It's rare, maybe unprecedented, to see gamers brought into the development process on such a wide scale and at such an intimate level. Though participation takes the form of an single vote, you can bet that people who get involved will have lots of feedback and questions, and probably a few demands, as the process continues — which, in addition to forging a strong connection with fans, could actually be kind of scary. Today I spoke briefly with Tim Schafer to ask more about the thinking behind the project and his expectations for where it might go. For him, the key revelation from the Kickstarter campaign was less about identifying demand for a new adventure game, and more about discovering that a more transparent development process can be a really positive experience:

We're building off of one of the things we learned from that project, which is that it's okay to open the doors. We've had this Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory thing for many years, and the Kickstarter changed all that.

...

We let people see the making of the game and realized it's okay. You think people will laugh at us or they'll judge us for the work or they'll get mad when we cut something from the game. ... We realized that the players are smarter than people are giving them credit for.

He expressed some slight anxiety at the idea of handing the choice of games over to the public, but it was far outweighed by curiosity:

It's really interesting. Usually I pick, usually I deal with the deciding. I think I just wanted to try a different way to see. I like getting my way some of the time, but not all of the time. If you don't have any sort of agent of chaos or wild card then you never have any sort of evolution of ideas, and fresh blood. ... I really want to see what the people at large have to say, to see if it's different.

Similarly, he noted that live-streaming the development process would be a real dose of reality for some gamers, and he's interested to see how they react. While there's plenty of fun stuff to show, like the Art Jams where they flesh out a game's visuals, there's also the painful side, like the budget meetings where exciting ideas get reluctantly cut. But such things are necessary, and as he notes, displaying them helps to humanize the process — which is something we talk about a lot when it comes to connecting with fans and being open, human and awesome.

It's going to be great to see the results of this team-up. Schafer started his career at Lucasfilm Games when secrecy and control were the orders of the day, and developers tried all sorts of wacky schemes to prevent piracy — that's what he was used to, and he credits the Humble Bundle with helping to inspire a different outlook:

Besides the fact that they bring a lot of smaller, lesser known games to light, a lot of what's inspiring is the business model.

Keeping things secret, hoarding information, protecting your copyright. That's just what I was used to, and Humble Bundle says let it go, open it up, let people have it for a penny or a dollar, let people pay what they want and give all the money to charity if they want.

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You can't have this 100% watertight, airtight grip on that stuff. You have to make other people not want to pirate, make it easy for them, and respect them enough to let them choose. People respond to not being treated like criminals.

If you want to get in on the project and cast your vote for which games get developed, you can do so over at the Humble Bundle site — there are also two existing prototypes of other games for contributors to download right away.

Campaign strategists and pundits are always trying to predict the newest or most important political demographic groups. For a long time, it was seniors. That was followed by the dawn of the "soccer mom" and lately there has been a lot of talk about "NASCAR dads." But the strongest untapped political factor these days is rarely mentioned, despite representing a force central to the lives of nearly every American -- the Internet.

The three planks of the association's advocacy platform are: protecting Internet freedom; fostering innovation and economic growth; and empowering users. The unique nature of the Internet, free from government control, has unleashed unprecedented entrepreneurialism, creativity and innovation, far beyond imagination. But what about tomorrow? No one can predict what innovations will happen next. But we do know that the Internet's decentralized and open model has been the catalyst that has powered this information revolution.

• A panel on copyright and disruptive technologies involving three true experts on the subject: Andrew Bridges, Margot Kaminski and Wendy Seltzer.
• A discussion between two of the key Congressional staffers who (from opposite ends of the political spectrum) helped team up to defeat SOPA: Jayme White from Senator Wyden's office and Laurent Crenshaw from Rep. Issa's office, talking about Congress and the internet, and how to prevent future SOPAs from happening.
• A discussion asking if the internet has become America's "third party" starring some more of the key folks who led the fight against SOPA (including both Colwell and Crenshaw already mentioned, but also Maura Corbett and Marvin Ammori).
• Rob Pegoraro talking about why the media doesn't understand tech policy issues very well.
• A panel on the future of internet rights.
• This one, the title says it all: It's Reddit's World. We Just Live In It.
• Gary Shapiro on "ninja innovation"
• In Defense of Mashups looks interesting in that, among others, it would have Eric from Padmapper on the panel, and he's currently being sued by Craigslist for "mashing up" Craigslist with maps to make Craigslist more useful.
• I learned a while back that when the Bomb Squad/Public Enemy's Hank Shocklee speaks, you should listen, so vote for his panel (also with Julie Samuels at EFF, Michael Petricone at CEA and Paul Geller from Grooveshark) on making free content work for fans and for artists.
• Similarly, former rockstar, now brilliant business strategist Dave Allen is always worth following, especially when he'll be on a panel with Brian Zisk talking about music tech startups.
• Soundcloud and Wattpad together, talking about the rise of collaborative content creation? Count me in.
• Nick Grossman has some very cool ideas about connected innovation, and he wants to talk about a bunch of them at SXSW.
• Here's an interesting one on learning from China in terms of how imitation can help you innovate too.

