What if Apple entered the virtual worlds fray?

by justingibbs on June 23, 2009

iWorld - A virtual world from AppleLast week a friend asked me, what do virtual worlds need to go mainstream? After a minute my answer was pretty simple, for Apple to get involved. Apple could revolutionize the industry for consumer virtual worlds as they did with the MP3 player and phone market.

By now the field for consumer virtual worlds is pretty well defined. We’ve seen success with MMOGs and kids worlds, as well as complete failures such as Google Lively and the Second Life tie in with CSI. We’ve learned what it takes to make a virtual world successful – Sally Schmidt of Circle 1 Network laid it out at the recent Engage! Expo. And with that virtual worlds loses some of the excitement and enthusiasm which sprung forth after Second Life hit the public’s imagination. Maybe this is to be expected but I feel there is still a lot of unexplored potential. Interesting enough this is also the time where Apple enters the market.

The market for MP3 players was pretty well defined by the time Apple entered it with the iPod. Everyone already knew how the game was played – it was all about price and expanding flash memory. Some companies had already tried using expensive mini hard drives and they bombed because of price so they laughed when Apple entered with a $400 MP3 player based on a mini hard drive. Needless to say the leading MP3 players of the time are all but gone and Apple owns 70% or more of the market today. Apple would do the same with the iPhone. So what could Apple hope for entering the virtual world space? What would an Apple virtual world, an iWorld look like?

Browser based

Seeing Google release O3D (an open-source web API for 3D) and Mozilla is working with the Khronos Group to develop a similar API for Firefox I can’t help but think Apple is working to add one to Safari as well. That way users won’t need to download and install additional plugins, the 3D will be native to the browser. It would also lend itself to going mobile as well.

Entertainment focused

My guess is that it’ll be entertainment focused. There are many examples of successful virtual worlds – enterprise, virtual events, serious games, etc. but if you’re talking consumer based it’s quickly narrowed to games and kids. On one end we have World of Warcraft and MMOGs, on the other we have kids worlds with strong context like Club Penguin. Google Lively, which flamed out after only a few months, was neither. It had little context and only promised game developers tools in the future. The fact is that when new users enter these virtual worlds their first question is usually – how do I play the game or what’s the story? If the answer is anything like, “It’s a 3D social network where you can express yourself” they run for the hills. Even if you incorporate, “play games with friends” it won’t resolve the users confusion. They already have a social network, it’s called Facebook. They already have messenger and they were never lacking for ways to express themselves. When they see 3D they think game, they think entertainment.

Need more than just a game or games

Naturally when people think entertainment and computers they think games, it’s the same with virtual worlds. But I’m guessing Apple would take it beyond this obvious conclusion. For one games are a hits driven business and second, they are not Apple’s strong suit. Apple also likes to appeal to wide audiences and crossover hits like Tetris and the Sims are notoriously difficult to come by. World of Warcraft is wildly popular but it’s audience is still rather narrow compared to Apple’s other markets.

That isn’t to say that Apple will completely neglect gaming aspects, it just won’t be core. Apple could turn the virtual world into a platform for game developers such as the iPhone is with app games. However the iPhone launched without an app store and was still a success. The games help but are not core.

Another way to think about it is by examining virtual worlds that build themselves around games or mini games. It seems like a logical step, once you have people in world keep them entertained with games, it’s also a common request from users. The only problem is that this strategy puts the virtual world in competition with game companies and casual game sites. The question then becomes what do you bring to the table that is different? What is core to your experience that you can’t get on a casual game site? It’s a difficult question and one where I think we’ll see the real innovation coming from Apple.

Apple won’t fall for the self expression myth

The question is what does your virtual world bring to the table that is different? Most virtual worlds would answer with some combination of an avatar and self expression. Problem is I was never hurting for new ways to express myself. Oh people love customizing their avatars and virtual rooms, however after a few weeks it gets old and they move on. People use to spend hours building homepages on GeoCities, customizing their MySpace page, but they’ve all moved on.

The same happened with Yahoo! avatars. It was one of the top requests from users for years and they were excited when we launched early 2D versions, but after a few months there was little activity.

The majority of users are just observers not content creators. Even less are artists in need of self expression. Such features can greatly enhance a service, but can’t carry a service on there own.

Strong context

So what else might Apple’s virtual world build at its core around? Simply having avatars and allowing for personalization probably isn’t going to separate it enough from casual game sites and the rest of the competition. Kid’s worlds get around this with strong context. Kids find endless entertainment in the penguins of Club Penguin, even if they aren’t playing a game. However with strong context Apple faces the same problems as if it was game laden – it’s tough to appeal to a wide audience and it’ll evolve into a hits driven business.

Instead of games, story

Maybe it isn’t necessarily a question of what Apple could bring in addition to the games but the games and activities themselves. Most social gaming sites are a collection of self contained or semi-contained games and a leader board. Maybe the core of Apple’s virtual world will be set up by the selection of games themselves?

Games have notoriously been an insular industry. The Wii and Sims have shown that there is a much wider audience but it’s still very much locked to their traditional audience, because it’s safe. Serious games have shown some of the potential outside of shoot’em up games. And there are simulations, interactive story, immersive story, etc. There is a lot of potential that has never truly been explored. It’s risky when games costs go into the millions, but Apple has shown the wherewithal to place big bets before, like switching to Intel chips.

What it really opens up is room for story in the gaming world. Instead of the challenge leading people through the experience the drama could. Of course the conflict between games and story have been played out many times before and so far they have remained separate entities in many respects. It’s like sculpture vs painting, each has it’s own feature set however virtual worlds give us the ability to merge these like never before and this is where I believe Apple’s virtual world will play. It will push games into their next stage of evolution just as they did for the mobile Internet.

Platform for real time story artists

You just have to look at Xtranormal to see what is possible. With Xtranormal moving making is simple and completely digital. It isn’t much of a stretch to see it become real time with interactive or immersive story. AI technology is also improving, it’s not at the point where users can freely talk with chatterbots but in the hands of an artists a few constraints could unlock their potential. The technology is there,  real time story artists have just never had it all brought together into a platform.

Think of it this way, the traditional carnival is full of games. Darts, the ring toss, and more. Rides were added, but it wasn’t until Disneyland opened that it truly entered into the story world. The App Store made it possible for game developers to create more games but an Apple virtual world could make it possible for real time story, for a Disneyland of story experiences.

Is Apple building one?

Well I’ve speculated a lot on what Apple would do if they built a virtual world, but is there any evidence that they’re building one? Not really, but then again Apple is one of the most secretive companies in the world. They just announced plans for an East Coast data center, which makes you think as virtual worlds are very processor intensive. Apple also isn’t saying what the data center is for nor how big it is going to be.

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Real time movie making with Xtranormal

by justingibbs on June 18, 2009

XtranormalOne of the more exciting companies I’ve come across recently is Xtranormal. It’s a great example of where I see the future of entertainment going.

Movies have been digital for a while, but Xtranormal moves the entire creation process into the digital realm. Newspapers went fully digital with the Internet and look what it did for them. I’d expect even more for movies.

People’s first foray into scripted movies is usually as part of a class project. Going through the motions you quickly learn how incredibly time consuming it all is. Your friends, now actors, are difficult to organize let alone direct. Having a script would be helpful but most people start without one. The biggest lesson you learn is that re-shoots and last minute edits take up more time than shooting the original footage. It simply isn’t an easy medium to work with and in the end you settle on something far below your original vision.

Edit and re-shoot in real time

Being fully digital changes much of that. With Xtranormal the actors are completely virtual, using text to speech for their dialogue. Even the camera and editing can be automated. You can build a film in less than a minute. Granted the text to speech is still a little rough and there are only a limited set of characters and sets, but the technology will only improve with time and what you gain can be much more powerful. For one, you can all but do away with those pesky re-shoots – you can create a movie in real time if you’d like.

