The website of BD & Comics Passion is online! This new festival, celebrating the graphic novel genre, will take place the 7-9 October, at the Institut français (London). Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), Jean-Claude Mézières (Valérien and Laureline), a cosmic party… and much more !

As webmaster of the Institut français, I worked with the Book Office (organising the festival, in association with Comica Festival) to make the whole website.

www.institut-francais.org.uk/bdandcomicspassion

The graphic design is based on the festival poster made by an illustrator.

Josselin Perrus focused his speech on use of badges.
A badge is a social indicator : it’s a way of learning information about people’s type (eg. Top-rated Sellers icon on eBay).

Badges could be organized in hierarchy or in category. Category enables to distinguish users, and if the social indicators are well chosen, there could be a “mirroring effect” ; the user would want to improve his own image. Besides category limits content, only relevant information is displayed. Whereas hierarchy bores users, they grow tired of competition, and to heap badges could trouble reading information.

Good social indicators could be a solution of differentiation, to remind you of yourself rather than to show yourself. The more you could express your own identity, the more you could attempt to get to the identity you want.

Philippe Gargov talked about links between game and city and improvment possibilites. He saw three issues : public debate (city 2.0), good practices (livablecity) and social innovation (wikicity).

City 2.0 : there are already some immersive 3D environments (displaying real urban areas), or service to collect ideas, but P. Gargov identified a need of game workers experience to lead citizens to give their opinion.

LivableCity : to promote good practices (eg : Chromaroma encourages users of the London Undergroung to walk more, Yahoo ! Bus Stop Derby helps to increase public transport attraction by eclipsing waiting time.

WikiCity : or how use the user’s experience in service production. With public data opening (Paris recently) it’s now possible to create services which matches to specific needs, developped by external developpers.

To continue with gamification :
Gamasutra : GDC 2011: Time To Ditch The Term ‘Gamification’?
Gamasutra : GDC 2011: McGonigal Says, ‘Don’t Exploit Gamers,’ Extrinsic Rewards ‘Missing The Point’
Internet Actu : Les ambiguïtés de la gamification
StoryPlaying : Gamification : Demystifions un buzzword (Josselin Perrus)
La gamification : entre perspectives de création et motivations marketing

Speakers
Nicolas Nova (Lift Lab) : Introduction
Josselin Perrus (eCRM consultant) : Bagdes as social indicators
Philippe Gargov (geographer consultant) : Game and city

“Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications, particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications” (Wikipedia), or to encourage desired behaviors (for instance to perform chores that people don’t usually like).

Eg : Chore Wars (ARG) suggests real cleaning-tasks as quests, the players are from the same house or workplace, and each completed chore gives experience points.

3 points to think for a gamification :
- identify behaviors to encourage
- choose a system of measurement
- apply game mechanics

Game uses intrinsic rewards (= do, participate, which make the fun) and extrinsic rewards (= points, grades, which directly reward a result of an action).
It’s a common preconceived notion to think that game’s interest is only built on points (extrinsic reward, limited) while gamer’s interest and pleasure come from the work itself (intrinsic reward, renewable).

Extrinsic rewards have a limited efficiency, because we build up a tolerance for them (collect badges and badges doesn’t necessarily make sense).
There is no perfect formula, promise points and reward each action with a badge doesn’t make an application interesting.
Now gamification is often a control over user, in contrast to user-centric versions.

Virginia Heffernan developed several points : the social opportunities of internet, the cultural catastrophe and the likely reactions, and the safety feeling caused by the apps.

She had her first contact with internet in 1978, with US army’s chats. Since then she have reckoned that it was a wondreful way for practising how to present herself, working on her social-skills, talking to complete strangers (even from a different social background), being more confident without being nervous or blushing, inventing herself… being a “social super-hero”. But she also realised that her lies could and would be reveal, and after an actual date with another user she left internet (for a time) for the reality, which seemed more interesting.

“Sometimes a patient needs to know that the catastrophe he fears has already occured.” Roland Barthes
For V. Heffernan we are the patiens and our fear, the cultural catastrophe, has already happened. Analogical culture era is over. Printed newspapers, paper scent in libraries, handwriting letters… we’re losing that. The cultural catastrophe has occured.
But if our cultural experience is not related to material condition but is a mental, intellectual, cerebral experience, we could enjoy the arrival of digital culture.

