Thanks for being patient everyone… the time has finally arrived. The new blog design is done, and is ready for the unveiling. Without further ado, I’m pleased to present Zaissian Logic. Check out the first post on the new blog today and let me know what you think. Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed!
I got an interesting email last week:
Wow… it really took Nintendo over 8 months to come to the conclusion that some sort of Virtual Console update would be a good thing? As a Wii owner, I’ve got to say, I’m a fan of the Virutal Console. However, after 3 weeks of checking every Monday, just to be let down because random games from TurboGraphx got added to the mix, checking Virtual Console updates manually became my least favorite part about the whole system.
So what’s a lazy technophile to do? Find a blog feed that showcases the Virtual Console additions every Monday so they’re easy to check.
Nintendo should have been on top of this from day 1, but after being convinced that they didn’t have any location to browse VC releases, I gave up and went feed hunting. It turns out that the email above had a link to all currently-available VC releases, each one with a link telling more about the game. That’s pretty cool, but still pretty obscure. Not to mention the fact that these update emails (which seem to be happening weekly now) come three days after the console updates. Nice, but still not a step up from the immediacy you get from a feed like N-Philes.
Nintendo, I say you’ve gotta step it up with your VC messaging. Shout it from the rooftops! Be your customers’ number one source for all things Virtual Console! And… release Dragon Warriors I-IV to the VC while you’re at it.
Update 12/17/07: I’ve been getting these emails for a couple months now, and I’m reversing my position. Their timing is variable – sometimes they arrive at the start of the week, sometimes at the end, and other times in between. But they are a great deal more visual than the other sources, and they link to a pretty stellar site that maintains a full list.
Using one of these emails, I realized that Ghost & Goblins was a game I had in my childhood, after repressing it for my Toolbox assignment in Game Design. After buying it and playing for 5 minutes I realized why – It. Is. Extremely. Hard.
So I was surfing the internet today, learning all the intricacies of Windows Movie Maker (don’t ask), when I came across a particularly disturbing ad:
First thought: Eww, gross. Second thought: Wait a second. Haven’t I been asked that question before? Sure enough, almost two years ago, I was horrified at the same ad, only that time the culprit was Yahoo.
There must be billions of possible search queries out there… are we really hurting for original ideas so much that we need to reuse them? And even if we are… do we have to use spiders as the ad to copy? Why can’t we use a less scary query… like “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” or “Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?”
In the meantime, my conclusion remains the same – only now, I’m avoiding two search engines for fear of spiders popping up out of nowhere.
What? What do you mean, not me?! Just cuz I tend to blog in waves, and had a bit of downtime earlier… gosh, you’re all so picky… Look on the bright side. I’m back blogging again, which means at least another 2 weeks of posts. Or… not. We’ll see what happens.
Actually, the correct answer to the question is Flickr. In what must be a new marketing move, I noticed a new, subtle message in the latest Flickr logo:
Flickr and its users, sitting in a tree…
Seriously, though, this is an interesting marketing tactic. Sure you could post your pictures online with Picasa, or Shutterfly, or Zoto, or Zoomr (though Zoomr is confusing - the big link says Discover but the logo says MasterCard). But do any of these sites love you?
Flickr loves you. And that should count for something. And I believe it counts for… being out of beta?
I know, two posts in a row with the word “pastime” in the title. It sorta bugs me, but not enough to change it. Just enough to comment about it in a lengthy non sequitur at the start of the post. Anyway.
I was walking along the other day, when I passed an ad that caused me to do a double take:
Whoa. Really? 386,000? Being from Nebraska, I am a little sensitive when people ask if we have automobiles, running water, or the like. But even I found myself asking, “Are there even 386,000 people in Nebraska?”
It turns out that there are; in fact, in 2000, there were 1.7 million people in the state. (So sue me, I suck at remembering or even estimating population facts. I never won those silly contests where you guess how many jelly beans are in the jar either.) But still, the Toyota ad is still implying that about 23% of Nebraskans are bird watchers… and that just seems a bit ludicrous to me. We really don’t get that many interesting birds in Nebraska (I know, because my dad is one of those apparent 386,000) - growing up, cardinals and blue jays were the coolest. Gold finches were common too. Occasionally a hummingbird. But is that enough for over 1/5 of the state to take up bird watching?
