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The Challenges of Interactive Storytelling in Games

I remember the time when magazines were my main source of gaming information, back in the early 2000’s before I had access to good, reliable internet. I was particularly fond of the reviews and gave perhaps way too much attention to the system they used to rate the games. In retrospect, I’m not even sure how well thought they were. Nonetheless, they did influence the way I still analyze games to this very day. And with my senior project in mind, those notions flourish once again in my mind.

I have been thinking a lot about the gameplay for my senior project lately, which is funny considering how conceptually simple it is at first glance. Yet, the more I think about it, the more the complexities become clear. As an adventure point-and-click styled game, controlling the character is simple and straightforward, but that’s not all of it. That’s because project “Shenanigans” is an interactive story in game form, in which the user input defines the way the story progresses. It’s the kind of thing that soon becomes a snow ball, since one change leads to another and so it goes. In other words, what I avoid in terms of traditional gameplay, I must face in terms of interactive storytelling. This is complicated because, while the concept itself is not entirely unique, very few games truly succeed at it. Far too often games that are marketed as “you make your story”, don’t really offer much more than an illusion of freedom and user input. You get a few multiple endings, but it rarely goes much beyond. That’s where the ambition of my project lies… and its greatest challenge.

To deal with that, I’ve decided to create a chart to outline player actions and decisions, and their consequences. The idea is that this chart will work as a guideline for both me and the rest of my team, and prevent me from getting lost when writing the script. While it will be a little challenging, I can’t say I’m not excited. I’ve always been a storyteller, and always appreciated the edge that games have on dragging the player into the story, but I want to do more than that. I want to create the opportunity for the user to become a character and to make each experience unique in some way for every user.

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Accessibility in Games

Here’s an unfortunate truth: people often don’t consider accessibility in gaming. I say this not as a bold generalization, but as a recognition of a fact and issue that needs to be dealt with. I myself have only rarely contemplated the subject. I remember playing some games and suddenly realize “Wow, it must be really confusing to play this game as a color-blind person”. I can, off the top of my head, remember one game that did offer alternatives for people who are color-blind: Nintendo’s amazing online third-person shooter Splatoon allows players to change the color palette of the paint guns used in the game to make it easier to distinguish the colors of opposing teams. And color-blindness, obviously, is merely one example—what about hearing impairment, or physical disabilities? The fact is that the majority of games being produced and released don’t seem to deem this issue relevant enough to receive considerable attention, which unfortunate when you discover how simple it is to implement accessibility in the development of a game.

The colorful Splatoon offers in-game alternatives to color-blind players

Enter projects like includification.com, a website dedicated to spread awareness of this issue. In it you can find several alternatives to implement accessibility in game development, and many of them are so simple you wonder why they’re no more common. For instance, allowing third-party access, that is: allowing players to use non-standard input devices other than mouse and keyboard, such as headmice, which is a system for users who cannot rely on their arms to manipulate the mouse cursor. Many computer games block the use of third-party devices in an attempt to curb cheating and the such, but, obviously, this ends up being a real problem for people who depend on those tools to play games. That is a sizable public that wants to buy and play games but is constantly excluded even though the solutions are often surprisingly simple.

This is, of course, an issue much bigger than the gaming industry. The reality is that disabled people are ignored by the media and industry in general, and it’s great that the internet is allowing people to spread this message further and more effectively than ever before.

As mentioned on previous posts, I’m currently working on the project of a game for my senior project on Interactive Media Management, and after reading this and other websites this topic has been swirling in my head and I’m already thinking about my game in terms of accessibility. Since it’s a point-and-click adventure game, implementing the suggested alternatives is so easy that I have no excuse for not doing so.

