Extending the media experience
There are so many exciting things happening in the independent gaming scene. It calls to mind what indie film was like in the mid to late 90’s, when technology became accessible and anyone with a camera and a story could make a film. Something that I find of particular interest is how gaming allows audiences the abitily to role-play and shape the storyworld as it evolves in real-time. This creates an organic two-sided conversation with the audience. Something that can build a strong tie between the people running the game and its players.
But when I discuss gaming with other filmmakers, I’ve found that there is confusion around the term. It tends to evoke images of first person shooters or franchises like Grand Theft Auto. In reality gaming is play and play is at its core a social experience. In fact there has been an exciting shift within the gaming industry as can be seen with experiential games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, flOw, and Spore.
But that is within the console world. Lurking below the surface is a whole movement of people designing storyworlds. The tools for creating something like an ARG are basic and accessible. Back in 1996 when we launched the site for my first feature film, The Last Broadcast we created a fictional world that was presented as fact, a way for us to extended the world of the film. In a sense that was an ARG. With the release of my latest feature Head Trauma, we created a storyworld that involved an interactive graphic novel, physical comics, alternate soundtracks (that secretly lined up with scenes from the film), phone calls / text messages from characters and even a separate web series with subliminal clues that was related loosely to the film. (see Hope is Missing)
What I’ve learned from the creation of these storyworlds is that they mirror the way many people are consuming their entertainment. The fragmentation of the digital space is a perfect opportunity to tell stories in new ways. And I can honestly say it has presented me an interesting and cost effective way to reach and engage my audience. The gaming that I’ve done around Head Trauma has been experienced by millions of people – far more than it would have reached in traditional outlets.
Related:
ARGnet
Unficiton
ARGfest-o-con
Unvierse creation 101
Lance Weiler is a filmmaker and a self distribution pioneer. His films THE LAST BROADCAST and HEAD TRAUMA are distributed in the United States and in over 20 countries around the world. Lance often lectures on filmmaking, technology, media consumption and distribution. He’s spoken at the Sundance, Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals in addition to numerous Universities and film societies. Lance is currently working on a number of new film, tv and cross-media projects. He currently sits on the board of the IFP, is the founder of the Workbook an “open source social project” for content creators and a co-founder of the discovery and distribution festival FROM HERE TO AWESOME. For more on Lance visit www.lanceweiler.com
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Nice article. However if I were you I would jump to the conclusion that gaming is in a high innovative stage. All the titles you mentioned are good-old-copy of an old ideas in a new hardware. the small size indie developers are under huge pressure from main-stream big industry fishes!
besides the willingness of these same ones to promote indie titles it eventually all bowls down to MEANS of production!
it is completely different from the indie-movie analogy! technological advance means mostly high cost of production, in case you want to target the market of the big-ones. I see dark ages of gaming due to limited innovation and the limited access of low-budget projects to mainstream.
i can give you countless examples…
I find the current indie scene a little disheartening myself. Many of the people in the indie scene are there because unlike in the 90s most of the publishers in the industry are focusing more and more on annualizing franchises. If the indie scene is burgeoning it’s not because of some large sudden bubble of aspirations, it’s because many people have been pushed there due to disinterest from large publishers.
If the game timeline is analogous to that of film, game development is somewhere near 1915. Experimentation is widespread but a singular elegance like that of books and films hasn’t been developed. Games throw up so many barriers in terms of hardware alone. Not to mention the problem most “non-gamers” experience with the interface.
Further, if games are going to rise above their current state, game makers have to realize that games are NOT about story. Just as the directors of new wave determined that film is NOT about story but about cinema. What is pivotal to games as a medium is developing the language of interaction as a device for conveying thoughts and emotions. Just as cinema has a visual vocabulary, music has a tonal vocabulary, and books have of course a written vocabulary, games need a vocabulary of interaction. At this point, the game aspect of most games is irrelevant to the story and characters. All thought, ideals, and emotions are delivered in-between play using the language of film, cinematics.
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