Open source movies

Xtranormal also enables you to set a movie as being open – open for others to cut, remix, do whatever they’d like with your original work. That’s taking fan fiction to a whole new level and truly powering mass amateurization as defined by Clay Shirky.

Movies as a continuous evolving product

Editing movies in real time also changes the concept of a finished product. Think of a movie being in Beta. With edits and re-shoots being this easy it’s possible to also employ continuous deployment and continuous learning as advised by Eric Ries and his Lean Startup methodology. Think of split-testing not just a new ending, but a single line of dialogue. Truly the movie itself becomes a continuously evolving product.

It’s all about the level of content

I’ve seen other similar tools like GoAnimate but none use text to speech and the 3D aspect certainly puts Xtranormal a step above. That said however, Xtranormal will succeed or fail based on the level of content created with the tool. There are only a limited set of characters and sets to choose from so you’re story will be pretty confined to talking heads but with a little creativity I’m sure you can work around that and the roughness of the text to speech. I just started a project to try and experiment with interactive story using Xtranormal, hopefully others will start experimenting with it as well.

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Is no spec process better than an overly detailed one?

by justingibbs on June 16, 2009

The other day I was meeting with a company and was a bit shocked when they openly admitted to not writing specs. And before you ask, yes the company is rather successful and been in business for years – all without formalized a spec process. As a product manager I find it difficult to image, I’ve seen companies with an overtly detailed process before but none? Then I began to question, is it better to have no spec process or an overly detailed one?

Paint by NumbersI once worked for a very successful Internet company that also worked under the Waterfall model. This was my only experience working outside of an Agile shop and I can safely say that if you aren’t doing mission critical stuff, like building a plane, you should never use the Waterfall model. Any-who this company also had a very detailed spec process to go along with it. The Product Manager outlined the product, the Project Manager would translate that into a spec, it would then go to Engineering, etc. What you got at the end of it all was an engineering team that basically did paint by numbers. They only did what was asked and nothing more. They were more worried about covering their ass than pointing out faults with a spec. Of course saying that implies that they knew what we were building, I think most saw the numbers and simply painted. This is certainly not the Engineering team you want when building innovative products.

Compare that with an Agile company that works off of lite specs. Lite because they’re always changing and also because most people don’t read them fully (any part that is unread is wasted effort as Eric Ries points out and startups are about eliminating waste). So the spec is incomplete by its nature so everyone has to add to it in their own way. But how do you know what to add or not to add? That comes down to communication within the company, having a clear vision. Where as with the example above the responsibility was pushed to an all encompassing spec, with a lite Agile process the responsibility is shared with the spec and the communication within the company. With a company that doesn’t use a spec the responsibility must be all on the communication.

Of course adding a lite spec process to where there was none before can be helpful,  likely facilitating more communication. However changing the spec process at a company with a detailed process doesn’t yield much gain. If it’s been years you might have departments in serious atrophy as the one I had to work with. So I’d say no spec process is better than an overly detailed one.

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Real time story gurus – where are you?

by justingibbs on June 14, 2009

Great American PitchFestI spent all day Saturday at the Great American Pitchfest. It was great to be immersed in all that story knowledge again. These conferences are usually built around access to Hollywood types and pitches, but also include a healthy dose of screenwriting gurus. Syd Field probably more than anyone is responsible for making screenwriting gurus famous. Of course each guru has their particular way of breaking down story, but the very fact that they can do it so easily is a bit amazing. But as Drew Yanno put it, “We are the most sophisticated story receptors ever”. We are simply exposed to more stories than at any other time in history and the more exposure means the easier to gleam knowledge. All this lead me to think of what early film pioneers in 1900 would give to know what we know today? What would real time story artists give to know the techniques and conventions that would become standard in the field in say 2050?

The Pixar StoryBeing at the beginning and lacking that knowledge can also be fun. It’s when the wildest experimentation takes place, but that also means a lot of failure. Yet for those who trudge through it there is usually great success. Take Pixar for example. Watching The Pixar Story, the early founders realized that to create computer animation they would first need to get all the data into the computer. Every tree, every leave, ever piece of bark.

