Things of note for the week ending Sunday July 31, 2022

INTRO

There wasn’t going to be a newsletter this week.

It’s 1030am on Sunday morning as I fire up Substack. Today is the first day since Monday I’ve woken up feeling human after suffering a good six days with my second bout of Covid. It has not been fun.

But today? Today I definitely feel better. The family are playing Minecraft together (the youngest is teaching Mumma how to play – and it’s going well) and I’ve probably got an hour or so to see if I can knock out a quick newsletter. What do you think? Can we do it? Worth a try, right?

I know there’s a a decent selection of links saved in the #5things bookmarks so let’s knuckle down and see what we can see.

Maybe we can crank out a swift one before anyone notices.

Our secret, OK?

LET’S GET TO IT.

1. YOUR WEEKLY METAVERSE BS

Believe it or not, I am loathe to keep regular themes in this newsletter. Preferring instead to switch up the topics as and when but honestly, every time I think I can put this particular hot potato down for a bit, something makes it bubble right back up again.

The ‘Metaverse? What Metaverse?’ talk is is coming up on 6k views and the public and private notes of endorsement keep growing. Thank you to everyone who has written in. I set out to make it useful, to help equip you with better questions to ask when faced with metaverse presentations and pitches, and by and large, from what I’m hearing this has achieved that goal 😊

Let’s have a look at the latest metaverse news/data you should be across:

• The VMAs search for relevancy continues with a newly announced ‘Best Metaverse Performance’ category. Upon closer inspection of the nominees, these are all, of course all video games.

• “The Metaverse Will Be at Least 30% Of Every Creative Agency’s Business in the Next Few Years” – no evidence at all to support this laughable, unproven horse manure that went completely unchallenged. Jokers.

• Investors can’t afford to see the world through rose-tinted VR goggles.

• Metaverse jobs are disappearing as hiring slows. Bloomberg reporting the dropoff coincides with broader hiring slowdown in tech and employers recalibrating hiring needs based on incoming recession concerns. The article illustrates this point with this perfect chart:

In FB/Meta news.

• First FB/Meta put up the price of its two-year old headset, the Meta Quest II, by £100/$100 (citing component costs). Same hardware, new expensive price. What.

• Then the FTC blocked FB/Meta’s purchase of a VR company (Within). The agency argues the deal would put Facebook’s parent company one step closer “to its ultimate goal of owning the entire ‘Metaverse’”. I mean, aside from this being really odd generally (feels small fry tbh – the FTC clutching at straws perhaps), this is yet another nail in FB/M’s ‘innovate or buy’ strategy.

• Then FB/Meta posted its first ever quarterly sales decline.

• And in that earnings report, it revealed FB/Meta’s VR division, Reality Labs (remember them?), reported a loss of $2.81b.

So let’s review:

If your Meta rep has asked you to pop ‘round to ‘share their vision of the metaverse’ anytime soon, please please please keep this stuff in your back pocket.

There’s no value in brand investment in this space right now. None. And if you are investing – specifically in Meta’s vision for the space – then there’s a good chance you’re propping up their losses (with your own).

Eyes open, folks.

…

Finally on this section, I know my output on this topic comes across as being a nay-sayer. I get that. And I can see why you might land there. Personally, I prefer the label researcher. I like data. I like human behaviour. When it comes to data points, I prefer millions vs hundreds.

And as I said last week: this isn’t rocket science, this is reading.

So the next time you’re faced with a ridiculous metaverse number (be that users, or predicted spend or whatever) do yourself a favour and go the extra click.

Don’t just accept it at face value. Look at the source, check the methodology, do the due diligence – and really challenge yourself to try and see what’s really going on.

That is all.

2. GOOD SHOUT

You may remember my friend and TikTok muse Amy Kean used to run a thing called Practice Makes Unperfect. Back then, PMU was about getting more women speaking at conferences and events. And after literally hundreds of people going through the course, Amy made the decision to wind it down (you can read more about that decision here).

In its place, and with a refreshed team and vision, the amazing GOOD SHOUT has been born.

GOOD SHOUT, in Amy’s words, is a new training programme that helps people experiment with their voice, their talent & their thinking, through social learning.

Covering topics such as:

– how to use your voice
– presentation skills
– how to be more creative
– how to get better chemistry in your working relationships
– how to listen
– how to have a ‘realer’ culture
– how to write better at work
– AND (Amy’s favourite) how to be WEIRDER.

Private courses have been running already and the first publicly available course is being run in September. If this is something you’re interested in, or if you know someone who could learn or benefit from it, then get in touch via the detals below.

Amy is great. Her team is fantastic. I can’t recommend this enough.

3. THIS WEEK IN… GAMING

I’ve been sick this week so I’ve been gaming. A LOT.

GAMES I’VE PLAYED THIS WEEK

• I picked up, played, and finished STRAY (aka ‘the cat game’ – pictured at the top of this newsletter). It is charming and only really a 7hr playthrough. It’s free as part of PlayStation Plus Extra (mid-tier plus) or £25 from the store. Worth a go – moreso if you love cats.

• No Man’s Sky dropped a new update ‘Endurance’, along with a new expedition, ‘Polestar’. I updated to the former and played through the latter. Expeditions are a great way to get back into NMS. If you’re an OG player, boot it up and start a new save with an expedition – they’re really good.

• What Remains of Edith Finch. Annapurna Interactive (also the publisher of Stray) dropped a free next-gen update to this earlier in the week and I used that as an excuse to finally give this a playthrough. You can do it in a couple of hours and if you haven’t, then you absolutely should play this absolute pinnacle piece of gaming-as-a-storytelling-artform.

Gaming news worth knowing about:

• For those that do, the next wave of Mario Kart 8 DLC drops on Thursday August 4th. Here’s a trailer.

• Maker of Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar, has ‘cleaned up’ its frat-boy culture and with it, Grand Theft Auto too (apparently). If this is true, then GTA6 might be the first GTA I play (I’ve never liked or enjoyed the series’ depiction of women – so this change is welcome, if belated).

• An early look at the user experience for PSVR2 (this is a day one purchase for me).

• How streaming stars pay the price of fame (hard reading).

• GQ getting dragged for being idiots about gaming is great.

• This is a little old but coming from a highly inclusive and toxic-free clan myself, I can really get onboard with the idea of ‘low sodium gaming’.

• This is a VERY GOOD thread from Ukie’s comms lead on video games and well-being. A worthwhile read.

Got anything gaming in your head?
Wanna chat about it?
Hit that reply button.

PS. Gamescom diary is filling up. Going? Give me a nudge.

4. THE BROKEN PROMISES OF UTOPIA AND THE RELENTLESSLY OPTIMISTIC NIHILISM OF MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

I bet you didn’t wake up this morning thinking you’d need this presentation about dystopia, resilience, feminism, mythology, and optimistic nihilism (but most importantly, high-octane car chases in a post-apocalyptic wasteland) in your life did you?

Well, you do.

If you enjoy it, then head to Twitter and say thank you to the outrageously smart Jenny Chang, for generously sharing the contents of her head once again.

5. ‘PLEASE FORGET YOUR SCARF IN MY LIFE…’

I love this.

-via the must follow Nikita Gill.

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• Here’s 8mins and 24s of that Joni Mitchell surprise appearance that was all over the feeds last week. I can’t watch this and not cry. Incredible. More here. And more.

• Five brands breaking women’s health taboos.

• OH MY GOD these TMNT Pixel 6 skins are awesome.

• I was reminded this week of the time I had some digital art exhibiting at the Saatchi Gallery (and not a single NFT in sight).

• If you liked Obi-Wan Kenobi, you might be interested in the backstory to the film/series.

• Watch The OA. Also, #SaveTheOA.

• Alex Myers lambasting Edelman’s ‘ZEO’ is word perfect.

• Some lovely Cox on Cox action.

• Also of note: Edelman banging on about LGBTQIA+ and then winning Saudi Arabia as a client (the embedded tweets here say it all).

• Revelation vs Insight (Richard Huntingdon on excellent form, as standard)

• THE LINE. Real life, not a dystopian sci-fi series Netflix pitch.

• Advertising makes us unhappy. Correlation or causation?

• Marques Brownlee wants to help you create viral videos (this is a great read, I really like MKBHD – and this piece shows why he’s one of the best).

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

Everyone keeps asking me if I’ve read Matthew Ball’s new book ‘The Metaverse’. I haven’t. I am going to. However someone also asked me what I thought of Snowcrash last week and I realised I hadn’t read that either. Oops.

So I bought Snowcrash, which I’m reading now. And then I’ll move onto Ball.

OK? OK.

(Have you read them? What did you think? Hit reply and tell me)

In the meantime, it’s 13:35. Bacon sandwiches have been consumed and the rest of the day beckons. I hope you’ve had a restful weekend and let’s catch up soon. The summer is here and it’s time to get outside and see people – maybe you included.

Big love,

Whatley out x

Things of note for the week ending Friday, July 22nd 2022

INTRO

My philosophy on life has changed significantly over the past five or so years. It’s funny. Two rounds of therapy, a suicide attempt, and a pandemic will do that – I guess.

