None of it stuck. While there has been a lot of good and interesting work over the years, the majority of those types of ads have been forgettable, obnoxious, and irritating. The majority of everything is horrible and Flash ads aren’t any different, but the stigma stuck. Users became increasingly aggravated and then came two final nails in the coffin.

As browsers opened up and became extensible, ad and Flash blocking add-ons grew increasingly popular. Then Google entered the fray, offering really simple text based ads that had the distinction, thanks to Google’s massive databases, of being super contextual to where they were placed. Flash experiental ads, while still around, no longer have that optimism anymore.

So with that it was interesting to see Apple focus so much on their new advertising platform, iAds, at last week’s WWDC. They demoed interactive rich media, some would say “flashy”, advertisements that were targeted at mobile devices. Words like “engaging” were used. The future was likely mentioned. And I feel like I’ve heard it all before. And I as a user, and as someone that made those same obnoxious Flash ads, don’t share that optimism and I hope that history repeats.

Apple, of course, doesn’t want that. It denied Adobe’s Flash in its iOS. If you want to make these flashy ads on its platforms, you have to do it their way. It, effectively, banned Google from advertising on its device. It has strict control of what is and isn’t allowed in the AppStore, so you’ll never get an ad blocker (even if they push one out in their own browser on the desktop.) It’s doing everything in its power to control and minimize the things that led to those very same ads becoming the ignored whipping boy of the web.

There’s just one problem with that strategy and why things are a little different than they were when the wild web was embracing rich ads: there is only one web, but there are other mobile platforms. It’ll be interesting to see how iAds are handled and how consumers react.

Pirhana Bar’s “Avatar Days” reminds me a lot of Robbie Cooper’s “Alter Ego” project and the subsequent book. Robbie Cooper also created “Immersion” which looks at how we look while playing a game rather than how we choose to look within one. He has a blog.

Robbie Cooper “Alter Ego”

I don’t play MMOs; the majority of my gaming time is consumed by single player titles. Though many such games involve you taking the role of a character, and sometimes you can even design them, without the social aspect it never really feels like the character you control is an avatar, a direct representation of you. Single player character-driven games, especially the more narrative focused ones, are nothing more than puppeteering. You can do what you want with the strings you’re given, but nothing more.

Avatars are about ownership and one does not own John Marston in Red Dead Redemption. You control him in between story segments, but he is exclusively his own person within the narrative. The set-ups, the order of events, the motivations of the characters exist strictly within Rockstar Games’ realm, but the how is what’s up to the player. If between moments of severe tension in the Mexican Revolution you decide to go back to the United States to go look for some treasure and pick some flowers, that experience remains yours. If you capture a bounty alive and during the trip back to the local jail you get randomly attacked by a cougar because you decided to take a short cut through a field and you curse at it for killing your horse and your bounty, you have a unique tale to tell.

John Marston’s story, however, belongs to Rockstar. Everyone that plays it, save those that quit part way through, will have the same narrative and the same outcome. Top down story-telling tends to separate a game’s character from the player. You control Marston at times, but you are not him. It’s a small but important difference because when it comes to solitary game experiences, an avatar, as a representation of the user, is solely the result of a player’s actions. You could switch out John Marston for any other character and it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s what you did to get there that counts.

GONE

If you do grab it and it works, let me know.

As a side note, as of last week this domain is ten years old which makes it yet another thing making me feel old right now. So to freshen things up I redid the theme. It’s unfinished and had been sitting in alpha for months as I very anally pushed every single pixel and tweaked every alignment, but I figured this was a good a time to get it out as any. It was about time I upgraded this site to HTML5, if not 100%, to match my Tumblr.

The in-flight entertainment was a Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker movie followed by a Twilight movie. Once this was announced and we hit cruising speed I quickly got up and pulled out my little netbook and the thumb drive which I had preloaded with music and some better entertainment. Minutes after booting, I switched off VLC, stopped my movie, and did something rash: I opened Flash CS3.

With my legs stretched out and crossed–oh how wonderful it was to have seat 1A–and the EEEPC balanced on my knees, I started making things to kill the time. I set up basic DisplayObject structure, created an mp3 loader and player, played around with audio visualization, created some blurring effects and filters, used the visualization data to generate “enemies”, brought in user input and player bullets, and, as a whole, got into a serious groove. In less time than it took to show to horrible movies I had the basis for a playable music game.

