Business: August 2007 Archive Page

A large majority of video games sold in the UK receive a rating under the voluntary Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) system, but some games, about 6-7% of the total, are referred to the BBFC. In determining what classification to give, the BBFC employs much the same approach as it does to films and DVDs. However, as a medium, video games of course differ from films in a number of ways, and especially in being interactive.

There has been little recent or credible research into the ways video games are distinctive as a medium or into how games may generate different reactions in players than films and DVDs do in viewers.

Many video games involve violent action and some people fear they may desensitise players to violence. Media interest in this subject has been growing. Some research in the US appears to support the hypothesis that playing video games can make people more aggressive. There is some pressure on both sides of the Atlantic for games to be more tightly regulated.

Meanwhile, the technology continues to advance, enhancing interactivity and delivering ever more realistic graphics. The newest developments may complicate the task of classifying games and increase anxiety amongst those who worry about the medium. --BBFC

In order to study people's concerns about video games, the study breaks parents up into current gamers, former gamers, and never-been-gamers.  The study emphasizes marketing, rather than topics that interest me more (such as rhetoric, design, or psychology), but there is some good discussion about playing habits among the different age groups.

SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make equipment that inadvertently increases the likelihood of repetitive stress injuries. | Enter the usability professional, whose work has recently developed into a solid career track, driven mostly by advancements in technology. --Barbara Whitaker --Technology's Untanglers: They Make It Really Work (New York Times)

The techno bloggers sort of scoffed at this article when it first came out, since usability is a basic concept to people who work on the internet. Still, it's a good thing that a reporter took the time to educate the general public.

The internet news audience -- roughly a quarter of all Americans -- tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. --Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations (Pew Research Center)

The statistic I found most interesting is that those who prefer to watch TV news were twice as likely as internet news consumers to say news organizations care about the people they report on. Of course, that statistic might also mean that people who prefer empathy end up watching TV news, or that the TV news includes more emotional content.

We're a long way from the time when popular culture was full of heroic reporters who righted wrongs and stood up for truth.

The New York Times Co. (NYT.N) plans to stop charging Internet users for access to its columnists and Op-Ed pieces on a section of its Web site known as TimesSelect, The New York Post reported on Tuesday. --New York Times to end paid Web service: report (Yahoo! | Reuters)

Certain upscale and targeted audiences will pay for some premium content, but this decision suggests the amount of money the Times made off of its premium content is not worth the hassle (and is not worth the income the company stands to make if this previously walled-off content is opened up to search engines and bloggers).

To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers. --Jakob Nielsen --Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Alertbox)

It's been a while since I checked out Nielsen's site. His overall point against blogs -- which we can sum up in the old saying "nobody buys the cow if you give the milk away for free" -- assumes that you're in the business of selling cows.

Nielsen himself churns out an article about every two weeks, which he gives away for free. Usually the articles are self-contained, but sometimes they are a teaser for a full report, which he sells. Those reports are themselves teasers for his speeches and conference workshops, which are themselves advertisements for specialized consulting services.

I don't disagree with anything he says... but I'm not going to stop blogging, because I'm not in the business of selling cows. I already have a job -- teaching new media journalism and other courses at SHU. Were I in a publish-or-perish environment, I would have to make a lot of adjustments, not only to how, when, and why I blog, but how I spend my summers (in the library or at home with the kids?).

I have advised people who were thinking of jumping on the band wagon that if they or someone else in their organization doesn't already love writing, or if they can't hire someone with writing skills, it's probably not worth it to add a blog. Yes, we need the one-in-a-thousand experts to lead the way (putting professional talents and R & D funds to work solving highly technical problems), but everyone is an expert in something -- not always something that makes money. That's OK.

The internet became the cultural force that it is now because geeks decided to give digital stuff away for free. They made tools with the idea making content creation easy, and they revolutionized society in the process. Without free digital culture leading the way, digital commerce would be nowhere.

So keep coming back here for milk. I'll keep telling you where I've found good milk elsewhere. And if you're looking to buy a cow, I'll point you to ones that I think look good. I hope you'll return the favor for me.

Like locked cell phones and copy-protected music, Facebook is on the wrong side of the open-network debate. Facebook is a sealed bubble. Facebook users are locked into Facebook, just as iTunes locks music fans to Apple's iPod.

This serves companies' business interests, but not the wider interests of consumers.

[...]

At this point, "friend" relationships remain unique to the social networks. The web still lacks a generalized way to convey relationships between people's identities on the internet. The absence of this secret sauce -- an underlying framework that connects "friends" and establishes trust relationships between peers -- is what gave rise to social networks in the first place. --Scott Gilbertson --Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up (Wired)

I couldn't have said it better. This is why I have no particular desire to use a fenced-in system. Yes, I have my students blog with MovableType, but the software is free for private users.

Having said that, I realize that the appeal for some people is precisely that they can share their information with a small group of friends, but all it takes is for one friend to squeal.

I also confess to feeling a bit uncomfortable at the prospect of contacting a researcher whose work I find useful, and telling them I want to be his or her "friend". In the clinically hierarchical world of academia, even "colleague" might be presumptuous.

The administrators generally agreed that people skills were important, yet those skills remain underrepresented in required courses. One likely explanation: Students don't like the courses, and they are pressuring administrators to drop them.

When curricula emphasize soft skills, administrators "are significantly more likely to report increased pressure from students to change the curriculum," the researchers said.

"Given that students are indeed the direct consumer and key revenue stream of most M.B.A. programs," they write, "this finding supports recent assertions that students' general disdain for people-focused course work drives considerable policy decisions regarding curricula. ... This finding may suggest that with respect to designing a relevant M.B.A., the customer is not always right." -Katherine Mangan --Companies and Business Students Differ on What Skills M.B.A. Programs Should Teach (Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription))