Vex Appeal is a weblog and collection of projects by Guy Parsons, a game designer, online community and digital strategy dude in London, England. Read more about the saucy butcher boy here.
subscribe to VA by feed or email by clicking the thingy:
projects:
law 37 / sleeper cell / lets change the game
101 things in 1001 days
psychopatch
LOLgod
elsewhere on the internets:
flickr
myspace
zoominfo
linkedin
facebook
guy.lewis.parsons@gmail.com
vexy young things:
jey biddulph
mike jewell
roo reynolds
dan hon
adrian hon
naomi alderman
steve peters
previously on vexappeal:
Back soon... Free Moshi Monsters Codes Spokeo... or spookeo, more like I'm Prove Very Where J.C Leyendecker and Team Fortress 2 Train of thought "Love Is Like A Bottle Of Gin..." Links for FAME people They Tell Stories Ffffudging it slightly
Mixed business
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Some stuff I've meant to be blogging...
First. I'm working for a PR agency at the moment. It's good, and not just because of the office doggins, who is frankly adorable. Online stuff is all a bit new for them (and PR is likewise new for me) so we're making it up as we go along, in the best possible sense. I think the main difference is that most bloggers and social media types aren't sitting there at 2pm going "fuck, I have to file something in 45 minutes time" desperate for anything vaguely resembling a story. It's just a tougher sell, and rightly so.
Talking about journalistic desperation for a story, another office feature is the big widescreen TV permanently tuned to News 24. I think it makes us look up-to-the-minute when clients come in or something... anyway, you sense a deep and abiding longing for stories to Go Big. They spent a whole day filing reports from the North of England about how it was "almost flooding" and how "nervous" the populace was. And of course the Heathrow "crash" was reported on exclusively for 4 hours solid. You end up rooting for the reporters who are in turn rooting for something to burst into flames, go bankrupt or resign from the very highest levels of government. Something, anything, to not play the Amy Winehouse crack-smoking footage for the fifth time that hour. Charlie Brooker, as always, is damningly accurate on the topic of 24 Hour "News":
Warren Ellis, meanwhile, shows us that television is best not just ignored but destroyed completely.
Another side effect of the new PR gig is that I'm now the proud owner of all of the RSS feeds Anthony reads (for it's him I'm covering for, while he's in Brazil) imported into my Netvibes wholesale, so I'm reading a metric ton of new blogs. It turns out there's this whole sphere of ad /marketing people blogging very interestingly about all sorts of things, but ultimately every time I see the word "creative" used as a noun it makes me want to vomit blood out of my eye sockets. (As in "that's a great piece of creative" or "I'm a creative" or whatever.)
Onwards. Two great articles about the otherwise opaque world of financial trading have been doing the rounds recently: this quasi-walkthrough at the London Review of Books and an interview with a hedge fund manager at n+1, and although a bit dense in places is actually all the more interesting for it. There's something good about jargon. I always like to look over the bridge column in yer quality paper:
Borker (North) and Doub were using the weak no-trump, opening one no-trump with 12-14 points. So North had to start with one club. South used an inverted minor-suit raise, promising at least four clubs and game-invitational or stronger values... Now West entered the auction with a two-diamond overcall, leaving North unsure what to do. He contemplated doubling, but was not certain how it would have been interpreted by his partner.Absolutely no idea what's going on there, but it sounds great. It's like calling the final card in Texas Hold 'Em "the river" rather than, I don't know, "the final card." I played some poker with my mates the other day and cleaned up thanks to my erratic, n00bish betting that remained impervious to any reasonable analysis. Emboldened by this victory (and then reading all about kids younger than me making millions) I had a quick go online for play-money and found it to be the dullest gaming experience of my entire life. I had to go and play Team Fortress 2 for twelve hours straight just to take the bad taste away, seriously.
J.J Abrams (of Lost, Alias, Cloverfield... and Mission Impossible III)giving an entertaining talk on 'mystery' at T.E.D:
Now, I think this is interesting, because it helps explain the central failing of Lost, which is the lack of answers, or satisfying answers at least. Basically he's saying that speculating and wondering is such fun, why bother with actual answers? It's a bit like saying "being hungry for something to eat is a pleasure... so let's just never eat." The problem with Lost is it never committed to the idea of an unsolvable mystery, or a central Rorschach blot of a mystery which we could interpret as we'd like. (cf. the Blair Witch in the epynomous project, where it's clearly an intentional blank page for you to ascribe your worst fears to.) Instead it keeps the viewer hooked with the promise of finally finding out what's going on. So all told, I think Abrams' idea of a Mystery Box is more likely to crop up in specific, constrained instances (like film) to create a particular effect. He seems to think that "what happens next?" is itself a Mystery Box - I disagree. It's the difference between the box you open and the box you don't. Lost, of course, is a series of nested Matryoshka-doll style Mystery Boxes.
