So, who’s Stuart Slann, why does he need advice, and why from us?

Stuart is an Englishman who decided to cheat on his wife with a Scottish woman he met on Facebook.  Affairs of the heart are things that happen all of the time, the world over, so what’s special about this one?  Well, the ‘woman’ turned out to be 2 men that had met Stuart on holiday in Mexico several months earlier.

Back then, they’d got into an argument over their soccer teams, which ended with the 2 Liverpool-supporters throwing Manchester-United-supporting Stuart (sporting a broken ankle and rib from an earlier para- sailing incident) into the hotel pool.

Rather than letting this be the end of it, these 2 then decided upon a new way to get at Stuart, and ‘Emma’ was born.  Over the next few months, Stuart and Emma had several, increasingly intimate discussions.  This culminated in Stuart agreeing to drive 9 hours from his home in Sheffield to a remote location in Scotland outside of Aberdeen to consummate their relationship.

Upon arriving, they communicated by text, with Emma asking Stuart to take a video off himself performing a NSFW (not safe for work) act with a sex toy.  He complied and sent it to her, then waited for 3 hours for her to ‘get off work.’

At the appointed time, he received a phone call from ‘Emma’, which was where the ‘joke’ was revealed to him.   Surprisingly, he seemed to take it quite well…maybe because he realized that ultimately, he’d put himself in this position.  Sure, the 2 ‘gentlemen’ had played him, but he’d made the decision to cheat and drive 9 hours to meet someone he’d never met.

What’s happened to Stuart in the month since this happened?  Well, the 2 Liverpool fans released the tape of the phone call as a video, with the video of Stuart and the sex toy as the background.

As you may imagine, this has been picked up by quite a few news sources – from international newspapers, to blogs, to soccer sites.  Many talk about the cruelty of the prank, but all of them giving the facts, talk about what happened to Stuart, and link to the video.  A Google search for “Stuart Slann” returns 702,000 results.  I went through the first 100 to see what was out there… and not 1 was unrelated.  Everything was about tale of deceit and treachery (that applies to both parties).

Reputation management wise, Stuart has one heck of a job on his hands.  With hundreds / thousands of pages that talk about him, some on very respected news sites, and the video having over 500k views…what should he do?  Can he do anything that will get rid of all of this?

Well, honestly, not really.  He has 2 options at this point.  The first of those is to lie low, and just wait until the story dies down.  Some of those articles will fade from the search results; as some sites expire their stories, with some fading due as their postings become stale over time.  However, in all likelihood, there are probably still going to be quite a few that stick around for his name – for the next time a new employer wants to find out about him or a potential girlfriend wants to check him out (his wife left him after the story broke).  Sure, he can build up sites and profiles for his name to push them off the front page, or even further down.  But, it’s going to take time and effort.

Stuart’s second option is to embrace it, sell his story to the press, and make some short-term cash off his experience.  Everyone knows about it, his marriage is over, so why not get his side of the story out…(not that it would particularly alter the search results given that the story that’s out now is apparently fairly accurate)?

Personal reputation management is a concern that everyone should have. Anything that you do can and may be used against you by anyone.  It’s all well and good believing nothing can happen to you in a protected community, where only your approved friends can see what you’ve said or posted.  But, all it takes is one upset friend or a fake friend to take what you’ve done and put it elsewhere.  Suddenly, you’re ruined.  Your boss finds out what you said about him.  Your spouse finds out about the pictures of you and your co-worker at the company party, etc.

Everyone has done and said things that they don’t want others to know about.  But, in this instant, connected world; there’s more of a danger than ever before that the lid of your personal Pandora’s box will open up and everything gets out…never to be placed back in the box.

So, think before you share.  Think before you put it on the Web.  Think before you post that photo.

…and most definitely, think before you video yourself with a sex toy to send to a person you’ve never met…

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to making successful games.  But, here are a few of the pitfalls to watch out for. Make sure you do a lot of testing, particularly in your target demographic because the last thing you want to do is create a game…

…that isn’t fun. Well, duh! Then, why make a game? No game designer ever sets out to make a game that’s as fun as watching linoleum curl, but it does happen. Sometimes, it’s from too many features, sometimes too few, sometimes it’s poor art direction, sometimes it’s a poor scoring system or recharge system, or saving system, or some minuscule, insignificant thing that annoys the heck out of the player.

Whatever takes them out of the game world or frustrates them as a side effect of playing the game (frustration as a direct result of game play i.e. “That Boss is so darn hard!” can be a good thing, in moderation) will kill the fun and your profits.

…that isn’t playable. If the controls to fire your weapon is “Press F1 while holding down X for one shot or V for rapid fire then hold down Y for normal bullets Q for hollow bullets and W for radio active bullets,” that would be enough – but, you probably also have to move while shooting. Make sure your controls are easy to use, intuitive, and if it will be played on the computer, easily reachable. The easier it is to play the more often people will do it, particularly for casual games. A higher end game will require a more sophisticated control system with more options, but ease of use is still the name of the game.

…that isn’t consistent. You should have a logical progression of levels, power ups, enemies, gameplay, etc.  Each level should feel like a part of the larger game (unless you’re making something like WarioWare where moving around randomly from one mini-game to the next is the point).

Each level should be a slightly different with slightly more difficult variation of the level before or there should be a pattern/story progression to levels that vary wildly from the “normal” game play – e.g. every third level is a vehicle level or the last level on each “world” is a certain type while all the others are the same type of gameplay.