I found the above image (source) a couple of months ago and I just keep coming back to it. We are here for such a short time. Against the backdrop of the amusing, enlightening, and inspiring JWST perspective from last week (link again in case you missed it), I just wanted to reiterate: nothing matters – and that’s ok – so if you can, please, find some ways to enjoy yourself.

Take a breath, think about what’s important, hug the people you love (and include yourself in that), and smile into the rest of your day.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives, right?

Do the thing. Make the leap. Tell that person you love them. And if it doesn’t work out, you tried. Trying and failing is infinitely better than doing nothing at all.

I promise.

…

OK. So. That was quite the primer! I did not see that coming. Shall we crack on with THE THINGS?

OK, LET’S GO.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

1. YOUR WEEKLY METAVERSE BS

Because honestly, between butt-hurt metaverse gurus on Linkedin and the ridiculous excuse of regurgitated PR that is the [occasional] excuse for industry/trade “journalism” (we’ll come back to that), we are still calling this ridiculousness out.

In the past few days, a couple of people tagged me in this:

‘Our map of the metaverse worlds: find a virtual home now’

“The metaverse is a new canvas for creativity, but the hyped up trend wave could snuff all the incredible out of a good thing. We must see past the hype and build the future. Blinded by a shiny new thing, a nearsighted pursuit of rapid innovation can lead to a misuse of technology. With flashy acts that don’t contribute to overall brand business objectives, the fun is over before it ever even really begins.”

And I honestly don’t know where to start with the levels of disinformation contained within. To put that quote on the same page as the above image is such a phenomenal self-own, I can’t quite believe it’s still live.

1. These are not metaverse ‘worlds’. The names mentioned are either desolate website wastelands OR video games or VR platforms.

2. ‘Metaverse worlds’ is an oxymoron, ya moron. Any background reading or literally any serious attempt at a definition of what ‘the metaverse’ might be one day, clearly delineates that this space will be persistent, interoperable, and singular. In short, you’ll be in one metaverse and move between them seamlessly. You can’t just back-pedal a metaverse ‘worlds’ definition onto video games because you’ve woken up soiled in Web3.

3. The sizing of the ‘infographic’ is WAY off. Fortnite’s numbers next to Decentraland’s make no sense. ‘Here’s a K! Here’s an M! – they’re the same!’ they are not.

4. The MAUs are as incorrect as they are misleading (google it).

5. For some unknown reason ‘Fearless Girl’ is in there too, is it because she is an NFT now? My dudes (because a pound to a penny this was signed off by dudes), NFTs ≠ the metaverse.

She’s right, y’know.

Because I had 15mins between meetings on Wednesday and – to be quite honest – I still find it utterly baffling that people pay buffoons to mutter the likes of Sandbox and Decentraland in the same sentence as Fortnite and Roblox, I made a few charts.

The first one was taking the MAUs supplied by this ‘map’ at face value, combining it with the DAU data I could find, and then representing what that data looks like with a bit more meaning (and by ‘a bit more’ I mean ‘more than zero’).

If you can see it, then it’s a video game.

If you can’t see it, then thems those clothes the emperor has been wanging on about so much lately.

For real.

Check this out: someone made a live user counter for Decentraland. It’s amazing! Click, scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see.

As I write to you the number says ‘Total Users: 750’.

And yet clients are giving up their marketing dollars to pay for this horse manure.

Anyway. I rewrote the ‘map’.

Updated with DAU actuals across the board (aside from Horizon – telling that Facebook doesn’t publish this figure) and updated definitions (video games, websites, etc), this is a slightly more realistic version of the ‘metaverse map’.

Realistic insofar that it shows real numbers. The interoperability, persistence, and random addition of NFTs in the middle of it all were just too much to bother about.

My goodness, this stuff makes me cross.

You can tweet it or post it on LinkedIn or whatever, or just print it and stick it above your desk at work or at home. Hell, laminate it if you want.

The point is: if you see the original repurposed anywhere, hit reply with the updated stats or just send them this way.

We make no changes unless we collectively work to prevent this disease from spreading across our industry.

………………………………

UPDATE: since drafting this section, S4 has issued a profit warning, slicing £30m off EBITDA forecasts and stating spiraling staff costs as a problem:

“The staff costs issue, it clarified, is concentrated in its content practice. It still expects its data and digital media practice and technology services practice to deliver “healthy” EBITDA margins for the full year.” –

It is a difficult year for everyone. Maybe let’s stop selling things that aren’t real to clients that don’t need them and then maybe people can keep their jobs?

………………………………

I mentioned PR as trade ‘journalism’ earlier.

Here’s why:

This isn’t rocket science. This is reading.

I clicked on the link and it said:

“The artists were briefed on the project and told to “showcase an electrified interpretation of how the Nissan Ariya is a ‘ray of hope’ within each of their cities”.

Each artwork is influenced by the Japanese-inspired design of the Ariya but the artists were encouraged to use their own personal style and story in their pieces.

The images will be shown in digital and on large-format outdoor sites while also presenting consumers with a QR code.”

Guess where the QR code takes them. Go on guess.

“You can literally step into it with a Meta Quest headset for a fully immersive experience or explore it in 3D on your mobile or computer.”

It’s a website.

“Car lovers will be able to enter the metaverse using the QR code and experience the artwork in a truly immersive way.”

I have a question.

Sorry to be a dick about it but out of curiosity how many people passing ‘large-format outdoor sites’ will be carrying their Meta Quest headsets in their bags?

Oh, and while we’re at it: Meta Quest is not the metaverse.
It’s a self-contained VR platform made by Facebook.

Also! Exploring a ‘3D website’ on your mobile or computer is not the metaverse.
It’s just a website! Oy.

…and breathe…

OK, I think we’re done here.

If you are a brand or a client and you’re still unsure about this, hit reply to this email – I just want to talk. If you’re looking at your 2023 planning briefs at the moment and you’ve got a couple of slides near the back with the words ‘the metaverse is coming’ on them, then take a good long hard look at yourself and ask ‘Why is this here?’

Have you had too many free breakfasts at the Facebook offices? Has your media agency been told it has to find extra money in the budget because they bent over backwards to win your business last year? Or are you putting it in the deck because you think if you don’t then you might not be seen as ‘innovative’?

Whatever it is, stop. It is dangerous – for your budget, for your ROI, for your job – and it will deliver zero brand growth.

2. THE WHALE DYING ON THE MOUNTAIN

This is a gentle, timely, and somewhat beautiful read.

We don’t have long.

3. THIS WEEK IN… GAMING

This week I’m playing: Neon White with my colleagues in Bristol, new Hot Wheels DLC for Forza Horizon 5 (it’s ridic) and, hopefully, I’ll get a chance later today to dive into the latest FREE update to No Man’s Sky, ‘Endurance’ – which has been described as ‘Captaining it up like Picard’ – in.

Some quick links for you:

• STRAY aka ‘The Cat Game’ has been reviewing incredibly well. I haven’t bought it yet because, well, see above. But if you’re a PlayStation Plus Extra subscriber (I am not – a longer story for another day about me banking too much Plus for years ahead) you get it as part of your sub. Nice! I’ll probably pick it up once I’m done with Horizon Forbidden West (still yet to finish that).

• OH MY GOD. A super fan collected every Super Nintendo game manual and made them free. You can read them all HERE. MY GOD, THE MEMORIES!

• This week I learnt: Xbox uses blockchain tech to help game creators check royalties and profits. New tech that is useful! Hooray!

• On the opposite side of that coin, Microsoft-owned Mojang Studios announced this week that NFTs would not be appearing in Minecraft. Hooray! Some good back and forth on this here.

• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is still one of the greatest adaptations ever (AGREED).

• A long long time ago, I wrote an article about how the advertising industry’s self-governing body, the ASA, needed to get tougher with industry-based social media rule-breakers or else the government would step in and do it for them. A few years later, the CMA stepped in to do just that. Reading this piece about how the DCMS has stopped short of banning loot boxes, it feels like we are in a similar space. Who will move first? The industry or the government.

And finally, my agency – Diva – is a sponsor of the ongoing thought pieces ‘Playable Futures’ on GamesIndustry.biz. The latest is an interview with the always fantastic Anna Rafferty from Lego. Her thoughts on ‘Rubber Safety Mulch’ give me even more confidence in Lego’s partnership with Epic. I can’t wait to see more.

4. THE TALL BENCHES OF COPENHAGEN

10 benches in Copenhagen have been raised by 1 meter (3.28 feet) and set up in prominent areas of the city. A copper plate on each bench reads:

“Flooding will become part of our everyday life unless we start doing something about our climate. According to the latest UN Climate Report sea levels are expected to rise by up to 1 meter before 2100 if global warming continues.”

A haunting way to illustrate an impending problem.

More.

5. ‘I WANT YOUR INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT’

First came the threatening texts, followed by the SWAT teams. Then someone wound up dead.

This is as chilling as it is nuts. Eesh.

