I keep my eyes open for examples of technology convergence such as the convergence between the movie and the video gaming industries. That's why this announcement caught my attention.
The details are a bit sketchy at the time of this writing and the announced deadline is way out but it looks like the Sci Fi Channel is going to simultaneously co-produce both a TV show and an MMORPG.
How is this is different from other movie/MMORPG combinations such as Star Wars and The Matrix? In those two Sony franchises, the movies were made first then the MMORPG followed. The story arc of the game always follows what has already been revealed in the movies.
It appears that what might be different this time is that both the television producers and the game designers will have equal creative say in the franchise. The writers of the series will study what the gamers have done online to work plot elements into the show. They may also schedule events online that dovetail with what is going on in individual episodes. This new innovation kicks media demographic research up a notch from other convergence ties such as CSI:NY on SL.
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Monday, June 2, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Say a Little Prayer for the Semantic Web
Earlier, I had blogged about SPARQL. The feedback I got was along the lines of asking why I was bothering about that since RDF never really took off. Well, it is true that adoption of RDF is pretty weak. I guess that means the semantic web is not really ready for the main stream yet.
Too bad, really, because the problem that RDF was invented to solve is both interesting and compelling. It is the problem of context sensitive search. Wouldn't it be nice if you could write a search query that differentiates between Huckabee the politician, the store chain, or the movie? Maybe this problem isn't serious enough to bother with the trouble of authoring anything as onerous as an RDF document because google is already doing some special parsing tricks to provide some pre-canned context sensitivity. For example, if you google movie: Huckabee, then you see only movie reviews with the word Huckabee in them. That's not exactly what was wanted but it is closer. You can do similar stuff with define: and stocks: but this is not a complete solution to the problem of context sensitive search. In the world of google these are called search operators.
But perhaps it is still premature to declare RDF as dead. The CEO for the Reuters news agency has talked up RDF in a recent interview. They have even introduced a cool tool for generating RDF from textual content. There's nothing like a cool tool to generate traction in the world of protocol adoption. However, this tool still has a little ways to go before it is going to be of much use. I pointed the tool at another blog entry of mine (Data Access Strategies), just to see what it would do.
What it generated could do little more than identify the following from the article as industry terms; web application server, web application development framework, ruby utilities, django utilities, rapid web application development, business application software development, operational systems, and web application developer frameworks. Not very intelligent, eh? It did correctly identify Martin Fowler as a person but incorrectly identified VB.NET as a company. To give you a basis for comparison, I went to the bother of authoring an RDF of that article myself. That document won't do you much good unless you are comfortable with RDF or have an RDF editor. As I hinted at before, RDF is kind of complicated. Here is a picture of what that RDF looks like when viewed as a resource graph.
Here is a PDF of the graphical version generated by RDF Gravity.
Here's hoping that Reuters continues to work on making this tool better. There is also a recently published extension to the very popular RSS format that allows you to add more context sensitive tags to your site maps. Here's hoping that takes off too.
Too bad, really, because the problem that RDF was invented to solve is both interesting and compelling. It is the problem of context sensitive search. Wouldn't it be nice if you could write a search query that differentiates between Huckabee the politician, the store chain, or the movie? Maybe this problem isn't serious enough to bother with the trouble of authoring anything as onerous as an RDF document because google is already doing some special parsing tricks to provide some pre-canned context sensitivity. For example, if you google movie: Huckabee, then you see only movie reviews with the word Huckabee in them. That's not exactly what was wanted but it is closer. You can do similar stuff with define: and stocks: but this is not a complete solution to the problem of context sensitive search. In the world of google these are called search operators.
But perhaps it is still premature to declare RDF as dead. The CEO for the Reuters news agency has talked up RDF in a recent interview. They have even introduced a cool tool for generating RDF from textual content. There's nothing like a cool tool to generate traction in the world of protocol adoption. However, this tool still has a little ways to go before it is going to be of much use. I pointed the tool at another blog entry of mine (Data Access Strategies), just to see what it would do.
What it generated could do little more than identify the following from the article as industry terms; web application server, web application development framework, ruby utilities, django utilities, rapid web application development, business application software development, operational systems, and web application developer frameworks. Not very intelligent, eh? It did correctly identify Martin Fowler as a person but incorrectly identified VB.NET as a company. To give you a basis for comparison, I went to the bother of authoring an RDF of that article myself. That document won't do you much good unless you are comfortable with RDF or have an RDF editor. As I hinted at before, RDF is kind of complicated. Here is a picture of what that RDF looks like when viewed as a resource graph.
Here is a PDF of the graphical version generated by RDF Gravity.
Here's hoping that Reuters continues to work on making this tool better. There is also a recently published extension to the very popular RSS format that allows you to add more context sensitive tags to your site maps. Here's hoping that takes off too.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Children of Men
I saw an interesting video the other day. The story line for Children of Men is a fairly straight up sample from the genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction and that alone makes it worthy to watch if you are into that sort of thing. That is not why I am writing about it here, however. What makes this movie interesting enough to comment on in a blog about contemporary culture is its innovative cinematic approach.
Industries are constantly looking for ways to converge. They do this to open up new markets and to form partnerships that enhance their value proposition without expanding payroll. One of the current hot areas for convergence is between the gaming and the movie industries. I have blogged about all of this before.
What makes the movie Children of Men interesting is in their approach towards convergence with the gaming industry. The cinematography of the movie is very reminiscent with that of the gaming genre known as the First Person Shooter. There are dialog shots in the movie that are filmed very similar to that of cut scenes in a game. In the action shots, they used a steady-cam behind the main actors as they progress through the scene. The effect is very much like being in a team based FPS where you are running behind the next gamer in front of you. You and the actors move through a battle zone trying to avoid being shot at which is a very typical challenge in a FPS style game. In another scene, one of the supporting cast members gets pulled off of a bus and you get to see her grim fate as the bus pulls away. This is a typical atmosphere building sequence that you may find in well made games.
I keep my eyes open for opportunities of convergence because I find it to be fascinating. I have previously noted other ways that the film and gaming industries are converging. What other ways do you see?
Industries are constantly looking for ways to converge. They do this to open up new markets and to form partnerships that enhance their value proposition without expanding payroll. One of the current hot areas for convergence is between the gaming and the movie industries. I have blogged about all of this before.
What makes the movie Children of Men interesting is in their approach towards convergence with the gaming industry. The cinematography of the movie is very reminiscent with that of the gaming genre known as the First Person Shooter. There are dialog shots in the movie that are filmed very similar to that of cut scenes in a game. In the action shots, they used a steady-cam behind the main actors as they progress through the scene. The effect is very much like being in a team based FPS where you are running behind the next gamer in front of you. You and the actors move through a battle zone trying to avoid being shot at which is a very typical challenge in a FPS style game. In another scene, one of the supporting cast members gets pulled off of a bus and you get to see her grim fate as the bus pulls away. This is a typical atmosphere building sequence that you may find in well made games.
I keep my eyes open for opportunities of convergence because I find it to be fascinating. I have previously noted other ways that the film and gaming industries are converging. What other ways do you see?
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