This will allow the player to get a feel for how the game works and enjoy mastering more difficult variations. Otherwise, it feels like you’re thrown into a room full of Sproogly Wishum. What the heck is that, you ask? I don’t know either and neither will the player.

…that’s too hard. If you make the game too hard no player will want to play it. If only 10% of players make it past the first level, then…90% of your audience isn’t engaged long enough to care about your game, let alone your product.

…that’s too easy. If even a two-year-old can play your game, twenty-five-year-olds won’t be engaged very long, unless you can somehow make it addictive. If your audience is two-year-olds, however, then you’re probably on the right track.

The first few levels should be fairly easy as people get a grasp on how the game works. The game should then increase in difficulty until only the most expert/time-devoted players can get past each level. Think of Tetris on the original NES (That’s Nintendo Entertainment System (TM) for you marketers who never had a childhood or had one before 1985.)

It had a very simple concept: make complete line. But, as the levels got higher and higher, the irregular blocks came faster and faster until most people could not flip the blocks fast enough and filled the screen to their geometric doom. (My personal best on the NES Tetris was 199 lines. Yes, I’m still proud of that. No, I don’t care how many you got on X implementation of it unless you beat me on the NES version, and then, I’ll probably cry.)

…who’s tone doesn’t fit the company or the audience. A Toddler game probably wouldn’t go over well for Rolex, nor would a Gothic Horror game be the next big thing for the over-50 set. So, make sure the tone both fits the company image you wish to portray and will be appealing to the audience you’re targeting.

…that’s one big advertisement. An advertisement in game form won’t win you any awards nor will it engender any goodwill from your clients. In fact, it’ll do more harm than good. Yes, there are companies that are testing in-game advertising but …

A. No one’s come up with a good model for it yet and B. Those marketers are building upon a gaming “infrastructure” that’s already in place. If you’re building that infrastructure, you don’t want to throw an advertisement at your house of cards. The whole thing will tumble down. You’ll have thrown money away AND angered a large percentage of those people who played your game and might have become new, loyal customers.

As you embark upon this brave new world, may you always remember one thing: you can lead a gamer to water, but you can’t make him take a shower, unless, maybe, you happen to be his mother. (Even then, it’s a crap shoot.)

In any case, Happy Gaming!

Facebook owns you!! That’s right.  Everything you’ve ever put on Facebook can be used by Facebook however they please.  Think by closing your account everything will go away?  Wrong.  It’s now property of Facebook FOREVER!!

On February 4th, Facebook updated its Terms of Service (TOS) to basically take away any rights you have to any content you’ve added to Facebook or any other information you’ve provided them.  Consumerist.com has a nice write up on the changes to the TOS and it looks like Facebook may have a growing backlash to the changes they’ve made.  Twitter is a buzz (or should I say a tweeting) about the topic and over on Digg, the consumerist.com article is one of the most digged articles in the last 24 hours.  There is also a Facebook group that has formed and is exploding with new members. 

It will be interesting to see if Facebook listens to its users whom they depend on for success or ignore the growing backlash and keep the changes to their TOS.  One thing is for certain…now you never really know for sure what’s going to happen with your content once you’ve uploaded it to your Facebook profile.     

So, the next time you’re about to upload new pictures, videos, or other content – take a second and think if it’s really something you want to make available now and more importantly, forever!

Pete Blackshaw’s recent interview with HHS Web Manager Andrew P Wilson (which took place on Twitter) is an interesting and informative look into how social media can/should be used and the mindset required for success.  Maybe it is because the goal of HHS  in this instance was focused on public service (getting timely information to the public about the salmonella/peanut butter crisis) but Andrew’s approach and philosophy feels like a much needed breath of fresh air.  Andrew and his colleagues seem to see Social Media as — first and foremost — a way to better serve the people they are trying to build a relationship with. Unfortunately, many organizations  still approach Social Media with one thing on their minds:  How do we  get people to do what WE think is important?  

Andrew’s group is way out ahead in a couple of other areas as well:
1.) An in-house team dedicated to exploring and using social technologies and channels to accomplish many different things;

2.) An integrated Social Media Center that includes HHS, CDC, the FDA and other agencies who work together to create synergies and to learn lessons from each other.  (Wow!  What a concept! Rather than recreating the wheel in multiple agencies, they coordinate their efforts.   If the U.S. government can make this work in spite of security issues and heavily firewalled siloes, it can’t be that hard for companies to accomplish.)

Obviously HHS is still in the beginning stages, but they deserve kudos for their work thus far.  This is, in many ways, more sophisticated than what we’ve seen from some big brands.

So, you stopped getting the newspapers delivered to your house because it was so much easier getting your news online.  But, now you wonder if there’s an even easier way of finding out about news events without having to type in all those troublesome URLs.

Well, have no fear….Twitter’s here!

All you need to do is sign into your Twitter account and follow the Twitter accounts of the organizations listed below.  Before you know it,  you’ll have access to news from around the world.  When you see something posted that sounds interesting to you, simply click on the link in the tweet, and away you go.

TV News Twitter Feeds
CNN	NBC News
CBS News	ABC News OK, it’s the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
FOX News	MSNBC News
SKY News	BBC News
Newspaper Twitter Feeds
New York Times	USA Today
USA Today On Politics	Washington Post
Wall Street Journal	Chicago Tribune
LATimes	International Herald Tribune
Daily Mirror	Financial Times
Radio Twitter Feeds
NPR News
Web Based News Service Twitter Feeds
Google News US	Drudge_Report
Yahoo News (no custom logo)	CNET News

I’m sure there are plenty more news services on Twitter, so feel free to add your favorite in the comments.