Millennial Modes

Analysis: Fame Might be the Biggest Motivator for Millennials

Authored by Scott Goldberg on March 19, 2007 - 10:37am.
Camera Phone FameAs part of our upcoming Millennials Conference April 18th in LA we’re putting together a documentary about the generation loosely defined as ages 15-25 with Victorhouse Films.  We’ve noticed an interesting trend in our interview subjects, one that I’ve increasingly noticed in advertising as well: Millennials might be more motivated by fame than any preceding generation, and it’s not difficult to understand why.  It's just a click away.

How Much Time Do Millennials Spend on MySpace & Facebook?

Authored by Scott Goldberg on March 12, 2007 - 12:17pm.
College socializing 2007 As part of DMW’s Millennials Conference April 18th we’re making a documentary about the Millennial generation (roughly defined as age 15-25) with Victorhouse Films.  We made UCLA our first stop for interviews, partially because the conference will be on its campus, and partially because its students, located in LA, are among the most exposed to digital media.  As a disclaimer, I am not, nor have I ever been, a MySpace or Facebook user.  And what I found in our student interviews is that never, in my life, have I been so out of touch with a pop culture phenomenon.

Buzz Watch: South Park’s 11th Season Opens March 7

Authored by Scott Goldberg on February 28, 2007 - 4:56pm.
South Park What keeps fans returning to South Park is the seemingly bottomless well of shock humor the show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, come up with each year.  South Park will begin its 11th season on Comedy Central March 7th, and as always, loyalists will tune in to see if the four crudely-drawn kids from Colorado can top themselves yet again.

User-Generated Content: Who's in Control?

Authored by Ty Clancey on February 16, 2007 - 8:21am.
MTV UGC Hey You.  Yeah, You.  Big-Shot Time Magazine Person of the Year "You".  You got my next product, You?  Where's my web-ad, You?  You think you're something special with all this new-found attention, You?  Well, maybe McD's is relying on You to sell their new excuse for food permutation, but let's take a hard look at what's really going on in the Big Media shake-up known as User-Generated Content.

On YouTube, DutchWest Plays Differently than the Other Kids

Authored by Scott Goldberg on February 6, 2007 - 6:35am.
DutchWest
Your friends and family are YouTube’s best filters.  The reason?  The majority of the clips you find browsing are terrible.  Most likely, unless you’re intentionally subjecting your friends to garbage, you’re not going to send them bad material.  What you send, naturally, is a mark of your identity.  Send something dumb and you think it’s funny?  Hope you have dumb friends.  A buddy recently sent me a clip too stupid to waste time describing with the subject line, “This is funny…I swear!”  Well, it wasn’t funny at all.  It was horrendous.  When I realized he was serious it made me consider whether or not we were really friends.  How could our senses of humor be so different?  I thought I knew him better than that! 

 

12 Questions about Video Games with a 12-year-old

Authored by Scott Goldberg on January 19, 2007 - 6:41am.
Scott CohenScott Cohen is 12 years old, comes from Connecticut, and is a huge fan of video games.  I interviewed him with some tough questions about gaming recently, and as one would expect from a man of his experience, he does not filter his opinions.  He tells it like he sees it, which will be music to some developers' ears, but might leave others back at the drawing board.  I’ve personally played video games with him (and thoroughly lost), so I can attest to his skills.  Here are 12 questions with a 12-year-old… 

 

Death Row Records Made a Christmas Album?

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 20, 2006 - 5:37am.
At a Christmas decorating party I recently attended, the host played a homemade holiday compilation disc. When I realized within the opening stanza of the first song that it was not Alvin & The Chipmunks but The Beatles, I was surprised, though less so than I was for the songs that followed. Soon there was Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Christina Aguilera, Kurtis Blow, Whitney Houston, and a tune from Phil Specter’s album, “A Christmas Gift to You”. But then came a moment of surprise similar to taking a sip of water from a straw only to find a Jack & Coke. Silky smooth over the stereo came the one and only Snoop Dogg, singing a song called, “Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto.”