BONUS SECTION

BONUS LINK CHROME TAB COMBO BREAKER INCOMING – THIS WEEK SOURCED FROM TWITTER LIKES AND LINKEDIN COMMENTS BECAUSE WHY NOT

• Elle McCarthy on incredible form re: RvW (warning: this is a hard read).

• QR codes in OOH. The good, the bad, and the (usually) ugly.

• Someone thought this was a good idea.

• This is fun.

• On bringing your whole self to work.

• This is what crap Fortnite looks like.

• Chased by the Black Dog.

• The holy anarchy of fun.

• Augmented Reality contact lenses are getting closer…

• Thor Love and Thunder spoiler (but if you’ve seen it, this is lovely).

• A good long read with Mark Manson on the subtle art of not giving a…

• If, like me, you find yourself in a Premier Inn from time to time, here’s how to reset and retune the Samsung TVs within. Magic.

• Instagram: TikTok is coming! Quick! Do Something!

• Everyone keeps asking me what I think of Matthew Ball’s new book ‘The Metaverse’ – I will read it (I haven’t – I’ve ordered it). In the short term, I have read his piece in TIME magazine and listened to his appearance on Decoder. Both are excellent. For what it’s worth, someone challenged me about the definition of Metaverse re: Snowcrash and I realised I hadn’t read that either. So Snowcrash first, then Metaverse. OK? OK.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

Thanks for reading.

If you liked this week’s newsletter, please forward it to someone. I’m edging towards 3000 subs and it’d be nice to hit that number for no other reason than vanity x

I love you 3000,

Whatley out x

PS. Are you going to Gamescom? Hit reply and say hi.

Things of note for the week ending Sunday, July 17th 2022.

INTRO

Well howdy.

Any newsletter worth its salt openes with the above image this week. IF YOU HAVE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK then you may have missed NASA release the first batch of images from the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope).

Don’t just sit there, GO LOOK AT THEM.

(and then watch this)

…

Back?

…OK great.

Hope you’ve had a good week. I had a couple of days holiday. The Mrs had a birthday on Monday and a long-planned shoot in Cambridge on Tuesday so we used it as an excuse to get away from it all for a bit (stayed here, and ate here – both excellent) and generally enjoy mooching around Cambridge. The Hockney Exhibition at The Fitzwilliam Museum was a highlight. It was fun. You should go.

What else can I tell you?

The metaverse talk from last week’s edition is currently sat at just over 1800 views on YouTube. For a 30min presentation about such a ridiculous topic, I’d say that’s some good numbers.

(And we’ve had glowing endorsements too – from the likes of Xbox, Electronic Arts, and Lego – hi gang, thank you, x)

As a result, Diva has had a few speaker requests come in (I think five or six at the last count) from agencies, tech platforms, and other equally globally recognised brands.

We are saying yes to as many as we can.

If you’re after similar, then do please hit reply to this email and get in touch (or use the contact details on the last slide of the talk). We’d love to hear from you.

Right then, shall we crack on?

ONWARDS! TO THE THINGS!

1. ‘WE KNOW METAVERSE’

No. You don’t.

Readers of last week’s edition of FTOF of FTOF might remember this:

“In the BIMA talk mentioned above, I go into a fair bit of detail as to why the recent McKinsey Metaverse report is balderdash (it’s honestly a joke). I’m looking forward to doing the same with this twaddle from Momentum Worldwide …but funnily enough, they haven’t shared the methodology (I’ve asked).”

If you’ve seen the headlines on Adweek or Little Black Book, this ‘wE kNoW mEtAvErSe’ report features such belters as:

• “67% are unaware of the term ‘Metaverse’ or have heard it but don’t know what it is”

• “The metaverse is a place where people are finding true emotional value.”

• “63% had no idea they had been in the metaverse all this time”

Well, you will be wholly unsurprised that Momentum never got back to me.

But Patrick Kulp at Adweek did. And he shared the link that Momentum provided to the original report. You can download it right here.

On page six of the report, it identifies two audiences in their data set of 4500 people. TWO. Accidentals and Intentionals.

And guess what.

THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT GAMING.

It’s right there!

“The Accidentals are exactly what their name implies: they arrived in the metaverse space accidentally or unintentionally.”

YES. ACCIDENTALLY OR UNINTENTIONALLY BECAUSE YOU SUDDENLY CALLED GAMES “THE METAVERSE”.

“This is a group that predominately plays Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox.”

AS WE HAVE ESTABLISHED ALREADY, THESE ARE VIDEO GAMES.

“They are less likely to associate themselves with the metaverse and are simply enjoying the platforms for the relaxation and fun.”

OF COURSE THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO ‘ASSOCIATE THEMSELVES WITH THE METAVERSE’ – THEY’RE GAMERS.

Goodness me. What is it with the obsession of calling anything remotely to do with gaming, tHe MeTaVeRsE?! It’s maddening (RT this, please).

“Yeah but James, what about the intentionals?”

I couldn’t give a monkey’s to be honest because at no point in the report whatsover does it mention of the percentage split of these two audiences.

The only other thing I’m going to pull out from the report is the teeny tiny bit of explaining it does around the ‘methodology’

“The global study collected more than 4,500 consumer responses and over 100 ethnographic interviews across seven countries: Canada, Japan, MENA, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the US. This approach takes a step away from the means and methods of the metaverse and instead steps toward the meaning and motivators for being there, all while never referencing the word “metaverse” until the very end of the survey journey.”

So I’m guessing the survey probably asked people what games they play, why they play them, do they buy in-game items, why do they play games etc… and then back filled a load of metaverse juice all over the answers at the end, right?

It’s painful.

…

I mentioned this whole thing to my CEO. Her instant response?

“Because for years gaming has been treated as a social pariah and rather than advocating for gaming, which flies in the face of so many stories we’ve been told about gaming culture and the negative affect gaming has on society, it’s easier for big business to rebadge it as something altogether different than to admit that they were wrong, and worse still, woefully behind the curve… – enter ‘the metaverse’”

And that’s where I think we’ll leave it.

Believe it or not, my ambition with this kind of stuff is not to knock things down and kick things over. I just want you all to know what you can uncover when you simply ask better questions.

The headlines that came off the back of this Momentum/4A report were all about diveristy and inclusion and how the metaverse will make people happier etc… but not one headline actually looked at the report and said ‘hang on, the metaverse doesn’t exist – do you mean gaming?’

Just ask better questions, yeah? Please.

Download the report and judge for yourself.

2. WHAT IS A BRAND?

“When a word starts to mean everything, it risks coming to mean nothing.”

Brand strategist (and co-author of the must-own book, ‘Which wine when’), Claire Strickett has written this excellent examination and primer to answer the ‘simple’ question: ‘’What is a brand?’

Covering:

• Brand as signifier of origin.

• Brand as reputation.

• Brand as business.

To quote Strickett, “we owe it to the word “brand” to use it with the care, respect and above all, the clarity it deserves”.

This dedication to craft and rigorous application thereof is something we can all learn from.

Mandatory reading.

3. THIS WEEK IN… GAMING

I’m barely into thing three and Substack is giving me the ol’ ‘Near email length limit’ warning. Rubbish!

I’ll be brief.

• This interview/profile with Dr Jo Twist, CEO of Ukie, is great. I’ve known Jo for AGES and had the great fortune of sitting next to her at the MCV awards a short while back. A brilliant woman. Please read.

• There is no objective history of video games – every player’s experience is different. I love this.

• That said, here’s how Street Fighter shaped the console wars (what a game).

• Last week I told you that NEON WHITE is fantastic. This week I’m telling you it’s down to £15.99 on the Nintendo Switch. GO GET IT.

• Hilarious.

• The gaming industry, NFTs are already dead.

4. IT’S OK TO OPT OUT OF THE CRYPTO ‘REVOLUTION’

That’s it. That’s the link.

5. YOUR EVENT IS BROKEN

Last month, The DICE (Diversity & Inclusion for Conferences and Events) Charter launched its first ever advertising campaign.

This work is the brainchild of creative duo Katherine O’Connor and Alicia Hessey, students from the University of Lincoln, who responded to a brief from the DICE team as part of their second-year project.

The ‘Your Event Is Broken Without Diversity’ campaign will run in partnership with ISOLATED Talks® (an initiative from creative agency …Gasp!) and will run across national digital billboards donated by Clear Channel (and it turns out many others).

The creative itself hinges on the visual of a broken screen on each digital billboard, reflecting the idea that any event that only amplifies the voices of certain groups – such as white, middle-class men – is essentially silencing every other voice. The lack of representation reflects a broken system, propped up by corporate gaslighting that prefers to discuss change rather than enact it.

And I love it.

I can’t believe this thing we built continues to not only grow and grow but also impact real world and digital events the world over. Events are getting better at DE&I thanks to DICE – and thanks to all the people mentioned above, even more people will now know about it.

Incred.

Read (and see) more on the DICE website.

BONUS SECTION

IT IS HOT. BUT NOT TOO HOT FOR BONUSES.

COME GET SOME.

