Do you consider yourself a gamer? Think carefully about how you answer that question, as the reality may surprise you. The typical definition of ‘gamer’ is usually someone who looks a little something like this –>

But the reality is that games have begun to infiltrate our lives to the point that we don’t always recognize when we are playing one. The Entertainment Software Association’s 2011 Report found that 72% of American households play computer of video games, with the average game player being 37 years old. Female gamers are also on the rise, making up a whopping 42% of game players. With so many people online, gaming can and is being used to spur some pretty amazing ideas and initiatives.

PSFK recently released a study on the Future of Gaming. Since it costs $150 and I’m low on cash this month, I perused the abbreviated version, posted below. It covers off all of the major gaming mechanics and tactics and includes a bunch of pretty amazing examples.

There are a few that I really wanted to draw attention to for their ability to take game mechanics and turn them into real, applicable and useful tools to further our society and do good.

1. Realitree: A digital manifestation of our local environments and the role that we play in keeping it healthy. Realitree is a huge projection of a

Realitree, PSFK Photo

tree and it’s surroundings (sky, earth, etc.) that thrives and suffers based on the health of its surroundings. It takes into account news media so that stories that are in conflict with climate reality decrease the visible health of the tree and expose agents of the fossil fuel industry who propagate smears and lies.  Groups, cities and even countries can compete across social networks for the healthiest image of their environment.

2. Fold.it: A web based platform that allows users to compete against each other to design new proteins. This work can be used to help spur innovation in curing diseases such as AIDS/HIV, Alzheimer’s and Cancer. Researchers recently engaged gamers to compete in configuring an enzyme structure related to AIDS/HIV. The result: A breakthrough structure in a matter of weeks that had stumped scientists for years. Big win for collaborative gaming!

3. Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond: A collaborative game from NASA intended to grow interest around science, math, technology and engineering. The game is set in a fictional community in the year 2035 and allows players to undertake authentic solar system exploration using resources like NASA’s Astronaut Handbook and complete renditions of real Mars exploration missions. I know this is definitely up one Blog Campaigner’s alley (@parkernow)

4. Interactive Ping Pong: This one is a little less “for the good of the people” but still a pretty cool idea. An advertising campaign for McDonalds in Sweden asks pedestrians to play ping pong on a giant screen in Stockholm Square. Pedestrians download an app and play an interactive game of ping pong using their mobile phone and the billboard. If a player can play for 30 seconds or more, a McDonalds coupon is sent to their phone.

If all the predictions hold true, some pretty incredible initiatives should come to life all thanks to gaming.

What examples of gaming have inspired or amazed you so far?

(Gamer photo courtesy of Holy Taco)

I’m really enjoying the “Shit BLANK say” meme that’s making the round these days, and this one about PR people is no exception.

A nice bit of fun from Hunter PR.

If you liked that, you might also like this electro-pop song about PR girls.

-Parker

A few weeks ago I was listening to a RadioLab podcast about Games. In this episode, hosts Robert Krulwich and Jad Abamrod spoke to Brian Christian, an author who recounted the story of the checkers craze of the 60s that culminated in the World Checkers Championship in 1963. Apparently. this championship was a series of 40 games between the world’s two top players.

All 40 games ended in a draw. 21 of those 40 games were the exact same.

“Checkers had gotten to the point where there was a perfect game of checkers,” Brian said as he discussed how the top players memorized previous games and knew the ideal countermove for the other player’s moves. “This was rock bottom for the checkers community.”

The name for this knowing of all the games, all the moves, is The Book.

Brian continues on the podcast to say that the same thing happens in chess, and that there is an equivalent book  (actually a computer program called “Fritz” these ays) of every chess game played by grandmasters for the past few hundred years. Although there are way, way more variations, there are occasions where two grandmasters will play the exact same game that has been played years before. Nowadays, the first 20 moves or so in major chess games are totally by The Book: the two players playing moves that they’ve memorized, just like their checkers predecessors.