Confronted to this situation, she identifies three likely reactions.
The first : a complete rejection, going back to the real life. Quite uncommon but still enjoyed : for example with the Do It Yourself movement, the local food movement or the passion for vinyl records or polaroid.
The second possibility : going to the apps. V. Heffernan compares apps with rural and suburban areas : stable, safe, clean, private. Just the opposite of the web : urban jungle which is dangerous and unsanitary, infested by spams, virus, pop-up ads, dead links, unwanted pornography… and inhabited by “multilingual, noisy, well-rooted people”. Apps (especially from AppStore) are controled, beautiful spaces where users pay for a chosen content which is designed for the application.
The third option : staying on the web, a public, popular, lively and creative space, where new opportunities keep appearing.

V. Heffernan’s speech was very interesting, and the parallel between the web and New-York in the seventies and the apps and the suburban tidy pretty houses is really relevant. Regarding the three possibilies, it seems (to me) more likely that people use two or even the three solutions. For instance we could enjoy vinyl appeal and acknowledge pratical sides of mp3. At the end we listen to a piece of music, but rummaging through boxes in a record shop, holding the record into our hands, taking it from its sleeve and putting it on the turntable, are fully a part of the experience. Mp3 benefits are not superior they are different, and we can enjoy both in turn, depending on what we need.
About the cultural catastrophe, and the fact that web/digital technology introduced unquestionably new practices and possibilites, I’m reading “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal. It deals with why and how “reality, compared to video games, is broken” and how game design could improve reality. It seems to offer a useful and relevant perspective of changes caused by new technologies.

Antonio A. Casili concentrated particularly on the effect of the web on our networks : does the web change the size and shape of humans groups, does it create new links ?
At the beginning of internet, it was considered as potentially risky ; cutting people from others, bringing isolation. Some studies spread this idea, especially one led by Robert Krauf (Internet Paradox, 1998), which noticed that “greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants’communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness“. Offline and online life would be directly related, increase of online relationships would cause a decrease of offline relatitionships. But this conclusion was disproved by another survey by Kraut himself (Internet Paradox Revisited, 2001), which deduced that this increase wasn’t relevant and possibily caused by a transition / adaptation time.

Then the speaker quoted Barry Wellman, who thinks that our relationships become a “glocal” (global + local) network. To a first network of close relations (locals : family, friends, neighbours, co-workers) we add long-distance relationships. So A. Casili highlights two ideas : the “bonding” and the “bridging”. Bonding means tightening current strong links while bridging is making new entries, opening inactive links. For instance when we are looking for an answer not known by a close friend, we could search for new (far-flung) people on a forum.

So comes the question of the (real) size of networks. In 1992 the anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that a limit is imposed by the size of our neocortex and so he calculated it to 148 (“number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained”). In 1998 Peter Killworth (anthropologist) found 290 relationships, and in 2010 Matthew Salgalik (sociologist) 610. But does the social group really grow, does the social environment become better ? It seems that online social networks are ancestral continuation of our willingness to bound with others, but internet enables to tighten old strong links and keep activatable links with people of the our network outskirts.

The amateur was critized for being to personal, for not doing the separation between himself and his work. But with the web this point is becoming the main part of the amateur expression : this hazy expressiveness is done by self/one’s identity production and self/one’s tastes exposition. We show ourselves, we share our tastes and associate them with the tastes of the people of our network.
We promote our work and ourselves, the content production has now an identity aspect. There is a continuity between the work and the person, continuity but not confusion, we show ourselves but we are fully aware of the public so we choose what we show (and this is a form of distance).

Faced with this huge, fantastic and disturbing content, the professional workers must wonder how to be different, how to be seen and recognized for their art and work. An interesting point of view by Anne-Laure Jacquart (photograph) : here (in french).

Read the book !

the excerpt
Jane McGonigal’s website
an other excerpt : Practical advice for gamers

flex sources
php and mysql files

I took the TOEIC and got 930 (out of 990), which should be an advanced intermediate level.
I’m looking for a job in design (multimedia, video game) or development (flash, web) and I hope find a position in UK or North Europa to keep learning English.