On Storytelling in the VR Space

We’ve been diving deep into the VR space for a while now as we’ve been exploring developing content for emerging platforms with various potential partners. The future of VR is going to hinge not on the technology getting there – it’s too far along the curve and there are too many smart people working on it for it not to – but on how developers and storytellers work together in carving out this emerging platform.

Developers in this space must understand that making VR compelling isn’t just about nailing the technical or gaming mechanics or designing levels or how a game is economized; it’s equally about creating compelling and immersive story. The VR platform is going to require story content that is conceived and designed specifically for an experience that is completely different from either movies or video gaming. And storytellers, in particular Hollywood studios and filmmakers looking to transition into making content in this space, have to get that they need to work and play well with others – in this case, the game developers, who are way further along the learning curve than a lot of Hollywood folk are in grokking the kinds of interactive experience gamers want, and the video gaming experience is significantly closer to what an optimal VR experience will feel like than the experience of sitting passively in a theater seat watching a movie. Video game developers, the good ones anyhow, know how to engage players and keep them engaged. Developers already working in figuring out immersive storytelling are even further along that curve, and it would behoove Hollywood to work closely with these folks as they carve out their own spaces in the VR sandbox.

The optimal UX of virtual immersive experiences, once it finally settles in, will likely be a hybrid derived from the DNA of both big screen cinema and gaming, with some reach-for-the-holodeck-dream wishing and, no doubt, new ways of interacting with content that the early adopters of VR will help shape as they interact within it and give their (no doubt vocal and not-so-humble) opinions on it. But whether it moves beyond the early adopters and on to the broader consumer market – and, specifically, whether VR captures the female market, which is a sizeable chunk of gaming market share these days – will depend as much on how compelling the stories we weave are as on the tech that drives them.  The most logical and elegant game mechanics in the world may engage you in the game play, but its the characters  and the story world they inhabit that VR explorers will connect with, engage with, and keep coming back to.

The development of compelling, original, engaging and immersive content that puts story mechanics and tech mechanics on the same level of perceived importance in development is essential to the widespread adaptation of VR as a platform for content.

Right now we’re seeing the baby steps of VR. When a toddler takes its first few wobbly little steps, it’s cool, it’s exciting! That’s where we are right now with VR: We kinda know that we can do this, but we’re still sorting out the myriad  technical/UX details that are barriers to widespread adoption of VR by the consumer market. But it will get there. Remember once upon a time when folks thought the tech razzle-dazzle of 3-D was the next huge thing all on its own? Turns out it’s more of a novelty, and not a terribly compelling one once you’ve experienced it a few times.

Content-A-Go-Go

This article about Comcast getting in the game with a beta release of their streaming Web TV service, Watchable is somewhat interesting for the indicator that Comcast is feeling some pressure to respond to Verizon’s launch of its own content-whereever-you-are app, Go90. Both services come with plenty of advertising, natch. And you may recall back in July when Comcast previously announced a new service allowing their internet customers to view their broadcast content and HBO on their mobile devices, for $15 a month (which is a hell of a lot cheaper than their standard cable service, by the bye).

Will Bad Content Really Destroy VR? Yes. Yes, it Will.

(Photo : Creative Commons: Flickr)

Check out this terrific video interview over on BBC with James Milward, founder and exec producer at The Secret Location, a “content studio for emerging platforms,” which recently won the first Emmy for a VR experience for their Sleepy Hollow Virtual Reality Experience, which was originally an installation at Comic-Con 2014. The headline, “Emmy Winner: Bad Content Will Destroy Virtual Reality,” sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. He’s right.

The Sleepy Hollow VR Experience isn’t WOW-inducing-mind-blowing in and of itself necessarily, but Secret Location’s work here is important in that it illustrates exactly the direction VR needs to be heading: it extends an episodic story world  audiences are already engaged in through an emerging platform,  and it allows them to feel immersed (albeit just a toe-dip of immersion) in that world. It’s also an example of a big studio (in this case, Fox) partnering with a content creation company focused on emerging  platforms.

This kind of cross-platform thinking about story, considering the places where Venn Diagrams overlap and where story can be taken deeper and wider, is precisely what we need to be considering as we develop projects for the VR space.

Masterful, immersive storytelling. Tech and story. Show and tell.

 

The First Virtual Reality Article?

When I was 15, this was the first article I read about virtual reality. I read it in a back issue of a small DIY ‘zine called Mondo 2000, and it grabbed me because I felt like I was shown proof of a whole new dimension that I didn’t know existed before. Way back near the end of the pre-internet era, this ‘zine was the best source of future tech news. Although theoretical in tone, this article was uncannily prescient. At the time, I laughed at: “Like the Union Pacific Railroad awaiting the fact of empire, corporations prefer to let the rag-tag pioneers die all over the frontier before they come out to claim it.” But it was no exaggeration – that’s exactly what’s happening right now in the end-game of VR’s mass market introduction.

As the piece says, “Columbus was probably the last person to behold so much usable and unclaimed real estate (or unreal estate) as these cybernauts have discovered.” What are these cybernauts going to do with this “unreal estate” now that all these flags have been planted? I would argue that the pattern of history will repeat itself; the VR start-ups will do the innovation, but the corporations will come in at the end of the fight, and plunder the battlefield.