Which is kind of my point: last year the NAB glitterati were busy sweating and lamenting the bells tolling for TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, the record industry and all other antiquated media platforms.  This year however, we saw a revitalized community – aggressively interested in emerging platforms for communication of our collective stories and in innovating new technologies to address the zeitgeist.

At his opening day keynote address, NAB president and CEO David K. Rehr began:

“There is no place I’d rather be than right here…right now…with all of you.” Donning a sticker that read “I Matter” he continued:

“We are demonstrating that broadcasters are forging ahead…spurring innovation and creating multiple platforms to deliver our content from moving 3D into the home to incorporating FM chips in cell phones, to exploring all the possibilities of the Internet – we are planning for the future and seizing opportunities in this digital age.”

It’s Not A Recession – It’s A Reset

And though these words can be taken as cautionary, post-mortem and defensive, they were certainly not delivered that way. As author Dr. James Florida delineated later during the opening ceremony – we must consider that we are not going through a new Great Depression, but rather a Great Reset. Where once the economy was built on God-given resources like water, food, ore and wood, and then later the resource of human energy and labor post-industrial revolution, what we are seeing now is a new kind of economy built on that of the output of the Creative Class. What Juan Enriquez called Human Evolutis at TED. As the work of building and crafting is increasingly outsourced to China and India and other countries abroad, in North America the primary export is being that of the human mind itself – of imagination and ideas and creativity. This of course, is not to say that these do not exist abroad, but rather that the North American GDP is shifting the source of its wealth.

Ideas were found in abundance at NAB as CEO’s, Presidents, General Managers and inventors from such companies as Disney, Adobe, Electronic Arts met with independent directors, producers, post-production experts, radio broadcasters and content creators of every type and platform to exchange ideas and talk about what the world will look like and respond to over the next few years.

Mary Tyler Moore, Kelsey Grammer and Bob Newhart were all honored for their contributions to the television programming lexicon.

Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline was interviewed about the development of stop motion and its marriage with new digital techniques.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of groundbreaking social analysis books Blink, The Tipping Point and Outliers was interviewed before the NAB attendees by NAB President David Rehr.  He extrapolated his process for coming up with his book subjects and confided that one of his most powerful techniques was avoiding Google searches altogether; Google is essentially empty he explained, it is merely an index of what is on the Web but to go beyond it is to mine massive sources of information available that afford us remarkable insights on who we have been, are and will be especially when seen with our new eyes in this high-speed information exchange society.

The Jim Henson Creature Shop demonstrated their digital puppeteering system wherein one puppeteer controls a head and mouth and another the body via a motion tracking suit and capture grid.  Without any intermediate, they are able to create real-time 3D animation that captures all the nuances and gravity of a real moving body.  Rather than illustrate a variety of movements, they simply shoot another “take” and then use the best take as the final output (after a polish render in Maya).  I asked them whether we might one day see a turnkey system from Jim Henson Company but they reminded us that the puppeteer and experience with working with such technology is really the thing, not so much the computers, mo-cap stage and proprietary software.

Lectures given in morning sessions were echoed in afternoon sessions, but now modified, expanded and reconsidered. By week’s end there were new consensus emerging about how to implement and innovate our proverbial campfires about which we sit and exchange our common experiences through this incredible life we share.

And now more than ever we are sharing it in ways we couldn’t have ever predicted or even imagined.

The Amazing Future of Broadcasting

Beyond all the pontificating – incredible products were on display – Autostereoscopic (which you will come to know as AS-3D) 3D TV sets -(meaning 3D screens for which no intermediary viewing glasses are needed), real-time video cameras displaying in 3D, super high resolution screens that add almost ten times the pixel count of existence HDTV screens, HD radio, FM tuners in all cell phones, HD movies on cell phones that run below real-time Flash based menus, technology that allows every word spoken within a video to be searchable, real-time holographic interview wherein the interviewee appears to be sitting or standing in front the interviewer in spit of any geographic disparity (think Princess Leia’s holographic appeal for help at the beginning of Star Wars except at a resolution almost indistinguishable from reality) and yes YouTube 3D.

Seminar topics ranged from When Will The Web Kill TV to How To Blog In 140 Characters to Alternative Reality Gaming, Second Chances in Second Life and the nature of Web 3.0.

You may have noticed one word popping up an awful lot in this article: “Real Time.”  Other popular keywords at this years convention were Home 3D and Metadata.  Metadata will allow every stage of the production workflow be indexable, searchable and integrated from top to bottom.

