Organic Media

Fundamentals of interactive media and its differences to film, Part 2

The following is the second article in a two-part series written by mark ury, a writer and businessman, who has been, at one time or another, an editor, director and producer. He is currently head of business development for The General Assembly Production Centre, and in particular, their new media companies, Digg Design and Helix Online, both located in Ottawa. Part one appeared in the May 22 issue of Playback.

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If you were to browse through the interactive entertainment titles at your local computer store, you’d think most of them had been produced by Hollywood film studios. Wallpapered on almost every box are phrases like ‘cinematic storytelling,’ ‘million-dollar movie quality,’ and my personal favorite, ‘interactive movies’ (something of an oxymoron).

Consumer magazines are similar, with ads for the upcoming release of Johnny Mnemonic (the game) extolling ‘an unprecedented hybrid of computer game and feature film,’ a ‘movie that you play.’

Everywhere, people are comparing interactive entertainment to films, not just from a story perspective (which we talked about in our last article), but as a production process as well. A byproduct of these vague notions is that many of us in the film and television community are unclear about the process of creating dramatic, interactive media.

Interactive, multimedia development is an organic, cyclical process, remarkably different than the linear, assembly-line process associated with film production. Furthermore, the successful titles today indicate not only is it a different process, but development requires fewer people than film, constant technical innovation, and little dependence on proximity to production infrastructures like Toronto or Hollywood.

Production vs development

One way to underscore the fundamental differences in process between film and interactive entertainment is to look at the words which are used to describe the act of making them: film production, multimedia development.

Production refers to a manufacturing process; a linear, assembly-line model with a start, middle, and end. In contrast, development means to unfold, or continually flesh out. The nature of development is cyclical, a process which re-examines its current state, then works to improve or add to it.

Development in film happens only at the script and storyboard stage, where, with the help of an eraser, scenes and characters are continually reworked. After that, you don’t develop the film, you produce it, largely due to the huge costs of mounting a movie.

Films are a very analog business, with people, cameras, lights, labs, and edit suites. To change or redevelop something during the process is costly and sometimes impossible. Once the process gets rolling, trying to stop it is like standing in front of a speeding freight train.

This is rather different from developers, who work in a digital environment where no constraints are made on reworking, remodeling, revamping, or redoing all or portions of their work – at any time. Characters, sets, and music are all changeable in order to suit the development of the best interactive experience.

Indeed, change is a regular feature of interactive work, according to Paul Butler, president of Artech Digital Entertainment in Ottawa. Butler and his team are acutely aware of the need to rework game elements, particularly those which relate to technical issues.

‘We deal with the technical challenges of a project first and foremost, then worry about the environment or story. In this business, the biggest-selling titles are usually those that are incrementally better than the next from a technical standpoint.’

From a process point of view, Butler explains how Artech goes about a project:

‘When we start an application, a project manager maps out some initial ideas for the game, and then starts working closely with the lead programmer to flesh out how things can work.

‘If we think there’s something new there, then the project manager works on it some more while the programmer starts to develop some code. We’ll then work with a few more programmers and artists.’

As things develop, explains Butler, a tester works with the team to ensure the code is bug-proof, and that it works on the platform for which it is intended. If something isn’t working, or a technical development allows them to do something new, portions of the project may be reworked for better performance.

Teams

The size of a development team is much smaller than that of a feature film. On average, about five to 10 people work on a title, and in some cases, as few as one or two.

Doom, the multimillion dollar selling shoot-’em-up was created by a core group of five partners in one of their basements. Myst, one of the most popular games in the past year, was developed by the two Rand brothers, one who worked on illustration, the other who programmed. Granted, it took them three years to finish their project, but then, adding more people to a team doesn’t necessarily speed up development.

‘There’s a saying in the programming world that nine women can’t deliver a baby in one month – the law of diminishing returns,’ comments Paul Bodnoff, president of Future Endeavours, Ottawa. Endeavours, which has four projects on the go, including the traditionally animated Castle Capers, keeps about four to six people on a project. Depending on need, team members may move to another project, and then back again.