The ‘Pros’ & Cons of the Championship Gaming Series

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 18, 2006 - 4:00pm.
Championship Gaming Series 2Skeptics of professional video gamers (or “cyberathletes,” as they are sometimes known) often ask the same two questions: 1) How difficult is it, really, to play a video game?; and 2) Who cares about professional video gaming anyway? You’ll find various answers supporting both sides of the argument, but the Championship Gaming Series is hoping to cash in on one of them, that being the existence of an obvious passion for tournament play.

12 Unwritten Rules of Cell Phone Etiquette

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 14, 2006 - 5:28am.
There are some hard, cold truths to the way we use our cell phones, but they’ve become commonplace to the point of forming an accepted, unwritten code.

Game Preview: MLB ’07 The Show for Playstation Offers a Nice Update to ’06 Version

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 12, 2006 - 8:43am.
MLB 07 - 2 Here’s the thing about sports games: When a game makes a huge leap forward graphically, like MLB ’06 on PS2, it’s difficult to take it much further the following year.  So the focus instead turns to improvements on game play, and in that sense, MLB ’07: The Show doesn’t disappoint.  The new game, to be released February 27, features some interesting twists: For starters, the Online League Play mode, which is basically organized like Fantasy Baseball, allows players to draft a squad, maintain detailed stats, and compete with up to 30 other teams.   


Game Preview: MotorStorm for Playstation 3 a Beautiful Disaster

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 11, 2006 - 6:12am.
Motorstorm clip The new Evolution Studios game for Playstation 3, MotorStorm, is a fun take on the racing genre.  Described by one of the game’s developers, Kyle Zendel, as, “brutal off-road racing in chaotic environments,” the races take place in Mad Max and Star Wars-like settings.  The contestants come from an “alternative and extreme off-road racing culture,” and you navigate the various courses without a map, an interesting addition that forces you to focus on the landscape, a subtle and intelligent choice on Evolution’s part.  MotorStorm, for me, is a fantastic preview of what the PS3 can do visually, though it still, supposedly, is only scratching the surface. 

Why the NFL Struggles to Attract Female Fans

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 5, 2006 - 3:10am.
At the Reuters Media Summit in New York last week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell discussed the importance of attracting more female fans, though no specific strategies were offered. "It's a very big initiative," he said. "(Women) fans want to be treated as real fans because they love the game and they understand the game and they want to have the opportunity to experience the game just as anyone else does."

There is good reason for the NFL to emphasize the importance of a female audience to its bottom line. NASCAR has managed to attract a sizeable female following of its own – 42% of the fan base, according to an ESPN poll conducted over 12 months. And according to a Nielsen Media Research figure from 2003, the NFL could only claim 33% of its audience as female.

Music Review: Regina Spektor will Become a Household Name

Authored by Scott Goldberg on December 1, 2006 - 7:08am.
Regina Spektor 2The Russian native and one-woman band Regina Spektor is going mainstream following a steady gig as The Strokes’ favorite opening act.  Her first album with Sire Records, Begin to Hope, will have a wider appeal than 11:11, her debut, and Soviet Kitsch, but it’s still thoroughly ReginaComparisons from music critics include Norah Jones (because Spektor is fond of the piano), Fiona Apple (because at times she sings powerfully about being a powerful female), and Tristan Prettyman (because her lyrics are sweet and easy).  But it doesn’t take long to realize she has a style all her own, musically and lyrically.  She can sing the blues with the best, sounding like Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” on the song “Lady,” or bring out her darker side and sound like Bjork on “Apres Moi.”

