Createasphere’s Digital Asset Management Conference
February 22-23, 2012 | The Beverly Hilton | Los Angeles, CA

Exploring the management of digital assets, media assets, marketing resources, content & information lifecycle, and storage, security & preservation.

Take part in two days of focused sessions for professional creatives, marketers, digital librarians, IT specialists, and executives. A robust exhibition of solution providers offers the best opportunity to examine specific products and talk with industry suppliers and experts. Networking mixers and VIP events round out this must attend event covering entertainment, new media, retail, museums, non-profits, and government.

My Panel: Reducing the Digital Friction with Transmedia
Transmedia insiders are striving to break down previously impermeable silos between platforms to develop and produce high-quality experiences with cross-platform properties while still delivering a meaningful message. These panelists will discuss the challenges they face in working across departments and media partners and how they see integration further breaking down these silos.

Discount Code: Use the registration code DAM20 to get a 20% discount.

“How I spent my weekend”

I spent last weekend producing a LARP experience for the Steampunk Symposium, a steampunk-themed convention held on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. My contribution ended up being a lot of narrative work and experience design, plus a minor role as an NPC (David Bainbridge of Sotheby’s).

The Queen Mary

For details of the LARP, Lauren Scime (who played one of the lead NPCs) has provided a great summary of the LARP, Angelique Toschi published a lovely collection of photos, and April Arrglington (Transmedia L.A.’s Content Curation Director) provided more coverage of the event.

This was my second time behind the design table of a LARP (the first was a Runes of Gallidon-based LARP I ran for Wyrd Con 2), and it was unique in a couple of ways.

First, it was layered on top of the Steampunk Symposium, so we tried to create intersections between our LARP and the overall theme of the convention, which was that Victoria II, Queen of Steam, was taking her annual birthday celebration cruise. I wanted to make sure anyone playing in our LARP could easily carry the story with them into other LARPs being run at the convention without disrupting the other experiences. This meant crafting our LARP and its NPCs to be coherent even when its participants stepped outside the LARP to pursue other activities (e.g., shopping at the dealer’s area, attending performances, dancing at the masquerade ball, etc.). The upside of this was that players and NPCs could also recruit new players for our NPC and do so totally in character.

For me, the coolest part of our LARP was having the Queen of Steam herself, accompanied by her entire entourage, knight two of the players in the LARP for services deemed worthy of the crown’s attention. The icing on the cake was then having one of the knighted players play “Happy Birthday” for the Queen via his musical hat (a hat with a music box that would “play” strips of hole-punched paper, much like a player piano).

Player showing Queen of Steam his musical hat

Playing "Happy Birthday" for the Queen of Steam

This kind of unplanned, serendipitous encounter is a perfect example of why LARPing can be so rewarding.That player would likely never have had the chance to play his tribute to the Queen in character (she was only available for limited times during the convention, and most of that was filled with pre-scheduled obligations), and being able to show of his creativity in character was simply a fabulous way to wrap up the LARP.

The second difference between this LARP and my Runes of Gallidon one is that this LARP spanned three days, which included three set/scheduled events plus activities for players to pursue in-between the events if they liked. Instead of trying to fill a two-hour timeslot, we had to fill multiple-hour time slots Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday, plus string them together in a way that allowed us to accordion the rollout of the story based on how fast (or slowly) players were moving through it.

Lastly, I was working with a team of creatives instead of going solo. We had a diverse group of talent to draw from, and roles were assigned based on skillset, interest, and availability: producing or procuring props, handling social media components, playing NPC characters, writing the story, designing the experience, etc. This allowed us to do some pretty cool things a one-person show could never have achieved. A bonus was that many of the team members I already knew through Transmedia L.A.: Aaron Vanek, Lauren Scime, Phil Gable, and Angelique Toschi.

As I suspected, working on this LARP was almost entirely a different experience from the Runes of Gallidon one, but it was just as rewarding.

Aside from having a blast, I learned first-hand some of the challenges (and solutions!) to designing a multi-day, multi-event experience that ran parallel and intersected with another persistent experience. I’m still getting my head around LARPs, but I’m finding them to be great sandboxes for playing with narrative, testing design ideas, and exploring the possibilities of collaborative, improvisational storytelling. And what I’m learning from LARPs is influencing my ideas about telling stories in other formats and mediums.