 Sources:

http://www.orin.com/access/headmouse/

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/05/dont_worry_colour-blind_gamers_splatoon_has_got_your_back

http://www.includification.com/

http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/

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On the Challenges of Developing a Game

Projecting a game can be scary. I have contemplated these words more than once ever since embracing a game concept as my senior project for Interactive Media. Of course, I’m not actually supposed to deliver a fully developed product—only a demo, in fact. Yet here I am pondering the complexities I’m about to face in this adventure I’ve set to myself, though my project shouldn’t be exceptionally complex in terms of game mechanics. My project—working title Shenanigans—is a point-and-click choice-based adventure game, with gothic visuals and heavy emphasis on storytelling. This description already hints at some of the challenges I might face while developing this project, but I’ll explain them in detail:

Audio and Visuals

I want it to be immersive. That’s more than a personal desire, it’s an actual necessity for the project to be successful since immersion is such a key aspect for the game. I reckon that for a game to be immersive it requires visuals, audio, storytelling, and gameplay to work together neatly. I’m fairly confident about creating some engaging storytelling, and the game mechanics for this type of game are rather simplistic by default, So I’m left with audio and visuals as potential challenges. The conceptualization for those two elements is well developed in my mind, but as someone with little artistic practice—apart from the occasional notebook drawing—it’s something to consider and plan, and it would be nice to have the aid of someone more experienced in these skills to transcribe my thoughts into something more “physical”.

What if it’s too ambitious?

I have asked myself these very words more than once. It’s not that the game concept is extraordinary or completely unique. There have been similar games in the past that can, and have served as inspiration for me, but issue isn’t that. The issue is that I have no direct experience with game developing, and that makes me think whether my project isn’t too much for me. My main worry is that the choice element of the game fails to achieve what I envision: that the player actually feels their choices and actions have an impact on the ways the story progresses. At the same time, however, I think the gameplay is straightforward enough that the possible challenges I will face due to my lack of experience will be compensated by the simplicity of the adventure genre.

Those are some of the challenges I can envision for my project, but there’s a flip side: I know exactly what I want to do. What I mean is that this project is already well developed in my mind, it’s a concept I have been developing for a very long time—long before I even started this course. That makes dealing with this potential challenges considerably less scary, because I can focus more on these more “technical” aspects.

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Interactive Media: Creating a Successful Product

The field of Interactive Media is marked by ambitious innovators and great ideas for all sorts of things, from games to apps, to interactive storytelling. Coming up with a cool idea, however, is only the beginning. For a project to be successful, it needs a good, well managed team, the right strategy and good planning, and that’s the tough part. But as I wonder what is it that an interactive media project needs to be successful I myself hadn’t pondered on this issue yet. A great source of inspiration could be the success stories of some indie game developers, such as Capybara Games, also known as Capy, for short. Capy is an interesting example, because it presents a small company created by people with little experience in the gaming industry and, through dedication and the right amount of ambition, managed to thrive in a such a competitive market.

One of their recent releases, in particular, caught my attention, not in a small part due to being a critical and commercial success: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. 

The great thing about this game, as success story, is that it shows how powerful innovation is in the field of Interactive Media. You see, Sword & Sworcery is many things, but one of the things it’s not is “conventional”. It’s as much a piece of art as it is a game, being heavily based on its mood and it accomplished so with a combination of great, yet simple, visuals and soundtrack. Unlike other mobile games, it’s main focus was not gameplay, but the experience, and that made it stand out immediately from its “peers”. But of course, it wasn’t just a matter of creating something new. People like novelty, sure, but only when it’s implemented well. Relying on innovation alone and ignoring whether it improves user experience in some way is can doom a project to mediocrity at best. It seems to have been an issue some people had with the Nintendo console Wii U, that they focused on the novelty aspect but failed to actually explore it in an engaging way (but I still love my Wii U regardless).

As gamer, it’s hard for me not to use another indie game as an example, but this one I would actually call half game, half interactive storytelling hybrid, and it’s one of my favorite mobile games of all time: Year Walk.

 Year walk is a puzzle thriller that is hard to describe and easy to love. Instead of controlling a character, you slide through screens featuring mind-numbingly beautiful sceneries, combined with a haunting soundtrack to boot. It actually feels more like exploring a living, breathing painting, and the puzzles in question sometimes break the fourth wall in fantastic ways, forcing you to, quite literally, think outside the box. Another interesting feature is the additional app that’s downloaded separately from the game. At first, you believe it merely enhances the experience, giving you additional information on the creatures you come across throughout your adventure, but eventually it proves essential to the storytelling. For all those reasons, Year Walk is a tremendous example of the potential for interactive storytelling, and it shows just how much an experience it can be, but you have to break conventions. There’s no point in making an interactive story that feels just like a normal book, or comic, or film. It is, and should be, an entirely different thing.

