SiliconSurfer

From the LA Times Article, an avatar looking into an empty Second Life store…

Well, this post on Slashdot regarding the LA Times article about marketers abandoning Second Life sure does have a lot of comments following it. Some are slag, but many are well thought out and reasoned. I think it’s very interesting how heated this topic gets people, and I love the passion people have; good, bad, but very little indifferent!

Something I have been preaching about for quite a while is that virtual worlds are places where people generally want to go to escape the bonds of their real lives. So, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to marketed to in the same way there that they are in everyday life. I doubt people would want to pay good money to sit in a theater and watch what they had just done all day. We go to places like the movies, plays, and even virtual worlds, for entertainment and to experience something beyond our normal, first life.

Certainly advertising & marketing is going to play a large part in these worlds, but it’s not going to look like just slathering everything with logos and calling it done (not to say that’s the only thing that’s happening now…). Brands who want to make this work for themselves are going to have to bring value to the worlds in a non-intrusive and useful way. Brands will need to bring something to the table to gain their credibility in-world. Just because a brand is strong, and even cool, in the physical world doesn’t mean very much in the virtual world unless they create themselves as strong, and even cool, all over again within the society and context of the virtual worlds in which they’re participating. The goal of not breaking the experience of ‘being in another world‘ is an important one, as well.

Interestingly enough, within Entropia Universe most of the advertising and marketing is for in-world products, events, and services. I think that’s actually very exciting and I think it marks a way for real world brands to participate, as well. Another interesting aspect about Entropia Universe is that they’ve been profitable for the last 11 quarters. I think amidst this negative press about Virtual Worlds it’s very important to bring up the successful worlds, like Entropia Universe.

Jim Ward, Lucasfilm and LucasArts

Neil Young of Electronic Arts and EALA

Moderated by N’Gai Croal, Newsweek

Take Aways:

There are actually two distinct pipelines, creative and technical.

The convergence thing is still coming, but it’s happening on some levels already. George Lucas definitely has experience combining the creative pipeline across many different media.

Lucasfilms uses LucasArts game engine as a previz engine. That thread again!

Neil Young continues to be amazed at how much game creative people undervalue themselves vs. film and television. People in the games medium can make great works.

A key thing for Hollywood (particularly the producer) to get is how complex game development is, and what a long time it takes to develop a good game, and to start the collaboration early.

Another key thing it seems from the whole show is that characters, stories, etc. are intellectual properties that can be developed in all the various ways that fit the property.

And YES, a light sabre game is coming for the WII. Uh oh! I might have to get one now!

Moderated by the classic Corey Bridges of Multiverse. Have you been to Virtual Laguna Beach? Notice the difference between MMOs and Virtual Worlds? I guess the difference is that MMOs are more scripted.

Lessons learned by members of the panel:
Rob Pardo of Blizzard - MMOs are just beginning when you put them out! You need to be able to fire on all cylinders and be able to deliver content over time…

Michael Lewis of Cryptic Studios - Same! You have to be willing to support it. These worlds can be huge! You have to have a focus. There is way too much possible to do it all.

Nicholas Beliaeff Sony - How impactful the games are on the people who play them. A couple had met playing a game he was involved with years ago and they wanted the CEO of the company to marry them…

Jeff Yapp MTV - You have to make it easy for people to get into it. Once they’re established they can take off, but you have to make it easy to get into the world.

One thing that is interesting is that TV is, in some ways, better suited to bring games to, since there is so much content in a game and a movie is just too short to deal with it. A television show, however, is able to deal with the much higher amount of content, and broadband Internet is also better equipped and becoming even better. Broadband allows a story to be told between shows, and it allows you to test content, as well.

The ‘content created with game engines’ discussion came up again during this panel, as well. FRAPS here we come!

And, another thing that everyone is excited about is Gaming Championships and the franchises that makes possible…

This is an apocalyptic, post technology, dramatically de-populated vision of an Internet game/show (not gameshow): afterworld, by Electric Farm. It is inspired by something like Lost. (It reminds me of conversations I used to have with my guitar player Ward Spring back a long time ago. Imagining that all things man made disappeared in an instant. Imagine the surprise of the airline passengers, right?) That same demographic is what the creators of afterworld are after. This is something a bit like lonlygirl15 in that it uses the Internet to tell a story, with places for fan fiction to inform the story line. This looks like it will be the port wine of movies, i.e. boiled all the way down. You can both play and watch episodes, and it’s time based, so click quickly.

There are lots of places built in for interactivity and there is a lot of depth built in via ancillary story lines, and some of the characters who are not main characters will actually have their own stories developed as further ancillary content.

The big deal is that they’re developing this all over the world, tweaked for local needs, and it’s a tremendously inexpensive way to develop intellectual content and develop a franchise from the beginning. They turned down a lot of opportunities to turn it into a tv show already, since it hasn’t been exposed yet and it’s impossible to value it yet.One thing I love about this is the potential for having this work for International audiences. There is the potential for heroes to emerge in other parts of the world and to have the threads connect. I think that’s cool.

