The Funware Blog @ rmbr

No, I did not make a personal appearance on the Daily Show, but yesterday (6/24/08) saw the show dive into videogames and the political landscape in an unusual and Funware-centric way. Take a look at this Daily Show clip and fast-forward to 4:17:

Jon Stewart (TDS’ affable host) made reference to the McCain Space Invaders/Pork Invaders Game in which you blast pork-barrel spending and can compare the Obama and McCain camps on that issue (I’m sure they readied a Hillary version too). Here’s the game’s embed, for your amusement:

He then proceeded to joke not only about how old the senator appeared to be (by making a lame game, I suppose) but took it a step further and showed us McCain’s abortion-rights game (Pong with fetuses) and Obama’s health care game (FPS with Obama head shouting Yes. We. Can).

Part of the precedence for Funware is the idea that people start - even in jest - conceptualizing games that do more and go beyond the point of pure entertainment. The Daily Show’s satirists took a specific Funware application (the McCain game) and then imagined both how they’d build an anti-McCain game (FetusPong) and a pro-Obama game. They were using game design, though more visual then mechanistic, to get a point across.

The best part: the audience completely understood the meaning that both of the satirical games were trying to convey.

Made an appearance on Donny Deutsch’s The Big Idea on CNBC 6/16/08 to talk about Generation G, Funware and games. Though a short visit, it was a good one. Take a look:

There’s also an interesting blog post that I wrote for the CNBC folks on the future of winning that you can read here if you’re so inclined.

All in all, it was a great experience, and a big shout out goes to the CNBC production team for their foresight, the makeup crew for not making me orange, and my fellow panelists for being hilarious and genuine.

We’ll be shooting a segment for Monday’s (6/16/08) “Big Idea with Donny Deutsch” on CNBC that should air the same day. The show’s title is Getting the Winning DNA, and Gabe will specifically talk about The Future of Winning. Set your Tivos to stun and record the show!

Friends (Romans, Countrypeople):

Today marks a major milestone for rmbr. We have launched our (long-awaited, oft-discussed) core Funware app for Facebook, a game called Prized Collection. In a nutshell, Prized Collection lets you buy, sell and steal your friends’ Facebook photos, all the while letting you interact with a zany cast of characters, a range of external conditions, and a deep(er) narrative.

We took some of the best mechanics of the Facebook world and applied them to our central quest: how to create a fun way to engage with photos (that eventually produces order and progress). We refined those existing concepts, applied our own vision, and voila!

We’ll keep innovating the game in the coming months, as there are a lot more things we plan to add before our Prized Collection session at Austin GDC. So start playing and let us know what you think!

“The future of design is games” is an interesting blog post from Ross Popoff-Walker. Pretty well reasoned stuff, IMHO.

The most important nuance appears in the last paragraph. The coming ascendancy of game design in all fields is driven by a demographic shift. It is this shift of power to ‘Generation G’ (Games) that most profoundly impacts the definition of narrative and fun, and what will lead to our Funware-centric future. It’s not a conscious effort on the part of designers or marketers, but rather a consumer-first approach that is inexorably pulling us in that direction.