Kicking off the bonus section with a late entry/brief plug for the DICE certified, State of Social 2022 event in Perth. The lovely Meg Coffey asked me if I could speak at it this year and I can’t as I’m away with the family. But just because I can’t be there. doesn’t mean you can’t (virtual tickets are available).

As Meg puts it:

Because Australia is never a bad idea. Check out State of Social ‘22 in Perth this August.

Two days of killer keynotes, discussions and breakout brainstorms analysing the latest digital trends, techniques and real-world case studies to help you plan, create and convert, no matter what the world throws at you.

I can’t go but you should. It’s even DICE certified.

OK, now back to the bonuses.

• This could be a problem.

• CBT is… sexy now? I’ve done it. Twice. So, y’know 💅

• Police want Amazon Ring camera access? Easy. No warrant. No consent. No permission. No problem. (Maybe don’t buy Ring).

• Nope. In more ways than one.

• Daily dissonance.

• Yeah, go on then.

• Please don’t mis-use alt-text.

• Lol.

• How about a National Geographic Twitter thread of some Urban Wildlife?

• I say again, Decentraland has less than 1000 DAUs.

• Another way to view the above argument.

• Bleak.

• ‘Emmanuel don’t do it’ (this is the best).

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. TAKE CARE OUT THERE.

It’s about to hit midday on Sunday as the UK is headed into the most dangerous heatwave in recent history. It’s not going to get cooler, friends. So if you’re in the UK, please buy that fan, stock up on bottled water, buy the bags of ice, and just keep out the danger zones.

Look after yourself, and each other.

Whatley out x

PS. Ms Marvel is the best damn thing Disney has ever done. WATCH IT.

Things of note for Saturday July 9th, 2022.

Hello mate.

It has been a week.

(And no, not because of ‘the politics’ here in the UK (there’ll be none of that here, thanks).

Standing on stage a little over eight days ago, talking to an engaged audience about how many often mistake gaming platforms for ‘The Metaverse’, I didn’t have much of a clue that one single slide would pull on its boots and go stomping around LinkedIn, Instagram, Discord, and more… According to one account (FROM CANADA), I had upset ‘metaverse gurus and crypto bros everywhere’. Lol.

And judging by some of the LinkedIn commentary, you can believe it. Shame. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

In the meantime, you can always tell when FTOF goes on a little break – because it means life is good, and busy, and the creativity and love I normally pour into this is being spent elsewhere. It’s Saturday as I write this to you and the girls are away for the weekend. It’s been in the diary for a while so I collected up some links this week and thought ‘Hmm, I think there might be a newsletter this week’ – and well, here we are. How nice.

So. That’s the preamble out the way. Onwards… TO THE THINGS!

1. LET’S GET THE METAVERSE TALK OUT OF THE WAY SHALL WE?

Here’s what happened.

Wednesday, June 29th, I did a talk at the #BIMABeyond conference.

One of my… er… punchier slides (3/63) got snapped (below) and went a bit nuts on LinkedIn.

Cue: tons of comments, shares, replies, and angry metaverse believers. Since the above LinkedIn post went live, I’ve been called a flat earther, a metaverse atheist, and… best of all ‘anti-human’. It’s mad. Like, just because you’ve made an app for Facebook’s Meta Quest VR, doesn’t mean you’re in the metaverse, my dude.

ALSO. Can you imagine how much worse this would’ve been if I was either a woman or a person of colour or both? Ugh.

The good news is:

1. 90% of the commentary – publicly and privately – has been really quite lovely and positive. Lots of ‘THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS!’

2. Thanks to huge amount of inquiries from people asking to see the slides, Diva found some time for me to not only share the slides (with written out speaker notes) but also record a version of the exact same talk that you can see as well.

The slides and the video are available on the Diva website.

Given the interest so far (and if you’ve not seen it yet), I would really love to know what you think. Thanks, gang x

—

Other Metaverse links of note:

• ‘Metaverses’ that aren’t games have next to no users, pass it on.

• Michael Lewis on the metaverse ‘Shallow and phoney’ (cheers to Paddy for that nugget).

• Sam Gilbert, a leading researcher on Web3, has published a new metaverse-focused piece. ‘The political economy of the metaverse’ – Worth a read.

• In the BIMA talk mentioned above, I go into a fair bit of detail as to why the recent McKinsey Metaverse report is balderdash (it’s honestly a joke). I’m looking forward to doing the same with this twaddle from Momentum Worldwide …but funnily enough, they haven’t shared the methodology (I’ve asked).

• Welcome to the ‘please-make-it-stop-a-verse’

2. CULTURE MOVES FAST BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GO SLOW?

Sara Barqawi writes:

“As an industry, we’ve fixated on ‘tapping into culture’ or creating comms ‘at the speed of culture’, which is great in theory. In practice, we’re only actually tapping into what’s trending on TikTok or Twitter that day. This is limited to reacting to cultural events that work at the speed of our news cycle; it relies on influencers, platforms, or current affairs. It also means you’re just as quickly forgotten.

This partnership does the opposite. By going after long-standing cultural institutions which have existed and contributed to the vibrancy of city life for decades, Adidas will create legitimate long-term relevance and desire. By chasing the more robust side of culture — slow culture (culture that really matters) the brand may be rewarded by staying remembered for longer.”

I had never heard of Ravi’s before. And Sara’s brilliant piece on both the history of this local cultural touchstone and why it’s so perfectly chosen for this partnership is a great read.

So go read it!

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING 

First off, what am I playing?

My current fave is Neon White (available on Switch and PC). It’s a super nuts speedrunning game and I love it.

The levels take between 10-90s depending on how fast you are, the action is frenetic and it’s the first game that’s made me want to get a Nintendo Pro controller..

It’s really hard to capture how fun this game is but here’s the trailer and a decent review. Genuinely can’t recommend this enough.

Also playing: Destiny 2 (standard) and finally working my way through Horizon Forbidden West (with occasional dips into Fall Guys – now free to play on all platforms! – and Forza Horizon 5 (can’t wait for the Hot Wheels update).

Next, I’m looking forward to God of War: Ragnarök in November.

Oh – and STRAY! which looks great (you play a cat for crying out loud).

What are you playing?

—

Other games news of note:

• After the SEC, it’s now the CMA’s turn to investigate the Microsoft/Activision takeover.

• I will yell this from the rooftop until my throat hurts: gaming is not just boys.

• This is hella useful: six ways to turn Twitch clips into YouTube Shorts, TikToks, and Reels. It works too. Here’s mine.

• Writing for games.

Side note: I’m working on a ton of games stuff at the moment AND I CAN’T TELL YOU ABOUT ANY OF IT BUT MY GOD I HAVE THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD.

4. LISTENING: FRENCH TOUCH

My go-to ‘GTD’ playlist is Whatleydude playlist for Getting Things Done (you’re welcome) but recently I’ve taken to sticking French Touch in my ears and it’s having a similar effect.

But with more chair dancing.

Recommended.

Fun fact: the Wikipedia entry for Daft Punk uses one of my photos on the main page. Hurrah for creative commons.

5. THE WAR ON GIRLS

My god, this is some writing. I mean proper writing. The kind of writing that forces tears from your eyes and lights a fire in your belly and then you scream and scream and scream. This is some writing.

My friend Amy Kean can write.

And with this ‘The war on girls: why can society take young women seriously?’ she’s done it again.

I implore you to read it.

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• Racism at Cannes.

• Communication charts on how to negotiate with people around the world. I’ve done a bit of work and reading on this before and I can’t tell you how useful this stuff is. And utterly fascinating.

• Writing a book? It seems everyone is. Well, you might find this useful.

• ‘Oh, that’s good. people will need to go in to hand their notice in’

• TikTok drives culture. No denying it. So it makes sense that it’s The Town Square now.

• ‘I should be able to mute America’ (evergreen).

• Speaking of which, cowering in a luxury bunker is a lousy retirement plan.

• Amy Lennox doing Cabaret. Goodness me this is good.

• Three tips on how to spot bad research.

• The stories we don’t tell.

• James Hong (you know him) is 93. And he isn’t done.

• Crossrail is here. Crossrail is amazing (I’ve been on it – TCR to Farringdon is a game-changer). And yes, here’s where to sit when you’re on it. God I love this level of nerdery.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

Well, that was lovely, wasn’t it?

It’s been a hot minute since the last FTOF and I can’t promise when the next one will be but what I can tell you is that I’ve still got a bunch of links in the bank and when the time comes for round FTOF #322, you’ll be the first to know. Until then, thank you, as ever, for reading, for subscribing, for screenshotting, and for sharing. You’re proper lovely.

Hope you’re having a gorgeous summer.

Whatley out x

Things of note for Friday May 20th, 2022.

INTRO

Hello. From me and my snail friend.

Isn’t he wicked? Or she. I’ve no idea. I didn’t ask. But whatever, aren’t they cool? After the veg in the garden, almost certainly. Point is: I hope wherever me and my snail find you today, you’re doing fine and well.

It has been a good week.