Another thing that is cool about this is that often Hollywood operates on the precedent (Jeff Sherwood says: The mark of mediocrity is searching for the precedent.) Sony jumped in, however. I think this will be interesting to follow.

BTW, the optimum length of time for a piece of mobile entertainment (i.e mobile phone) tested out to be 2:47. Something that is shown at that point, like an ad, is retained 100% of the time by the ‘key demographic’ which I didn’t catch, but which is, I suppose, desirable.

This is also pretty interesting. Of course, lonelygirl15 it reminds me of The Spot, which my good friend Jeff Sherwood was instrumental in creating waaaay back in the 90’s. It’s interesting because there is art in this, commercialism, some might say deception, and, at the bottom lonelygirl15 has evolved quickly to use the new opportunities that are now available for storytelling. It’s a bit like the Blair Witch project, right? I have to give these folks credit for putting together a bunch of disparate pieces to create a story and entertainment that people can really get involved with.

An interesting point is that in this world product placement is about the only real way to get advertisers in and serve their interests. That way where ever the video goes the ad is still there. So, Neutrogena becomes a character in the story.

It’s kind of interesting. There’s at least one lesson here, which is that if you’re good at creating content for small screens, be they 8 bit games, cell phone screens, web video, and so on, I think you’ll have a job for a long time since we continuously push our content out further and further even as the main pipes we use get bigger. In other words, alongside the penetration of broadband, there will always be a concurrent effort going on to push content out to further and further edges like cell phones, Dick Tracy watch tvs, etc.

This was a very cool presentation. Kellee Santiago of thatgamecompany just spoke. Of course, being the Internet guy that I am, I LOVE digital distribution.

Check out Flow.

Kelle ran some very interesting stats past us, but the bottom line is that a very easily accessible game that is available via digital distribution can spread astonishingly fast. Kellee is funny and offers some great insights. One big point is that working with Sony (or others like Sony) to distribute games digitally brings back the ’storefront.’ And, since Sony makes their own games, that essentially shrinks the shelves, too.

Nick Foster of Outspark, Gilles Garceau of Ubisoft, Lyle Hall of Heavy Iron Studios/THQ and Todd Pilger Animator, Surf’s Up. and moderated by Jane Pinckard of CMP Game Group. One interesting issue right off is something like Sponge Bob, since he’s actually 2D, but then has to be brought into 3D, yet still look 2D. The panel is saying that most of their work now is done in 3D, it’s the new pencil.

The pipeline between film and games came up again on this panel and is something that people are obviously excited about and anticipating.

Another big point is that games companies are really media companies. That is an important paradigm shift for the games world, but I do believe that it is a critical and important point for games companies that haven’t realized that yet.

Creative intimacy is another theme that is being sounded again on this panel. The basic point is that the closer the team that makes the game can be to the talent and the creators of the film the better the game generally turns out. An interesting issue brought up yesterday was that the Fantastic Four game actually didn’t use the actual movie stars, but that led to a better result since the stars were too busy and they voice actors had the time to develop an ensemble team, which is actually the point of the Fantastic Four.

An important difference between film and games is that in film character can be a real driver, but in games plot needs to be the driver since the player is the character.

Another interesting thing that was mentioned on this panel was the resurgence of 8 bit games… Make one yourself!

An interesting discussion, but I missed anything about Mythology. We heard from Thomas Tull, Chairman Legendary Entertainment, and from Mitch Davis, CEO of Brash Entertainment. There was a lot of talk on this panel about what makes a good game, what makes a good movie, and the fact that they don’t necessarily lend themselves to each other. They mentioned micro-payments and the pioneering work by K2 and Nexon, but failed to mention my peeps at Entropia. Another interesting aspect is the International appeal aspect of the whole market and how that needs to be taken into account.

I admit I got a little distracted, but Jamil Moledina brought up the altruistic aspect of Heroes and Jesse mentioned World Without Oil, which I just checked out and which seems really, really cool.

This is what we were talking about over a year ago when I was working with the Biomass Energy Foundation. “There’s an oil shock going on. It started April 30, 2007. The world oil supply is falling short of demand - by 1.5% at first, but it’s expected to increase to 3% or more throughout 2007. Check out what M. King Hubbert had to say about this, it’s chilling in its implications.

I think the takeaway from this panel is what Jesse said, “We’re just trying to do the coolest sh*t we can. . .”

I believe that it’s interesting to juxtapose and compare things, but at the end of the day doing the best stuff possible by the best means available seems pretty obvious. That said, with the burgeoning options and complexity inherent in the Game and Internet worlds it’s not necessarily as easy as it sounds! But, there has to be a real and deep back and forth conversation between all the people involved in creating the property. “Reach out…” is what Jesse said.