Obviously Toyota wasn’t worried about finding some factoid that yielded a count of exactly 386,000, but what bolt of inspiration suggested Nebraska… and bird watching? Is Nebraska known for bird watching? The number of tickets sold for last year’s College World Series seems like a more accurate figure for the ad…
…but then again, maybe it was thanks to my Nebraska bird watching skills that I was the only one able to spot the woodpecker the other day.
If you’ve been following the next-gen console sales, you’re probably aware that the PS3 isn’t doing so well. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but this ad that made it to Digg today doesn’t seem to be helping Sony’s cause much.
But what do I know about marketing. I guess if the game ads aren’t working, something different is in order.
Due to high demand, Amazon came up with a new way to sell their limited supplies of gaming systems - randomly select people to purchase them among a group that has signed up. Check it out.
Now, these types of lottery are all so random, I try not to put much stock in them. But it’s good to know, according to Amazon, that we have better odds of winning the game system of our choice (20 to 1 for a Wii) than contracting botulism (2,300 to 1), contracting the plague (299,999 to 1), or getting bitten by a shark (6,000,000 to 1). Personally, I’m holding out for the wii. But if I wake up tomorrow with botulism and no wii, I’m gonna be one pissed off gamer.
While I enjoyed all of the typography exercises back in Communication Design Fundamentals, lately I seem to be drawn to simply varying the grayscale of text to communicate. It’s a simple thing to do (and seems pretty basic), but I’m only recently starting to see more instances of it.
If you’ve seen Honda CR-V billboards lately, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I couldn’t find any images online, so I had to stop and take my own on the way home from work. Luckily I didn’t hit any cars while I was driving and taking pictures!
… I’m only kidding, I don’t take pictures and drive, do you think I have a death wish? Well maybe sometimes but not in Seattle traffic. I’m not that dumb.
Anyway, I’m a fan of all the new CR-V ads, but the billboard stood out to me most. Simple. Yet deep and meaningful. And hopefully you haven’t crashed your car while you’re trying to figure out what’s up with that A… but once you do… it’s kinda cool.
I’ve been using this simple technique for communication as a subtle way to show rather than tell (rather than “Here’s a list, I’ve done A, B, and C, but need to do D, E, and F” - just gray out the ones in progress. Or gray out text that you don’t want to be the focus on in an omnipresent spec review at Microsoft - things tend to keep focused more often). Have you seen anything like this around? Point me to it, cuz it’s what I’m craving. (… right after the CR-V, of course).
When I got my Washington license plates, the guy at the counter gave me a warning as he handed me the new plates:
I called to verify – indeed, you are supposed to return them. (I didn’t verify the warrant part… I didn’t want to sound shady). They’re picky about having all plates returned to them. Any refund for the unused part of the year of PA registration? No.
It turns out that I also still had my Nebraska plates (because the Nebraska DMV isn’t psychotic about their plates), so I took it to a local licensing branch to recycle the plate. As I sat and waited for a free attendant to give my plate to, the young child next to me was eyeing my license plate.
“When you move states, you have to get new plates,” his mom told him. “Why don’t you ask that nice man where he got his plates from?”
Kids are fun, so why not. “I’m from Nebraska. Do you know where Nebraska is?”
With a smile: “No…”
Mom with the save: “It’s very far away.”
The kid comes back with: “I thought it was fire… because it had red and yellow on it.”
What an interesting conjecture. What would the state of fire be? …Hell, perhaps?
Probably not… people have actually heard of Hell.
In case you aren’t an avid comment reader, I wanted to call out Laura’s special link that she left on my earlier post.
It left a smile on my face. Why can’t we get more marketing like that in the US? Seriously!
But what I find interesting is the tone in the ad… “They’re gonna taste great??” That wouldn’t work in America at all! We don’t want random future predictions, we need isntant gratification! It’s a minor point, but I find it interesting that the rhetoric has to be “It works,” “It’s the best,” “It tastes great.” Very declarative. Does that say something about our society?
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