Author: Jeff Larche

There was a time when the ultimate computer-based entertainment was pretty much confined to CD-based computer gaming. That was back in the stone ages, when the web was the exclusive stomping grounds of scientists and academics, and bulletin boards were the only way to experience the asynchronous power of email and forums. Asynchrony is what makes email the original “killer app.” It telescopes time, allowing us to communicate on our terms, when and where we want.

CD-ROMs are themselves asynchronous. By that I mean that they allow you to pop a game in at your convenience and stop and save your place when you are rousted away from your computer by the need for nutrition, or by the beckonings of other carbon-based life forms. (I’m using a little of my dear friend Marty’s terminology. I was never into gaming, but Marty made up for it by playing and mastering computer games the way other people read novels. Once again I merely stand on the shoulders of giants.)

Online games with multiple players can be synchronous, or asynchronous, or a little of both. An online chess game can be played over the course of a year, if the players want it to take that long. Whereas EverQuest, one Marty’s more recent passions, has real-time cooperation among its players. Although breaks in the action are inevitable, when playing resumes there is a synchronizing clock maintained by Sony’s servers behind the proceedings.

A “synchronizing clock” maintains the action of another type of entertainment: live theater. That clock is held by the stage manager. Although plays telescope time with scenes and intermissions, one or more actors on stage at any given time sets up all that is needed for a real-time event, one that must be played out on its carefully scripted schedule.

I bring up theater because way back in the stone ages, I wondered how CD-ROMs could conceivably improve standard modes of storytelling. I thought about live theater. It occurred to me then that a computer could allow a scripted performance to be filmed from many angles. That’s interesting. Instead of a play having three walls (or less), it could have all four. But isn’t that just a film, except you choose the angles and not the film editor and the director?

Then I thought about how the cameras could themselves be point of view shots (POV), and “players” could occupy the bodies of characters as the dialog unfolds. The POV could in fact jump from one character to the next as desired by the player.

That’s interesting, but also creepy and pointless. Plays were written to have audience members participate as “flies on the wall,” not as mics and cameras hidden on one or more of the characters’ bodies. Also, significant action often takes place while one or more characters isn’t looking. What then for plot developments based on hidden letters or stolen glances?

Then I remembered a wish I once had (and still do!) to see performed all three plays of the wonderful The Norman Conquests trilogy. This set of stage comedy/dramas, by the brilliant British playwright and director Alan Ayckbourn, takes place over a weekend, and is set in three locales of the same home: the living room, the dining room and the garden. Each full-length play is set in only one of those locales. In other words, one whole evening’s performance is set in the living room (that one is called Living Together). Another, Round And Round the Garden, is exclusively set … guess where? Likewise with the third, called Table Manners.

Ayckbourn is something of a magician, in two ways. First, he really understands the folly and drama of human relationships. And secondly, he is a stage-craftsman of the highest degree. He actually managed to pull off three consecutive nights of entertainment, all telling the same story about the same weekend and each being uniquely enthralling.

What’s more, when one character storms off stage in one play, she enters the next night’s performance of the next play, still peeved and cursing the person she left in the last room, one whole play ago. Magic, huh?

Assuming I ever get a chance to see these performed live, on three consecutive nights, and assuming I’ve got the bank account, and the posterior, suitable for that level theater-going, I’m sure I’ll love the experience.

But wait! Why not pop a DVD into my computer and watch the performances all in one interactive experience? What’s more, what if I could be a fly on the wall that literally buzzes along – tracking, say, that actress who just stormed out of the room, to follow her and see her performance in the next room?

I would still need approximately five hours to hear every single line of the plays (I’m guessing each is one-and-two-thirds hours long). But just like a CD-ROM based game, you would be able to pause at any time and pick up where you left off. Perhaps there would even be a pie chart in the corner of the screen, to show you how much of the action was left unwatched. In other words, how much that happened in the adjoining scenes did I miss by being in this one, and which wall does this fly have to light upon in order to take in that fresh action?

The closest I’ve seen to this in cinema is a film called Timecode, which shows the action of the same 97 minutes in real time, across a movie screen broken into quadrants, with each showing a different, related scene. It was a good experiment by director Mike Figgis, but not a total success as a work of art. The Norman Conquests is, by contrast, a triple-success, and I think the trilogy would be greatly improved — in fact, transformed — by the ability to view it in an interactive way.

Has a multiple, synchronous theatrical experience ever been presented as an interactive entertainment / game? Does it succeed, and actually improve on its parts? I’d love to find out.

This blog entry is a message in a bottle to all innovative video game developers / playwrights / filmmakers to get cracking. I, for one, have been awaiting this type of experience for a long, long time.

Second Life is a “metaverse,” which is short for metaphysical universe. In Second Life, everything you see — every scrap of clothing, every piece of scenery and every avatar (which is a player-operated character) — is “built” by the players themselves, either for their personal use or for sale to others. Someday, this world’s ability to empower and inspire its residents to build and share could challenge movie studios. In the meantime, Second Life is becoming the defacto movie studio (and dance studio, and design studio, and much more) for tens of thousands of people with a strong vision and a lot of spare time.

I only wish Second Life had come along 20 years ago, when my wife and I were two such restless auteurs.