Innovation, experience, and the interconnectedness of sound, visuals and interactivity a great formula for a successful interactive media project. Be willing to do the unexpected in creative ways and drag the user into the experience. If you project can do that, it’s in right track.

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The Little Black Book of Innovation

source: hbr.org

What is Innovation? That is one of the first questions asked by author and managing director of Innosight Ventures, Scott D. Anthony. It seems like a simple word, and everyone keeps using it all the time, but trying to define it can be surprisingly difficult. But the author gives it a simple, but thoughtful answer “Something different that has impact”, which is the definition he uses throughout the book.

Now, innovation has become a sort of mantra for many companies around the globe but to many of us it still remains something distant, restricted to those especially talented individuals, like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg, as if those individuals had some sort of magical inborn skill. It’s a common enough perspective, that I’ve caught myself wondering, and one that the author eloquently disagrees. To him, innovation is a skill that anyone with motivation and determination can achieve, but allowing themselves to have the correct world view, and following the correct patterns left by the innovators of the past. Not only that, but, in his opinion, innovating nowadays can be much cheaper that in used to be. To demonstrate that, he described one example that applies quite well to Interactive Media Professionals.

He compares two stories of entrepreneurs separated by decades. The first one is about the time when Robin Wolaner, in the 1980’s, came up with the idea of a high-quality magazine dedicated to parents. The idea would cost about $5 million to be developed, so, before raising that much money, she did a simple market test, which cost her $150 thousand. The test was a success and the idea went forward, and eventually she sold her magazine, called Parenting, to Time Life Inc. for $10 million.

Now compare that story to that of two entrepreneurs the author met in 2010. They had an idea for a website that “would democratize tools used by designers of a type of chip called a field programmable gate array (FGPA)”, which, according to the author, is a big market. They then told him that they had already had a functional website with real, live tools, that, after a marketing campaign, had begun attracting some hundred users and was resulting in modest revenues. The catch? Their investment was less than $1,000. The website was built by themselves, during their spare time, and they used Google for online advertising. In other words, with modern technologies and the internet, you can do quite a lot with small investments.

Ok, that’s a nice story, but how do I become and innovator? Well, this book seems like a great start. Scott recognizes his book is not the only to try to teach this, but it’s interesting in that it tries to condense the teaching of several past innovators, plus teachings from Scott’s personal experiences. He does so by highlighting some of the, in his opinion, greatest innovators he knows. To prove his point that anyone can become an innovator, he doesn’t restrict his list to traditional names, such as the aforementioned Mark Zuckerberg. His Mount Rushmore of Innovation, as he calls it, includes A.G. Lafley, of Procter & Gamble, Robert N. Anthony Sr., the author’s grandfather, Mike Tyson, the boxer, and Thomas Edison. Quotes and stories of all these individuals are used to teach the key mindsets to become an innovator. “Take an external viewpoint”, “Recognize that you are wrong”, “Release your inner Edison”, and “Fight the sucking sound of the core”.

source: iddeurope.org

He also creates an analogy using the seven deadly sins: “The Innovation’s Seven Deadly Sins”, that are often perpetrated by companies. Pride is forcing your view of quality onto the marketplace; Sloth is slowing down innovation efforts; Gluttony is suffering the “curse from abundancy”, which he defines as the problem of having too much resources, which often results in wasting too much on the wrong ideas; Lust is trying to pursue too many ideas at the same time; Envy is an us-versus-them attitude relationship between the core and new growth efforts; Wrath is punishing risk takers; and finally, Greed is impatience for greed. All of those are accompanied by elegant solutions and real cases from real, often well-know, businesses.

After defining innovation and explaining the Whats and What nots, he puts all this knowledge to practice in a 28-Day Innovation Program, to instill in the innovator’s worldview into the reader’s mind. This program is comprised of small tasks for each day, all assigned into four weeks. Once again, the author makes ample use of real life examples from himself, people he knows, and well known businesses.