It probably won’t amount to much in the end but it stands as a testament to the creative possibilities that arise when you are trapped in an uncomfortable place with nothing to do and no means of escape. If this is true, then my being in Mississauga should herald a new creative era.

The one thing that distinguishes both launches is the amount of hype. While the PSP had a bit, most of it was contained within the already excitable gamer demographic. The mainstream press, while making mention of it, casually passed it by. There certainly were no marquee features in the likes of Time magazine, written by Stephen Fry, or anything of the sort. There was no hyperbole about the PSP saving media/journalism/print/whatever. It was just another game device.

Today it was revealed that the iPad sold 300,000 units on launch. People are claiming it’s a success. It sold more than the iPhone originally did, and look how that turned out! Big numbers!

You wouldn’t know it if you went by the buzz alone, but when the PSP launched in North America it sold, in two days^[1], 500,000 units. It was considered a flop.

It’s pretty safe to say that the PSP under-performed over its lifetime and didn’t make the in-roads that Sony hoped it would, but it’s also pretty far from a failure despite public perception. There are over 50 million of them. I don’t care what you’re selling, if you sell 50 million of it that’s pretty damned good. You wouldn’t know it by the hype, and this is where that media perception comes in, but that means there are 20 million more PSPs sold than iPhones and iPod Touchs combined.OK, yeah, that’s an old number. There are more of those than PSPss now. But still fewer than DSs. See comments

I find this interesting from a media perspective. When I see the actual numbers being so disproportionate from the actual buzz around the devices, I come to two conclusions: 1) Apple’s marketing is that much better than Sony’s; 2) Videogames, despite their obvious ubiquity, still get no respect in the media and the PSP, being a games-first machine, was duly dismissed. Let’s not even mention that the Nintendo DS is approaching 150 million sold.

The revolution with simple, accessible computing in magical devices happened long ago. They’re already all around us.

1. I realize I’m comparing one day sales to two day sales, but with launches like this the vast majority of sales are on day one. There’s no way that the iPad sold more on day two than day one, so I believe the PSP still has the edge.

I thought about what videogame vistas I liked and wanted to see recreated in this fashion (leaned towards Metroid Prime, to be honest) but it soon became apparent that I was going abroad and a painting wasn’t the most practical thing to bring with me, so it morphed into a thank you gift to my friend JP. The setting became obvious: Bioshock’s Arcadia. I must have a thing for big, artificial environments being consumed by nature (see Metroid Prime) because that was my unbiased favourite area in Bioshock. I figured he’d appreciate it more anyway on account of, you know, his design work on that specific map. The painting arrived yesterday so I can finally post it:

The only reason that I have an iPod Touch is because it came with the MacBook when I bought it, but I’m glad I do since it turned out to be a decent game device with some, amidst the sea of junk, quality games. The lack of any tactile input does hurt it when it comes to the kind of games I know and love, but for more casual fare the machine performs admirably. The developers that need more precise input have managed with virtual joystick and button setups, some better implemented than others. These generally work because the iPhone’s form factor is not all that different from the kind of ergonomics we’ve had since Nintendo released its controller in 1985. It works because it’s stable. The machine rests between two hands, supported by back fingers, while the thumbs are free, in their natural position, to press things. This is also the form you use when typing with the soft keyboard (or, even, your Blackberry.) It works.

It’s great that the iPad is backwards compatible with all the Apps that are out there and all those games that you’ve bought, but I look at its size and weight and wonder how that form factor will affect all those many games. Can you imagine playing a game on your Playstation with a controller that’s seven and a half inches wide and weighs 1.6 pounds (about 3 times wider and 5 times heavier than the iPhone)? I can’t, and I’ve used one of those massive original XBox controllers. This, as a gamer, is the most glaring problem with the iPad.

And since I started writing this Kotaku has posted a hands-on impression that basically echoes these thoughts and a piece on a gamer’s doubts about the device. Also a gamasutra piece. So I’ll leave the thoughts at that.

All told, though, I do hope that this change in ergonomics, making the virtual d-pad awkward, forces developers to really think about the interface, slow down their game designs, and make something nice for this specific platform. Too many rely on old conventions dating back to 1985. When someone does, that’s when I’ll consider the device worth my investment. Maybe a nice, original strategy game. One that can also work on the iPod Touch too. I’d buy it. That gadget works well enough already.