[MUD-Dev] Much Respect to JessicaM

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Michael Tresca wrote:

> No more traditional movies.  You plop the camera in a MMORPG, buy
> the rights from the guys who participate, clean it up, and sell
> it.  That's your next movie.  Virtual actors have already removed
> the need for storyboarders since you're filming the action in real
> time and can tweak the characters' actions later. Less and less
> traditional film roles are necessary.
 
> No more traditional TV.  Just plop the camera into a Soap MMORPG
> (it's coming, I'm sure).  Watch it for an hour.  Gee, kind of like
> Big Brother.

Reality tv is a fad, that's all. People will get tired of it, like
they do with all fads. Putting a camera into a MMORPG would tend not
to make for good stories, in my opinion. Not saying it'll never
happen, but I feel fairly confident saying that recording action in
an MMORPG is never going to supplant structured storytelling in
popularity.
 
> No more traditional music.  The war's on already.  Small bands get
> their music out on the Internet.  Thus the long, slow death
> struggle of the music industry.  They're losing control and the
> means of making money off of the industry in a traditional
> fashion.  Worse, the market (i.e., us) has a more direct influence
> over the success of a product every day.  More and more, producers
> are going STRAIGHT to consumers, no middleman included.

They just have to switch their business model. Use the internet
downloads as advertisements for branded goods and services, like
concerts and Britney Spears Pepsi. The popularity of MTV also
guarantees the ongoing need for publishers, as there is no way most
bands would have the resources or expertise to produce their own
videos (which are just 4 minute commercials themselves, of
course). Just my non-music-insider opinion.
 
> Hollywood will have to change.  Right now, they're going to fight
> it tooth and claw, because it means a lot of old jobs are on their
> way out.  Script writing?  Poof.  Movie actors?  Poof.
> Pregenerated content?  POOF.

Come now. Hyperbole is fun, but script writing is NOT going
anywhere. Movie actors, possibly, but not for quite awhile.

> Ironically, the actors who are rising to the top are the
> traditional stage actors, who are more accustomed to acting in
> invisible and imaginary environments.  Imagine -- an entire
> generation of actors who are trained to be dramatic (i.e.,
> role-play) in a MMORPG.  And the company who makes the MMORPG pays
> them millions of dollars to film what their avatar does every day!

I think you are seriously overestimating the influence of MUDs (or
MMORPGs, or whatever you want to call them).  Broadway and London's
West End ain't going anywhere. Neither is Hollywood or
Bollywood. I'm also not sure what you mean by saying that the actors
rising to the top are stage actors. If anything, the exact opposite
is happening. Look at, for instance, Vin Diesel, whose star is
rising very quickly. Or established stars like Tom Cruise, Mel
Gibson, Jim Carrey, Julia Roberts in the US, or Amitabh Bachchan
(voted greatest star of stage or screen by BBC News Online users),
Madhuri Dixit, or other Bollywood stars. I don't think any of these
people started out on the stage.

In fact, aside from Ian McKellen, who has had some 'big' roles
recently, nearly all popular movies are fronted by actors without
stage experience. The days of actors like Laurence Olivier or Alec
Guiness being huge draws are long gone.
 
> We're almost there.  Graphics are striving, by hook or by crook,
> to become indistinguishable from real life.  Once the graphic
> quality becomes that good, the shift will happen at high speed.
> And a lot of creative (and not so creative) folks are going to be
> out of jobs in Hollywood.

Yep, I can definitely see this happening eventually, but the ability
to create realistic virtual actors doesn't give you story. Look at
the pretty-nice-looking-but-otherwise-awful Final Fantasy movie, for
instance.
 
> No more trilogies, no more movie sequels.  You sell universes.
> The Batman universe.  The Aliens universe.  The Day of Our Lives
> universe.  I expect copyright law to change pretty soon to protect
> and extend this new way of making money.

This has been happening for a long time. Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord
of the Rings, Marvel and DC Comics, etc. It's unrelated to MUDs, in
my opinion. The reason there have been umpteen Star Wars books and
games is because Lucas isn't just selling the movies. He's selling
the Star Wars universe, and has been doing so for a couple decades
now.

--matt 
Ashcroft, Bush, and Rumsfeld need a kicking.


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