another correct prediction.

Back in 2007 (in a less focused time for this blog), I predicted that someone would make a sci-fi product based on the Svalbard Seed Vault.

And now, due to being followed by the creators on Twitter, I have stumbled on to this comic, the Two Percent solution.

My future-predicting cred is getting pretty solid, these days.

look to the webcomics.

I've been reading webcomics for about a decade, now, and every year I get more convinced that no one has figured out the new economic reality better than webcomic creators.  And I'm not talking about the Penny Arcade level death-star goldmine webcomic creators.  I'm talking about the one-and-two person operations, and the 'collectives'.

I'm not arguing it's an endless goldmine.  I'm just saying that a notable number of hardworking, talented artists are making a living on their creativity.  I'm not an expert or an insider, but I am impressed.

Business models I've observed include donations, subscriptions, advertising, sponsored content, but mostly a mixture of some of the above with merchandise sales (books, tshirts, tote bags).

All of this comes down to three stages: Make something good. Give it away. Offer the people who care about it a way to support you, and to own a piece of something they have come to love.

This can be merchandise sales (the Topatoco army wins at this, in my opinion), or donations (which have supported Something Positive for a couple of years now, if I'm not mistaken), or most recently, beautiful handcrafted books, sold at a well-justified premium (a la Dresden Codak.)

The important thing is the understanding of the new model of business.  It works the same as a new relationship - you give something of value, because you want to.  Because you love it.  Not with an expectation of return.

If you give something that enough people value, then they will give back, not only to support you, but to own a piece of what you've created.  To pull a little more of something they love into their lives, whether as a status object, or as a reminder that this thing they love exists.

The best part? Commerce has another layer of separation from the art.  The art is created to be art, to build a following, and to show something of value.  When the art is created to build a connection, there's no need to water it down - you want something that people will be connected to, not just unoffended by.  Selling tshirts doesn't diminish the art of a cartoonist, web or otherwise.  It separates the art from the product.

[Seriously, read webcomics.  The quality, humour and consistency of these people is clearly the biggest element of the success they've had thus far.  You will not regret it.]

how we deal with real change.

I  never shut up about my beloved iPhone, but it's one of the few things I've owned in the last 5 years that has actually changed anything.  Clearly, this is more about the rise of smartphones in general, than a specific gushing about Apple's current gadget du jour.

I recently read Cory Doctorow's 'Little Brother'* on my iPhone, through Stanza.  Last night, I read several comics released in an iPhone application format, from iVerse media.  Both of these experiences got me thinking.

We deal with new technology in one of two ways, generally.  These are both examples of the first way, which is usually the most successful and the majority of uses; taking something we already do well and finding a way to emulate that on the new platform.  Taking content created for one form (print media) and finding a way to make it work reasonably well in another form.

The second way we deal with new technology is to think about the essence of things we currently do (in this case, text narrative, graphic fiction, etc), and then devise a new way to do them based on the abilities and limits of the new technology.  This is substantially more rare, because it's very easy to do poorly, and very difficult to do if new technology isn't standardized.  Also, in comparison, written text has centuries of R&D behind it, any new form is pre-Alpha, by comparison.

That said, the second method, creating a wholly new way to do something important or interesting, is where the massive transformational power is.  It's at least worth spending some time considering this approach whenever you're tasked with reconfiguring content from one medium to another.

*It's good enough that not only will I recommend it (and probably blog about ways in which it inspired me later on), but that I'm planning on giving it to the majority of YA fiction readers in my extended family, who I've always worried weren't geeky enough. 

ARG promotions and the dark knight.

I caught a midnight showing of The Dark Knight, and was far more than impressed.

However, I don’t do movie reviews here.  So instead I’d like to ramble about something I’ve noticed in myself repeatedly – ARG (alternate reality game) regret.

A short list of creative products I’ve enjoyed, but not participated in the ARG for, include NIN’s Year Zero, Cloverfield, and now The Dark Knight.  Inevitably, the film or album ends, I become enamoured with it, and then I research the ARG, and the world-extension content that was a part of it.

Now, the design of these campaigns is for this to happen in the opposite order.  We’re supposed to build anticipation through the ARG, and therefore share that anticipation and interest with our friends.  But here’s the core problem with that:

I don’t have the time.

I’m not assuming I’m busier than anyone else, or my work is more urgent or important.  I waste a lot of my time on less than intellectual pursuits.  But I can’t imagine how I’d be able to schedule my work and social commitments around random automated phone calls from fictional characters, or scavenger hunts.

But my lack of participation doesn’t matter, because I can read about it online, and think to myself ‘oh, isn’t that cunning.’