It will not take thousands but millions of triangles to create the photo realistic animated films we see today.

That’s a daunting task given the processing power of computer in the early 80’s. We wear more processing power on our bodies today than existed in the average computer lab in the 80’s. But Pixar’s early founders saw through to the potential and kept at it to become wildly successful.

Of course much of Pixar’s journey was on the technology front. They didn’t experiment with story, rather much of their success can be attributed to their strong use of classic storytelling. Screenwriting gurus use their movies as examples of classic storytelling. Pixar’s experimentation took place in the creation process – one half technology and one half structural. Unlike Hollywood studios Pixar creates a movie more by committee (which some would argue is how Hollywood worked in the early days). In Hollywood where movies start with a screenplay written by a single screenwriter, Pixar many time starts with a concept and work as a team to build it into a movie.

I see a much different path for real time story on the experimentation front – much of which will be on the story front. Real time story is about changing the rules of classic storytelling. It’s going to be an interesting time. I can’t wait for the day I attend a conference to hear real time story gurus.

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The power of character and responsive environments

by justingibbs on June 8, 2009

I just saw this video of Milo from the E3. It’s from Lionhead Studios and designed to highlight Xbox’s new Project Natal. Seeing the video you can easily see where immersive technology and virtual worlds are going. But more than that, you can see the power and potential of immersive story. Remember immersive story, unlike interactive story, does not require their to be interactivity with the storyline just that the player imagines there is. To pull this off the environment has to be highly responsive as it is here.

Lionhead Studios also correctly focused on the character Milo to draw you into the scene rather than the technology itself. The augmented reality aspect is great but it’s Milo that really captures your attention and engages your imagination. It’s the difference between using technology to build the scariest monster Hollywood has ever seen or using technology and story to engage the audiences imagination. As they say in Hollywood, don’t show the monster till the very end or ever if you can help it – you simply can’t compete with what audiences can imagine in their head. We imagine Milo as a full character and see the augmented reality as simply a way to interact with him.



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Serious games, the best application for interactive story

by justingibbs on June 7, 2009

I’ve been waiting for interactive story to take off for years and I’m relatively new to the field, Chris Crawford has been plugging away at it for over a decade. Originally I thought the games industry would lead the way in developing interactive story, however the defining feature of games is of course the game – not the story. The industry has also famously been conservative as Wagner James Au put it, The game industry is Hollywood for Lost Boys.

It’s a business comprised almost entirely of young gamer dudes, serving an audience of young gamer dudes, covered by a gaming press of young gamer dudes, all of whom are only interested in creating, playing, and covering games that interest young gamer dudes—which they believe to be the pinnacle of entertainment.

Seeing virtual worlds though I thought it was a second chance for interactive story. However most are struggling just to find a business model and the technology is nascent. There’s still a lot of opportunity in virtual worlds but what has captured my attention is serious games. For one they have a business model. Secondly, their educational value is increased the more immersive they are and incorporating story will only help that.

Over the weekend I spent some time going through examples from Visual Purple. They specialize in serious games and simulations for training and education. What impressed me most was their incorporation of movie techniques. In Winning in Wireless: Year 1, they incorporate a virtual world but also utilize great cut scenes to pull the player into the story. Exposition is the bane of storytellers and especially in training materials, but WiW does a great job by putting it over an action sequence.

Seeing examples from Visual Purple I can say that serious games are the best application of interactive story yet. And Visual Purple isn’t the only pioneering company in this space.

It will be interesting to see what these companies come up with in way of tools, innovations, and conventions. It also won’t be much of a stretch apply these to interactive stories aimed at more entertainment than educational pursuits. Just check out the Power of Story: Driven to get an idea of where it can go.