I made it along to a few days at Advertising Week Europe this week and used the time (not spent queueing up outside in the ridiculous printed pass system) at Picturehouse Central to also see some pretty decent talks as well as catch up with some fascinating people. I’m going to write this stuff up on the Diva website at some point next week however, in the short term at least, it was super interesting to me. I’ve been writing since the start of the year about how much difference there is between games/dev brands talk about online virtual worlds vs brand marketers outside of gaming.

At AWEurope, it’s the difference between ‘The metaverse doesn’t exist, so let’s please stop talking about it’ and ‘We’re taking our first steps into the metaverse and look how great it is’ – while I heard both these statements on stage and yet only one of them can be true. No prizes for guessing which one.

The other incredible thing I heard this week was ‘No one over 40 plays Fortnite’ – an incredibly dismissive and ignorant statement which I just can’t get my head around. Going on old numbers (2018ish), Epic reports 350million registered users. 12% of those users fall into the 34-45 age bracket.

42million then? Cool. Cool.

It’s maddening to me that even with the data literally a google away, anec-data just seems to win out. ‘I can’t see it [in my life] so therefore it can’t be true’ is a plague on bad marketers everywhere. FWIW, the Fortnite statement was said by a planner. Even worse. Mad mad mad mad mad. We’ve had two new clients walk in this week, each wanting to know more about gaming, player communities, opportunities for brands etc – and above all else, not wanting to take a single step forward until they understand the space. It’s hugely flattering but also, in light of the waffle you might sometimes hear at events, hugely reassuring. There are marketers out there that want to get involved and understand the space properly. And nine times out of ten they’re the ones not on a stage telling you they know it all…

Ok. Rant over.

Where was I?

Oh yes. I don’t know if this edition will make it out. It’s late on a Thursday as I write this opener to you. There are fair few links in the txt file so I should just boot that up and get going, right?

Might mess about with the order and see what happens.

Shall we get a wriggle on?

TO THE THINGS!

1. GAMING ISN’T A DIRTY WORD

A week or so ago, The Drum got in touch to ask me if I wouldn’t mind kicking off their week-long look at gaming by pulling apart the mis-use and abuse of the word ‘metaverse’ when people should just be talking about gaming.

So I did.

Here’s an excerpt (the tone of which will not be unfamiliar to regular readers):

The metaverse is not a thing. Online virtual spaces where people have been hanging out to achieve things together have been around for decades. And if we just call things what they are, these things are video games.

Games. Gaming. Gamers. These are not dirty words. It’s OK to say them out loud. They shouldn’t be dirty words in the marketing dept (although metaverse should be banned). Sure, the metaverse sounds sexy and yes, I’m certain you all read about Gucci this and Balenciaga that in your Substack of choice last month, but these things are just good video games partnerships. And that’s OK.

You can read the full article right here. FYI. The Drum has a registration freemium (register to read) wall so you may need to create an account to read the whole thing.

Had some great feedback about it so I hope you like it. If you do like it or find it useful/interesting, I’d appreciate you sharing it forward – please 😊

—
Some bonus metaverse-related stats and stories before we move on:

• Nick Clegg wrote about FB/Meta’s vision for the metaverse. TechCrunch read it so you don’t have to.

• Related: Zuck’s metaverse obsession is driving employees nuts.

• Related x2: FB/Meta tells its metaverse hardware division ‘prepare for cutbacks’ – it’s all going well then.

• Related x3 (but this time to the rant in the above opener), anybody who mentions Decentraland in the same breath as Roblox or Fortnite needs their head seeing to. You’re comparing 10k DAUs to 48.2m and 24m respectively. JUST GOOGLE IT.

• The silos preventing any vision of a metaverse coming to fruition are arguably the biggest blocker in the world right now, seeing the big players break those down internally is great news.

• It’s really hard to stay sane among all this mess. ‘How brands are experimenting in Web3’ is factually incorrect three times in the first five paragraphs. I weep.

Shall we move on?

2. HIDDEN IN A FIRE ISLAND HOUSE, THE SOUNDTRACK OF LOVE AND LOSS

And now for something completely different.

This is one of those ‘the New York Times has done a special build on its site again’ posts but it’s a good’un.

“Last summer, as Peter Kriss and Nate Pinsley moved into their new two-bedroom beach house on Pine Walk in Fire Island, they took stock of the keepsakes and tchotchkes the previous owners had left behind — a pair of old sewing machines, a box of Halloween decorations, racks of colorful costumes.

The island, a remote 32-mile spit of sand and shadblow trees, does not allow cars, and the unspoken rule is that homeowners must save or toss what the former residents did not carry with them by freight ferry. The massive collection of blue and white porcelain they knew would have to go, same with the coat rack made of cats doing a kick line that they gave to a friend, a former longtime Radio City Rockette. When they stumbled upon a set of milk crates piled high with cassette tapes, they assumed those would go too. Even if they wanted to salvage the greatest hits of Whitney Houston or Queen, neither of them had a tape deck.

But as they dug through the crates, they noticed that not all the tapes were commercial releases. Some had hand-drawn inserts with the names of legendary Pines nightclubs and venues — the Ice Palace, the Pavilion — and more of them had neatly written labels spelling out names, places, and times in thick black ink.”

The special build walks you through the history, the stories, the tales of it all. And of course – there’s the music.

I’ve been through it. Twice. I’ve listened and loved… and now I’m sharing it with you.

You need sound on – enjoy.

Ps. If you’re struggling with the NY Times paywall, the music (sans story) is available on Mixcloud. But do try and read the thing.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

Some really interesting gamery-based stuff this week.

First up, even if you’ve only got a passing interest in gaming, then you’d probably had to be living under a rock to have let this news pass you by:

As trailed a little bit in the previous edition of Five things on Friday, EA and FIFA have indeed parted ways. EA Sports FC is the name of the game from now on (well, from next year on) and I think it’ll be just FINE.

In the interest of balance, Gianni Infantino, FIFA President, said: “I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans. The FIFA name is the only global, original title. FIFA 23, FIFA 24, FIFA 25 and FIFA 26, and so on – the constant is the FIFA name and it will remain forever and remain THE BEST.”

I’m not so sure.

‘FIFA’ has been short hand for ‘football video game’ for a generation. It helped create leagues and divisions of casual gamers and pro players the world over. Changing the name isn’t going to do much damage. Players aren’t thick.

When you pick up an EA game, you know what you’re going to get and with EASFC (ees-eff-cee?) the engine will still be the same, the playability, the options, your friends and their friends – they will all still be there. And, while the title for the next version will be different, the bones of what players have loved for decades will still be there. There’s an old joke here about EA simply doing this exercise ever in year out anyway – but I think that’s slightly unfair.

If you played literally any EA sports game in the 90s then you this is a sentence you can hear: ‘E.A. SPORTS. IT’S IN THE GAME’.

What fascinates me is a the mixture of brand, product, and gaming meeting in this way. The strength of the EA brand stepping up and into place where ‘FIFA’ used to be. Gotta build those brand assets, gotta keep those core players close, gotta keep growing share. And soon enough, you gotta defend when nu-FIFA comes back over the hill looking for its ball back…

E.A. Sports. It’s in the name.

— — —

What else can I tell you?

Oh, yeah, about two years or so ago I mis-predicted the arrival of Xbox Series S (aka ‘Lockheart’) as being some kind of streaming stick. A bit like a Chromecast but instead of streaming Netflix or YouTube, you’d stream Game Pass games direct to your TV – without the need for a console.

Turns out this might be a thing after all. And completely aligns with the Xbox/Phil Spencer vision of ‘Xbox Everywhere’. I imagine there are some hardware and subscription targets to hit first before rolling that out at scale however. The tech is undoubtedly already there – it’s just making sure by launching something like this it doesn’t cannibalise any hardware sales for the home consoles.

So… maybe a holiday release then?

As an aside, I traded my old Xbox One S in at GAME last weekend and got £150 off a brand new Series S for my eldest (total cost £99). I think the deal is running until Friday next week. Just in case you’re looking.

— — —

Only other games-related news to tell you is that I’ve finished ELDEN RING (yes that’s right, I might actually stop talking about it). I say ‘finished’, I mean ‘I got the platinum’ and to be perfectly honest, I am completely adrift at sea and have no idea what to play. Haven’t really turned the PlayStation on since it happened. Yeah. It’s a weird feeling that one.

I’ve still got Horizon Forbidden West to get back into and there’s a new Destiny 2 season starting next week too. Maybe that’ll tempt me back. We’ll see.

Speaking of Horizion Forbidden West, I built this last weekend:

The Tall Neck, a key part of the first Horizon game and I’m sure equally key in the second (I’ve only found one so far), is a) a brilliant example of a Lego/PlayStation partnership and b) a fantastic build. There’s still a few left on Amazon if this floats your boat. I love mine. Proper nerdy.

Speaking of nerdy, I love this glossary of gaming terms from PlayStation.

You’re welcome.

4. YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE

When you move from one agency to another, you’ll often see work going through as you leave that you think ‘Wow, that’s going to be amazing when it goes out’.

