If you’re a gamer you know what an NPC is. If you’re not - it stands for non-player character.
While that’s technically any game character you don’t directly control, it usually connotes those that range from neutral to helpful (not obviously hostile).
I don’t play many video games these days. Back when I did, you could expect NPCs to be one or more of the following:
- Irrelevant. Some NPCs were just world-filler. Citizens loitering or wandering aimlessly around a town. Click on ‘em and they’d spout off one of a few set phrases, but it ended there.
- Pushy. Some NPCs wanted you to do stuff for them. Kill this dragon, find that scroll, whatever. Get close enough and they’d run up, bump into you, and say something like, “Hey! I need to talk to you.” Oh really? They’d promise you something in return.
- Repetitive. NPCs were prone to having the same conversation with you over and over again. No matter how many times they saw you. Just in case you forgot their bit of the story I suppose.
I smell an analogy.
But NPCs are integral to any game (at least ones with stories). You can’t get very far without them. And when they’re well-done, they can make a game more immersive, more entertaining, and even inspire affection.
Video game makers have gotten better at their craft. Not only in terms of NPCs, but the entire experience. For example:
- Branching dialogue. Letting players influence NPC interactions - and ultimately game outcomes - enhances game depth and replayability. Does your brand offer choices? And do the choices matter, or is it the same old conversation after all?
- Non-linearity. Non-linear play means no longer having to go from NPC to quest to NPC to quest ’til the damn thing is over with. Providing ways to stay engaged without dictating every last step. Is your brand like a sandbox, or a Skinner box? What kind of environment can you create?
- Being human. On a low level this means better simulacra. On a higher level, maybe it means just doing a really good job of enabling people to play with each other. Does your brand encourage people to connect with one another? Does it get better with more people involved? Or are you a single-player game?
Overlap and social media. Farewell 2008.
Haven’t posted much lately, but felt compelled to close out the year with a final something. Which got me thinking about overlap. And then social media. And then overlap again.
We pin such hope and significance to a new year. This is a sort of collective bargain we’ve struck with our calendars. It works for us because time is measured just so and we can say: “2008 is over now. And now it’s 2009.” Brand new year, unsullied by last year. No overlap.
This go-round we even get a whole leap second between the two.
But that second serves as a small reminder - our calendars and clocks aren’t perfect. Our ability to measure is precise, yet the lines on the ruler arbitrary. Lurking behind the fun of the meaning we make for a new year is the same old flow of time - no-fun, plain-jane continuity.
A new year is new in name, but not in kind. New in perception, but not mechanism.
Bringing me to what we call social media.
Which seems to be the subject of much chatter and tension of late. On the one hand we’ve witnessed the rise of “social media experts” and entire agencies devoted to its commercial application. On the other hand, an undercurrent of hard questions.
Herd in the last couple weeks has gone straight at the nut of it - first saying that social media isn’t media, and then that it’s not even about information transmission. (To clarify, he’s referring to media and information from a standard business/marketer perspective - that media are tubes and information are messages.)
So what is social media then? His take is that “real communication is gestural in nature - it’s about what you do and what you see others doing.” Then later: “It’s about people. People watching and listening and interacting with other people.”
And it occurred to me that overlap might be a useful term for this.
Human interactions are an intermittent but ongoing stream of overlap and evaluation, with reference to power, attraction, exchange, and social objects/markers. Overlap can be real, fake, aspirational or assymetrical. And sometimes - you just like what you see, cut around the edges, and copy the next guy. It’s what we’ve always done. It’s what social media helps us do now in ways we never could.
What we call social media is new in name, but not in kind. New in perception, but not mechanism. The tools and tech indeed are new. It does inspire, but there is hard work ahead. Like a new year’s resolution.
(Special thanks to this post from Mike Arauz, which was another mental input in thinking on this.)