Stripped down, LARPs can be fairly short (less than a half-hour), they don’t require props of any kind, and you can focus just on story if you have limited time/resources. If you’re at all interested in playing with story, I highly recommend trying your hand at designing a LARP if you have the time!

before reading my response below, and be sure to check out

Carrie Young’s expanded thoughts on the topic!

Earlier this year at the StoryWorld Conference, Andrea Phillips approached me and proclaimed, “You know, I really, really, really hate the term, ‘value co-creation!’” It was not the first time a female had approached me unsolicited and delivered a scathing remark, but it was the first time anyone had directly attacked this phrase.

A phrase I’ve taken to use a lot in the last two years (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

I know Andrea and her work. I like her, and I respect her creative instincts. Hearing her trash a term I’ve embraced and promoted for two years was a bit of a shock. Bruised my ego a bit, even. Why did she hate the phrase so much?

I replied, “Well, you know, I’m really, really, really going to keep using it, but I’d love to know why you think I shouldn’t!”

We had a quick chat about our different opinions on the term but ran out of time. Then I suggested we take the conversation to the streets (and by streets, I mean the Interwebz), as I thought it would actually be a constructive experience worth sharing with others. Might even encourage other creatives to weigh in.

As I told Andrea, I’m working with the best models and vocabulary I can, and I’ve spent a long time searching for the just the right phrase and just the right words (as proof of how far I’ve come I submit the following abandoned phrases: “renewable entertainment properties,” “collaborative property model,” and “evergreen entertainment models”). I don’t claim “value co-creation” is ideal in every case, but it’s the best I’ve come across so far.

Andrea was kind enough to take up my challenge, and she wrote an eloquent, thoughtful post about her objections to the term.

I still disagree with her conclusions, but she raises valid points about the issues surrounding frameworks where fans, UGC, and money mix. In fact, I acknowledged this thorny situation in a post earlier this year at Shared Story Worlds.

So where, precisely, do we disagree?

Andrea’s post takes aim at two things. The first is the phrase, “value co-creation,” and the second is the question of whether you can allow fans to profit from their UGC without creating an unpleasant community culture.

First, the phrase.

Andrea says value co-creation “glosses over what it actually is, and worse…misleadingly implies an equitable balance of power where there is none.” She suggests either of the following as better alternatives:

• Fan-curated profit-sharing
• Creator-curated audience collaboration

I disagree that the first option accurately describes what I mean when I say “value co-creation,” as it implies fans are doing all of the curation, which is not the case. Furthermore, it explicitly includes the phrase profit-sharing, which is not a requirement for all value co-creation scenarios (some do not involve money changing hands or are non-commercial – see my post here).

I reject the second one because it’s clunky and not much more accurate. As I read it, “creator-curated audience collaboration” doesn’t explain the role the creative has, and it doesn’t differentiate whether the audience is collaborating together or with the creative. Besides, others have been using value co-creation for a while (C.K. Prahalad wrote an entire book on the topic), and it nicely conveys what I mean when I use the term. I could have called it “super awesome audience play time” and defined it how I preferred, but I thought it best to build on an existing term.

As for value co-creation implying an equitable balance of power, well, that’s Andrea’s opinion, not an objective fact.

“Co” doesn’t mean or imply “equal.” Together, jointly, mutually – yes. But it doesn’t imply equal (if it did, why would we need the word “coequal?”).

I still don’t see a compelling case to abandon “value co-creation,” though Andrea is making me aware that I maybe haven’t done a good job of defining the phrase.

Fans are perfectly capable and willing of co-creating value. They already have the power to do so, and they exercise it every day. Each fanfic story, each fan art piece on Deviantart.com, each mashup, video, etc. based on someone else’s IP *is* value co-creation, whether the intellectual property (IP) owners acknowledges it or not.

Said actions do not, however, translate to commercial rights (ever had your YouTube-hosted video remix taken down via a DMCA notice?).

I see the concept of value co-creation as recognition that fans can create things of value based on others’ IP. The shared story world model I advocate builds a bridge between fans and IP owners, with value co-creation being a cornerstone of that model. It acknowledges the critical role fans play in commercial entertainment, and it offers a non-traditional way for fans to contribute to commercial entertainment (by recognizing certain UGC as official/canonical work and/or monetarily compensating fans for their UGC).