For Bodnoff, a team typically consists of a project manager, a couple of programmers, and a few designers or animators. Capers, which is coproduced with a traditional animation company, will employ an additional four to five animators. For sound, elements are produced by external audio production companies, and then incorporated by programmers into the application.

One of the reasons work teams stay so small is the limited use of filmed or videotaped sequences, which would then require all the trappings of a production crew. There are two primary reasons for this: one, the playback mechanism is poor – as Artech’s Butler is so fond of saying, ‘You don’t get much of an experience out of video the size of a postage stamp,’ referring in part to Apple’s Quicktime video compression system.

The other reason relates to the fundamental issue of interactive environments: if you play a pretaped sequence, then you’re turning your participant into a viewer. Although branching movies (films which allow you to choose options at predefined points which then branch the narrative into a new direction) will likely endure, it’s the yielding, do-as-you-please environments which make up a compelling interactive experience.

Technology

No one may fully appreciate this point more than the team at Bullfrog, one of Europe’s most celebrated developers. In an interview with journalist Matt Firme for P.C Gamer, Peter Molyneux, cofounder and joint managing director of Bullfrog, explained a technological breakthrough they’ve been working on for two years, a process called Skeletal Mapping.

Currently, to have characters in an interactive environment, you have to create them first.

Whether they’re computer-generated bitmaps or videotaped sequences which are cut out and pasted into 3D environments, someone has to design and place these characters in the drama. By having to pre-animate characters, the creators of this world are defining what you can or can’t do with them, which in turn makes the environment less interactive.

For instance, if you jump from a building and miss your destination, that has to be predetermined by the animators. Skeletal Mapping, on the other hand, is a computer simulation of physical movement, which allows the characters to react to situations which are not predetermined.

So when you miss your jump and sprain your ankle, the computer simulation makes your character limp. Maybe your character had high heels, and lost one; the computer would model a double-limp, one for the missing shoe, the other for the sprained ankle.

As Molyneux points out: ‘It was my opinion that we had to work on this technology because it’s no good having these vectored characters and then having a human animate them. That’s not how these virtual worlds will work.’

This author’s prediction: within five years, technology will allow computer-based entertainment to generate novel, random environments, characters, and plots. Each time you turn on the computer, a completely new adventure will occur, one which was not even predicted by the original creators of the game.

Geography

A startling aspect of interactive media production is how all of these factors can work anywhere in the world.

One of the principal reasons Hollywood, Toronto and London remain the centers of film production in their countries is the massive infrastructure required to support the industry. Talent, agents, guarantors, studios, rental houses, crews, support services – the list is enormous. In other words, the cost of entry into quality filmmaking is high.

But like it has in every industry, digital technology changes this. There is no size advantage in interactive development, in fact, work groups are best when small; the technological investments are minor in comparison – a fully outfitted developer could spend less than $200,000 on equipment; and technological breakthroughs in the field happen anywhere.

Granted, since some of the best computer animators and illustrators will gravitate towards film cities where their skills can be used in the increasingly digital film world, larger developer communities may evolve there. But with the use of digital networks (which will change the film industry itself), artists, programmers, sound designers and project leaders can be in four separate locations and collaborate.

What will likely occur then is an industry somewhere between book publishing and film: where in publishing, novelists come from virtually anywhere, and film, where all the tools for production are amassed in a central location.

When asked about the future, Artech’s Butler and Endeavour’s Bodnoff concur: the industry will remain decentralized, like the Internet and its culture. Says Butler: ‘Where people make the mistake is in thinking that film and interactive multimedia are converging. Actually, they’re only overlapping at some points. They will always be distinct, in their medium, and their process.’

(mark ury can be reached for comment at (613) 723-3316, or ga@helix-online.com.)