Ubisoft takeover of Hybride

"We've set ourselves a goal of creating angrossing, extended game experiences for our audiences. That means taking our game properties and extending them to other media, including television, film books and more"

- Rob Cooper, Managing Director,Ubisoft UK

October 08's 3D World Magazine reported on Ubisoft's acquisition of Canadian based effects company, Hybride. Hybride are best known for their effects on both 2006's 300, and 2005's Sin City, comic book adaptions. Such an acquisition would make sense as VFX of film and gaming begin to naturally merge. There's a quote from Jenkins' 'Convergence Culture' about how in the shooting of The Matrix sequels,

"Perry's team logged four months of motion capture work with Jada Pinkett Smith, the actress who plays Niobe, and other member of The Matrix cast. All the movements and gestures were created by actual performers working on the set and were seen as extensions of their characterisations."

- David Perry, Electronic Arts.

This studio synergy "allowed them to import thousands of 'assets' from the film production into the game". 

I've taken particular interest in this as it could set up an ideal business structure for developing tight-knit transmedia storytelling opportunities. This seamless connection between computer game and film media can help create a ubiquitous franchise, reaching out to a particular fan-base or general public alike. 

10 Futuristic User Interfaces

Jack Schofield posted this link to Smashing Magazine where they displayed their ideas of 10 futuristic interfaces. Some really nice concepts. I especially like Ringo: Holographic user interface as I've become fascinated with the idea of taking computer generated effects off the screen and into the real world (Its referred to as Augmented Reality as opposed to Virtual Reality).

I found it surprising that Jeff Han's multi touch screen, as presented on TED below, didn't make it into the list. I'd have it at the top of the list...



I was lucky enough to get a demonstration of the Musion Eyeliner technology in London. Its actually the material technology and set up logistics that Musion actually offer, its not an interface in itself. Many of you would have seen this used for The Gorillaz' live show (Musion & Passion Pictures) with Madonna at the 2005 MTV European Music Awards in Lisbon.



...and this is one of my favourite projection displays from Alexander McQueen's 2006 fashion show created by Musion and Glassworks Ltd.



...and if I am going to mention Musion and McQueen's fashion show work, then Diesel's 2007 'Liquid Space' (Vizoo & DVein) from Florence is certainly worth a mention.

The Watchmen Downloadable Game, Warner Brothers' Transmedia Storytelling

"...consumers become hunters and gatherers moving back across the various narratives trying to stitch together a coherent picture from the dispersed information" - Henry Jenkins

Jack Schofeld's 'Newsbytes' headline in The Guardian's Technology section on the 31st July told of Warner Brothers' partnership with Deadline Games to develop an episodic downloadable game for 'The Watchmen', a graphic novel written by written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons and due for cinema release in 2009.

Warner Brothers have developed an intense interest of using transmedia story telling in an attempt to promote as much interest in their cinema releases as possible. The case-study example would be The Matrix Trilogy, which boasted computer games, the 'Animatrix' (a collection of anime and CG animations uncovering other, parallel stories in the Matrix world), and a huge online multiplayer game. More recently, for the release of Chris Nolan's Batman Begins, Warner Bros' own DC Comics released special editions comic books for the movie, to provide extra background information on Batman and Bruce Wayne to enhance the viewers' entertainment experience.

Transmedia story telling, while allowing for additional depth to a story, also creates additional revenue. Licensing of the story ensures game developers or other merchandising bodies adhere to the text of the story. This means that any sales on other media will mean cash for Warner Bros'. But comic books and video games are quite subliminal forms of marketing 'thus blurring the line between marketing and entertainment'.

What I really like about the concept is that is provides numerous access points for a consumer. A consumer may just get enough out of watching a movie; while a more avid, enthusiastic fanbase may have a thirst for more information, searching for behind the scene stories or development of peripheral characters, living parallel lives to the films' leads.

I first read about transmedia story telling in Henry Jenkin's Convergence Culture and extensive notes on the topic can be found here, on his own blog.