And that’s what happened just before Christmas, when the below project, from the talented lot at Digitas UK & their client Nivea Men, was first shared with me in a meeting room in Chancery Lane.

Starting from the insight that 50% of mental health problems begin before the age of 14, Digitas and Nivea Men teamed up with Liverpool FC and Talk Club to champion a simple way to help men of all ages to start talking and improve their mental fitness together.

The launch film, live in cinemas now, is bloody amazing and I’m so proud of my old team for not only creating this idea but actually getting it past the many many stakeholders to get it live and out into the world.

Well done all.

You can read more about the work over on Campaign.

5. TODAY DO THIS: 48+ WAYS YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE NEWS

For the past three years, Today Do This has been publishing a ‘do something about the news’ newsletter.

Each year since that first edition, TDT has been publishing an annual round-up of the small things we can each do to change the world.

This year is no different.

Covering planet protection, confronting discrimination, improving your community and so much more, it’s a dead handy list of inspirational things you can do… right now.

Click, read, be inspired.

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. THERE A LOT OF BONUS LINKS THIS WEEK. I’M SORRY. I DON’T MAKE THE RULES (I LITERALLY DO BUT IF I SAY THAT THEN THE JOKE DOESN’T WORK).

ENJOY?

• For my writer friends: things authors have learned since being published (great read this).

• Intersectional Diversity Events are on the rise! YES!!! DICE gets a solid mention here too. Dead proud.

• We watched the new Chip ‘N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers movie yesterday and it’s great (now on Disney+).

• Looking back at the Mount St Helens eruption, 42 years ago.

• Orson Welles being Orson Welles. A thread.

• Dolphins are WILD.

• Hello from us.

• New Daredevil, with Charlie Cox, is coming. No idea how it’ll be better than than the near-perfect Netflix originals but we’ll see.

• A great interview with Norman Reedus. Casually confirms Death Stranding 2.

• This Lego Optimus Prime is sick. IT’S THE ORIGINAL TRANSFORMATION!!

• An unorthodox way of getting your Instagram account back.

• This AMAZING story about the Icelandic Fish Festival reminds me of a VERY SIMILAR TIME IN SCHOOL when I wrote a 12 chapter story about a time machine that literally nobody asked for. I might dig it up.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

I hope you’re relaxing into your weekend nicely. It’s early Saturday morning here as I finish this newsletter to you.

The sun is out. The summer is around the corner. Family is healthy and work is going great. I’m sending all this warmth in your direction right now.

All that and I’m still pinching myself on the reg because I still can’t believe I work in video games. There’s a grin on my face as I edge towards the big blue Publish button at the top of this page.

How lovely.

Whatley out x

Things of note for Friday May 6th, 2022.

INTRO

Hello hello x.

It’s the end of week one, month three in the new job. And it’s been hectic* (more, much more, on that later). I hope you’ve been keeping well.

It’s Thursday as I write to you. I’m home from seeing DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS and, without giving away anything all I will say is: I didn’t realise how much I’d missed Sam Raimi.

I’m hopeful for a subdued FTOF this week. The past handful of editions have slipped into the ranty space and frankly, this is not why I started (keeping weekly notes in my moleskine that became a blog which then became) my newsletter.

So let’s see open the FTOF dot txt file and see what happens.

My name is James Whatley, and welcome to Five things on Friday #329.

It’s ok, you haven’t missed much.

Shall we?

1. WHY NOT LET’S KICK OFF WITH SOME DECENT MUSIC

One of the handful of reliable sources of new music I follow is this semi-regular list from Jodie Bryant.

Some proper bangers on this month’s.

I think so at least.

Do you?

2. WORLD’S BEST FPV DRONE SHOT?

Love me some quality drone footage. And guess what: I’ve got some for you right here. See that? That down there?

That’s a drone that is.

And what’s happening with that drone is this: an FPV drone pilot is doing a follow shot of professional mountain biker Tomas Slavik racing the Red Bull Valparaiso Cerro Abajo last in April 2022.

There’s an 11 minutes video from Red Bull (who else?) that sits behind it and while you could skip straight to 8:14 and watch the one continuous shot from there, I would recommend you watch the whole thing.

It’s ace.

Zoom zoom!

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMES

From a personal perspective, I can’t tell you anything much else outside of ELDEN RING. ELDEN RING IS LIFE. I’m playing far too much and to be frank, you’re lucky you’re even getting a newsletter at the moment, given the pull of the PlayStation behind me… and yet… here we are.

To the (games) things!

First, let’s talk about brands.

Beano Brain, the insights team behind Beano Studios (yes, that Beano), released this top ten chart from their top 50 of the coolest brands for kids and teens (UK data):

Every single brand on this first list is either a game or doing something with games in some way, shape, or form.

That’s even before you get to the clear winners of the games category in Minecraft, Roblox, Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox.

That’s Gen Alpha. What about Gen Z?

Adage and The Harris Poll have got you. And this one’s really interesting.

Here are the top five Gen Z brands by brand equity growth (almost certainly all US data)”

Yeah, that’s right. ELECTRONIC ARTS is up there with Old Spice, Urban Decay, Square, and Whirlpool.

From Adage:

[A]nalysts attributed EA’s plans to rebrand its popular FIFA game and end a long-standing relationship with the soccer organization, and its announcement of a mobile version of its battle royale game Apex Legends. The brand worked with video game influencers in late 2021 such as Twitch host KarimCheese, who made a video sponsored by the brand showing him teaching his grandmother video game lingo. Electronic Arts also collaborated with the NFL to create a virtual celebration for the Pro Bowl. It also launched a network of creators in late 2021, which gives YouTubers, bloggers and others the chance to collaborate and attend the brand’s events.

While I highly doubt the brand’s reported choice to move forward without its FIFA partnership has created that much cut-through, I do believe that EA’s other brand-based efforts, detailed above, have helped it rebuild itself into something that can once again be loved by players – and beyond.

Gaming brands, eh? Turns out they’re important.

…

And now for some bullet news:

• As of this week, you can play Fortnite literally anywhere for free. All you need is a browser and a Microsoft account and you’re away. Tim Sweeney is very happy about this.

• That Matrix Unreal 5 demo? Yeah, some smart folk have modded Spider-Man and Superman into it. 1. This is a great watch. 2. I would absolutely be here for a new Superman game where you could actually fly like this! Would be amazing.

• My friend Ru has a great answer to a good question (about VR).

• America went nuts again. Bungie stood up for what’s right. And my friend Matt went viral because of it. An average week.

• How Reggie Fils-Aimé got ‘Wii Sports’ included with the Wii

• I totally missed IKARUGA was available on Switch (and has been for AGES). I’m going to download it tomorrow just so I can do this.

4. THIS WEEK IN JAMES

See what I did there?

No Metaverse moans in slot number four this week (not directly, at least – honestly it’s just punching downwards at this point). No no. Instead this week I thought I’d gather up all the other stuff I’ve been doing since we last spoke.

Instead, because I’ve not been writing Five things on Friday for a few weeks, it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped writing anything. It means the writing, and occasional speaking for that matter (or in some cases simply turning up), has been elsewhere.

Here’s a list of that stuff, if you’re at all in any way interested in that 🙂

• Late last month, I spoke to The Drum about Microsoft’s plans to introduce more ‘traditional’ advertising into its games. Utility and understanding being key here.

• Last week (and thanks to some unforeseen circumstances), I was super proud to represent Diva at the Ukie table at the MCV/Develop awards. It was a great night. AND I met my dev hero, Sean Murray. There’s me, explaining how much I love No Man’s Sky and going full nerd over it all (I just wanted to say thank you for the game!) and then to top it off the man hugged me! – and completely made my night.

• Speaking of representing Diva, it was also something truly moving to be able to be an honorary member of the Bristol community at the recent One Question conversation ‘Who is responsible for our mental health?’ – I believe there is a write arriving any day now (possibly even next week), so expect more on this one v soon.

• Lego and Epic announced their new partnership and Adweek asked me for some words/opinion/analysis accordingly (it’s genuinely the most fascinating metaversal thing to happen this year).

• If that’s paywalled then don’t worry, I got you. A week or so later we wrote up said Lego/Epic commentary into a larger piece for the Diva website.

• Publishers, having forgotten about Facebook’s fatal direction to ‘pivot to video’, are getting all hot under the collar about the latest thing big blue is trying to get them onboard with. That’s right. You guessed it. The Metaverse. As a result, The Press Gazette has a really good overview/primer on all of it ‘the next online revolution or a waste of money?’ and, rightly or wrongly, summoned me for a relatively scathing opinion on what publishers should and should not be doing with their hard-earned income right now…

• DICE co-creator and all-round GOOD PERSON, Amy Kean, roped me into giving an IsolaTED TED TALK about The DICE Charter and the research DICE has been doing in what DE&I feels like. You can watch that right here. Interested in your feedback on this one.