This young couple — the Jeff and Julie of the mid-1980’s — are only a memory now, but a particularly vivid one this weekend. I’m writing from a cybercafe in my home town, during a holiday visit with my many family members who never left. Visits like this remind me of who I was back when I lived here too, and how my wife (who also grew up in this town) and I responded to this quirky way of life.

How do I describe my home town? Deep in the forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.), it’s not as heartwarming as the place in the 90’s TV show Northern Exposure, but it was, and is, no less eccentric. For instance, I may be in a cybercafe, but it’s one that caters to people who proudly call themselves “Yoopers” (sound out the letters U.P. and you get the epithet’s origin).

So naturally, you can buy a piping hot pasty along with your WiFi access. What’s a pasty? It’s is a meat-and-potato pie that is the closest thing Yoopers have to soul food, which tells you as much about Yooper “soul” as it does about Yooper food. What I mean is, when I think of the U.P., I think of words like traditional, genuine and consistent. These are qualities that I’ve come to appreciate now — both in pasties and in people — but back then these small town virtues were easy targets for rebellion.

When my wife and I were first married, we lived near this town, and wanted to capture the area’s eccentricities before we moved on. We scripted a movie, called The Porchlights, about a fictitious nuclear family who loved each other and their Upper Peninsula lifestyle. It was to be a comedy.

We had little choice in what technology we would use for our proejct. If we were going to shoot this thing at all, it would on 16-millimeter film. The format wouldn’t make us candidates for commercial success, but that was far from the point. This film was for the exclusive entertainment of ourselves and our friends — most of whom were to be involved in its production.

None of these friends were actors, by the way, but we solved that problem as well. All of the characters in our little film would be pink, plastic lawn flamingos (clever, huh?), manipulated off-camera and synchronized later to sound studio voice-overs.

The project died a quiet death in pre-production, as they say, and much of the reason was the technology challenges. Film stock. Lights. Editing equipment. Producing even a humble Porchlights was so out of reach.

Not today. Right now, many thousands of people have similarly daft plans and dreams. But they are making them come to life, in quirky patches of virtual real estate.

They’re putting their stories on Second Life.

I mentioned that all the objects in Second Life are residents’ creations, including the avatars. Roughly a third of these objects are scripted, which means they can realistically interact with each other, at the whim of Second Life’s 230,000+ residents. Roll-playing games are common, as are amateur theatrics. These are sometimes “filmed” using special cameras that other residents have developed, for replaying and sharing.

You see why I wish Second Life had been around 20 years ago. To be clear, most residents find their fun in ad libbed interaction, not carefully plotted entertainments such as The Porchlights. But along with the typical night club and public park gathering places, Second Life includes such innovations as a “living” re-creation of a dying Native American culture. Built by a real-life Native American, this authentic village keeps alive his tribe’s heritage.

That’s just one example of how this metaverse is absolutely anything residents want it to be, even if their vision might include a U.P. ranch home populated by talking pink lawn flamingoes.

Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs, the software company behind Second Life, says his residents are far closer to the norm demographically than participants in most multi-player game environments. These residents are more likely to be middle-aged, and more likely to be female.

He says it’s hard to generalize in any way about these residents. Their stories and motivations are that diverse. Except for this fact. Rosedale says that Second Life resonates most with people who live in parts of the world with bad weather, limited entertainment options and good broadband connections.

In other words, right here.

Perhaps right now that woman I see at the next table, tapping away at her laptop, is creating her own Second Life send-up to this odd little corner of the world. If she is, I’m sure that she — like Julie and me before her — is having a great time of it.

Curious about Second Life? This link shows a video that will help fill you in.

Metcalfe’s Law says that the usefulness of a network grows exponentially with its size. A recent New Yorker article by John Cassidy (pp 50-59, 5/15/06) pointed out that if this were the case, MySpace would be far more useful than Facebook. My calculations are that it would be about 100 times more useful.

MySpace has 70 million members. Facebook has 7.5 million.

However, if usefulness is measured in activity, you can’t get much better than Facebook.com. Two-thirds of all members are on the site every day, and they spend an average of 20 minutes there!

If “stickiness” isn’t a measure of usefulness, consider this fact. Cassidy reports that since a recent Facebook policy change, members can upload an unlimited number of photos to their Profiles. Boy, are they enjoying that free ride! 

The volume of photos added to the site is unsurpassed anywhere on the web. One and a half million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day!

Other sites, most notably Yahoo’s Flickr.com, also have members, and unlimited uploading bandwidth. So why isn’t Flickr the leader? After all, it has far fewer restrictions to membership (just a Yahoo account), and far more open sharing between members (anyone can see everything).

Here’s a hint: That’s the explanation. Cassidy suggests restrictions add value to this type of network. Who wants to share really interesting photographs* with everyone in the world?

Unlike MySpace and Flickr, Facebook is a gated community. Only if you have an email address from one of the 2,000 colleges and universities it recognizes can you get in and establish a profile. And even within its walls, there is limited sharing of profile information between members who don’t designate each other as friends. Its very exclusivity encourages sharing.

* Speaking of interesting photos, many have discovered that you can have a fun, if useless, online experience by going to Flickr.com and searching on the tag “interesting.” But it’s a pain to browse through pages with very limited numbers of thumbnails on each. I discovered this cool way to view 500 of the most interesting photos of the day — and any other day you specify. Thank you houserdesign.com for wasting more of my time!