But we can quibble over terminology ad nauseum. Vocabulary alone is rarely the final stumbling block, and it isn’t Andrea’s underlying contention.

Andrea’s post reveals her true concern to be this: introducing a framework where fans can make money from someone else’s commercial IP and where the IP owner retains full commercial control over the IP will automatically result in an “unpleasant community culture” that becomes “toxic to the fan culture overall” (the implication being this kind of culture will have a fatal effect on the success of the IP).

Andrea then offers two solutions to avoid this situation: (1) never invite fans to contribute, but if you do select UGC for inclusion, do not pay fans for it; and (2) remove the IP owner as commercial gatekeeper (essentially stripping the owner of all rights to limit others’ commercial exploitation of the IP).

I agree with Andrea that these two options would limit what she calls “a community of freelancers all doing spec work in direct competition with one another.”

I disagree with her view that value co-creation models where fans are paid for their work (i.e., commercial shared story worlds) automatically create a toxic community which will necessarily lead to the failure of the IP.

Could it happen? Sure, just ask the people behind Fanlib’s spectacular demise. It’s sooooo easy to screw over your fanbase and reap the rewards of eternal derision and mistrust. So easy.

But not inevitable.

The kind of train wreck Andrea warns about isn’t a foregone conclusion due to some inherent flaw in the value co-creation concept for commercial shared story worlds. I just haven’t seen that to be the case. In fact, with the exception of Fanlib, I haven’t seen a fractured fan community destroy a value co-creation entertainment IP (and Fanlib’s failure is arguably a result of their disrespectful and tasteless handling of their target audience).

Andrea applauds the co-creation concept but hates the idea of seeing it fail due to terminology. I fear failure, too, though I suspect it takes a very different form.

Failure of value co-creation in a shared story world model is more likely to be a result of poor execution (mediocre storytelling, bad world design, ineffective marketing, missing legal components, etc.) or inappropriate community outreach. To paraphrase Whitman, “fandom is large, fandom contains multitudes.” Creatives should, indeed, tread lightly when dealing with large multitudes.

I guess my glasses are a bit rosier than Andrea’s when it comes to value co-creation and shared story worlds. I see shared story worlds surfacing in increasing frequency over the next few years, and no single phrase or injection of money into the mix is going to stem this tide. My optimism is buoyed by new projects like Angry Robot Books’ Worldbuilder project, where fans will be compensated for their creations.

How did the fans react to this news? Well, if the comments are any indication, the fans find the concept anything but toxic.

And notice how Angry Robot doesn’t mention shared story worlds or value co-creation? They don’t label it at all, actually. Just like when a new ARG is launched, it’s not plastered or marketed as an ARG? The people playing in these spaces don’t care that the rabbit hole they fell in to is an ARG any more than fans care about whether their favorite transmedia property is explicitly marketed as a “transmedia” experience. They just want to have fun.

We can have the internal debate over value co-creation just like we’ve been having for transmedia (and hasn’t that turned out wonderfully?), but our efforts really ought to be channeled towards creating cool, fun experiences for audiences. I doubt Andrea would disagree on that point.

So, yeah, I’m damn optimistic on value co-creation and shared story worlds. Color this typing monkey very optimistic, indeed.

The culprit for my discontent?

An increasing dismissal of audience contributions (i.e., user-generated content) to commercial entertainment as unfit for inclusion in professional entertainment experiences. The most common argument I hear against including UGC in any entertainment property fail is, “UGC is awful,” which reduces the value of UGC to a single vector: the subjective metric of “quality.”

At best, this single litmus test of value confuses UGC with other forms of participation (e.g., collaborative storytelling). At worst, this narrow view summarily dismisses UGC and the other benefits its offers.

I’ve already explored why collaborative storytelling is completely different from participatory storytelling and collaborative worldbuilding, so this short post is going to focus on the issue of the quality of UGC.

Here’s the single take-away: if you’re inviting audiences to participate with the sole expectation that you’ll get professional-level, high-quality content, then you are completely misunderstanding the larger reasons and logic behind participatory entertainment (for the record, that is not the same as saying that all UGC is non-professional or poor quality).

The bigger value inherent in audience participation is the different kind of connection this kind of participation encourages. Importantly, the demographic subset of consumers most likely to create UGC based on your commercial entertainment property are (wait for it)…also the most passionate about that property.

