I was checking out Joi Ito’s presentation on The World of Warcraft at the 23rd Chaos Communications Congress today.  In addition to some interesting comments about the diversity of the players as it relates to guild rules and how players learn the fundamentals of project management in-game (e.g. leadership, delegating tasks, stress and communication management) , I enjoyed one comment that he made about future GUI design being in the hands of current WoW players. I totally agree and it’s a frightening thought:

*Photo: Ross Mayfield

I remember joking with a colleague once about the possibility of taking a passively multiplayer game like msn or email and tallying up our progress in the workplace each day. It would go something like this: 300 emails read, 175 emails replied, 25 chats etc.  

I think my future computer interface might look something like this :

Ok, so I’m not a designer…but you get the idea.

Also, it stressed me out doing this.

I think Trent Reznor is crazy. The kind of crazy that stems from brilliance…or maybe he’s just a neo-hippie of sorts…I’m not sure. I’ve never really gotten into his music, but I think I might after reading this Wired article about how he created an ARG to help promote the album Year Zero.

As defined by Wikipedia: An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.

Reznor’s game saw USB drives of unreleased music planted in washrooms, concert tees with ‘misprints’ that held clues and eventually ended with a surprise concert and a fake SWAT team bust. (They couldn’t blow up the building they wanted to) It gets me jumpy just thinking about how much fun it would have been to see the reaction of their fans as they cracked the clues and unravelled the story.

I would love to be involved in the creation of an ARG- especially one for kids. One that doesn’t blow up buildings, direct market to kids or result in lawsuits, of course. Think…scavenger hunt. Kids can do amazing things when they are exposed to and contribute to a narrative. I know everyone always talks about what kind of trouble kids can get into online. But credit where credit is due: it amazes me how much suspension of disbelief they hold, how hungry they are for more back-story in gaming and how much collaboration and respect they can exhibit in an online community.

I like what Reznor did because it was less about marketing a product and more about selling an experience. You know, entertainment. If you have the time, read the full Wired transcript for more details on how he started the ARG and his amusing tangents into what’s wrong with the music business. 

In the early 90s, I became a hardcore fan of Throwing Muses-a band that started in the 80s by Kristen Hersh and step-sister Tanya Donnelly.  Hersh is a quirky and skilled songwriter whose changing tempos and melodic picking style really appealed to me and influenced my own songwriting. Her unique style and attitude towards breaking the angry-young female stereotype was also refreshing and something I could relate to.

According to Wikipedia:

“The New York Times pointed to Hersh’s explorations of “rage, aggression and mental chaos” as evidence that there were at least a few female rock music artists by the early 1990s pushing against gender role boundaries to express “more than simply vulnerability or defiance” in their work.”

This year, that same tenacity saw Hersh starting a new phase of her career by introducing CASH Music. Hersh is dropping the artist-label norm for a business model that is “akin to public radio’s listener supported programming and Community Supported Agriculture’s subscriptions to underwrite crops.”

Hersh says: “Music is a tenuous profession in good times, hard times mean some of us disappear. I’m not looking for pity, but collaboration. Coming to you is the best way I can think of to continue being a musician.” You can read the full manifesto here.

Essentially Hersh licenses her work through Creative Commons and offers up her Pro Tools mix stems to the public. Her followers can mess around with them all they want as long as they agree to the same license when uploading their collaborative work back to her site. She then features the remixes and ‘works inspired by’ on her site. What caught my eye though, were the subscription packages and sponsorship opportunities that she is offering.  As a fan, what could be cooler than a visit to the studio or a credit on her CD?

As an aside, I’m also really liking how artists are taking advantage of Youtube as a tool to interact with their community. Here’s an example of a contest that Hersh promoted on Youtube that required her fans to cover one of her songs (or lip synch). Tori Amos has also taken advantage of Youtube for contesting. Both are excellent examples of not needing to reinvent the wheel in order to interact with your audience.

I find it inspiring to see artists like Hersh seeking out new opportunities. And with bands like Radiohead exploring digital download models and reporting success, I figure these are growing pains and it’s only a matter of time before the music industry transforms and adopts a business model that works for everyone.