locations, and they should show up at these sites at the time indicated by the given timecodes. The Relative Thread believed the coordinates were real locations, but the surroundings were the key for the puzzle solving. And lastly, The Numerical Thread believed the coordinates were some sort of mathematical puzzle, and once solved, they would reveal a hidden message or a graphical image. At the end, due to the lack of other evidence, the majority agreed that The Literal Thread was the most solid approach. So the players showed up at the locations, where pay phones rang and messages were delivered.

Here, McGonigal emphasises the importance of meaningful ambiguity, which for her, it is crucial for the formation of a collective intelligence. The reasons are twofold:

a. It is a psychological device to draw players into the collective. It allows players to have different interpretations, contributing with ideas from their area of expertise. It gives players the freedom to experiment with the context, pushing boundaries at will.

b. It allows game-designers (or Puppet Masters) to present players with issues without imposing any pre-determined solutions. The game structure should be open-ended, and the puzzle ambiguous.

Coordination is essential

3. Coordination

This is basically the ability to make meaningful ambiguity to work in favour of the game. It means to have a system prepared for real-time redesign, which enables the collective mind to evolve. This sentence sounds a little bit too dense, let me see if I can exemplify it. In I Love Bees, the Puppet Masters would watch the progress of the game community in solving the puzzles (by reading their posts in message boards, for example). As the game was designed with an open-end structure, the game designers could see how far the players would go, and based on their outcome, create more elaborate puzzles for the next stages of the game. Designers could re-write the game in real-time to accommodate the increasing development of the collective intelligence within the game community.

There is a citation in McGonigal’s paper that compares this iterative process to the interaction between musicians in a Jazz band. Pure real-time improvisation based on the bits and pieces of information gathered along the performance.

McGonigal defines this real-time responsiveness as the “true power of a puppet-mastered search and analysis game”. The cool thing is that even if you are a player or a game designer you can be surprised at anytime. It is full-time fun. Any initial expectations can be surpassed.

Hey, this post got a lot longer than I had expected. So I’ll split it into two parts, and do the comparison in the next one. In this meantime, feel free to throw in any ideas on how C.I. gaming and traditional TV programming share commonalities.

Halt! The Recap Cop says…

The past posts talked about how aggregation affects TV III Branding.

Aggregated content should be Textually Extendable, meaning content buyers should look for programme rights which allows them to explore and extend the story to other formats and platforms. The example presented was Rachel Blake’s videos from ABC’s Lost.

On top of that, content buyers should also be aware of Unbundable content, meaning the kind of show which is structured in a way that it could be either watched/purchased as a whole, or as smaller fragmented clips. Pretty much the way single audio tracks are sold separate from CDs on iTunes. BBC 3’s The Wrong Door was presented as a contemporary example.

Findable and Accessible content is another attribute that impacts on TV III Branding. Basically, it is crucial to acquire content with proper metatags so people can find the content they want easily. Having access to programmes is also fundamental. It’s gotta be easy to find, easy to buy and easy to watch, even for people with disabilities. I commented on some TiVo features in the post.

And finally, in order to build brand equity to the TV Channel, content buyers should look for programmes that share the same brand values as the network’s, in other words, Brand Compatible content. You’ll find cool clips from Dexter and Breaking Bad in that post.

The Recap Cop says: “Now that it's all cleared, go home to your family and watch some good telly”.

Brand Equity through Aggregation [Findable and Accessible Content]

One of the TV III’s most diffused characteristics is its quasi-infinite content inventory. Technically, every video or film ever made, after being properly digitised, could be available to the audiences [I said technically, not economically].

Abundance is a little bit of a paradox. It is wonderful when you have a movie in mind, and you can be a 100% sure that it is within your reach somewhere out there in the digital world. It is a liberating feeling, indeed. On the other hand, when you have no clue of what you want, too many options can become overwhelming. And when your head starts calculating the cost of opportunity for each option, your mind goes down a spiral of pros and cons, and just like that, the fun is gone. The act of choice becomes so exhausting that it wipes away all the psychological benefits that could derive from the perfect picking. Barry Schwartz talks about choice fatigue in his book “The Paradox of Choice”.

Cutting to the chase, if you are acquiring digital content for your TV channel, you want to make sure that this content comes properly tagged with all the information necessary for viewers to find the shows, as well as for the shows to find viewers.

The trick is done by this little thing called metadata, or in other words, data of data. Metadata carries all relevant information about a digital TV asset (e.g. a drama series episode), attaching to the digital file things like the name of the show, the synopsis, the casting, the genre, the resolution (e.g. HD), production details, so on and so forth.

However, metadata itself is not the GPS device of television content. It is basically the full address and a little more, but you still need google maps and a computer to find it. You need digital agents that make use of metadata to do the things you want. You can find a good application of metadata and agents on your television EPG (Electronic Programme Guide), or a much more advanced example on PVRs like TiVo or Verizon FiOS [both services not available in the UK. Here, we have to stick to Sky +, which is, as far as I know, not even close to the user experience offered by its American counterparts].

If you own a TiVo (and thanks to metadata) you can search content by different criteria: title, genre, actors, you name it. And if you allowed TiVo to observe your viewing behaviour, it can recommend and record shows that you are likely to enjoy (this is why I said before that, through metadata, content can also find users). Check the video below to learn more metadata-based features on the TiVo PVR [as I don’t want you to think I’m sponsored by TiVo, you can later also watch this video about the Verizon’s FiOS Programme Guide. The guy mentions a few things on usability, a theme I intend to cover sometime in the future. I suggest you to skip to 3:30, which talks about the search features].