As was mentioned recently at a Transmedia L.A. meetup by the guest speaker, “your competitor in entertainment is porn.” In other words, fans of your entertainment property have chosen to spend their finite money and time buying and consuming your media. Instead of going out to dinner. Instead of sleeping. Instead of playing with their kids. Instead of having sex.

So before you summarily dismiss UGC as having no business in your entertainment business, I would suggest you turn the situation around and ask yourself why you’re ignoring your biggest fans. Why you aren’t actively finding ways for them to connect with you. Why you can’t see the value in inviting them to share a story, build a world, and have a conversation with you.

Now if your answer is, “because I don’t want to,” then great. That’s an honest answer – a good answer – and I have no issues with that at all. The one objection I can’t and won’t accept is, “UGC sucks,” because it misses the true value audience participation offers.

Still, the exercise of bringing together some of the things I’ve discussed in isolation about SSWs was extremely helpful, and I was humbled by the reaction of the audience and the great questions they posed. If I can make the time, perhaps I’ll do what a few of them suggested and write a book…!

In addition to the presentation, I handed out copies of the design questions to help people follow along and perhaps even make notes. Below is the presentation and a link to download the .pdf of design questions.

What became clear is that unless you are crystal clear about what you want to measure (and how) before you launch any experience, the downstream metrics will likely be muddled. And – not unsurprisingly – we haven’t hit on concrete standards for defining the various kinds of engagement we see in transmedia/ARG/participatory experiences.

Here’s some of the responses I received (and big thanks to everyone who answered my query!):

Dee Cook

“I think it depends on how high the barrier of entry is to the project.

I recently worked on a project where the registrant:unique visitor ratio was 5%:95%. User-created content was 10% of the afore-mentioned 5%. But the barrier to entry was somewhat high, requiring registration in order to submit content. So that project, instead of 90/9/1, was more like 94.5/5/.05.

On a campaign where people can play in the space they already inhabit, I imagine that numbers could indeed reach those spoken about in the article.”

Brooke Thompson

“Barrier to entry is definitely a factor – not that I have any specific hard data to give you (though I may be able to dig around and see what I can find). But I do think that it goes both ways. For example, a game with an extremely high barrier to entry will likely have a much smaller but heavily engaged audience – because once they cross the barrier they’re ready to participate.

It also depends on the nature of the project and how clearly it comes across. A lot of ARGs suffer because they are intentionally obscure. You may get a lot of people that come and take a peek but when they can’t figure out wtf is going on, they disappear. By contrast, I worked on a project that was very explicit from the outside – all marketing materials pointing to it stated clearly what one could expect (a treasure hunt, puzzles, geocaching, really cool prize). It had a very high rate of participation because people came to it wanting to participate.

That said, I’m inclined to believe that there where the nature of the project really comes into play is with the difference between commenters & creators… though, with ARGs, some could argue that commenters are creators ;)”

Michael Andersen

“The best resource for publicly available ARG statistics is Christy Dena’s pages on domestic and international campaign metrics.

http://www.christydena.com/online-essays/arg-stats/
http://www.christydena.com/online-essays/worldwideargs1/
http://www.christydena.com/online-essays/worldwideargs2/

Campfire released some of their participation statistics from Maester’s Path (along with the goals set).

Jan Libby

[Jan and I exchanged several emails, and after summarizing her responses, she confirmed I accurately captured her sentiments below]

Jan is increasingly using a different design approach that explicitly targets demographic subsets, rendering the idea of a “lurker” participant as irrelevant. Every person touching the experience does so through a design of planned awareness.

Ultimately, under this design approach, the participation numbers will be whatever you want them to be, depending on how your designed the experience and how you defined your audience before you launch the experience.

To sum: the participatory rate is whatever you design for.

Evan Jones

“Participation stats seem to be the most controversial topic in Transmedia for two reasons.

The first is double-dipping.

When someone watches your television show AND visits your website, they are counted each time. It’s near impossible to ‘prove’ that it’s the same person without some identifier, and the same thing goes for doubling up on Twitter followers vs Facebook Likes, etc. Some people use rampant double-dipping to boost numbers when numbers are the only thing that matter. I’ve even heard of designers pushing to add platforms specifically to get the doubling-up effect.