It was indeed an extraordinary week and I hope to share and unravel some of the ideas exchanged over the coming weeks and even months. In the interim, you can hear myself and my travel partner and co-host Aimee Lynn Chadwick giddily discussed some of our findings at my podcast http://KeramCast.com

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Here is how Geoff Hammill, writing for The Museum of Broadcast Communications, summarized the incredibly popular award-winning sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show:

As Mary Richards, a single woman in her thirties, Moore presented a character different from other single TV women of the time. She was not widowed or divorced or seeking a man to support her.[1]

Felicia Day’s eight-minute webisodic-turned-cultural-phenomenon The Guild revolves around the character Codex, a single woman in her late-twenties, early thirties who is not widowed or divorced or seeking a man to support her, but who holds a position of great importance in her online guild – that of the Healer.   The show can similarly assert itself as a pioneer in the new post-TV era entertainment spectrum.  Originally broadcast via YouTube and The Guild’s own website, the show was subsidized by viewers like you sending donations through PayPal.

The Guild centers around a group of regular people who know each other singularly via their membership in an online guild of adventurers in an unspecified MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game), but that any former Azerothian would quickly identify as World of Warcraft.

WoW Syndrome

Day, the show’s creator, producer and star, confessed that she created the show out of her own two-year addiction to the game. I completely empathize; I myself spent two years as the founder and leader of a WoW guild that had up to two hundred and fifty members at any given time. I would spend entire nights with my then girlfriend, side-by-side on separate computers, grinding away for loot. It defined the entire second year of our relationship. I think it was when I looked at the clock reading 1PM and I was still up from the night before hacking away at giant wasps in a virtual desert in hopes of finding some sort of epic ring that had a .01% chance of dropping that I bypassed all suspicion and went straight to absolute certainty, that I had a terrible debilitating addiction and that I had to stop.

A Night Elf from World of Warcraft
photo credit: antigone78

Stopping wasn’t easy; my strongest social ties now existed by virtue of the Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and Tauren that I had befriended in the game almost two years prior.  Using Ventrilo and TeamSpeak to talk over headsets, their real-life voices were indelibly linked to the image of their respective avatars. We had laughed, fought, in some cases hooked up (not me, and not necessarily exclusively in the virtual domain), broken up, mutinied, reunited, cried, lost everything, and fought to win it back again.  I could simply hang up the receiver and pretend it had never existed; that it was just some misstep in the way I spent my time between jobs.  This wasn’t some bad, obsessive Bejeweled habit – this was a real part of my life, my memories, my emotional landscape.  I would dream of Azerothian locales at night, of my friends and what we had said to one another.  My fingers would absently tap out key commands when I met someone for coffee.

Transcending the Micro-Niche

Felicia Day decided to go public with her story and is now reaping the rewards for her courage.  The eight-minute episodes were picked up by Microsoft and are available for instant download (free at that) on their Xbox Live and Zune platforms.  Episodes center around the interactions between the Guild members in the Meatverse (that’s the offline world for you newbies/n00bs/nubs) and how they feel at once awkward and entitled amongst themselves as they attempt to reconcile their alter-egos with their Earthly counterparts.

Largely populated by unknown actors (Day herself used to have a recurring role on cult hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the episodes are not only legitimately funny and clever, but in their second season have started to branch out into the downright avante-garde. In a recent episode – titled simply “Fight!” – Day, who plays the ineffectual, self-conscious character “Codex” (we only know the characters by their online handles) confides to her webcam that she is both torn and flattered by the competition between Zaboo and a local stuntman hottie for her hand.  When things go awry and she ends up empty handed, a spectral version of herself leaps from her body and runs away from the scene as we reach the closing credits.

In much the same way, the show is beginning to trascend it own campy micro-niche origins and drawing an ever larger crowd of onlookers.  Bookended by a sponsorship page from Sprint PCS, the show runs commercial-free, but nothing about its eight-minute per episode length feels unsatisfactory; in a time where attention spans and available mind-share is running at a deficit, this show is a quick entertainment bump that quells the hunger as readily as a Snickers Almond bar between meetings.

Give It Away Now

The music industry was ambushed by a lethal combination comprised of the mp3 compression technology and high-speed internet access for less than a monthly cable bill.  As it struggled to plug the holes in its sinking ship, it fought to maintain control, when in fact it should have done the counter-intuitive thing and just given the music away for free like radio had done for so long.  Sure, radio has ads, but not all radio: jazz and classical stations, NPR, they are funded by donations much like The Guild was in its early days.  If people appreciate the content you are creating, they will rally behind it.  But hindsight is 20/20.  The music industry could not possibly have projected the way out once the gates were overwhlemed by the Barbarians, any more than it could have imagined that Napster would evolve into Twitter.