So far, this covers the findability part. Regarding accessibility, if you think about it, it is not enough for people just to find content, they also need access to it. You can see it in 3 different ways, I suppose. One has to do with placement, and we will discuss it later. But pretty much, it is the AmazonUnbox feature of TiVo. You can FIND content through TiVo, but if it is not available in the schedule of any channel, you can have ACCESS to it through the AmazonUnbox on-demand service. Accessibility regards format. And it has to do with aggregation. When you buy content, you want to make sure it already comes in the proper formats for all distribution platforms you have planned. So people can have ACCESS to the right format in their favourite platform. The third possibility has to do with viewers with special ACCESSIBILITY needs. It includes simple things as close captions, but can get as complex as the automatic rearrangement of the interface to better suit impaired viewers’ needs.

I’ve just found out this book about Digital TV and Metadata that talks about the application areas for Digital TV personalisation. The authors divide digital TV personalisation into three areas:

Broadcast A/V content, which includes:

• Searching and filtering available TV programmes;
  
• Matching consumer profile to programmes (via available content metadata);
  
• Matching consumer profile to content parts and delivering customised compilations (e.g. personalised news).
  

Value-added Content, which includes:

• Content adaptation for consumer groups or individuals (e.g. delivering sponsored content to a specific consumer demographics)
  

Value-added Context, which includes:

• User interface adaptation for consumer groups or individuals. (e.g adaptable user interface complexity for impaired user groups)
  

I don’t really believe that anyone is distributing or acquiring content taking all these aspects into consideration yet. But if a TV Channel wants to offer the best viewing experience to their audiences, and hence add value to its brand, these findability and accessibility attributes must be definitely sought after.

The next post will discuss brand compatibility of aggregated TV content. Stay tuned. :)

Brand Equity through Aggregation [Unbundable Content]

If you haven't seen BBC3's The Wrong Door yet take a moment to get yourself acquainted with the show (if it's been geoblocked you can try it at the BBC channel on YouTube. Let me know if it's been geoblocked too).

In a nutshell, The Wrong Door is Monty Python on CGI steroids.

But apart from the funny sketches and the typical British humour, The Wrong Door is a perfect example of unbundable content of TV III. 

Just like CDs had their basic commercial unit reduced from albums to tracks, the structure of The Wrong Door allows the sales of segments, rather than programmes. The sketches work fine as stand-alone comedy segments, but also offer an extra diegetic comprehension when watched as a whole programme. Certain characters are pictured in different episodical segments within the show, constituting a storyline.

As the format repeats the characters and the situational themes across different show episodes, viewers are enticed to follow the new stories of these characters every week.

The clip above is from a sketch that portraits a girl who takes her new boyfriend Philip to meet her girlfriends. In other episodical segments, she takes Philip to meet her parents, and even to go bowling with another couple. That would be completely normal wasn't for a tiny detail: Philip is a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

From my point of view, The Wrong Door succeeds in five different fronts:

• As a short stand alone segment, it is perfectly suitable for mobile platforms, where viewers usually snack content and can't necessarily rely on fast connections;
• Different episodical segments within a programme, entice audiences to stick around for more, and in the meantime, they get acquainted with new characters and diegetic situations;
• The repetition of characters throughout different weekly shows, entice users to come back for new stories;
• The short stand alone format can be (and already has been) used as an instant promotional piece, requiring very little work to become a full on-air promo, saving time and money.
• The segments, when unbundled from the show, have a viral nature, and serve as content snacks. They can be downloaded from mobiles, posted on blogs and social networks, sent to friends, etc. All these situations turn the segments into very effective promotional tools that drive audiences to the show aired on TV or VOD.

I'm not saying here that all content in TV III show be unbundable, as this would be the end of movies as we know it. But this format surely helps to raise brand awareness and drive eye-balls to the show. Not not mention making money out of mobile content.

Brand Equity through Aggregation [Textually Extendable Content]

The next posts will cover one by one all the attributes shown in the TV III Branding Schematics (see illustration in the previous post), starting with the attributes related to Aggregation.

Distribution is changing drastically in TV III. Non-linear platforms, such as video-on-demand, are growing stronger and becoming more diffused amongst costumers. The 360º acquisition of programme rights has become a typical issue in TV III. New acquisitions should include rights for all new platforms, and back catalogue rights should be also cleared for these new delivery systems.

Although the clearance of programme rights for different platforms is a crucial step, TV networks should go a little further in order to add more value to their brands.

The aggregation of Textually Extendable Content refers to the acquisition of programmes that can have its narrative (text) extended to other brand extensions. Whether it is a new fragment of the story contained in a hidden web video, like ABC Lost's Rachel Blake videos, or whether it is a video-game of the series that reveals secrets sealed in the TV series. For me, brand extension is anything that presents a touch point with the brand.

Actually, what I am trying to say is that networks should acquire rights that allow the extension of the narrative to any format capable of adding value to the brand. Of course, this is easier said than done, and there are a lot of implications to that. This is pretty much a franchise format, and any textual addition should abide to the rules of the original diegetic world. Moreover, this becomes one more element that distributors have to deal with when negotiating content. So apparently, this is much more suitable for networks that produce their own programming, such as Showtime and AMC, which have been coming up with great shows like Dexter and Mad Men. However, with good negotiation, networks that acquire programmes could also develop extended narratives, as long as it is created within the producers' rules.

But why should networks go through all this trouble to get rights for textually extendable content?

The extension of narrative throughout delivery platforms is the underpinning for new placement and promotional strategies in TV III. It is the basis for intra-textual flow (I will talk about this later), which is, to a limited extent, the solution for audience erosion in the multi-platform world.