To chess enthusiasts, the most exciting part (and true brilliance) is when players go off The Book: that moment when they make a move that hasn’t been done before in the history of recorded chess.

When I first started my career 5 years ago, there were no best practices for social media. There were no case studies. Everything was new. Everything we did was off the book.

Now it seems that everyone is staying on the book. Facebook brand pages are almost cookie-cutter copies of each other. Pitch emails to bloggers feel about as personal and special as a Hallmark card.

I still think there is a ton of opportunity to go off the book. I just worry that we’re too concerned with playing that perfect game.

A few days ago Reddit wrote a blog post to celebrate the fact that in December 2011, they had over 2 billion monthly page views and over 34 million unique visitors on their site (and 10% of that is Canadian!).

The blog post also points out that in the past year, traffic to their site has doubled and users are spending an average of 16 minutes/visit on the site.

As my friend Fred Moesker pointed out, it’s interesting how they achieved this based on the list of things they DON’T do:

• We don’t get traffic through ads.
• We don’t participate in any traffic trading.
• We don’t email our users (unless they choose to enter an email and then forget their password).
• We don’t harass users to sign up.
• We don’t harass users to invite their friends.
• We don’t pester you to download our app.
• We don’t use slideshows and other pageview gimmicks.
• We don’t know anything about SEO.
• We don’t integrate with Facebook.
• We don’t even link to our Facebook or twitter accounts.

A month ago, I wrote a blog post with some photos that I took while I was in Puerto Rico using a GoPro Camera. Over the Christmas break, Heather and I went to Maui and Kauai and used that same camera to make a video. Enjoy!

I edited it using iMovie, and the song playing is Cloud (Plastic Plates Remix) by Sia (I snagged it off of this blog post by Vacay Vitamins).

-Parker

I’m not much of a football fan, but I do appreciate great highlights:

I also like the fact that Starship Troopers predicted this play years ago:

As found on Reddit. As one Redditor mentioned, “add it to The List“

There’s a lot of buzz (no pun intended) about Google+. The entry of another major social network into the scene has caught a lot of people’s attention, and has forced many to ask, “Should I be on Google+ too?”.

I’d like to step out of the excitement and flurry that Google+ has caused for a minute to remind marketers that, as with all social networks, you need to ask yourself a few questions before jumping in head first:

1. Is your audience using Google+?

Before signing up for a brand page, conduct a little recon. Searching through pages, conversations and sparks will help you identify whether your brand or industry is being talked about on Google+, and whether you should be there too. Also look at the demographics of Google+, as of a few months ago comScore reported they skewed slightly younger and wealthier than Facebook users. While this will likely broaden as Google+ grows, it should indicate whether now is the right time for you to put resources behind it.

2. Do you have the resources to manage another online community?

We all know how much time and energy it can take to manage a community effectively. By now, many of us are probably managing at least two. Do you have the resources to throw another one into the mix? Since optimizing content and experiences for each channel and audience will drive the best results, simply re-posting content on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ won’t allow your distinct communities the chance to shine.

To this point, I have monitored a few brand pages on Google+, comparing them to those of Facebook. Many are indeed publishing the same content. This may be temporary while they experiment and develop a proper strategy for Google+ but they will need the time and resources to do so.

3. What role will Google+ play in helping your brand achieve its objectives?

Brands aren’t on social networks for kicks. They are there to achieve real business objectives. Before signing up and getting your hands dirty with a Google+ brand page, make sure you have outlined the role Google+ will play in driving towards these goals. Once you have nailed this down, you can begin to flesh out a proper strategy and measurement framework that will drive towards and demonstrate success.

There’s is no rush to do something unless you know you can do it right, and that it will help achieve your objectives. No one wants to be late to the party, but there’s something to be said about arriving with all your clothes on.

- Heather

Image via trend-ie.blogspot.com

This post doesn’t really have much to do with technology, video games social media or whatever it is that BlogCampaigning is about these days.