I guess my point is, the advertising value of an ARG is likely split along an 80/20 rule: 80% of interest generated by an ARG is in non-participants, through coverage of the campaign or by catching up after the fact online, and 20% is active participants who move the game forward, and aspiring active participants who follow, but don’t actually get to participate for whatever reason.

This is another case of the product being less important that the wider influence the product has on behaviour.  The Dark Knight ARG gets people thinking about the wider world of Batman, even if they aren’t interacting with it.  That’s what matters.

Read more about the Dark Knight ARG here.

narrowing audiences by catering to them.

I was recently attempting to explain why I don't play many videogames to Angus McQuarrie, a friend of mine who is an avid gamer, and on the cusp of starting out in that industry. His assumption was half right, that I don't play more 'complex' (read, non-nintendo) games because I don't get any gratification from them in the short term.

The reason behind this, though, is that the majority of blockbuster videogames are absolutely incomprehensible to me, in terms of control scheme, and game dynamics. I have pretty good reflexes, and I have an excellent academic understanding of different game dynamics, but I am useless at playing a game aimed at the 'hardcore gamer' well enough to enjoy it. Whenever I attempt to play Halo, or GTA, I get killed a dozen times in the first ten minutes, and then think to myself 'There are things I can do that I will actually enjoy' and go off in search of one of those things.

The game is designed with a curve that appeals to the people the game is marketed to. This is the fairly large segment of people, they are the ones who give the aforementioned game franchises opening weekend tallies that embarrass the biggest blockbuster films. But I, and many others, don't fit into it.

I don't speak videogame. Which is fine, except that the games which become pop culture touchstones are entirely inaccessible to me - I can't draw on past experiences, skills developed in previous iterations, and understanding of how to solve a specific problem with the controls that an avid gamer would know intuitively at this point. This is because gaming has, in part, evolved to meet the need of that specific subset of hardcore gamer - to keep them engaged, the references and experiences they have developed needed to be built upon.

When I try to play a game aimed at the hardcore gamer, it's as though I decided Finnegan's Wake would be an excellent follow up to the initial reading experience of Goodnight Moon.

Comics (the mainstream superhero market) has the same problem. The people who buy comics now are the same ones who were buying them 5 years ago. And, to cater to those consumers, continuity is an appalling mess for anyone not intimately familiar with the characters and history, impossible to delve in to. Even ignoring the tendency for Marvel and DC to directly reference events from the mid 80s, certain that the readership will understand, most flagship titles are now written based on the assumption that the reader at least superficially follows another 5 or more titles, within that company alone.

Both of these markets, the hardcore gamer, and the hardcore comic reader, have inherent limits to their size. Consumers will age, lose interest, decide to move on, and the product is not accessible to a larger group of potential new consumers.

The solution to this problem is to challenge and engage people by creating new experiences, not just further refining old ones, increasing the complexity to flatter those who have developed insider status. Nintendo does this, after falling behind in an attempt to compete by refining it's old experiences, by stepping outside of the conventional control scheme. Many comics publishers are doing the same, creating new worlds and content that doesn't re-hash the same tropes and characters as the mainstream successes.

The problem is, that this process of refining and focusing on a mainstream, hardcore consumers in both mediums has gone on for a long time. Long enough that the scope of the medium is conflated with the mainstream successes. It's very difficult to avoid - when I say comics, you think superheroes, and when I say videogames, you think sci-fi, fantasy, or crime - based characters completing tasks in search of reward or advancement. And of course, when the mainstream products all inhabit that genre-space, all media attention further supports that bias.

In short, developing a relationship with your core audience is great, but the potential fallout is altering your product to the point where it will not appeal to anyone else. If you can't continue a relationship with your current followers, without driving other potential customers away, you're doing something wrong on a very basic level.

news!

As of today, as of this post, I am a Mac Panther. That is right, I have finally abandoned the microsoft universe and am now the proud (absurdly proud) owner of a macbook.

What does this mean to the readers of BrokenGentleman.com? Very, very little. But it does mean the beginning of mobile posting, and of more frequent updates. Oh, and of slightly more justification for my apple love.

Thought of the day is the lack of activity in the front of the poster as a narrative medium. I mean, Chris Ware does it, and I have a great Ray Fawkes print sitting on my desk, still awaiting framing, but why is there so little mixture of cartooning techniques with the idea of displaying it as an addition to a room?

More of this later, right now I have to back up 40 gigs of music, carefully and legally purchased over the years.

charles is the best character in webcomics.

Yes. This is accurate and wonderful, like most of Diesel Sweeties.

artificial everywhere.

If you like good ideas, or comics, or know who Warren Ellis is, take a look at the teaser page of script for his new series Doktor Sleepless that went up today.

