I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And when Souris posted to a mailing list about it, I tried to put my rather vague thoughts into more coherent terms. I realized that I had been noticing four big trends that are already shifting the tectonic plates of the vast entertainment industry. I need to do some more thinking in these areas but my initial thoughts are that the futures of entertainment will be shaped by:
1. Tension between Immersion and Transparency.
What I think of as Big Media -- giant, big-budget movies, games, TV Shows -- seek to really *immerse* people in a spectacle of scale and sensation. And we say that we love that feeling of being utterly transported -- but at a My Bloody Valentine show I went to recently, what did I see? People were texting on their phones! Taking video of the band! Twittering! I was doing it too. We were *layering* these ambient communications transparently on top of what was supposed to be this overwhelmingly big experience, because we wanted to *share* this experience with others, we wanted to record it for ourselves. This has to do with what Linda Stone calls "continuous partial attention." I call this "transparent" because I don't believe it in any way diminishes the experience of, say, a rock show; it's simply a new way of experiencing it.
Future entertainment will find clever ways to accommodate, even encourage, this behavior.
2. Asynchronous Instant Communication.
Most of my friends have embraced Twittering, text messaging, Facebook, and the like. One of the things that is really new and intriguing about these forms of communication is that they are simultaneously instant and asynchronous. The update happens instantly--and the recipient can read or answer at her leisure. Or not. Facebook status updates are absolutely brilliant ways for expressing an immediate state, and allowing someone else to browse the "immediate states" of friends. Entertainment will increasingly make use of these styles of communication in the backbone of the product itself.
3. Credible Advertising with Integrity.
For a child of the 80's like me, this seems like a ludicrous notion. Advertising in that decade was so transparently slick and false that we quickly grew inured to it and scorned it. It seems designed to trick people into buying things they didn't need. Arguably that is still, at base, the aim of advertising. But it doesn't have to be that way. With targeted ads there is a chance to serve the consumer with something that she actually *wants* to see. The ad becomes both a form of entertainment and a service to the consumer.
Media companies that accept advertising should become increasingly picky about the ads they accept. They will accept ads that align with their values and their mission.
As an example, look at Penny-Arcade: the creators of the popular web comic have stated that they will only accept advertising for products that they themselves believe in. That endorsement is a HUGE win for both the consumer, who is a fan of Penny-Arcade and of their values, and for the advertiser.
4. Tools *are* the Content.
"Content is king." Well, there's about to be a revolution and some regicide. The consumers of tomorrow want content for free. And they will make their own content. That is potentially more fun and more interesting than consuming carefully planned, carefully made, well-mannered content from a professional. Films and TV are already at that point where they are consumed and remixed freely by consumers. Music was there long ago. Games will be there soon.
The content of the future will be in tools. Tools like the ones shipped with Little Big Planet (although I suspect it's still too early for that game to start a true paradigm shift.) Tools that will let consumers engage directly with the content.
Actually, this is the tipping point when "consumers" become "users". Consumers are passive. Users, active.
So, these are my initial thoughts. I need to work on them some more and flesh them out, but I think there is something to think about here.
I hadn't seen this before --The Unfinished Swan-- what an elegant idea. The FPP -- first-person painter! I wish the creator hadn't chosen to go eerie with the mood, that seems like cheating a little... it's so easy to go scary. Still, it's beautiful And it's an XNA-developed title. Interesting.
The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.
It took me a long time to find someone who wasn't a laughable buffoon or a stuck-up prig. While I do like the idea of marrying into wealth and aristocracy, all the male aristos had silly voices and I couldn't imagine myself married to any of them. The monks were actually the most appealing, but despite my best efforts -- playing music for them, giving them the thumbs up, dancing for them -- none of them would be seduced away from their chosen path of Light.
Then in the town square of Bowerstone I found him: Cyrus the Traveler. His facial hair is a bit odd, certainly, but he was solidly middle-class and had a pleasant speaking voice. His moral standards, too, are high -- perhaps annoyingly so since he refused to go to bed with me even after we were engaged. But I respected his decision.
I took him with me to Oakfield, where I had bought the charming Luminous House cottage, where I thought we could live. Alas, he was a bit too middle-class... he told me he didn't really care for the house and wanted something better. What could I do? I asked him to wait for me and took off to gather some more money to buy a nice townhouse in Bowerstone.
After a few adventures I thought I should return to spend some time with my fiancé fearing that he would be lonely and less in love with me. I hurried back to Oakfield, splurging 8 gold on a carriage to get there faster.
But he was nowhere to be found! I ran all over the place frantically. Perhaps he had gone back to Bowerstone? I raced back to the city and spent hours walking the streets. I even waited in the pub for a bit (where we first met) in case he should drop by for a pint.
But no. Cyrus had disappeared.
Has he run off with some floozy? If so, I can forgive him if only he'll come back. Is he on a trip? He is, after all, a "Traveler" and I'm afraid our conversations didn't really reveal much about his line of work. Has something -- god forbid -- horrible happened to him? Has he been murdered by bandits or devoured by balverines? Shall I ever find out his fate?
I've tried getting over him. I even proposed marriage to a new man, after a time. He's fun, romantic, bubbly; but he has a large mustache and a silly speaking voice and he is quite stout and... frankly, he's just not Cyrus. We're still engaged but I really ought to break it off. I just don't feel the same way about him as I did about Cyrus.
Besides, what if Cyrus comes back one day? What if he reappears next time I turn on my console, with the silver ring still there like a halo over his head, symbol of his faith and loyalty while I went off proposing marriage to some other, inferior, lesser man?
The life of a hero, I am finding, is hard in more ways than I could have imagined.
I've been invited to give a talk in November to students in the computer science program at ITESCA in Sonora, Mexico. There's no game-focused program there so this will be a pretty basic talk, and as some friends of mine have already pointed out, students seem to *always* want to know how to get into the industry. I figure I'll give a broad overview of the industry in terms of how production is generally divided between skills, what the impact of casual games/iPhone/downloadable console games has been for independent game developers, then give them a massive amount of resources -- books and websites, mostly -- so they can do their own research. And then, of course, Q&A. My Spanish is non-existent so I'll have a translator, too. Haha.
Any other tips? Or, if you know of good books/websites that I might not be aware of, please pass them along to me. Thanks!
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- My Lecture: Art and the Language of Interactivity - TrackBack: 0, Comments: 1
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Links to the last two months: November 2008 (1) October 2008 (3) , or list everything.