I just wanted to share some sweet photos that I took on my vacation to Puerto Rico last week. It was 8 days of epic waves during the day and reading the Game of Thrones series of books at night.

While I used my BlackBerry Torch and a Sony point and shoot for most of the photos, I used a GoPro Surf Hero camera to get those in-wave shots.

I was able to buy the GoPro Camera thanks to DDB Fuel, a program offered by the company I work for, DDB Canada. DDB Fuel gives employees money to put towards something that will fuel their creativity. I’ve done a bit of photo and video editing before, but using the GoPro camera has given me a chance learn more about how to actually use a camera (accounting for the glare of the sun, different settings, etc).

Puerto Rico is a really amazing place, and I would definitely go back. The water was warm, the people were friendly and the weather was absolutely beautiful.

I didn’t just surf, though. I also visited the Arecibo Observatory, the world’s largest radio telescope.

If you want to book a trip like this, I highly recommend going through Surfer Living, a surf-specific travel agency. They made some great recommendations about where I could score good waves, where to stay and had great customer service overall. If you end up going to Puerto Rico, hit up the Desecheo Surf Shop.

-Parker

A month or so ago, I wrote a blog post titled “Most Expensive Wi-Fi Ever?” about the cost of internet services at a Toronto-area convention centre.

I submitted the post to StumbleUpon, BoingBoing, TechDirt and Reddit, as I thought all would be places where readers might be interested in this type of insane mark-up. After my colleague Ian pointed out that Seth Godin had linked to me, I dug into Google Analytics to see how much traffic that ended up driving to my post.

As a result, BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow blogged about it on September 22nd, resulting in 1,141 hits to my post.

Mike Masnick at TechDirt wrote about my post on October 25, but didn’t link directly to me (I don’t mind).

Seth Godin mentioned my post in a recent post he wrote, driving another 678 views.

Reddit drove a measly 61 views.

And Google Analytics reports that StumbleUpon drove 2,437 views of the webpage (even though StumbleUpon itself only reports driving 35 users to the page).

There were also an additional 2,762 views to the post that Google Analytics identified as coming from (direct). While I obviously can’t confirm where these are coming from, I have a feeling they’re probably spread out across the different sources (my other colleague Kevin Mchugh sent me this link that might help explain that (direct) traffic)

So what does all this mean?

By itself, not much. Views or hits aren’t everything these days. A kind word from an online influencer is probably worth a lot more than a link in the long run, thought it might be more difficult to measure.

There is also probably a lot of digging I can do into how long visitors from the different sources stuck around, and whether they checked out anything else on my site. Visitors from one source, though fewer, might end up being more ‘valuable’ (in this sense, sticking around as long-term readers).

What do you think about this data?

-Parker

Yesterday I went to the Arecibo Observatory, the biggest radio telescope in the world. It’s in Puerto Rico.

Why? Because I love science and technology, and this is a really amazing piece of human achievement.

Thanks to the Arecibo Observatory, we know that the orbit of Mercury is 59 days and that neutron stars exist. The Arecibo Observatory also helped discover the first 3 extra-solar (as in, not orbiting our sun) planets, and was used by SETI in the search for extraterrestrial life and the Americans in the search Soviet information during the Cold War.

It’s also a pretty fantastic piece of engineering: the platform holding all the equipment, suspended over the center, weighs over 900 tons.

I knew some of this before I went, but learned about it in more detail and more on the Arecibo Observatory Wikipedia page. (the visitor’s centre is pretty comprehensive but was also pretty full of annoying kids so I didn’t stick around too long inside).

While I was there, I was reminded of an episode of NPR’s RadioLab about the world’s geekiest, yet most beautifully romantic mixtape, a golden record that was put on the Voyager Spacecraft by Annie Druyan, wife of Carl Sagan.

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RadioLab is amazing, by the way.

-Parker