= = =
OK, I think I'm about done here for now. Oh, I think I'm moving to Oxford soon, so if you know
of any two-bed places or thereabouts going free in the next three months or so, give me a nudge. And in a week's time I'll let you know the outcome of the Let's Change The Game adventure!
Labels: 24 hour news, j.j abrams, jargon, lost, me, poker, PR, warren ellis
book up look sharp
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
So Mike quite likes the notebook aesthetic of my earlier 8 things post, and because I'm accomodating (or because I desperately crave the approval of my peers) I thought I'd upload a few pages from my notebook that I've been doodling stuff in for the past few months. I would do more, but I seem to have put it in the shapeless void called somewhere.
Click to make with the legibility, or go straight to my Flickr.
8 things and all that
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
So I got tagged and all that. I can't really say they're eight random things about myself, though. The choice of things is hardly random is it? It's one of those very flat choices where at one threshold nothing qualifies as sufficiently interesting and yet if you dial back the criteria of "interesting" but a notch or two suddenly everything becomes an option. "I did a poo the other day." Or as I call it, "Twitter-level discourse."
I stopped Twittering and it's odd because since then I've continued to reach into my jacket pocket to whip out the old mobile and share a frightfully banal observation with the world. I think for me - maybe it's not like it with everyone - it was more about the act of transcribing my brain or "living out loud" than actually communicating. Like, if you were with a friend, you might go "Oh look, cute puppy." And Twitter lets you do that even if there's nobody with you. Probably how the first conversations went, people just enjoying the fact that ideas could be swapped.
Caveman 1: "Tree."
Caveman 2: "Yes, tree."
The thing is though Twitter becomes about filling a gap in a conversation that didn't previously exist, and sharing common experience with people who don't have the experience in common with you. It sort of becomes a new way to "think to yourself..." "what a wonderful world" or perhaps "SPARROWS ARE MY SECOND FAVOURITE BIRD" or whatever. It literalises the process of experiencing stuff. I don't know, I wonder if geeks are inclined towards it because their thoughts are so loud in their own heads and Twitter gives them a way to process it all. I wonder if everyone did it.,and then you took it away, the annoyance wouldn't come from the inability to text all your friends at once, but the tearing apart of "being" and "saying I'm being." Pics 140 characters to my friends, or it didn't happen.
Overall, my experience of it is that it's very much about talking rather than listening or even conversing and everyone knows people that only care about what they have to say get old awful fast.
Anyway, first and last meme that will ever grace this blog. Click to "big me up", so to speak.
All quiet on the western front
Sunday, December 02, 2007
It's been a bit quiet around here as I live my nomadic lifestyle, wandering between a friend's house in north London during the week and the family nest at the weekend. All a bit disorientating... I really have to sort myself out with someplace to live in the Big Smoke soon.
Blown away by this video:
Raph Koster wonders why there aren't more MMOG/ARG crossovers, followed by a load of the usual crap in the comments about "OMG TINAG!" Woohoo.
Also, been totally sucked in to Team Fortress 2. It's utter genius... more on that soon!
Labels: arg, imogen heap, me, mmog, team fortress 2, tf2
A Raw Deal
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Woo, yay and hoopla...
I'm off to join the fine folks at Raw TV on Monday for a coupla months or thereabouts, so I'll be in London (again) plenty - Kentish Town to be exact. I'm going to be working on developing a project that will hopefully turn out to be really cool and inspiring, upon which I'll not elaborate further for the time being.
Anyway, I'm in yr NW5, researchin ur digital offerings. Keep an eye out!
Labels: london, me, raw tv, work
Bye Candy
Sunday, July 15, 2007
So, I'm leaving Mind Candy in a month or so's time.
It's been a fantastic ride with some extremely talented colleagues and, equally, the insanely wonderful members of the Perplex City community, whom it has been a sincere privilege to serve. Along the way I've fretted over customer support, produced video podcasts, organised events, designed puzzles, spent long evenings in deeply involved discussion at the local pub, impersonated a busker, struggled to describe my job to my parents, and quietly become the fourth most long-standing employee. All in all - a total blast, and a dizzy ascent from ARG n00b to my current role as Game Designer. I'm looking forward to spending my final month working on some extremely fun writing assignments for the ever more ass-kicking [REDACTED] project, before moving on to fresh new challenges elsewhere. Sometimes it's just time for a new start, you know?
What sort of challenges will they be? Well, more stuff to do with community building, social media, customer conversations, interactive entertainment, online narrative and other exciting webby concepts, I hope. There's vast swathes of the corporate landscape that are only just latching onto this sort of stuff, so hopefully whatever ends up being next, I can help a few more people 'get it.' (Which doesn't necessarily mean getting an island in Second-bleedin'-Life.)
In the meantime, I'll be retrospectively blogging about the Perplex City community managing experience, and talking about Perplex City, ARGs, chaotic fiction and more besides at The Writer/Reader Mashup seminar, London, on September 27th. (It's free!)
(LinkedIn. Email.)
Labels: arg, arrivederci, me, mind candy, perplex city