Artificiality is showing up everywhere, because I suppose it has become obvious to anyone who's looking that being real is no longer a viable option given the state of modern media.

I am very excited about this book, mostly because Ellis is writing it, but also because I want to read his take on the benefits of being a constructed persona rather than a 'real' person.

[I really need to get back to the Artificials Manifesto.]

just because you should see it.

The last post received a long, thoughtful comment by David Mack about the nature of his work.

Read it here, or go look into the comments for the last post.

It leads me to consider whether almost any art form can be considered complete until it has been interacted with by another individual. This will most likely keep me up nights, in the best way. Communication instead of expression. That's something sure to make me smile for a while yet.

Thanks, this made my day.

[EDIT: Link corrected.]

accessibility versus disposability.

I was re-reading a few issues David Mack’s Kabuki the other day, and if you have ever seen anything he’s painted or drawn, you can understand why I had a moment that could be described as an immediate questioning of the definitions and limitations of the standard public definition of 'fine art'. It’s almost impossible for me to describe what reading an issue of Kabuki is like, except to say that it’s beautiful, engaging, and always feels to me like staring directly into innovation as a concept. The man tells stories in a way that seems completely new regardless if an issue or arc is read once or a dozen times. He mixes media, he shifts styles, and, from the one time I spoke to him at a Toronto comics convention, he does it without becoming arrogant, pretentious, or self-important in the least.

While those qualities alone would separate him from the ranks of ‘fine art’ in the eyes on many, many sarcastic people I know, I would assume he also has to deal with at least some level of ghetto-isation based on the vast amount of his work that is in the medium of comics. This raises questions. It can’t be said that any devaluation is an inherent part of created a reproducible work, because otherwise Starlight Over Rhone wouldn’t be considered fine art, as reproductions of it have been sold hundreds of thousands of times, on postcards, posters, prints, etc. This argument could be taken further (and, horrifyingly, I could reference Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art as Mechanical Reproduction) but I’d rather skip ahead to the current state of the artistic image, which is that anything that exists does so in a state of endless reproduction. Welcome to the digital world.

So, reproduction is out. Access into major galleries is circular reasoning at best (it’s not in the Tate because it’s not Art, which I can tell because it isn’t in the Tate), so the next thing to discuss is whether accessibility is a negative trait, and whether it is confused with disposability.

Kabuki (the last issue I bought) retails for $4.25 Canadian. Collections of past issues are readily available at any truly decent comic shop, and back issues are often still available for order. Kabuki is something that can be owned and enjoyed by anyone who reads it. There are original pages, and from what I can tell they can be purchased. The separation is that the reproduced option, the comic itself, is the intended form for consumption. This might be because Mack is a talented artist who just happens to love comics, it may be for specific benefits of the medium (such as being able to create complex and decipherable meanings while making beautiful static images), or it might both and many other things besides. However, this seems to be the point that people feel lets them argue that such a thing isn’t fine art.

I think this ties into the conflation of accessibility and disposability. I make the same mistake, and often drunkenly explain to people that any band who is loved universally has run out of meaningful things to say. This argument falls apart with the example of the Beatles, who were both insanely commercially successful, and unquestionably of artistic merit. Graphic art has different rules, however. Gallery art, where there is a single ‘true’ piece, fulfills needs of exclusivity and scarcity. There is only one Starlight Over Rhone, and everything else is a copy. The intended form of the painting is only the painting, reproductions are merely that. But a comic book is different. The original art is part of the process of creating the mass material. A comic is, more often than not, a universally accessible work of art, one that many can own, experience, and interpret. What confuses me is the assumption that because something is available and accessible, it must therefore be disposable. The assumption that because nearly anyone in North American society who cares to look can own an issue of Kabuki, it is somehow diminished in value, suggests that ‘fine art’ is not a concern of meaning, ability, or quality, but instead that meaning, like taste, is directly attached to having something others cannot. That ‘great’ artworks are those which only one person can own, attach to themselves as a statement of worth, and then loan to galleries in a gesture of generosity crossed with self-adoration.

I guess, at the end of it, I was re-reading issues of Kabuki, and I suddenly found it very depressing that David Mack’s work could be dismissed by anyone because of his choice of an accessible, available medium, with characteristics that no other has. I do, however, think that the commodification of visual art has lead to a situation where, beyond the confusion of comics as a genre, rather than a medium, there is brilliant work that melds both visual art and story seamlessly, which isn’t getting the recognition it deserves.

Then again, people are still complaining about Damien Hirst, so I suppose definitions of art are even tighter than the idea of exclusivity and scarcity.

[EDIT: David Mack's own thoughts are in the comment thread. Read them, and understand the intention of the artist rather than my own somewhat clumsy ramblings.]