In its second phase, The Guild has moved from the PBS model of public funding to the early television model wherein a show’s content was intertwined with content involving its sponsors.   With Sprint as its modern day Ovaltine, The Guild has a much larger, focused target group.  But the public is far more ad-blind than it was back in the days of Gunsmoke.  So long as Sprint doesn’t get greedy by asserting its product placement too heavy handedly within the midst of the video, they may very well have a new kind of success story on their hands.

The respite that would bring, after so many thousands of short videos consisting of people getting thwacked in the head with a two-by-four, is like mana from the gods.

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]]> https://theculturepin.com/the-guild-is-next-generation-mary-tyler-moore/feed/ 0 392 https://theculturepin.com/sony-blocks-content-xbox-360-hd-dvd-blue-ray-fallout-persists/ https://theculturepin.com/sony-blocks-content-xbox-360-hd-dvd-blue-ray-fallout-persists/#respond Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:58:32 +0000 http://theculturepin.com/?p=211 I have now mentioned in two posts that the exclusive arrangement between Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Netflix which affords the […]

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]]> I have now mentioned in two posts that the exclusive arrangement between Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Netflix which affords the viewer realtime HD video on demand streaming of over ten thousand titles, would pose a real threat to Sony and overpriced Blu-Ray.  Well Sony has demonstrated this to be true by blocking its (Columbia) catalog from streaming via Netflix as Xbox 360’s New Xbox Experience goes live this morning.

As reported at Xbox 360 Fanboy:

“According to Joystiq (and confirmed by MTV Multiplayer) Netflix has pulled all Columbia Pictures content from the Xbox 360 instant view library due to “licensing problems.” But, wouldn’t you know, all the blocked content can still be viewed online and through all other Netflix enabled TV devices except for the 360.

Netflix hopes to license all the currently blocked content to the Xbox 360 in the near future.”

Sony is known for its less-than-scrupulous turf wars, often upsetting consumers by viture of its insistence upon proprietary hardware and codecs.

 

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]]> https://theculturepin.com/sony-blocks-content-xbox-360-hd-dvd-blue-ray-fallout-persists/feed/ 0 211 https://theculturepin.com/xbla-fable-2-pub-games-for-xbox-360-tips-and-insights/ https://theculturepin.com/xbla-fable-2-pub-games-for-xbox-360-tips-and-insights/#comments Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:45:01 +0000 http://theculturepin.com/?p=124 The Culturepin is about a lot of things, but it is primarily about contemporary culture.  I say this to allay […]

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]]> The Culturepin is about a lot of things, but it is primarily about contemporary culture.  I say this to allay any confusion that may arise in my readers about the recent pattern of discussing video games.  But if home video game consoles/entertainment centers are not a bona fide part of our daily life, then I don’t know what is.  Unless you’re Amish.  In which case you are not reading this blog.

I want to offer some insights into the gameplay of Peter Molyneaux’s pre-Fable 2 release: Pub Games that offers a Vegas-meets-Ren Faire scenario that after some investment of time affords an enormous amount of satisfaction.

The lure of Fable 2 Pub Games is the fact that money earned (“won”) can later be merged into your main character in the game (once it is released October 21st.)  Seemingly simple at first, certain complexities creep up as you delve deeper.  For example, the real money to be made comes from playing the tournaments which, mercifully, afford you 1000 gold of play money to get in and get you started.

I was immediately partial to Fortune’s Tower – a form of Poker wherein you place bets against the odds of an increasing number of cards that threaten to double up and knock you out of the proverbial ring.  The most important thing to know when playing Fortune’ Tower is that if your row of numbers does NOT equal 15 points or more, then you are losing money on that round.  However, if you are down more than a couple of rows and the GATE card has already been used, take what you can and get the hell out because you will likely bust.  So in spite of anything I say after this about how I bet, it follows the above strategy.

I found the most success taking my chances – betting high in the first of twelve rounds and tempting luck as far down the pyramid as I could go before busting.  If you manage to get to the bottom of the pyramid without having to call on your Gate card, that offers you a Hail Mary pass on any double-ups, you have a good chance of winning the value of all the cards on the table.  If I continued to lose with my high-roller bets as I went through the rounds, I would back my bets all the way back to the minimum by round six in order to prevent further annihalation.