The Little Black Book of Innovation is heavy in content and teachings. Reading it is an eye opening experience that I would recommend to anyone interested in entrepreneurship, especially for those in the Interactive Industry. Innovation is the key to success to many fields of business nowadays, but it’s quite possible that no other is more heavily influenced by it than Interactive Media. It’s simply a matter of asking people around you. Whenever we think of the word innovation, people often think of Social Media, VR, ER, Gaming, and so on so forth. To compete effectively in a field so marked by these innovative efforts, learning to become a innovator is a more than useful: it’s a necessity.

Simply put: read it first, then thank me for suggesting it later.

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On Equity and Inclusive Workplaces

It’s fascinating to observe how the world has changed, and I mean it in a good way. It’s a work in progress, obviously, but we’ve come a long way. It wasn’t that long ago that women were almost completely excluded from professional life, and were restricted to the roles of mother, wife, or religious practice. It was a long time until they were fully accepted into academic life, the University of Cambridge only started admitting degrees to women in 1947. It’s quite mind boggling when you think that half the world population was being almost completely ignored. That’s a lot of missed brainpower. I think of all the women who have made contributions to science, and wonder how much more the world lost. Apart from the well know Marie Curie, other names include Caroline Herschel, Mary Anning, Mary Somerville and Maria Mitchell and many more. Those were women who stood out in spite of the restrictions imposed by the culture of their times. Imagine if more women had had access to high education, how much science could have progressed

That’s a key thing to remember: discrimination doesn’t harm just the victims of prejudice, it hinders society as a whole. The participation of women in science is just one example. As humans, we have an instinct to label people, experiences and things. It’s an asset, sure, and sometimes a very valuable one, but it’s a double edged sword that leads us to one of our greatest flaws. It leads us to build imaginary barriers between us, the idea of “us vs them”, prejudice.

Now, how does all of this influence the workplace, particularly in the field of interactive media? We live in a diverse world, and sometimes it might all seem a bit overwhelming. People are often tempted to stay in their zone of comfort, and so they’re sometimes reluctant to accept and include employees of different backgrounds or gender, often unconsciously. This isn’t a problem of ethics alone, although that is enough reason to worry. Like with the case of women in science, this reluctance is damaging to a company. It limits its field of view and perceptions of the world. It’s near impossible for a homogenous team to develop a satisfactory product to a diverse audience.

But how to improve inclusivity and equity employment? The goals are to eliminate barriers for discriminated and excluded groups, remedy past discrimination and improve access and distribution to all occupations and all levels. It’s an ongoing process that requires open-mindedness in order to create an inclusive environment. Hiring people for their professional skills, rather than genetics and customs, and providing fair payment and opportunity to have their complaints and opinions heard.

The process might be challenging at first. Some people are resilient to changes to the status quo, but the ethical and practical benefits are enormously rewarding. In the end, it’s important to remember that these barriers are all artificial. They don’t have to exist. We, as a species, built them, and we can surely bring them down, even if piece by piece.

Sources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/handy-psychology-answers/201101/the-psychology-prejudice-and-racism

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-historic-female-scientists-you-should-know-84028788/?no-ist

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/education/trehub/3.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science

http://www.anti-racism.ca/node/27

http://cupe.ca/employment-equity-workplace-reflects-community

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219505

http://offshegoes2013.blogspot.ca/2014/06/equity-vs-equality.html

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Marketing with Instagram

As a part of the Interactive Media Management assignments, my team and I are working with WIFT-T (Women in Film & Television Toronto) to help them develop a new design for their website. As a part of it, we’re presenting them with the possibility of employing social media more frequently/effectively, such as Instagram. Now, Instagram is, for whatever reason, one of my favorite social medias. Perhaps it’s its apparent simplicity, or maybe the focus on images, but apparently I’m not the only one. Instagram is a phenomenal tool for marketing. Some examples of businesses that have been successful with it are National Geographic, Saturday Night Live, and Airbnb. National Geographic has currently 61,7 million followers, a number that just keeps growing.

It’s particularly popular amongst millennials, and many use it as their favorite social media platform. A study by Forrester Researcher showed that “Instagram users were 58 times more likely to like, comment, or share a brand’s post than Facebook users and 120 times more likely than Twitter users.” That is quite a number. The success of Instagram lies in the fact that users like to visually share their experiences, and a picture, as the saying goes, is worth a thousand words. It has been shown time, and time again, that viewers react better to visual content marketing, and since Instagram is all about visual content, its effectiveness for marketing should not come as a surprise. Its user base is also massive, with over 500 million active monthly users, and 4.2 billion likes daily, and it’s still growing. Another interesting thing is that, due to its nature, it’s possible users are already posting things about your brand, which helps to build your presence in the platform.