• In upcoming news, the BIMA Creative Council have invited me to speak at the BIMA Beat event, ‘Beat the Metaverse’ on May 25th. Tickets are available now and, if any of my old Publicis/Digitas lot are reading, it’s back at the office fam – see you there? 😊

And finally, in what has turned out to be a rather hideous self-serving section, something else that I got up to recently – and is in line with the themes we’ve been discussing in these pages over the past couple of editions, is the Playable Futures WASD panel about leadership.

We finally got our hands on a copy of the video from the panel that day and you can watch it all right here.

Personally, I’m really happy with how this turned out. I was only two months into the job at this point (EEK!) but thanks to some fantastic prep from our head of comms + PR (big up Emily Britt) and some inspiration from panel-hostess-with-the-mostest, Nicola Kemp, we had a really great conversation.

Covering everything from the games industry talent crisis, the gender pay gap, mental health awareness vs crunch, DE&I, and ultimately, what it means to be a leader in games in 2022 and beyond.

…

*Like I said: it’s been hectic.

5. THE EMPTY DAY

“The day after a mental health moment or psychiatric experience always leaves a void. I call it The Empty Day.”

Adam Libonatti-Roche on incredible, visceral form.

Ahead of Mental Health Awareness week (or as some people call it ‘Annual Yoga on the roof week’, please read this.

It’s important.

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY (IF THAT).

ENJOY.

• Linkedin is changing how it updates your feed. Fun to me that the one example it has used to illustrate this is the exact kind of thing I would want to unsubscribe from. Lovely!

• My great uncle George is a legend.

• Game of Thrones: HOUSE OF THE DRAGON trailer is here. I hope it’s good. It probably will be. But it’s odd, isn’t it? The GoT vibe. It seems like years ago.

• Matt Holt’s strategy diet (similar to the last time he did but with a few decent updates) is worth a refresh.

• Spotify launched ‘Spotify Island’ in/on Roblox (this isn’t the metaverse but it is interesting).

• Seven ways to focus on the now.

• Coca-Cola says it is focused on bringing “unique” experiences to consumers… so it built a shop.

• Obi-Wan Kenobi new trailer dropped. But I still can’t get over the swear word in the middle of that hashtag. Strong #SusanAlbumParty vibes.

• I don’t need an excuse to post anything about Amanda Gorman (but this will do)

• Michelle Yeoh stan account incoming.

• Captain Power was a thing. I had no idea how much of a controversial thing. But it was absolutely a thing. Great watch.

• 4K Trailer for the original Star Trek movie? YES PLEASE.

• Remembering Jamal Edwards. Still thinking of you, man.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. HAPPY?

It’s been nice to [put the PlayStation controller down in my spare time and] do some newsletter writing again.

As ever, I’m always interested in what you’re up to. One of my favourite questions to ask new people I meet is always ‘What’s the most exciting thing you’re working on right now?’ – it switches people on straight away and there’s nothing I love more than people being passionate about something they care about.

So.

What’s the most exciting thing you’re working on right now?

Whatley out x

Things of note for the week ending, Friday April 15th, 2022

INTRO

Hello hello.

I’ve sat down to write this into a few times now.

The first draft started: “the kids are screaming in the garden, I’m sitting at the kitchen table (having just hit send on a couple of short paragraphs re: Epic & Lego – more on that later) and, well, I have time to write.”

The second attempt went: “Between those three lines and this next paragraph, a good 36hrs have passed. Turns out I didn’t have time to write after all.”

Here we are on our third and ideally final attempt. Shall we see how we get on?

Let’s.

So hi. It turns out I the kids’ Easter break off the newsletter.

Children everywhere. Lego abound. A batch of Animal Crossing purchases. It’s like April 2020 all over again. And we had loads (of great stuff – more on that later) on at work. I can’t complain. I really can’t. Life is good. So I am being as present as possible and enjoying what I have. With that in mind (and the false starts on getting this out over the past couple of weeks), heaven knows what delights I’ve got packed beneath the fold of this edition.

I’ve been collating links for the past few weeks on myriad themes. Leadership, metaversal activity, gaming, and a whole bunch more other stuff that I find interesting. Time to crack open the TextEdit file I’ve got saved on the desktop and get this thing going.

As always, I’ve got a fair bit to tell you 🙂

Oh, and one last thing. I had another nice bump of new readers recently – no idea where you’ve all come from but if you are new here, then welcome.

My name is James WhatleyThis is Five things on Friday. The rules are: it doesn’t always come on Friday (if it comes at all) but there’ll always be more than five things.

1. THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP

Leadership is a recurring theme for me at the moment. I’ve just had a pitch accepted for something along these lines (EXCITING) and, as per, I’m using this newsletter as a place to think out loud.

Last time we spoke, I asked to hear about your own experiences of what it means to step up into a new leadership role.

You were, of course, generous with your commentary.

I’ve pulled what I got back into seven themes and I’m putting them in as Thing 1 this week for you to enjoy and learn from. Because surely after ‘the great resignation’ the great hiring spree must follow. And you and I both know you can’t move for new job announcements on LinkedIn right now so… if this is you, or if this is a friend of yours, then maybe you’ll find this useful.

1. Ask questions!
   ”Use the enthusiastic newcomer status to ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS. I wanted to quickly learn a ton and know how to do things right, and this also helped me to build the confidence to start proposing new approaches. But how to ask all the questions without constantly pinging rando chat messages or emails to people? We ended up setting regular office hours where I could just save up all of my Q’s to discuss, and it made for lots of great convos while also ensuring I didn’t feel like I was interrupting other colleagues. Also, I love what being exposed to so much “new-ness” does to the brain, the joy of learning and discovery and everything suddenly clicking.”

2. Get Uncomfortable!
   ”If you aren’t out of your comfort zone you’re not growing.” 

3. Try not doubt yourself!
   ”My advice for stepping into a new more senior role came from a friend and ex-colleague: The only person doubting you is you.”

4. Stick up for your new team!
   ”You will meet some people who will look for holes in your Teams’ work to leverage them to their personal advantage. They would have done better, they’ll say. Where there’s work, there’s going to be mistakes. That doesn’t mean promoting or condoning mistakes, however, it means owning the fact they’ll happen and acting upon them – internally.”

5. Read the first 90 days!
   ”Here’s a cheat sheet (thanks Willem). And, as in many things, listening and asking open, candid questions are likely to be good keys.”

6. Set your personal objectives!
   ”The one activity that has put me in good stead is setting my own objectives. Not like buttering my own bread in terms of measured KPIs, rather setting personal objectives. I know what they needs from me, how to work to our shared goals and targets… but I add to that. Personal objectives in the past have included: refining my presentation skills, networking outside my industry, supporting upcoming talent. All these things have been important to me personally to create a sense of personal achievement.”

7. Be clear on what it is you are there to do!
   ”Know what the job actually is. The description and expectations are often quite different in specific areas, and at the very least, the act of asking and finding out from the stakeholders in your job means that the job will be nailed down.”

With thanks to Jennifer, Jamie, Rachelle, Rene, Bernard, Willem and FJ for all this gold. You are gods among us. Sincerely, thank you. For me personally, it’s been great to look at this and consider how it changes or influences my own day to day. It’s so useful. I hope it’s helpful to you too.

If my other thing gets published by the way, I’ll share it with you also.

Onwards.

2. JUDITH VIORST

A long long time ago, my incredible therapist read this piece out loud to me in one of our sessions together. He sent me the words shortly thereafter and occasionally I refer back to it or share it with friends if the timing feels right.

This is one of those things that you should read aloud. So if you have the time, take a moment and read it out lout. To yourself, to someone near. And remind yourself that you are worthy of love.

—

As healthy adults we can leave and be left.  We can safely survive on our own.  But we are capable, too, of commitment and of intimacy.  Able to merge and separate, to be both close and alone, we connect at varying levels of intensity, establishing loving bonds that may reflect the diverse pleasures of dependency, mutuality, generativity.

As healthy adults we feel our self to be lovable, valuable, genuine.  We feel our self’s “selfsameness.”  We feel unique.  And instead of seeing our self as the passive victim of our inner and outer world, as acted upon, as helpless and as weak, we acknowledge our self to be the responsible agent and determining force or our life.

As healthy adults we can integrate the many dimensions of our human experience, forsaking the simplification of callow youth.  Tolerating ambivalence.  Looking at life from more than one perspective.  Discovering that the opposite of a very important truth may be another very important truth.  And being able to transform separate fragments in to wholeness by leaning to see the unifying themes.

As healthy adults we possess, along with conscience and, of course, guilt, a capacity for remorse and self-forgiveness.  We are merely constrained – not crippled – by our morality.  Thus we remain free to assert, to achieve, to win the competition, and to savour the complex delights of mature sexuality.

As healthy adult we are able to pursue and enjoy our pleasures but we also are able to look at and live through our pain.  Our constructive adaptations and our flexible defences allow us to achieve important aims.  We have learnt how to get what we want and we have repudiated the forbidden and the impossible, though we still – through our fantasies – tune into their claims.

But we know how to make a distinction between reality and fantasy.

And we’re able – or able enough – to accept reality.