Real Demand for Sony’s PlayStation 3 will be Revealed After Black Market Cools

Authored by Scott Goldberg on November 20, 2006 - 7:20pm.
In limiting its launch to 400,000 units, Sony’s PlayStation 3 faced the issues one might expect: a shooting in Connecticut; a robbery in El Grove, CA; a brawl in North Riverside, IL; and many other incidents around the country. Some would say the countless stories of customers camping in places less than ideal for such an activity (ever been to Wisconsin in late November?) is indicative of the demand for the device, which will go head to head with the Wii (debuting yesterday) and Xbox 360 this Christmas. Whether the demand is real or not will be proven in the weeks ahead, because it’s likely many of the launch customers camped solely for the price a PS3 is currently fetching on the black market.

Nintendo’s Wii a Testament to Innovation

Authored by Scott Goldberg on November 14, 2006 - 8:15pm.
Wii controller I had a chance to test Nintendo’s Wii at the LA Games Conference last week, and it proved to be far more interesting than I had imagined. The Wii’s controller, which looks in form like it should be changing channels on a television, is a positive step ahead for the industry, offering a change to a device that has essentially been the same since the days when Atari’s Pac Man ruled the field.

Learning the Facts of Second Life

Authored by Scott Goldberg on November 6, 2006 - 4:37pm.
Second Life PartyPart I: Broke as a Joke
As a lifelong video gamer I’m accustomed to two things (well, far more than that, but for the sake of brevity): 1) Paying for my game; and 2) Not paying a dime after accomplishing #1. So I went into this “free” game called Second Life prepared to pay something, at some point.  But the virtual “Man” held out his virtual hand far earlier than I imagined.  I was prompted to enter a credit card number and receive, in exchange, my “Linden” dollars, practically the minute I pressed the orange “Join Now” button on the homepage.  I opted not to pay, and thus entered the game naked and without a dime.

VictorHouse Films One of Many Benefiting from the YouTube Generation

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 31, 2006 - 8:56am.
Millennial Modes is made possible by Cdigix.
Ty Clancey - VictorHouse FilmsFor filmmakers like Ty Clancey, a 27-year-old from Iowa who started VictorHouse Films in January 2005, the landscape has changed over the last year. He came to Hollywood five years ago, straight from film school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. At the time, the life of an aspiring Hollywood filmmaker was much the same as it had always been, which for people like Clancey amounted to little more than a shot in the dark.

Girl Gamer Team Frag Dolls Help Industry Grow Up(ward)

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 24, 2006 - 11:48am.
First there were the 007 games on Nintendo 64, which I played extensively in my senior year of high school. The benchmark on video game quality was set during that period: if I play a game 6 hours a day, I'm addicted in the worst, most hopeless way. There are few other addictions that occupy your time as relentlessly as video gaming. You suffer sleepless nights and the fabled “Video Game Eyes” – a state of appearance that falls somewhere between a 3-night bender in Vegas and reconstructive surgery.

Sex and the Digital Gadget Guy

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 17, 2006 - 9:24am.
iPod KissFiguring out how to meet a girl is one of the three biggest challenges a man faces in his life, and if the amount of time spent thinking about girls is added up...well, let’s just say we spend a lot of time on the subject. Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, apparently had difficulty with it himself. “Basically,” said Mark J. Pincus, a seed investor of Friendster, in the New York Times, “Jonathan wanted to meet girls.” And as if that didn’t sell poor Jonathan down the river enough, Pincus added, “He told me himself, he started Friendster as a way to surf through his friends’ address books for good-looking girls.”

[Millennial Modes, a weekly column that covers the trends, attitudes, and tastes of the millennial generation is made possible by Cdigix.]

Will Trendsetting Millennials Shun their Parent’s iPod for Zune and Sansa?

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 10, 2006 - 7:34am.
In July, the Solutions Research Group reported on iPod ownership demographics, and aside from the obvious market share results (which, according to Piper Jaffray, is 79% in the past 6 months), there was one statistic that might represent an ominous sign for Apple in the short run. The biggest year over year increase in iPod ownership: People between 30-49, who comprised 12% of iPod owners in 2005, and 33% in 2006.

[Millennial Modes, a weekly column that covers the trends, attitudes, and tastes of the millennial generation is made possible by Cdigix.]