If you are anything like me, you've spent more of your adult life in front of PowerPoint presentations than you have sleeping. On the surface, I guess thats a good thing (unless you're my doctor or my therapist). After all, PowerPoint is tool that enables the sharing of ideas, even if it is usually predicated on that archaic "being in the same room as other people" mentality ;-)
Though despite having such a noble foundation, PowerPoint presentations have come to... well... be about as much fun as hitting yourself with a hammer. Thats not a universal truth of course. There are still a ton of really interesting slide-show presentations being created. But good PowerPoints seem to be the exception, not the rule, at least in my experience. Some of that is the fault of presenters who don't know or don't care about engaging their audience, but some of it is the fault of the tool's overexposure. Did you know that slide-show fatigue plagues nearly 100% of Americans, according to a survey I took in my office 12 seconds ago?
Lets flash back 2 weeks <insert Wayne's World sound> to E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo). E3 is one of the bigger gaming trade shows, and is typically a hotbed of news, teasers, and announcements from across the industry. It also includes the requisite update presentations from major players at Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. This was my first year watching said presentations live, and I'm going to be honest, they were absolutely terrible. Have you ever seen an award's show host totally bomb for an entire hour? It was like that, right down to the really terrible "straight off the teleprompter" jokes. Has anyone ever sounded good reading canned presentations off teleprompters? I mean ever? I digress...
If there was a diamond in the great white shark infested rough it came during what would normally have been the driest of the dry - Sony's review of the past years hardware sales figures. So how did Sony Computer Entertainment of American President and CEO Jack Tretton spice it up? Watch and see for yourself.
Sweeeeeeeet mercy.
What you are seeing is a level from the upcoming PS3 game Little Big Planet. But this is not some sort of behind the scenes wizardry - Little Big Planet (LBP) is earning quite a bit of attention because custom level building is one of the foundational principals of the game. In theory, anyone with a copy of LBP could build a presentation (a level) like Tretton's in a relatively small amount of time.
The "Little Big Presentation" has a certain graphical wow factor to it the first time you see it - after all, it is a presentation like none other. But then PowerPoint had a wow factor at one time. New things usually do. Thats not what excites me.
No, what has me jacked up about the idea of using a game like LBP to create presentations is in the potential to shift presentations from something "you listen to" to "something you experience". A presentation that you not only could but wanted to play through yourself? A presentation that could be fun? A medium that could change the way we build and consume the slide-show that has bludgeoned us into submission for years?
Exciting? How about potentially game changing. Maybe.
Little Big Planet is not scheduled for release until October, so I can only speculate so much without having played it. But rest assured, you have not heard the last of Little Big Planet from me... nor of Little Big Presentations.
Comic from schol.wordpress.com
Though despite having such a noble foundation, PowerPoint presentations have come to... well... be about as much fun as hitting yourself with a hammer. Thats not a universal truth of course. There are still a ton of really interesting slide-show presentations being created. But good PowerPoints seem to be the exception, not the rule, at least in my experience. Some of that is the fault of presenters who don't know or don't care about engaging their audience, but some of it is the fault of the tool's overexposure. Did you know that slide-show fatigue plagues nearly 100% of Americans, according to a survey I took in my office 12 seconds ago?Lets flash back 2 weeks <insert Wayne's World sound> to E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo). E3 is one of the bigger gaming trade shows, and is typically a hotbed of news, teasers, and announcements from across the industry. It also includes the requisite update presentations from major players at Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. This was my first year watching said presentations live, and I'm going to be honest, they were absolutely terrible. Have you ever seen an award's show host totally bomb for an entire hour? It was like that, right down to the really terrible "straight off the teleprompter" jokes. Has anyone ever sounded good reading canned presentations off teleprompters? I mean ever? I digress...
If there was a diamond in the great white shark infested rough it came during what would normally have been the driest of the dry - Sony's review of the past years hardware sales figures. So how did Sony Computer Entertainment of American President and CEO Jack Tretton spice it up? Watch and see for yourself.
Sweeeeeeeet mercy.
What you are seeing is a level from the upcoming PS3 game Little Big Planet. But this is not some sort of behind the scenes wizardry - Little Big Planet (LBP) is earning quite a bit of attention because custom level building is one of the foundational principals of the game. In theory, anyone with a copy of LBP could build a presentation (a level) like Tretton's in a relatively small amount of time.
The "Little Big Presentation" has a certain graphical wow factor to it the first time you see it - after all, it is a presentation like none other. But then PowerPoint had a wow factor at one time. New things usually do. Thats not what excites me.
No, what has me jacked up about the idea of using a game like LBP to create presentations is in the potential to shift presentations from something "you listen to" to "something you experience". A presentation that you not only could but wanted to play through yourself? A presentation that could be fun? A medium that could change the way we build and consume the slide-show that has bludgeoned us into submission for years?
Exciting? How about potentially game changing. Maybe.
Little Big Planet is not scheduled for release until October, so I can only speculate so much without having played it. But rest assured, you have not heard the last of Little Big Planet from me... nor of Little Big Presentations.
Comic from schol.wordpress.com
Dammit, he stole my answer! *sigh.* Still, a very enjoyable post to read, even for the non-gamer. I do like the whole idea of experiencing the presentation rather than being droned at, but then again I'd argue that any tool (in terms of technology) can be effective if used creatively. The sad truth is that any tool (in terms of the presenter) can muck up a presentation no matter the technology used, and you're heading for a snooze fest despite the dozen prancing ponies that accompany the powerpoint slides...
But back to the point of the post. New and innovative ways to get the message to the viewers does make for better impact if done the right way. I actually watched the ENTIRE thing, which dealt with market shares and units sold and zzzz.. but I was engaged. And that, my dear friends, is what we should be searching for. Ways to engage our listeners, our viewers. Give them something or in some form they didn't expect, and you have sparked a connection.
Without having played Little Big Planet myself, I can appreciate approaching it with a bit of... we'll call it "healthy skepticism" =)
My hope, and one that I'm sure is shared by Media Molecule (the folks developing it), is that the tools will be sufficiently easy to use that interest will be the only barrier left to creating really interesting content. Of course you could make the same claim about PowerPoint, Second Life, or pretty much anything. I think you made a really great point about boring people making boring presentations - and I think to a point that will always be a problem, regardless of the tool.
Though perhaps thats part of my hope - if presentations are being designed to be "experienced" as opposed to "delivered", maybe some of the burden shifts away from those boring presenters. Then again, maybe it doesnt work that way - garbage in garbage out as they say. I guess we'll juts have to wait until October to find out!
Very exciting. But.
hehe
SecondLife, as an example, bored me, as a game, until I discovered/understood the build engine. The fact that I could make/use in-world anything I wanted became the factor that made the environment interesting.
But.
If you have no interest in DOING the building, investing the time/work/energy to GET the result, then it's a tool out-of-reach, and you go back to Pac-Man or Zork for your game experience choice. (Not to slam Infocomm, understand).
My roundabout point (maybe I should have presented with a .PPT file....) is that this will be fantastic for people that can do it, or can manage to find people to do it for them. Until then, and I'm sorry to take the negative on this exciting thing, we're stuck with boring people making boring presentations.
Ugh, now I've sullied this whole thing with pessimism. Let's leave it with the excitement; I'd love to see more new thinking invested in better tools for productivity, JUST like this one.
Thanks for posting about it, it was under my radar otherwise!