The Qantas Frequent Flyer program is one of the best examples of corporate game creation in Australia. It is a business which has been valued at $2.4bn and is used as fairy godmother to magic away Qantas public relations disasters.

At its foundation, it has the three core elements of good gameplay rewards: points, levels and status. These have been well-balanced to create an engaging and competitive world. I mentioned this to a partner at KPMG recently and asked him if he knew what his bank balance was. He didn't, and wasn't sure how many bank accounts he has. I asked about his Frequent Flyer status and he rattled off: "Platinum membership expiring in February, 660,000 points and 650 status points."

For an unexciting air carriage company to engage us on a positive emotional level is radical and effective. There is no action-packed story to work off, no tear-jerking moments to work off (though this could be debatable), just transport. In the world of film and television, the starting point is emotional engagement, so games should be a natural fit.

Movies and television are increasingly building worlds over storyline or characters, and this plays absolutely into the hands of game players who can explore these worlds, talking to the characters. Some movie directors like the Wachowski brothers even go so far as to direct the game as well as the movie - albeit with less than fantastic results.

As we started the production for our Facebook game Lost Monsters, we made a conscious decision to bring some writers onto the team. The idea was to ensure that we were creating the richness of narratives and characters in the game that could easily leap over to a TV series. With MIPTV in Cannes approaching at the end of March, Lost Monsters will form a major part of our portfolio. And maybe we'll start looking at an Xbox version of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program.

https://apps.facebook.com/lostmonsters/

This article was first published in Encore magazine, February 2012.

In 2009, a small Free-Tailed Bat landed on one of the booster rockets of the Space Shuttle a few minutes before take-off. While Wikipedia describes bats as "generally quite robust", however sitting on half a million tons of rocket fuel accelerating rapidly towards space was probably not going to end well, or as NASA put it: "The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery's climb into orbit".

Maybe it is drawing a long bow, but I reckon this little mammal is a good analogy for how sometimes we hitch ourselves on to new digital media trends without realizing the explosive consequences of our ride.

This column is all about interactive games: an industry filled with high-octane explosive materials if ever there was one. Prostitution and derivatives trading have better reputations. Yet suddenly "gamification" has entered boardrooms around the world and replaced "in terms of" at number one in management-speak bingo charts.

Gamification is the application of game mechanics to non-game environments. In some ways this works well, and in others it should be avoided. Like publishing peoples' overdrafts as a high score table.

And yet there are fabulous games out there, and some people are making a lot of money. Zynga, the makers of Farmville and Mafia Wars, has an audience of over 215m active monthly players. That's not viewers, hits, page views, or other wooly marketing fluff, that is an active and engaged audience that is spending money on content regularly. On the mobile platform, iPhone games like Flight Control and Fruit Ninja have put Australian game design onto the world stage again.

So this column will cover global gamification experiments as well as follow the story of a small number of games that we at The Project Factory have in development, and tales from beyond. It will be a diary of production and commercialization plans, successes and failures. It will be the story of a bat on a booster rocket as we work on these titles and bring them to the public and hold on for the ride. Readers of Encore will be the first to see these games on iPhone, Android phones, on Facebook as we boldly create strange new worlds and let people play with them.

This article was first published in Encore Magazine, January 2012

The Project Factory recently provided additional graphics to Channel 4's Tool Academy series finale produced by Objective Productions.

We created a "Video Yearbook" which host Rick Edwards used to go through the highlights and lowlights of the hit series.

Designer Az Newman created a bespoke menu, artwork and coded in video which was then embedded in a physical yearbook.

You can watch the episode here on 4oD.

The Great ritish Property Scandal is the Project Factory's most recent success out of the UK office, a co production with Tiger Aspect Productions.

Commissioned by Channel 4's Adam Gee, the project supports The Great British Property Scandal season of programmes on Channel 4 and is the hub for the campaign to fill up Britain's Empty Homes.

At channel4.com/propertyscandal in it's first 48 hours over 75,000 people joined presenter George Clarke's campaign. In under a week we had reached the magic number - 100,000 supporters - where the petition can now be taken to No 10 Downing Street and warrants a parliamentary debate.

The web site has also enabled 3,ooo+ emptie properties to be reported to local councils. Visitors can also download the Empty Homes Spotter iPhone app to report empties on the move.

One of the most popular features has been searching by postcode for the amount of empty properties and numbers on the Housing Waiting Register in a local area.

The Project Factory oversaw both the website and the app as a co-production with Tiger Aspect Productions. We also worked closely with Syndicut Communications and My Society.

Speaking in Televisual Magazine, Ruth Pitt, executive producer at Tiger Aspect says: "The Project Factory managed all aspects of the digital/ multiplatform campaign, working very closely with Tiger Aspect. They were happy to have someone from their digital production embedded in our team, working in our office. It was a brilliant experience working with them."

And Channel 4's Chief Creative Officer Jay Hunt highlighted the project at the recent Winter Briefing, calling it the "perfect Channel 4 project" and praised both the website and the app.

The Project Factory is continuing to work closely with Tiger Aspect and Channel 4 on the ongoing campaign.

Watch this space!

I recently spent a week with eight fabulous teams consisting of producers, screen content people, distributors, developers and writers; another eight wonderful mentors from around the world including Lance Weiler, Matt Costello, Anthea Foyer, Anthony Reed, Laurel Papworth, David Varela and Neil Ricards; all organised by StoryLabs (Gary Hayes) and Screen Australia (Mike Cowap).

I wondered if I had I drawn the short straw in that I was talking about the business models in digital (and nothing truly creative), but as is often the case, it does require a fair amount of creativity to imagine how to develop sustainability in digital projects.

I still feel it unjustified that somehow, digital is expected to be revenue positive, when vast numbers of projects developed on other screens are 100% funded and not directly reliant on audience interest to justify their existence or to provide the financial backing to be seen as successful. That said, success if several measures, of which revenue generation is certainly only one.

The StoryLabs/Screen Australia clinic also had a day in Melbourne where we all provided slimmer versions of the presentations we had made over the week. As there have been a few requests for this, attached is the presentation that I presented. You don't get me talking you through the pictures, but happy to respond to any questions or clarification you might need by email.

Enjoy!

Download Jennifer's Presentation