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2.5 - Describe the various strengths and weaknesses of competing technologies/products/ideas.

NESTA suggestions:

"Your answer to this question should address how this function is currently performed. In the previous question you will have told us about the need or purpose that your product / idea fulfils and how you expect it to improve on existing alternatives. We now want to get an understanding of what the competing products / technologies are and what their particular strengths and weaknesses are. Please also give your best current estimate of your likely selling price and how this compares with competing products?"

My film SANCTUARY competes with any any other film whose production, marketing and distribution uses the Intenet. There is no product currently available which offers this functionality.

The DVD for SANCTUARY (hard copy) will cost approximately £2 per unit to manufacture, market and distribute (based on quotes for a 5,000 unit print run). The intention is to sell this for close to cost price which puts it in the bargain console game category and on a par with the price model being used by Warp Films for their short film retail business.

FILM RE-RELEASES

Following cinematic release of feature films, it is now common practice to release "extended re-edited versions" on DVD. What constitutes justifiable alteration of a film depends on who does it and what their relationship to you is. Certain "Directer's cut" films have been accepted widey as improvements (e.g. Blade Runner) but often they are dismissed as cynical cash-ins or simply indulgent. Film re-releases are however often as commercially successful as the original release.

The DVD format is still relatively new and compatibility problems still arise. This is especially problematic when different manufacturers do not correctly implement the full DVD technical standard. For this reason commercial DVDs intended for the mass market often "play it safe" and do not rely on advanced interactivity.

SHORT FILM RETAIL

Short films are also released separately on DVD Video. Most titles include supplementary material as well as the film itself as a value-add. The process for producing a short film on DVD is identical to that of a feature film, in terms of design of the navigation system, quality assurance, and testing. The constraints of the DVD-Video format (for interactivity) apply to short films and feature films equally.

Increasingly, new media film-makers have been exploring the interactive potential of DVD-Video with short form content, particularly with music promos. Although it is possible to exploit certain interactive DVD features (like branching narrative) far more extensively for a short film, because more content can be included, this is not yet mainstream due to technical constraints and the relative immaturity of authoring tools.

The DVD-Video technical specification (put simply) allows for manipulation of audio and video (organised into "Chapters") and lets authors use simple code to control playback (e.g. conditional logic) to respond to user input (i.e. keypresses). In practice however, DVD-Video works better as a high capacity storage medium than an interactive one. It is far easier to create sophisticated interactivity inside a web page then it is for a DVD. The specification (aimed at hardware manufacturers) is not open-ended and does not allow authors to flexibly adapt the medium to individual titles. Ultimately there is a wide gap between DVD-Video and a console game and little scope in between for delivering a broadcast-quality film experience to a mainstream audience.

OPEN SOURCE FILM

"Open-source film" is a new idea competing with re-mixable film. The open source model is increasingly understood as a viable alternative perspective/philosophy/strategy/technology to the way proprietary intellectual property is traditionally developed.

"Open source" is a political hot-potato and source of ongoing debate in many industries. Pure open source projects tend to be technology-based (with little room for subjectivity) and guided by the meritocracy principle which pushes the best ideas to the fore over time. Open source is the key to reforming the excesses of IP seen in the last decade and a way to harness the potential of the Internet. As such, any "open source" label is a good way of appealing to the market for social and environmentally aware products.

The main weakness of open source as an idea is that it is clearly a threat to the status quo in many industries. With many technologists endorsing OSS (open source software) with almost religious zeal, there are few better ways to antagonise traditional industries than by emphasising the openess of a product. The film industry and the game industry are reliant on IP control and this conflicts with the open source model on several grounds (e.g. sharing assets, allowing products to inter-operate, allowing anyone to partipate in development).

While open source principles are relatively simple to explain in theory, few people have first-hand experience mixing proprietary and open source business approaches. The potential for open source media content is unclear whereas the potential for open source technology is much clearer.

Worse still, there is a mainstream perception (cultivated by the music industry) that open source is linked to piracy, on the questionable grounds that the Internet is based on open technology and facilitates sharing of IP.

Ultimately, the film-makers who most loudly tout the open source model for content are doing so because they have given up on securing traditional distribution.

HOLLYWOOD

The major film studios, often thought of as "Hollywood", can exploit most ideas rapidly but only once they are proven and the formula exists.

The strengths of the studio system are tried and tested formulae for development, production and distribution. US films have global influence as a result of the Hollywood studio system. By its nature, Hollywood attracts ambitious film-making and will continue to absorb new influences from around the world.

Hollywood's key weaknesses are shared with the games industry; mono-culture and piracy. A risk-adverse culture means that Hollywood is regularily accused of "dumbing down" films in the endless pursuit of bigger audiences. This has led to considerable resentment that the "Hollywood treatment" does not allow enough diversity to the fore. Film-makers, let alone the audience, are not encouraged to challenge the form. There is too much at stake in the money, people, processes and technology developed for 35mm film. Innovation is less important than familiarity. Hollywood does not have a climate in which to encourage new forms of film-making, preferring to scout for proven innovation elsewhere.

