Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Wednesday, December 06, 2006 Promoting football and promoting orienteeringI came across an article on the relationship between the Madden video game and marketing NFL football. Here are a couple of quotes from the article published in the Washington Post:Kids' "use of technology is different than a generation ago," said Lisa Baird, the NFL's senior vice president for marketing. "They are programmed differently than we are. They are wired differently than we are. We are getting increasingly smarter about the way kids act." "There's no question it's the video game that's bringing in teenagers," said Marc Ganis, the president of Sportscorp Ltd., a sports consulting firm based in Chicago. "It's educating young fans on the NFL terminologies and making them more sophisticated about the plays on the field. "But it's also bringing more fans into this very arcane, jargon-driven environment. If you watch the game on TV nowadays, the announcers -- especially the color men -- are using these very technical football terms. They expect the fans to understand it." Think about CatchingFeatures and think about how orienteering could use it to promote the sport. When I last talked to a newspaper reporter who was writing an article about the sport, I told him all about CatchingFeatures. My hope was that he'd check it out, learn something about the sport, and maybe point some potential orienteers to the game. I've no idea if it worked, but he included a link to CatchingFeatures in his article. I don't know enough about computer games to know how feasible it would be to do some of this stuff, but here are a couple of ideas: 1. Create a little demo version of CatchingFeatures that would include one map of a local area. A club could then give away the demo program as a promotional tool. For Orienteer Kansas, we could translate the OCAD map of the KU Campus into CatchingFeatures and then give the demo away to KU students who might be interested in orienteering. It'd give them a chance to learn about the sport in a way they might find comfortable (i.e. a computer game) and in an environment they could relate to (i.e. a copy of the university). 2. Create a very simple demo version of CatchingFeatures that could run on a web page. It would probably have to be a very simplified version with a small map, but wouldn't that be a cool way to show the sport to people? I'm sure there are lots of other interesting ways orienteers could use CatchingFeatures to promote the sport. There are probably even ways orienteers are using CatchingFeatures to promote the sport. To me it seems that some creative use of CatchingFeatures is a much more realistic way of promoting orienteering than trying to make the sport look cool on TV. TV has the advantage of a chance to bring more money into the sport, but it just doesn't seem like a very realistic possibility. CatchingFeatures might be a more realistic way to promote orienteering. It'd also be a lot cheaper for USOF to put some money into further developing CatchingFeatures than into trying to get TV coverage or orienteering. posted by Michael | 7:13 PM 
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1) I'm not entirely sure this would work, but it's a good idea. There are lots of "shoot 'em up" computer and video games out there that are somewhat similar (replace the control flags with guns, ammunition boxes, and bad guys running around). Most of these games have a map/radar in the corner of the screen to let you know where you are relative to the map. College kids love these games. If you give them CatchingFeatures, they might be interested for a little while, but the novelty of running around simulated campus would wear off quickly for most college kids. I think they'd rather run around and blow stuff up. For example, a lot of my recent college-grad buddies here in Seattle like to play these types of games, and they had a party where everyone brought their computers over so they could play these multi-player games on a local network. I didn't have any of the games that they were going to play, but I figured that I'd go and see about starting a CatchingFeatures race or something with the free demos. Nobody was interested, because they'd rather blow up aliens or terrorists. 2) I think this has a much better chance, especially with how viral some internet links can become. Everybody is linking to silly internet games and YouTube videos these days. Plus, there are some pretty slick online games out there, so you wouldn't have to dumb it down too much. 3) As far as orienteering on US TV goes, the best ways would be: a) get a couple of orienteers to participate in the Amazing Race and stay around for multiple episodes. b) hook up a high-octane sprint course at some televised adventure racing event. c) hope that the Street Scrambles keep growing and make the jump to the mainstream. (1 event in Seattle in 2003 has grown to 10 events in Seattle and San Fran in 2006, to 15 events in 2007, with a first-time event in Boston). # posted by
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