Entertainment Designer
Entertainment Designer
The Hollywood Reporter has an article up about Will Wright's future as an Entertainment Designer. While it was interesting, it got me thinking more about the future of creative works.
The Future of Fiction
I am reading What would Google by Jeff Jarvis do right now. Well, actually, I am reading it over and over again, especially the chapter on books. I love writing novels, but I feel a little limited by the format.
I love franchise fiction. Delving into the worlds of Star Wars, Star Trek, the Dragons of Pern, or The Lord of the Rings, pulls me deeper into the world and characters than anything else I know.
What makes these work for me is the multimedia nature of these products. I am just not sure how an independent creator like me can pull off anything like that easily.
Easy is the Key!
If we are going to movie forward in our attempt to re-envision creative works we need easy tools for content creators to make multimedia productions. What kind of tools?
Simple mechanima maker.
Character and setting creation as simple as the Sims.
Good auto-lip-sync tool.
No scripting required character animation and special effects.
Easy unique setting creator for the 3D impaired people like me.
Easy import of most if not all existing mesh and skin formats.
Easy export into at least the most popular video formats.
Low price point
Simple MMORPG Maker
The same features as Mechanima maker.
Easy story telling engine.
Simple cut scene maker
Setting time line that will allow players to decide what era they want to start in so they can play through the storyline in a dynamic and ever changing world.
Certain setting elements are fixed over time as part of the over arcing plot, over setting elements would be dynamic and alterable by the players.
The ability for players to move their characters easily from era to era through both play and choice.
The software would allow users to visit any setting with 1 client and one monthly fee.
Creators are paid for the amount of "player hours" their setting attains.
Hypertext Novels that relate to the text.
(I recently wrote more about this in my post: Making a Website an extension of Story)
Web based and downloadable hypertext versions.
The hypertext layer should be shown only by the reader's choice.
Readers should be able to flow through stories via their chosen path, for example, when the reader discovers a new character they should be able to:
pull up a biography of that character.
see a list of other works containing that character and the size of their role in the story.
navigate into those books/stories if they want to, then return to the previous place in the book and read on.
This type of meta-book should be self updating and thus be treated as a service rather than a product.
possibly as a subscription to the meta-book reader service, paying the author based on "reader hours."
Books should be printable, sharable, linkable, and searchable.
Authors should be able to add special features like outlines, setting notes, and general notes to the text.
Cross platform integration
All of these platforms should be integrated one with the other.
If someone playing the MMORPG wants to pull up the text, video, or audio relating to the era they are playing in.
Locations in the MMORPG should be able to pull up context about characters, items, and locations from the other media.
Readers should be able to switch between the text, video, audio, and game versions of the content at whim on multiple devises which are kept in sync one with the other.
Fanfiction and Fanfilm should be integrated into the platforms.
Fanworks should be community and creator curated.
Fanworks should be community and creator rated.
Fanworks should be promotable to cannon by the creator, and revenue sharing engaged at that point.
Content should be importable and exportable from one platform to another.
Content should take advantage of and if necessary create open standards.
The Creative Suite we need!
This is the creative suite we need, and that I am personally hoping for. With state of technology, most (if not all) of these features exists in separate non-compatible applications. What I want to see is for all of these features to exist in one comprehensive and affordable creative suite. Once we move authors and other content creators into mixed platforms like this, we will see the birth of real entertainment designers, and I think we will see much more compelling content.