Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

I don’t consider this crowdsourcing. I consider it regular old marketing because it seems to me that all they’re doing is just collecting marketing data. Big deal. If this is crowdsourcing, then we may as well call Google Analytics a crowdsourcing tool, since it measures “votes” via the number of times people visit your site.

What’s worse is that they make it sound like something more: “Consumers will assist in the creative process“. What exactly is creative about this? Is choosing which product you’ll buy now considered creativity? Is voting via surfing websites (or channel surfing on the teevee) creative? Sorry, my definition is a bit more strict.

I agree with Csven. This isn’t so much Crowdsourcing as it is normal marketing. I read the email more along the lines of “If you buy these, we’ll keep making more,” which isn’t any different than what the video game industry has been doing for years. There’s 27 Megaman games because people bought the first 26. It’ll be the same for these digitally distributed titles. LostWinds gets a sequel only if the original sells well.

>> TOPolk last wrote: Learning 2.0: Print Is Dead

It’s normal marketing, because normal stores do the same thing especially supermarkets. They all have a big database on what is sold more and they can see what should stay in the store or remove because nobody buys it anyways. And they can put special sales with those figures to attract costumers.

Hi All,

I think it does look like plain old market research eh?

But, I think Nintendo, is giving up a lot of opportunity, to create games where the users can make their own stuff. As they now have a huge access to the casual gamer market, the potential is too good to waste.

Unfortunately I think they have to rethink their creator/publisher game creation model. Right now it looks like there is no continuity.

Nintendo has less opportunity than either Sony or Microsoft. They have systems in place: Microsoft’s Marketplace and Sony’s Station Exchange. Nintendo has nothing currently in place, afaik, for this kind of thing.

Yes, the opportunity has been there and I’ve blogged extensively on that very issue, but there are lots of problems with user-generated content. That’s why I follow Second Life so closely. Nothing comes close to it as far as providing a glimpse of the future potential for these technologies; both good and bad.

Blew a buffer. I should have said: “Nintendo has nothing currently in place, afaik, for user-generated content.” By that I mean, WiiWare is, as I understand it, geared towards downloadable indie “games” which are approved for development by Nintendo; not additional content for games created by average people. Marketplace and Exchange are able to accommodate content, based on what I’ve read and how I understand those services.

Unfortunately, similar to Nintendo, both MS and Sony limit access to certified/approved developers … who rarely allow true UGC; and then, from what I’ve found, only during development of their game title (i.e. they’re desperate for development help). Instead, they become sub-gatekeepers by controlling additional content (”add-on packs”) and using their access status to help them sell it through the service.

For some developers, this makes sense because it can help keep employed content creators working steadily (i.e. they still have art content to create while programmers code the next game engine). However, I’ve read that some developers just farm out the work, mark it up with a middleman “handling fee”, and then sell it through an MS or Sony service.

>> csven last wrote: Next Generation Product Development Tools, Part 15