The point of all this is that ultimately, the media outlet that creates the most rewarding, engaging experience will attract the people. That’s not an answer to the monetization question, but it’s a precursor: Without the mass public interacting with your stuff, you won’t make a dime.

In a massively interactive media environment like the one we have now, game design and game dynamics hold important lessons for crafting a meaningful and rewarding user experience.

Audience members, readers or listeners don’t really exist any more. We need to think of users, and the winners in this arena will be the media organizations that can give their users the most meaningful and rewarding user experience.

Of course, the interactive medium that excels at making people feel engaged and rewarded is gaming. Our users will find more value if we can structure our media to allow them to be players.

I think game design in general is where many of the answers will lie. For journalism, Alternate Reality Games specifically hold five important lessons.

I think the lanuage of sustainability is good here – I get really annoyed when I see millionaire entrepreneurs laying off staff who were on $25K a year because they can’t make the returns on investment that VCs require, even though the business could pay the salaries of everyone involved quite easily. The VC poker-game model of funding businesses is pretty rapacious in the way it deals with the creative minds that power the companies at employee level.

Money’s clearly needed to keep things working, to fund development, to pay people, maintain infrastructure, but the point at which great ideas get shelved because someone can’t make 20% a year return on their investment is the point at which I side with the employees and those who need the tech to keep going in order to help the poor…

Balance, in everything

x

@Steve Cheers for the recommendation, I will check out Pat’s book.

I totally agree that Christian’s points were very important to make – particularly the work being done over SMS in Zimbabwe.

However, I don’t think I could screw the monetization completely.

It’s difficult when I talk about community, or experience, or happiness as people tend to plonk me into the “fluffy” camp and fluffy doesn’t have much to do with “hard” business.

Yet to me these elements have everything to do with business because you are selling to human beings and, as a species, we all respond well to products or services that make us feel good (in however small a way).

Seth Godin probably puts it better than I when he talks about the experience of Starbucks.

this ties in really well with Pat Kane’s book ‘The Play Ethic, which he referenced in his keynote at Media140. well worth a read.

Also, on a heavier note, Victor Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ is pretty amazing on the deeper side of this topic. Puts lots of things in perspective.

I loved what Christian Payne said at Media140 – basically, screw the monetization, let’s look at how this technology can liberate and empower the poor and the marginalized. It’s a question that can certainly be asked in local news, given the unique reach that local papers have, an the opportunity to speak on behalf of local communities that otherwise don’t have a voice.

http://www.43folders.com/2007/06/14/stefan-sagmeister-on-design-and-happiness

Thanks for helping making media140 a success