Dragging the Net

Looking for the big fish in a sea of interactive media

Friday May 20^th, 2005 - For the first time ever, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is set to award an Emmy® statuette to the winners of the 2005 Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Television. While the Interactive Television category is in its fourth year, this year’s recognition in the form of a statuette will cast in stone (or a mixture of copper, nickel, silver, and gold, to be exact) the TV industry’s acknowledgment of interactive media as a peer component in television entertainment.

One might be tempted, at this juncture, to infer that interactive entertainment is at last considered on a par with the more conventional forms of mass distribution entertainment. Experience suggests otherwise, however. While “New Media” has unquestionably grown well beyond its “newness”, many people in the film and television industry do not perceive video games, mobile entertainment, and other forms of interactive media, as full-fledged partners in the larger entertainment arena.

What luck that the LA Convention Center was festooned this week with over 2 million pounds of rigging, and nearly 6,000 monitors and screens; blanketed with 20,000 feet of power cable and 200 miles of cabling; and draped with more than 2.5 acres of banners – all covering more than 540,000 net square feet, the equivalent of 2,700 city blocks, and all dedicated to celebrating the power of interactive entertainment as a global industry. E3Expo 2005 was in town, hosting more than 400 exhibitors from 90 countries, and literally thousands of new or imminent productions. What a shame that most of Hollywood didn’t attend.

The world’s largest interactive entertainment trade show was conspicuously lacking in Film or TV figures. OK, Michael Chiklis was there for a bit, signing “Fantastic 4” posters, and a few non-union actors got a couple of days of work dressing up as characters from lesser-known video games. E3 doesn’t trot out a tantalizing coterie of star actors and directors, à la ShoWest and NATPE. The explanation for this lies in the fact that Interactive entertainment focuses on immersion, rather than passive observation. The fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry has dedicated itself to the proposition that the viewer IS the cast. As a result, game players do not respond well to megastar casting trends, preferring instead to worship at the altars of renowned game designers, programmers or platform developers. There has finally been a strong shift toward emphasizing deeper story richness, but one should not hold one’s breath, in the hopes of hearing how the latest Tom Cruise game broke all sales records. Gamers are sold on gameplay, story, and -- in such cases as Tiger Woods and Tony Hawk -- real-life personalities playing themselves. But interactive entertainment holds fast to the principle that the audience is the star.





Several years ago, I moderated a panel of industry prognosticators, including a high-ranking executive from the Screen Actors Guild. I took the opportunity to discuss Video Game production with the SAG executive, encouraging her to enter into dialogue with game development companies, in order to preemptively establish SAG actors as a crucial part in the creative development of game production. The executive with whom I spoke made it very clear that SAG did not consider such dialogue a priority at the time. At that time, I believed that the still emerging game industry – willing to sacrifice a measure of operational liberty, in exchange for entrée into new distribution opportunities - might be willing to partner with organizations already strongly established in the entertainment industry. It was a classic case of “they need us, more than we need them”. The SAG executive on my panel gave me the distinct impression that she believed this would always be the case, and was not interested in hearing suggestions to the contrary. I wonder how she feels today?...

Producers of TV and film properties still have an opportunity to engage in serious dialogue with game developers and other interactive entertainment producers, as we continue to explore the relationship between “Hollywood” and the interactive entertainment arena. How that dialogue is conducted may professionally affect us all far more deeply than we might imagine.

The leadership at the Producers Guild of America is fond of referencing the "producing team," and rightly so. But ask yourself, producers, does your producing team encompass new media producers? If it doesn't, it should. It's always a challenge to expand our frame of reference and embrace new modes of telling our stories. But it's a challenge that every single producer will have to face. The real choice is: Will you face that challenge proactively or reactively? That said, interactive entertainment producers in the US are themselves faced with an opportunity: to engage in dialogue with their international counterparts at such organizations as Australia’s GDAA, and Europe’s TIGA, in order to keep communication, production, and distribution channels open in all directions.

The interactive entertainment industry wants to work in partnership with the TV and film industry, as attested to by such lauded upcoming game releases as “King Kong”, “24”, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, and even some classic titles such as “Taxi Driver”, “Dirty Harry”, and of course, the much anticipated EA game, “The Godfather”. Yet the *really* hot titles have nothing to do (yet) with TV or film properties. Games such as "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess"; "Madden 2006"; "Spore"; "Nintendogs"; "F.E.A.R."; and "Civilization IV”. Suffice to say, game developers have plenty of successful titles to keep them going, without tapping into film or TV properties. As one game developer rep who-shall-remain-nameless quipped at E3, “it would be nice to work on some more film-related games, but not crucial for us”. While I believe this confidence may come back to bite this executive in the server-side output channel, film and TV producers would do well to recognize the relatively strong position of their interactive entertainment counterparts, as and when they explore possible alliances and co-productions.

I sat with David Hufford, Global Group PR Manager for XBOX, to discuss the company’s vision, with respect to how it would collaborate with Hollywood. “When you combine games with movies,” he said, “you immerse the audience in the world of that story…forever”. When questioned about the recently announced XBOX Live Marketplace, he enthusiastically invited Hollywood to bring their stories online, via the XBOX 360. “The episodic nature of online gaming establishes an interactive relationship with the audience for as long as the story is being told, which could be forever.” Hufford invited producers to consider releasing trailers and other footage via the XBOX Live community. Imagine releasing your feature trailer hand-in-hand with the first few levels of that story’s online component. Imagine getting the characters and themes in front of a guaranteed 4 Million plus eyeballs, and initiating an INTERACTIVE relationship with a community whose fervor for a well-told story is unquestionable…

Game on.

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E3 Insider

GDAA – Game Developers’ Association of Australia

TIGA – The Independent Games Developers Association (UK)

XBOX 360