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Interactive story isn’t just about decisions

by justingibbs on June 4, 2009

Over the years interactive story has captured the imagination of many. Hollywood even tried to create one – Mr. Payback. But nothing has caught on with mainstream audiences. Most people’s exposure to it probably consists of Choose Your Own Adventure books, seeing the Holodeck on Star Trek, and if you’re lucky dating sims or a serious game. If you’ve ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book you’ll know it’s full of questions. Interactive stories to date are just a series of  decisions, of which Mr. Payback is a great example.

For me it’s really difficult to watch, forced to make decision after decision. Needless to say Mr. Payback was also a complete failure. The problem is story isn’t just about decisions. James Bond doesn’t really have a choice to accept a mission or not, he has too. The story comes out of his skills and audacity of the master villain. The only decisions James Bond really makes is how to subdue the master villain. Trying to incorporate that will inevitably lead the interactive story down a path to becoming a game with resource management, strategy, and all that. Soon the story will be taking a seat in the back to the game aspects.

Decision points can actually hurt immersion

The creators of Mr. Payback could have done a better job integrating the decision points but it also demonstrates the problem of relying solely on them for interactivity.

Interactive stories typically proceed like Mr. Payback. A cut scene followed by a decision point, followed by another cut scene and decision point. Most of these decision points are directed at the player as if he was the protagonist in the story. The player is asked to dawn the role of the protagonist. However that presents a few problems of its own.

Michael Hauge, the screenwriting guru, explains that stories are interactive by their very nature. To enjoy them we already have to see ourselves as the protagonist.

Movies, screenplays, and novels are participatory events. In order to experience the emotional roller coaster they offer, audiences can’t just observe the action, they must become the hero as she faces all the obstacles standing between her and her goal. In other words, they must empathize and identify with the hero.

- Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds by Michael Hauge

Empathy is the key, however it’s difficult to empathize when the character is yourself. If you’re like me you’ll answer the questions as yourself rather than as the character. Every decision point is actually a point to just play around. Let’s go this way and see what happens. Where this might be good for educational purposes (serious games) it kind of falls flat for entertainment as demonstrated by Mr. Payback.

We need to expand the interactive story tool-set

Story is about more than just decision points. Interactive story will need to expand it’s tool-set if it hopes to attract a mainstream audience and expand beyond serious games. If you’re hoping to create an interactive drama all you can rely on is the power of story – you have to create empathy organically from the story. Serious games can more or less expect the player to take on the role of the protagonist simply for the instructional value. Games on the other hand are about simple play and rarely care if you take on the role or not. We play just to see the explosions, for the challenge, etc. That said, serious games and games themselves would be greatly improved by incorporating more pure story.

Eventually the conventions and techniques of the new medium will emerge. It took years for film pioneers to discover continuity editing. Prior to that they were accustomed to just filming Vaudeville acts and trains. Continuity editing unlocked films story potential, perhaps we’ll find an equivalent technique for interactive story.

If you’ve seen other techniques that work well, please let me know by leaving a comment. In a future post I discuss some of the techniques I’m experimenting with.

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Breaking the reality distortion field

by justingibbs on June 2, 2009

Drink the Kool-AidI’m a big fan of a concept Eric Ries calls shadow beliefs. Of course they aren’t something to strive for. Shadow beliefs are shared assumptions that are widely believed in the start-up but never spoken. For example:

  1. We know what customers want.
  2. We can accurately predict the future.
  3. Advancing the plan is progress.

They can also be unique to the start-up and company, but most of the time these shadow beliefs lead to executives and employees living in a reality distortion field. And reality distortion field is another name for a confirmation bias.

confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and to irrationally avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs.

Yahoo! is a great example. It came to fame as a portal but lost that distinction years ago. However the company never could realize that inside the reality distortion field. Even when Jerry Yang took charge he called Yahoo! a start page.

We have taken significant but disciplined steps to refocus our business on our objectives to become the starting point for the most consumers and the must buy for the most advertisers and enhance Yahoo!’s long-term performance.

Problem was that most people start with search, and Google owned search.

Most companies are guilty of creating reality distortion fields. Some are small and some are huge. In very rare occasions they can be successful, as with Steve Jobs and the original Mac. Other times they can take down a company. Much of the reason GM filed for bankruptcy is do to their reality distortion field.