The second is depth of engagement.

So many times the numbers trafficked are ‘visits’ since there are no other standard definitions for ‘player’ or ‘participant’. I’ve struggled to make sure all my reports give qualitative analysis of this area, but when comparing projects to each other, qualitative loses out to hard numbers. For those you end up in the lowest-common denominator where your competing with the ‘impressions’ a freaking billboard on the highway gets. Very tough to measure overall engagement in a way that makes sense outside the profession.

The talks that I’ve given discuss the ‘tiered system’ that I’ve observed over the years. Traditional web metrics would suggest a linear curve from earliest engagement to deepest, but I’ve found that it isn’t the case. People self-select to push ahead to the next category and eventually hit a wall where they won’t cross. The 90-9-1 stuff is still relevant to me in that many projects just have a natural 10% crossover rate to the next stage. If you promote a website on television, it’s fair to guess that 10% will remember the URL and visit it. If you ask for a login to see more, you’ll get 10% that will login. BUT what I’ve also seen is that the quality of the design of these transitions can affect these stats. I’ve had some projects see up to 20% crossover what I’d call a ‘transmedia barrier’ – I’ve even seen A/B testing shift between 5% and 15% which is a great boon to iterative design and analytics, but horrible when it comes to saying it’s a 90-9-1 hard and fast rule.

The issue really only comes up in design and one business-related question: “Why wouldn’t I just market to the 90% and forget about the high demands of this 1%?”

I know you probably need some numbers though to make this point. I’m afraid many of my past ARGs aren’t under my control so I’m not even sure if I could GET at the numbers. From what I saw anecdotally, the concept of designing specifically for audiences on both sides of a barrier makes for a more successful project. If you make it fun for the people who don’t want to register, and then you make it fun for the people who do want to register – then everyone has fun. Sounds ridiculous to say it that way, but that’s how I’ve thought about it.”

Voting is now open and runs through September 2nd. There are a lot of great ones in this year’s mix, so be sure to cast your vote and spread the word about the ones you like!

Shared Story Worlds and Value Co-Creation

Speakers: Esther Lim, Robert Pratten, Scott Walker

“Discover the benefits of co-creating value with audiences by examining lessons learned from shared story worlds and learning how to inspire your audience to contribute to your entertainment property in a meaningful way. A shared story world is an intellectual property explicitly inviting audiences to contribute their own content and meaningfully participate (not just interact). This presentation explores the opportunities available when audiences are viewed as a competent source for creative contribution to commercial entertainment properties.”

Interactive Storyworlds for Marketing & Pleasure

Speakers: Robert Pratten, Scott Walker

“Learn how to develop your movie, game, TV show or web series with the marketing baked into the story in such a way that nobody can see the join between “selling” and “entertaining”. Rather than develop a creative project in isolation from its advertising and marketing, think of the process as a continuum from discovery through experience to exploration – an ongoing storyworld with which audiences want to engage. This presentation explains how to expand a linear script or synopsis into an interactive, multi-platform, participative storyworld using social media, direct marketing, promotion, advertising and traditional media (books, movies etc.).”

The Rise of Co-Created Storyworld Communities

Speakers: Esther Lim, Scott Walker

“Storyworld communities are often treated as marketing and promotional tools, where content creators spend significant time, money and resources building a thriving and engaged fan base around their story, only to abandon these living ecosystems at the completion of the narrative. Yet the role of the storyworld community is changing as content creators begin to recognize the value of sharing creation rights with fans in the development of the storyworld canon and also in the growth and management of the storyworld community. This panel will examine the definition of co-created storyworld communities, the market forces driving this movement, the benefits of sharing storyworld creation and steps for leveraging the community to grow the story universe contextually and commercially. We will also discuss the different aspects of Creative Commons Licenses, the rights and options for sharing ownership with the individuals involved in the co-creation process and the expansion of the canon into various co-created materials and subsequent content.”

But I wondered if there was another contributing factor, perhaps something inherent in the design or architecture of ARGs.

So, I’m posing the question to those with far more ARG experience than I: why are ARGs currently relegated to one-and-done status (and can or should they be liberated to serve more than once, either as a self-contained experience or as part of a larger entertainment experience)?

[apologies for the picture quality; I didn't have a tripod, and there was no lighting on the panel speakers at all!]