A possible downside to using Instagram as a marketing tool is that its users are mostly younger people, who might not be your target audience. It’s also almost exclusively accessed via mobile, which are becoming quite ubiquitous now, so it’s not as much of an issue as it would be in the past. Also, since it’s so visual oriented, a business might be tempted to try different things to attract consumers, and eventually make their Instagram account lose track of their brand message. Nonetheless, the pros of marketing with Instagram often far outweigh its cons.

With that said, how to market in Instagram effectively? First of all, it’s essential to know your audience: what their interested in, what gets their attention. Engage with your users, get to know them.

Know your niche and stay in it. Avoid making off-topic posts, or your public might lose interest.

Try using the sponsored ads. Like Facebook, Instagram offers the option to sponsor posts.

And of course, don’t forget to use hashtags. Using efficiently is perhaps the key to make your posts go viral. Always include hashtags in your posts, this makes your brand stand out more in the platform, but make sure your hashtags are relevant to the posts.

Instagram is a remarkable tool, and it’s attracting more and more brands every year. It’s user base, coupled with the efficiency of visual marketing make it an indispensable platform to many brands.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-long/the-benefits-of-marketing_b_11154342.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/06/21/7-businesses-that-are-doing-instagram-marketing-the-right-way/#4367acf95ac1

https://www.tapinfluence.com/blog-six-killer-benefits-of-instagram-marketing/

https://www.fastcompany.com/3032848/the-future-of-work/nofilter-necessary-why-any-brand-can-and-should-harness-the-power-of-inst

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/03/25/the-101-of-marketing-on-instagram/#7fe9a511240c

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/instagram-beats-twitter-as-most-popular-social-media-platform-a7074121.html

https://insights.newscred.com/why-instagram-should-be-part-of-every-marketing-strategy/

http://brandongaille.com/18-pros-and-cons-of-instagram-for-business/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/tag/instagram/

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3 Technologies that Prove the Future is Here

3D Printing

The first 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, was first developed in 1980’s by Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute, in 1981, and then again in 1984 by Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte and Jean Claude André, who filed their patent for the process. However, the French General Electric Company (now Alcatel-Alsthom) abandoned it, due to what they claimed was a “lack of business perspective”. Three weeks after the French inventors, Chuck Hull also filled his own patent, and, with his corporation 3D Systems, developed a prototype for a 3D printer.

Nowadays, 3D printing promises to revolutionize the everything from industry to medicine. Advancements in the precision and effectiveness of the process have made it possible to craft prosthetics fully customized to the user. In 2014, Hayley Fraser, 5 years old at the time became the first child in the UK to receive a prosthetic hand made with 3D printing technology. Bio-printing, the process of building tissue, organs and even body parts using inkjet techniques. Some examples include the creation of a jawbone for an 83-year-old Belgian woman and the Chinese experiments in printing human ears. In industry, 3D printing clothing is already a reality, such as bikinis, shoes and dresses.

Autonomous Cars

Autonomous cars have fascinated me ever since I first read about Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, not too long ago. But Google has been working on this project since 2009. Driverless cars definitely sound like something of the future, however, even though the technology is new, the concept has been around for quite some time. In 1925 Houdina Radio Control, a radio equipment firm, presented a radio-controlled driverless car in the streets of New York. It was controlled by another car following it through radio impulses. A similar car was also presented in Milwaukee by a car distributor named Achen Motor. That was 90 years ago! Of course, much has changed since then. Those cars were not truly self-driving, rather, they were remote controlled by other drivers, while the more recent efforts involve truly independent cars.

In August 2012, Google released an announcement that their autonomous cars had “completed more than 300,000 miles of testing. They’ve covered a wide range of traffic conditions, and there hasn’t been a single accident under computer control.” These cars use a combination of sensors and software to detect pedestrians, cyclists and other cars, while their computers work on avoiding said obstacles and navigating. Considering that approximately 90% of car accidents are caused by human error, a safe and effective driverless car sounds like a dream come true, but there’s still a long way until the technology is ready to become common place on the streets.