After Roger Smith, Confirmation Bias kept GM from viewing the threat from Toyota as significant, contributed to its decision to pull its electric car off the market, and more recently led it to ignore the impact of higher gas prices and a collapse in credit markets on consumers’ willingness to buy profitable gas guzzlers like the Hummer or tricked-out Escalades and SUVs.

At GM it was beneficial to your career to toe the line and ignore what customers were saying.

So the smart thing for those seeking promotion within GM was to praise the CEO’s wisdom and carry out his orders.

But many times employees simply get pulled in, they drink the Kool-Aid. I have a friend right now working for free while his start-up looks for funding. You have to be dedicated at start-ups but that can also slip into a reality distortion field.

Breaking through the reality distortion field

The Lean Startup Master ClassI’ve run into my share of reality distortion fields in my career. When I was younger and more naive I thought I could simply prove my way through them. If I presented a strong enough business need they would see the light. Of course they never did, that’s the whole point of reality distortion fields.

Having taken part in Lean Startup workshop I think Eric has found a great process for breaking through the reality distortion field. Acknowledging the shadow beliefs is a big step in itself but he goes beyond just that.

The first place to find reality is in your users. But don’t just listen to them, validate your what you’ve learned through Customer Development. And remember the best form of communication is through providing customers with new products/features. They vote with their time and money – money being the more important validation. Eric also dives into a few techniques to shrink the time between major iterations, which is another way of saying speed up the conversation and learn more. Learn more than your competition and you’ll win.

Eric also offers some internal techniques to keep free of the reality distortion field. One he took from the Toyota Production System, Five Whys. He of course tweaks the techniques for software companies and start-ups.

In the end I think it might be one of the most important of Eric’s teachings – breaking the reality distortion field.

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WordPress and Matt’s passion for design

by justingibbs on May 31, 2009

WordCampI’ve always been impressed with WordPress. It’s fast, clean, and open source. A lot of my enjoyment comes from it having just what I need and nothing I don’t. But a lot of that enjoyment also comes from the fact that it’s a beautiful tool.

Everyone knows that Auttomatic and WordPress are focused on open source, but at WordCamp yesterday I also learned how committed Matt Mullenweg is to design and aesthetics. His presentation was full of snapshots and more than once he pointed out the incorrect use of the logo. He also took time just to highlight the T-Shirt designs from earlier WordCamps. Design is very important to Matt.

I find Matt’s commitment to open source inspiring and am thankful he is so committed to design.

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The first Lean Startup workshop

by justingibbs on May 29, 2009

Today I had the privilege of attending the first Lean Startup workshop put on by Eric Ries. I came across Eric’s teachings and consequently Steve Blank’s Customer Development while working at Vivaty. At the time it seemed everything we were doing was the exact thing Eric and Steve advised against. Needless to say I became a big convert, so much so that I plunked down my own money to attend the first workshop Eric put together and I wasn’t disappointed. I was already sold on the material and more exposure to it would be well worth it however Eric also forced us to do something I always dread at workshops – participation exercises. Whenever instructors force the audience to do these exercises they say it will help impart the information, and they’re usually correct despite the pain. What I learned from these exercises will probably take a while to fully sink in. It was also to learn from the other attendees through these exercises. I have to give it to Eric, he was trying to impart a lot of information and I think he made a great start. I have a much better grasp of the concepts than I did before the workshop. Eric is very sincere about his passion to spread the concept of The Lean Startup. Like many in Silicon Valley he wants to see what innovation it can spur.

My only complaint is that one day isn’t enough. Eric has a lot of material to cover and was only able to focus on what he felt was the most powerful, leaving the rest for the workbook. Needless to say I have a lot of reading to do.

Interestingly enough Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek was there. I always expected him to be the constant marketer but he is actually very humble and down to earth. I look forward to catching him at WordCamp tomorrow.

In closing I feel compelled to pass along a great video Eric showed during the workshop. It so captures the traditional start-up.



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