media

How Borderlands 2 Illustrates Changing Content and Involvement

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As you may have guessed, some of us here are seriously digging Borderlands 2.  I’m enjoying it and am currently on the first DLC campaign AND running a second game with a DLC character.  Jose penned his own love letter to it when it first came out (where did he get the time?).  All things aside, it’s a great game, filled with references, and has a crazy cute robot named Claptrap who at one point threatens to violate a villain’s corpse.

Really, it’s great.  Also, the Commando class rules and you can’t prove me wrong.

But what’s interesting on a pro geek level, is that the game has several great lessons for those of us working in gaming and content.  Beyond the whole angry-cute-robot angle.

One of the great lessons?  Mindshare.  A lesson that shows how we need to rethink content.

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Oogieloves experience Oogiehate and Oogieindifference

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I’m sure you’re disappointed to hear that the Oogieloves film has tanked terribly.  This may be record tankitude.

I of course don’t follow children’s television much, unless it’s about Hasbro’s marketing departiment going “WTF” over brightly colored pony fandom.  However I had seen the posters for this film when I went to watch a Rifftrax and figured it was some other franchise I’d ignored.

Turns out as I dug deeper it was an independent kid’s film, best summarized by a commenter at gawker as trying to look like a franchse.  I thought it was a franchise and am kind of surprised to discover it’s bounced around for 3 years before coming to theaters to fail.

So I’m getting the impression this little failure is an example of trying to create “insta-franchise” that didn’t work.  Can I understand why it was tried?  Sure – if people think it’s a franchise they may feel it’s reliable or predictable – franchises don’t even have to be “good” per se to succeed.  The thing is that a franchise builds on a series of past experiences, of which people had none to go on.

I also think a lesson can be taken in the internet age, the one of instant fame and viral effects.  Yes those things can build a franchise, yes you can create something fast, yes you can get attention.  But you can’t pretend you have something you don’t have.

The Oogieloves could learn a lot from the Kardashians and Honey Boo-Boo.  This, by the way, is probably something I’ll never type again.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

OK Folks, Get In On This

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Hopefully you saw our Twitter Feed, and saw how Bonnier Corp created a media start-up incubator.

This is something to follow anyway, since it could be the source of your future employer or your own company.  But it’s something else I like to see – specialized start-up incubation.

I’d honestly like to see more of it, because a good, specialized incubator can focus more specifically on things the funders and others involved know about.  It can create more effective results – and encourages others to do the same.

So what specific areas do you want to see startups focused on?

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.