As Rick Falkvinge writes, things didn't go too well for those hoping to free up orphan works for modern use:

the copyright industry lobby won key points in the voting procedure with 14 votes against reform and 12 in favor of it, according to the just-published protocol.

• Surviving Lulz: Behind the Scenes of LulzSec (this one looks fascinating)
• Set Your Content Free (It's Harder Than You Think)
• The Systematic Undoing of Copyright Trolls
• Appetite for Enforcement: IP Policy Evolves
• 3D Printing: Not Everyone Will Be Excited
• Hey, That's Mine! Who Owns Content?
• Thank You, Wow & Done: The 3 only metrics you need
• "Now there's music cloud, where's movie cloud?"
• Tricking People Into Reading Again
• The Revolution Will Be Published (by Richard Nash, who you should be paying attention to)
• Can Free Streaming Music Survive and Thrive?
• Everything is a Remix, So Steal Like An Artist
• Vote4Geeks: Why Techies Should Run for Office
• Promoting the Innovation Economy (Rob Pegoraro is always interesting)

Instead, America should implement weighted voting to make voting more objective and fair, and give the young more power, because the consequences of political decisions will affect them the longest. Weighted voting would restore power to twenty and thirty year olds, where it resided before the advent of medical science. With the aid of computers, it would be easy to give everyone a Voting Score, just like we all have a credit score.

Apparently in 2004 the polls in Waukesha were teeming with voters as the Waukesha County Clerk's office showed a 97.63% turn out. No, that's not a typo. 97.63%

http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/...

Of the 236,642 registered voters in Waukesha on Nov 2, 2004 apparently 231,031 of them came out in a hint of rain and drizzle and did their civic duty.

Just to put this in perspective, Australia has compulsory (mandatory) voting and their turnout is 95%.

In the 8 months leading into the 2004 Presidential Election there was a marginal 1.3% increase in the rolls netting about 3000 additional new voters. However in the 3 months after the election, which showed an anomalous 97.63% turn out, suddenly the rolls surged to the tune of almost 50,000 new voters and upped the rolls 20%. I suppose that's one way to even out a suspiciously high turn out.

Furthermore, remember that first number I told you to hang on to? The 283,820 eligible voters in the county of Waukesha in July of 2004? This new surge in the voter rolls has now pushed total voter registration in Waukesha County to 99.5% of elegible voters being registered to vote by February of 2005.

In the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor there were a total of 176,112 votes cast. For Attorney General there were a total of 174,047 votes cast. And for Secretary of State there were a total 170,440 votes cast.

So, look at the 3rd line of the top of that report...Total Ballots Cast: 156,804. So based on those numbers 20,000 extra votes were cast in the election that weren't actually accounted for in the ballots cast.

Three months ago - when KISS launched their "You Demand It Tour", Buzz Lumpa's jumped all over it in an effort to bring KISS back to the Verizon Wireless Arena. The deal was that the band would rout their tour to the cities that wanted them most - and that meant the cities that cast the most votes. Manchester NH did just that - beating out EVERY major U.S. city! We cast more votes than New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and yes- Boston. Over 240 cities were vying for the band - and Manchester NH placed 2nd in the U.S.! And yet, when KISS announced their tour itinerary, Manchester NH was NOT on it. The band chose to play Boston instead. KISS lied to you.

"We have not seen this particular condition anywhere else in Ohio or anywhere else in the country."

accomplished people who have something to offer on the board. But as far as I can tell they are not "professionals in the field of science and technology," so their appropriate positions on the board would be somewhere in the other thirty-five seats.