Participant Observations 12/12/17 - Returning the Fox Box

I just had a really funny conversation with the woman at my local newsagent. I'll explain how it came about:

So I got an email from Foxtel this week, saying the voluntary account suspension of my satellite service was about to end, and that they would start to charge me for it again.

Having been with the Foxtel OTT service now for about the same length of time, and not particularly unhappy with what I'm getting, I decided that I would terminate the satellite service. So I called them up, and cancelled the service, but not before they again tried to pitch to me some deals to stay with them. Iit was too late for that.

So they sent me an email with details about how to return the Fox Box. I printed off the label that came attached in the email, packaged up my Fox Box, and walked it up the road to the designated dispatch point - my local newsagent. (For those who didn't know, getting a Foxtel Subscription does not buy you the Box - you effectively only rent it during your subscription)

I walked into the newsagent, and said, "I understand I can drop this off here to be returned to Foxtel?"

"Yeah, that's right," she said. She then took the package out to some back room. On her way back to the counter, a thought flashed through my mind.

I asked, "Do you get many of these dropped off here?"

She looked at me in a knowing kind of way, and said, "Yeah, we get heaps. Probably 6 to 7 a week, ever since Netflix and all them other ones came along."

I said something like, "Fair dinkum. They must get a lot of churn I reckon."

She countered with, "Yeah, they have to do something about their pricing or something to stop it."

It was an informal yet fascinating validation that the traditional Foxtel business model is in crisis. It in turn led me to two other thoughts:

1) A comment one research participant said in an interview, where they said Foxtel's business model used to be about just bombarding people with as many content as possible, literally 100's and 100's of channels. It probably also reflects an ideology of "Content is King", which I think may no longer be the case. It's been said to me more recently that "User experience is now King." Which now seems more apt.

2) It also reminded me of the 5 weeks I worked as a telemarketer for Austar (which became Foxtel) waaaaay back in 2002. One of the selling points of our pitch, we were told, was to talk about the number of channels we had, year round.

But the conversation with the newsagent lady was an informal validation of the changing media landscape. Sometimes I fucking love my research and where it leads me.

Participant Observations 10/12/17 - Fan Studies Network Conference

The Fan Studies Conference in Wollongong was a really interesting and reward experience. Some takeaways:

• I felt that the paper presentation went well. I tried to get it to follow a logical progression, and integrate the key concepts of the Produser and the Informal Media Economy clearly.
• Because Fan Studies is not an area that I'm too familiar with, it forced me to explain some concepts that I probably take for granted, such as what OTT and anti-siphoning is, which is I think a good grounding experience.
• Rehearsing for presentations is always helpful. It forced me to really tighten up the literature review, and it allowed me to get my presentation down to 20 minutes, almost exactly.
• Rehearsing also made me change the order of the material so that it made the logic easier to follow. After the intro and literature review, I looked at regulation, which led into the AFL Case study, and the outcomes of Illegal vs Legal consumption, then the introduction of key concepts, which then led to a look at AFL Produser consumption practices, and finally some conclusions.
• The conference also made me restate why an Interdisciplinary approach to study is important - most people had little to no consideration of industry at the conference, and I felt that a real strength of my presentation was that it did involve direct data from an industry source.
• I think the presentation was well accepted. There was some good comments posted on social media, and most of the comments seemed to stem from Smith's observation that sports fans experience the same neurological patterns as those people that are undergoing a deep religious experience. This shouldn't be too surprising I guess.

But otherwise the conference was ok. It was only small with probably 30-40 delegates there, but was well run.

It was also probably a bit like going to ComicCon! most of the presentations focus on particular fan communities, especially around TV shows or Films and so on. But it was compelling nonetheless. 

The two keynotes were also helpful I think in terms of understanding new ways to look at Fandom, that moves away from a high culture-low culture binary to more of a quadrant pattern. I'm not sure if this could be applied to sports fandom and AFL fandom, but it might be something worth considering.

And met some interesting people as well, which is always nice!

Now, I need to see if I can get the paper written up and published somewhere!

Participant Observations 10/12/17 - New PC

About a week ago, I (finally) took possession of my $1200 gaming PC. Here are some early thoughts on it:

• I fucking love it. I play games on it without fear of the system crashing. It's quiet, looks good, and has been a breeze to use.
• Unfortunately, using Foxtel through the windows browser is not as good as using Foxtel through the chromecast app. The image is more pixellated, and not as bright as through the chromecast. This surprised me because I always saw chromecast as an inferior product, in terms of latency and instability of the Foxtel app. I think this must have something to do with the graphics card or operating power of the PC, because the PC runs computer graphics as smooth as silk, but there may be a difference between computer graphics and streaming graphics.
• I'm super keen to play some online gaming or multiplayer gaming with it. My internet is fast enough, but I'm not yet confident enough to go into the online space.
• I'm having to guard against buying too many games too quickly. They are expensive, and sometimes not as good as anticipated.
• I'm also cognisant of not using up all my time on there, when I should be doing uni work or chores or whatever. 
• My favourite games so far: The Golf Club and NBA 2K16, both of which my old system would crash if it were trying to run it. I really want to build my own golf course, but I'm also aware that this will chew up heaps of time, which I need to be aware of.
• Games I want to get: AFL Evolution (which is expensive - $65), and perhaps some other first-person shooters/adventure games, like one of the GTA games.
• The games look FUCKING SPECTACULAR on my television.
• I have the free AFL Evolution Demo, but it only lets you play around with some list management features, which are nice, but really you want that gameplay action!! Actually, fuck it, I'm going to get it tonight...
• You become more aware of the whole 'microtransaction' process, and how fucked it is. I tweeted this article about it the other day: https://www.theringer.com/features/2017/12/2/16725196/reddit-fighting-microtransaction-exploitation-in-video-games For example, most of the golf courses on the Golf Club are locked and only open to 'platinum' or 'premium' members.

Here's what she looks like:

And some screenshots of my favourite games:

Which can also be found on my Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcMvWqrnc2X/?taken-by=ed_reddin

So maybe I need to come up with a name for it!!

Participant Observations 10/12/17 - Foxtel Survey

So I recently recieved an email from Foxtel, asking me to participate in a survey. I've grabbed screenshots below:

I completed the survey, and also checked all three boxes in the last quest. The reason I'd do this is because hopefully I can:

1) Give Foxtel feedback about their OTT app, and how to improve it, because I still think this app is underdeveloped in an attempt to discourage customers from becoming pure OTT consumers (i.e., they try to 'encourage' people to stay on a satellite plan because of the poor user experience with the app).

2) It would help me to maybe see the values and priorities for Foxtel from the types of questions they would ask me.

I also try to identify as an early adopter/influencer in this space, so I think my answers might be of some relevance.

However, it depends if I'm seen by them as a 'core' customer or not (i.e., I'm not a family with a huge amount of disposable income, or whatever it is that Foxtel see their core customer profile as being). So yes, ultimately I'm hoping Foxtel will add me to their survey group.