Piracy is an ever-increasing weakness of the current Hollywood system. Distribution has always been the key to success and this is being undermined by the Internet. Hollywood is fighting sampling culture, in the same way as the music industry fought (unsuccessfully). When the inevitable happens and film sampling becomes as mainstream a commercial activity as music sampling, the Hollywood system may be forced to move with the times to maximise profit from their film archives.

Film sampling and other re-mixable ideas are pursued within Hollywood but none of the cost or creative benefits are for consumers. Re-using existing film assets is recognised as a cost-effective way of producing new films but there is little support for changing restrictive IP practices.

The UK film industry, while considerably smaller, can be considered a dimension of Hollywood as far as this proposal goes. The development process for British films is largely similar. There is no support for the parallel development of interactive ideas, let alone technology to support story-telling.

CONSOLE PRODUCTS

Console game products are the best funded and most sophisticated form of interactive entertainment available. Game designers use original and middleware technology to create intricate user experiences. As the industry grows, innovation risks becoming as stifled as Hollywood. Publishers in the UK are growing increasingly risk-adverse and as a result the majority of games released are now derivatives of existing games. Publishers know that licensed games sell well regardless of their quality and so have little incentive to invest in new experiences until the bubble bursts.

As a result, there are no straight competitors within the games industry, only various influential developers and products. The industry, at least in the UK, is arguably unsustainable with few companies ready to cope with the team sizes and content volumes deemed "appropriate" for next-generation game consoles like the Playstation 3. Technology is the key feature of most games touted by the press, obscuring the fact that most games offer little in terms of original gameplay.

The game industry is currently undergoing a consolidation phase with many small developers unable to survive. Few developers are in a position to be able to develop the new broader "non-game" titles that consumer electronics devices like the PSX (a combination of Sony Playstation 2 and DVD-writer) will support.

One weakness of of the games industry is that there is little interest in people who don't or can't interact with entertainment. Spectator-driven titles, which might only need a percentage of the total audience to interact (football for example?) are rarely discussed. Non-gamers need to be "converted" to gamers, in the mindset of the industry. This is clearly suggests one reason why computer gaming continues to be marginalised, despite astonishing economic success.

RHYTHM GAMES

Music/Rhythm games a good example of a computer game genre which has an appeal beyond the market in which it is largely advertised. In a rhythm game, the player usually has to tap out a beat or rhythm as specified in time with a tune. These games are usually linear, in that there is little scope from deviating from the task at hand.

People who do not like games, or complex gameplay, often like these products because they are so simple. By contrast, the target "gamer" demographic ( teenage boys) tend to be attracted more to games with more complex and time-consuming virtual goals. Rhythm games are relatively cheap to produce and to design for re-use (e.g. play this year's Top 20 singles).

Rhythm is a key component of all media and culture and, as such, it is a widely accessible (and overlooked) form of interactivity, more so than more computer game genres. Rhythm games are pioneered in Japan and, until recently, were considered too foreign a concept for mainstream western appeal.

Rhythm games are appealing to musicians and performers because they simulate the skills required to play an instrument. For people who do not have the dexterity or discipline to learn how to play a musical instrument, a rhythm game can simulate the experience.

The key weakness of rhythm games is how they are traditionally marketed. Game industry marketing has tended to focus on familiar genres than products which offer more lifestyle and musical entertainment than game-play. In western markets, where "play" can be sometimes dismissed as a juvenile activity, rhythm games are rarely targeted at non-gamers who might also find them appealing.

MODS

Popular game development studios have encouraged fanatical fanbases to develop around their games. A segment of this fanbase now produces commercial quality MODS for a handful of the most popular games. However this phenomenon has resulted in additional costs, not revenue, for many developers when online community dynamics were not adequately planned for.

"Despite the fact that Counter-strike generates more global eyeball minutes per year than NBC's billion-dollar TV franchise Friends, Valve hasn't made any money directly... Worse, Counter-Strike actually costs [the company] money, particularily with respect to ongoing support such as updates and patches... And it is this fundamental imbalance in the Internet business model that Steam is designed to overcome."
Jon Jordan, develop magazine
oct 2003 - issue 33 - p.9

That said, the relationship between game studio and MOD developer is arguably the most sophisticated example of interactive entertainment. The teams who create MODs are highly social constructs, working in tandem with the studios to explore the full potential of the released game. Many more people play MODs (e.g. Counter Strike) then create MODs. Published MODs are viewed as an extension of the game itself, additional resources that less active users benefit from.