Autonomous cars have attracted considerable attention from e-commerce, Amazon in particular, since their usage would make shipping much cheaper. Uber has also been investing in this technology and, although it’s still behind Google.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality has been a part of the human imagination at least ever since it was first introduced by Science Fiction. One of the first references was Stanley G. Weinbaum’s short story “Pygmalion’s Spectacles”, but it was only with the advent of gaming and the internet that VR started to popularize. Through the 90’s, both SEGA and Nintendo each tried their luck with this technology, with their SEGA VR, in 1991, and the Virtual Boy, in 1995, respectively. During that time, there were also first attempts to use VR to connect distant places with real time 3D modeling and video chat, such as Maurice Benayoun’s “Tunnel Under the Atlantic”, which was also the first VR artwork.

Since then, VR has taken tremendous steps. Oculus VR’s prototype Oculus Rift, was first announced in 2012, followed by the creation of a Kickstarter to fund the project. The company was later acquired by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Oculus Rift uses an OLED display, 1080×1200 resolution per eye, a 90 Hz refresh rate, 110° field of view and integrated headphones with a 3D audio effect to create an immersive 3D space. Similarly, Sony has on their own Virtual Reality device, Project Morpheus, designed to work with the Playstation 4 gaming console. All things considered, Virtual Reality promises to revolutionize the entertainment industry.

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“Craigslist: What is it?” or “Where can I find a Solar Generator for $2000″

I have only recently moved to Toronto, in September 10th to be specific. After staying for about a month at an Airbnb me and my wife finally found a more permanent place to stay. Problem is, we don't really have anything in terms of furniture. Hoping to solve this minor issue, we looked for suggestions from other people, and they mostly agreed on two effective and, most importantly, cheap solutions: Ikea and Craigslist. Now, first of all, both of those things are brand new to us. We knew about them, of course, but by that I mean we knew their names. We could easily visit Ikea, and so we did. A bit overwhelming, sure, but pretty straightforward. Now Craigslist… We didn’t really know anything about it, so I armed myself with my favorite weapon: Google.

Okay, so far so good! It seems google has it all figured out for me. Thanks google! I knew I could count on you to show me the way. So… Hmm, craigslist.org? I wasn’t really expecting for a .org, but that’s fine.

Whoa, ok. Not as polished as I expected, though I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe something more charming? Well, I don’t usually judge a book by its cover so let’s see… Let’s go here.

Ah! That’s cool. There’s quite a lot of stuff in here.

It seems I can easily refine my search based on price, proximity and type of object. That’s useful, I think I’ll find what I want pretty quickly… Is that a solar generator?

Is that a good price for a solar generator?

Oh nice, it comes with a handle and wheels, and it has USB ports. That’s adorable. I mean, I won’t buy it but I digress. Let’s look for something I actually need, like a sofa bed. Those things are useful.

Wow, cheap stuff! And a large variety too.

That… Can’t be right? Or is it? One dollar?? Do people sell stuff like this for one dollar here? I need answers! And it supposedly includes a bathroom mirror! 

That first one seems nice, though.

Cute. But, now I realize I don’t really understand how this thing works.  ”Buyer arranges pick-up”, ok, but how do I pay for it? It must be in person, right? There doesn’t appear to be any other option. But then, how do I arrange anything? I’m confused. Oh, wait.

There you are, reply button. Apparently I can contact the sofa seller through e-mail, ok. It seems that’s where craigslist’s job ends though. Now I’m on my own with the sofa seller.

Now what about mattresses?

Oh look, someone is selling a baby for $10! Lot’s of posts without images too, that’s a bummer.

Eww, why are you using inches? Now I have to go through the trouble of converting to cm… What is this, the United States?

Well, overall craigslist seems like a very versatile tool and pretty simple to use. Of course, since it’s entirely based on user content, it’s not flawless. Some offers are vague and don’t seem very trustworthy. Nonetheless, it’s a great way to easily find cheap stuff. I certainly plan to use it more in the future, although I’ll remain wary. I just don’t trust people, that’s all.