And we’re willing – for the most part – to seek most of our gratification in the real world.

As healthy adults we know that reality cannot offer us perfect safety or unconditional love.

As healthy adults we know that reality cannot provide us with special treatment or absolute control.

As healthy adults we know that reality cannot compensate us for past disappointments, sufferings and loss.

And as healthy adults we eventually come to understand, as we play our friend spouse parent family roles, the limited nature of every human relationship.

But the trouble with healthy adulthood is that few of us are consistently adult.  Furthermore, our conscious goals are often sabotaged unconsciously.  For the infantile wishes we sometimes glimpse in dreams or fantasies exercise great power outside our awareness.  And these infantile wishes may burden our work and our love with quite impossible expectations.

Asking too much of the people we love or ask too much of ourselves, we aren’t – who is? – the “healthy adults” we should be.  Growing takes time and we may be a long time leaning to balance our dreams and our realities.

We may be a long time learning that life is, at best, “ a dream controlled” – that reality is built of imperfect connections.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING 

“Let’s talk about WASD, bay-be, let’s talk about you and me…”

Three sections in section three this week:

• Work @ WASD

• Games @ WASD

• Interesting general games stuff.

Let’s kick off with WASD.

I know I’ve mentioned it before but in case you skipped it last time around, WASD is a brand new London-based video games expo with a core focus on the indie dev scene. My new lot (I don’t know much longer I can say that but I’m milking it for as much as I can), Diva, were the headline sponsor for the main stage and the industry mixer on the evening of the first day.

I was(d) there Thursday for work stuff and Saturday for a family trip and that’s how I’m going to split my write up.

WORK @ WASD: Playable Futures

At 5pm on the Thursday, Diva presented an IRL version of Playable Futures. Playable Futures is a series of interviews with industry leaders talking about their visions for the future of play (you can download the full set of volume one right here via Ukie).

For the IRL version, Diva brought together games veterans Agostino Simoetta (Chief Games Officer, Thunderful), Gina Jackson OBE (a leader of diversity, mental health, and skills development in video games), John Clark (CEO, Curve Games) … and me!

Given the seniority of the people on the panel, we wanted to ground the session in two areas not only relevant to the future of games but also reflective of what Diva’s mission is in the industry: leading with people first values.

In an industry where toxic workplace stories are rife but everyone is crying out for new talent (sounds like advertising), hearing new CEOs and mental health leaders discuss their thoughts and plans for their respective approaches to leadership was genuinely fascinating.

John spoke about his years at Sega and everything he learnt and the journey he’s taking Curve on as we speak. Ago pulled from his years at Xbox and talked about how the values he learned there have inspired him to be a better leader at Thunderful. And Gina was amazing with the industry stats and figures (and her experiences) on hand to hold them both to account.

Tell you what: I bloody loved it.

I am told we have the video so as soon as that is edited and up, you’ll be the first to know…

Ps. Mad love to Emily Britt for the phenomenal prep prep and Nicky Kemp for the lessons on how to be a good panel host.

FAM @ WASD: Playable Games

On the Saturday me and the eldest returned to WASD to play ALL THE GAMES!

And what games they were!

There were so many GREAT games on show!

Standouts were:

• Trek to Yomi (amazing 2.5D Kurosawa-style slash-em up)

• Cult of Lamb (my single-player best in show)

• Silt (Limbo-esque underwater creepy af)

• Sword Ship (arcadey, weapon-free racer – great playability)

• Golf Gang (my multiplayer best in show – SO MUCH FUN)

• Cursed to Golf (really nice 80s style golf/platformer mash-up)

• Shadow Warrior 3 (NUTS)

• Power Wash Simulator (sooooo chill)

• Two Point Campus (sequel to Hosptial, and better with it)

• Grapple Dog (playable AS HELL – and all of about £12 on Switch)

• Post Void (like an insane FPS Hotline Miami)

Honestly, look ALL these games up.

Like I said, they were just the highlights.

The key takeout for me is that I don’t have anything to play Steam games on at the house. In lieu of buying a gaming PC (not happening – we have all the consoles so justifying another outlay will be HARD) I’m currently looking at an Nvidia GEForce Now sub via the Nvidia Shield just so we can play the new games listed above (and more). So we’ll see how that bottoms out later.

What else can I tell you?

General interesting games-related stuff.

Some very quick things:

• The UK consumer games market is now worth a record figure of £7.16bn. According to the latest figures published by Ukie, this is a 1.9% increase on its previous peak that landed after the first lockdown year 2020. This is great slide fodder.

• This is what Elden Ring is like. Like, ALL THE TIME.

• Ofcom published the Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2022, on its own, is always an engrossing read. But it features a fair amount of gaming stat love. eg: Six in ten children aged 3-17 played games online in 2021, increasing to three-quarters of 12-17s. I’m going to revisit another part of this later on in the newsletter but whatever, you should read it all – there be gold in them hills.

• Fortnite raised $144m for humanitarian relief in the Ukraine. Incredible.

• So you’ve binged the perfect game, now what? This, from WIRED, is about how you feel when you’ve completely done a game. Now for me, I switch genres. If I’ve done a racer, I’ll go puzzler. If I’ve done a huge AAA, I’ll go indie. But that’s just me – what do you do?

• This report is from 2020 and I think I missed it the first time around but the tl;dr is simply: video games can be good for your wellbeing.

• Ghost of Tsushima, mate? Gonna be a film, yeah? Amazing.

4. BECAUSE SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED SINCE WE LAST SPOKE I SIMPLY HAVE TO POINT AND LAUGH AT A FEW MORE METAVERSE THINGS, IM SORRY

I saw this on LinkedIn and honestly came close to tears.

Utter Jokers.

Could be worse. You could have let Meta sucker you into co-opting your hard-earned well-respected brand for an excuse of a case-study.

What’s that?

You want more things to point and laugh at?

OK, how’s this. The following two slides are from the same presentation given at IAB Play Fronts last week (images via the poor Kerry Flynn who had to sit through this).

This first slide CLEARLY STATES that ‘WEB 3.0’ is ‘the metaverse’ and can be defined as ‘an immersive decentralized internet – read-write-own’.

And then… ‘What is the metaverse?’

‘The metaverse is the digital universe (???) – the collection of ALL immersive experiences – including games, virtual worlds, and social experiences’

Oh my God I actually hate it 😭

Definition 1: it’s the decentralised immersive internet
Definition 2: oh wait, it’s actually Minecraft, and Roblox, and and and and…

Both are wrong.

The metaverse doesn’t exist.

Online virtual spaces exist. Online games exist. You could even argue metaversal activities exist. At a push, you could call Roblox or Minecraft metaversal spaces.

But you’d be a dick if you did.

Because these things are games. They are online spaces. In fact, scratch all that – they are simply what it means to be ‘online’ today. Calling them “the metaverse” is either obfuscation in the name of marketing hype or idiocy dressed up as ignorance – and I’m so bored of it.

There will be a time soon when ‘metaverse’ will be disconnected from all things web3 and NFT etc. Online social spaces where people can hang out have been around FOR DECADES.

I mentioned the Ofcom media usage and attutudes report earlier, here’s a chart from that report:

Not a single mention of the the metaverse. AT ALL.

Because it’s not a thing.

Even when EPIC and LEGO announce their own ‘METAVERSE’ partnership (I gave some comment on this to Adweek last week – written up on Diva’s website yesterday), neither of them actually mean ‘the metaverse’ – it’s just an easier shorthand to talk about an online gaming/social space. And maybe that’s just what the word will eventually mean.

We’ll see.

Shall we move on?

5. SUCCESS AND FAILURE AT PEBBLE

I loved my Pebble.

But it is no more.

Matt Muir shared this article with me earlier in the week looking at exactly how and why that happened.

Good reading.

BONUS SECTION

ACCORDING TO SUBSTACK, THIS WEEK’S NEWSLETTER IS ALREADY ‘TOO LONG FOR EMAIL’ BUT DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE? NO. RIGHT THEN. MORE LINKS? OK. LET’S GO.

ENJOY.

• The most important Metaverse piece you should read this week.

• The guy that bought the NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9m tried to sell it. That went as well as you’d expect. Reminds me, I need a Chrome plug-in that replaces ‘NFT’ with ‘url that points to a jpg’.

• Olympics 2028? I’m in.

• Oh, we’re noticing alright.

• Yishan Wong on Elon and Twitter (the only thing worth reading on it tbh).

• This is a great interview with Sienna Miller.

• Life and death.

• Don’t just take my word for it re: WASD.

• Matt Navarra invited me onto his Social Media Geekout Twitter Space. You can listen to the recording of that right here.

• Making a real bat signal (and why everything you’ve been told about this to date is a lie).

• Looking back at the skip button.

• An outrageously good PREDATOR poster.

• The greatest trilogy of all time.

• Wet Leg’s Wet Leg.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

It’s been a long one and I’m grateful to you for reading.

Drop a reply and say hi.

And also, for those of us that have the time off, enjoy the extra long weekend y’all.

Whatley out x