Not all games support MODs and, in particular, few film-licensed games support MODs (the exception being Lucasarts' Jedi Knight II). This is because many MODs simply re-use "art assets" (e.g. characters, sets, textures, sound) without going to the trouble of creating new art. MODs occaisionally fall foul of media companies for this reason. An Alien Quake MOD was pulled out of circulation when Fox sent in lawyers. Until the laws around "derivative work" are adapted, MOD makers have considerable hoops to jump through before they can have their work recognised creatively and commercially.

Despite all this, designing a game to support MODs, despite the additional expense, is often viewed as a way to extend a good title's longevity.

MACHINIMA

A sub-set of MOD developers are now focused on telling stories (not game-play) using game technology. This "machinima" community produces short and feature length cartoons using commercial and open source real-time 3D engines.
Commercial machinima has the same issues as commercial MODS but in the last year, the profile of machinima has been raised to the point where technology designed specifically for machinima is emerging and it is becoming viable for commercial machinima productions (which wholly replace the art of an original game).

Strange Company is an Edinburgh-based company whose sole business is producing machinima and promoting machinima.com which tracks the sub-culture. The company has recently begun selling a DVD compilation of the best machinima films.

Machinima remains in its infancy but has grown into a world-wide phenomenon over the last two years. An annual Machinima Film Festival is now held in New York. Many console games (like "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers") move fluidly between film clips and machinima sequences (constructed in real-time). Machinima is increasingly discussed in mainstream press like Wired and New Scientist.

The biggest strength of this kind of product is that it is increasingly viable as more and more technologies permit real-time 3D manipulation.

Arguably the biggest weakness of machima is that developments have centred on First Person Shooter games (e.g. re-using Quake, Unreal, and Half-life engines), constraining the possible aesthetic to real-time 3D animation whereas the idea of re-utilising game technology for narrative is more open ended.

MMORPGS (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games)

MMORPGS are a relatively new phenomenon in the game industry; persistant worlds that operate in real-time, 24/7, for gamers to inhabit. Titles such as Everquest charge a monthly subscription on top of the game media for access to the world. These games are hugely expensive to create and maintain but can attract huge followings of regular subscribers. Last year the Everquest virtual economy made world news when studies emerged that showed how many players were buying and selling virtual items with real currency (e.g. on eBay) and stimulating an economy larger than certain nations in the real world.

Star Wars Galaxies is the latest entrant into this space ($15/month). Applauded for its attention to detail, this online game has also attracted criticism for being too obsessed with administration in the guise of gameplay. Certain reviewers say that ultimately the game is beautiful to look at but not that fun. This is unsurprising given that MMORPGs have pioneered a community-led development approach which means that the most ardent fans wield unprecedented influence over the design and development of their favourite games. The Star Wars Galaxies community was begun years before its release. The experience is ultimately designed less for casual use then for "real" fans. The product gives little consideration of what casual users find fun.

VJ

Vjs use lightweight portable technology to re-mix visual material from a range of sources on the fly. VJs rarely have the undivided attention of their audience but can readily adapt their performances to most situations. VJ culture is a relatively new phenomenon but is becoming increasingly popular. The notion of "found footage" (i.e. using other people's content) is a topic which is always debated on VJ communities. Some VJs regularily work with copyright violations while others only work with original material. "Re-mixable film" in the VJ sense does not imply passing the re-mix capability on to the audience.

It is hard to generalise about VJ content at this stage except to note that there is a line between VJs who only deal with abstract visuals ("eye candy") and those who try to work long-form narratives into their sets. The relationship between VJ and audience is still in an embryonic stage. Many VJs relish their work as a form of improvised performance but often the venue context means that their work is treated as wallpaper.

VIDEO ART

Video art is typically treated with greater reverance than VJ performances although the line is becoming blurred. Video art is typically intended for undivided attention. It requires, and expects, focus from the viewer. Video art is typically not aimed at a mass market audience although this is changing.
Video art is closer to traditional film-making than VJing because of the process many artists go through in preparing their shoots.

FILM-MAKING SOFTWARE

There are defined markets for consumer, pro-sumer and professional film-making software. The closest comparison would be with pro-sumer products.
Many software companies release professional and pro-sumer versions to encourage take-up. However the availablility of studio-quality film samples is limited at best. To the average high street consumer, the costs of producing high end film footage is near-prohibitive, as are the constraints on time, ability and other people's involvement. It takes a lot of time and people to produce a good film, and considerable practise to become adept with the products.

Software vendors have created a market for sampling and re-mixing which has not been matched by the creation of a market of content that is legal to sample and re-mix. Software companies make money from media industry customers who supply product, and simultaneously from media consumers who want to make product from outside the professional industries. A weakness within the film-making software industry is that vendor lock-in (being tied to one vendor) is still an issue.

Posted by .M. at October 17, 2003 10:36 AM