Then there is the Roulette/craps hybrid that is my Achilles’ heal.  By pressing the left trigger you can see the odds against all positions on the table – I play this like I play real Roulette – insisting on my favorite numbers (usually loved ones’ birthdays), Pairs, Triples, Runs and Keystones and stick with that.  The reason being – if the dice roll in your favor you win big and likely finish in the top five which grants you the special item card you are going for.

One of the things it took me a second to figure out is how to level up.  You do this by playing solo and not in tournaments.  Evidently, the longer you gamble and the higher the stakes, the more XP you get.  I can tell you whther or not the amount you are betting is pegged to the amount of XP though; its like in Vegas – you stick at those slots long enough and you miraculously start receiving free drinks.  Stick with it and before you know, new game options will open up.

But let’s get back to to the third type of tournament in the game: The Spinnerbox.  at first I could not for the life of me figure out how a game of pure chance could ever grant me the win.  Then I realized that you can stop the Spinner at any point by pressing the A button a second time, rather than wait for the slots to stop spinning.  In tournament mode, understanding this is key.  What is even more “key” is getting the hang of the sweet spot: as soon as you start the Spinner, watch the discs cock up and get ready to roll.  The instant before the spin, hit the A button again.  It’s a feel thing, but I swear on my life, once you grab that sweet spot, you will win every single time. I don’t know how this could be an exploit – it has to be built into the game or otherwise how would you win a tournament, which seems to be based on how many times in succession you actually manage to hit the sweet spot.

Give it a try. I assure you this is the way to win and win big.

Fable 2 promises to be a rich and evolved next-gen game.  Molyneaux himself has admitted that he doesn’t want it to be a game that you play multiple times but rather delve into deeply on the first and only pass.  They have programmed an exhaustive amount of complexity into how your character unfolds so that the ultimate climax to the story is a long way coming and the journey to it is as dense and interesting as possible.  Something, that I wish the creators of Spore had implemented.  I love Spore, but the urgency to get to the final stage left me wanting.

Exploring the deeper possibilities of the this mere Xbox Live teaser to Fable 2 means really good things are on the horizon.

Please be sure to leave your comments on this article – I am interested in hearing your own experiences at the Albion gaming tables.

 

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]]> https://theculturepin.com/xbla-fable-2-pub-games-for-xbox-360-tips-and-insights/feed/ 1 124 https://theculturepin.com/classic-standup-arcade-home-free/ https://theculturepin.com/classic-standup-arcade-home-free/#comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:42:06 +0000 http://theculturepin.com/?p=88 A few years back I was at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles and on a whim, picked up a book […]

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A few years back I was at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles and on a whim, picked up a book called Lucky Wander Boy by D.B. Weiss.  Upon reading it, it reminded me of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in its post-modern sleight-of-hand mind-fuckness where the line between protagonist as anti-hero, my id and reality were blurred as it referred to a piece of software called MAME that allowed me to run original standup arcade ROMs on my home computer.  One of these games was called Lucky Wander Boy and as the author of the book would tell it – to play the actual game led one down a very mysterious, even dangerous path.

With some healthy skepticism in place, I searched for the game online.  Imagine my astonishment when it showed up as a download!  Marketing tactic?  Nope.  It was the real deal.

Here’s the thing.  A lot of us have game consoles and spend way too much time reading bullshit threads about how PS3 and Blu-Ray trump Xbox 360s and back and forth ad nauseum.  But there is a thing about the old standup games wherein the farther you go back the more pure the gameplay is.  You boil down to the perfect game, ie., Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Pong or Donkey Kong and you realize there really is no way to boil it down further from there.

Well, imagine the joy for us dying Generation Xers when by simply pressing the number 5 on your laptop keyboard you can have as many quarters as you want.  Pressing the number 1 or 2 for number of players sets you loose into Arcade nirvana.  And yeah, if you actually figured out how to move out of moms basement by now you can even smoke cigarettes in your home arcade as you suck back that Orange Julius – just like the old days!

Even better, you can play versions of these games that you never even knew existed – bootlegs, demos,  revisions, and international versions!  Total.  Heaven.

So, how do you get your hand on these pretties?  Too easy.  Run a search for MAME32 and MAME32 ROMS.  Used to be heavily protected, even considered piracy, and I am not certain what the actual hard laws concerning this sort of use is these days, (so I hereby absolve myself of any liability by stating that if you download and or use these ROMS you do so at your own riskj) but since almost every old school arcade is going out of business, you are effectively participating in an examination of our cultural history and identity and paying respects to the soon to be forgotten art form that was tabletop/standup arcade gaming.

Here’s an example of a site for ROMs and emulators.

There are many others.  Enjoy, padawan.

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