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The Second Front

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Sony unveiled a new e-reader this morning. Here’s the lede from the L.A. Times:

Sony this morning unveiled its answer to the Kindle 2 — a wireless electronic book reader with a 7-inch touch screen that’s 17% larger than Amazon’s device.

The fact that basic specs of the new reader are defined not in terms of utility but rather competitive advantage tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on in the e-reader arms race. A serious fight is on to see who produce the dominant reader, just as the fight is on to see who will become the dominant content provider for those devices.

Note also, however, that the two fronts in this global war to control the portable text industry are already deeply enmeshed:

Sony’s Readers have another feature that’s not present in the Kindle: All of the devices are capable of displaying digital books that have been borrowed from thousands of public libraries that lend electronic books. The Daily Edition goes one step further by finding local libraries with a digital-books collection and letting users wirelessly download the book for 21 days (provided they have a library card for that particular branch).

The machines enable delivery of more content: demand for more content drives sales of the machines. At some point in the not-to-distant future, this simmering symbiosis — backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing campaigns — is going to explode onto popular culture.

Which explains why Google is not simply trying to become the dominant content provider, but why they’ve also allied themselves with Sony, against the Amazon/Microsoft cabal. From Bloomberg:

In March, Sony gained access to more than 500,000 e-book titles for its readers through an agreement with Google Inc. The deal expanded Sony’s e-book store to about 1 million titles at the end of last month, compared with the more than 320,000 Amazon.com offers.

Sony gets content for its e-reader: Google gets a friendly device manufacturer for its content delivery system.

It’s going to be very hard to bet against a Google/Sony alliance, even against the combined might of Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and others. More on this here. (That link is to a Macworld.com article, because “the new Daily Edition comes bundled with Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0, which is newly Mac-compatible” [emphasis mine]. Whether Apple is thinking about getting into the device business as well — iBook II anyone? — or whether they’re simply throwing their lot in against Microsoft is anyone’s guess. But that Apple seems to be on the sidelines should not be taken to mean that Apple is on the sidelines.)

— Mark Barrett

The Iceberg in the Ditch

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I intended yesterday to follow up on a tease at the end of this post, but the more I thought about the issue the more I realized it was the tip of a very big iceberg. Apologies for the delay, and apologies in advance for what may seem a bleak assessment.

For several days now I’ve been visiting sites that contain internet fiction of various stripes. I’ve been reading and trying to get my mind around what’s good about internet fiction and what’s not so good. I’ve been trying to come up with a way of comparing apples to apples across different sites and different authors, yet all the while something has been nagging at me so quietly that it took a while to realize what it was.

I don’t like reading fiction on the internet. Assuming that my view represents a non-trivial percentage of the world population, as opposed to the ravings of an ugly American, this would seem to be a problem.  [ Read more ]

The Ditchwalk Name

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Naming a web site used to be easy. You thought of the name you wanted, you registered the name, you put up your site.

Then came the speculators. Search for your domain name of choice today, or your second choice, or third, or tenth, and you’re likely to discover that the name has already been registered by someone who has no intention of ever using the domain to establish a web site. Rather, they hope to sell you the name for a vastly inflated price and turn a profit in doing so. Because domain names are based on language, and there are a finite number of words in any language, the speculators know that if they buy up the most common words and phrases, someone will inevitably come knocking….

In the parlance of business, this is called ‘making a market’ for a commodity — in this case, domain names. Other well known examples of this entrepreneurial spirit include Enron’s electric power market, oil topping $140 a barrel and driving gas prices past $4.00 at the pump, and those sexy real-estate-backed derivatives that were based on inflated mortgage values, leading to the housing crisis and the worst American recession in seventy years. (Your free markets in action.)  [ Read more ]

Willful Ignorance as Productivity Tool

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I said in a previous post that I had “complete unfamiliarity” with the subject of fiction on the internet — then I promptly launched into a high-level analysis of blog fiction in the same post. Since that seems a bit incongruous even to me, I thought I’d get a few things into the record before relating any more of my fiction hunting escapades.

Prior to launching this site I had a lot of questions about the state of storytelling in the digital age, but I didn’t do much (meaning any) research or scouting ahead of time.

Here’s why:

1) I didn’t want to spoil any of the surprises I might find along the way. If there are great stories out there on the web, or there are growling literary factions at war over virtual turf, I wanted to experience it all with this blog at the ready. (I’ve already deployed all the sticky notes my desk can handle.)  [ Read more ]

Googlezilla vs. Micromonster (and friends)

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I don’t pretend to know the full story behind the battle that’s shaping up over Google’s plan to make millions of books (many of them out of print and hard to find) available for purchase online. I don’t even know all of the arguments so I’m going to dig into the issue more tomorrow.

There are two conclusions I can draw, however, based solely on last night’s lede from the New York Times:

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are planning to join a coalition of nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations to oppose a proposed class-action settlement giving Google the rights to commercialize digital copies of millions of books.

First, whatever the outcome, after all the trials and suits and counter-suits are settled the landscape for writers will have fundamentally changed because distribution will have fundamentally changed. The current technological marvel and oddity that is electronic publishing will quickly become the norm, even if individual copies of these books are also made available in printed form.

Second, none of the musclebound corporate antagonists fighting to control this process is involved because they love writers and want to protect them from bad people. Profit motive is driving everyone’s interest, and the names of the tech-company titans who are squaring off should suggest just how much money is involved.

More soon.

— Mark Barrett

Site Seeing: WebFictionGuide.com

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If ‘blog fiction’ is an obvious term for fiction on the internet, so is ‘web fiction’ — and that broader term is what I typed in the search bar yesterday for my first formal surfing safari. The top hit for that phrase turned out to be a site called Web Fiction Guide, which describes itself as a “community-run listing of online fiction”. (Sweet!)

As a first stop on an uncertain journey it seemed a welcoming place, and after taking a look around I think it would be worth your time to stop by as well. (Visiting the WFG Forums will give you a sense of the traffic on the site, as well as the vibe of the community.)  [ Read more ]

Blog Fiction: the Big Picture

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In what I’m sure is an unflattering admission, my complete unfamiliarity with the subject of fiction on the internet includes the current terminology for the various expressive forms. For example, although I had heard of individual instances of blog fiction, I didn’t know if ‘blog fiction’ was a generally-used term, or even a broadly-used, all-encompassing term.

Well, yesterday I read a short Wikipedia article on Blog Fiction which not only provided a useful overview, but also answered or at least paralleled a number of my own thoughts about the subject. I’m still not sure of the scope of the term, but I now know I’m not alone in that uncertainty. (I encourage you to read the piece when you have a moment.)

Specifically, the article confirmed my belief that there are two big questions facing blog fiction and other types of internet fiction (if such distinctions need to be made):

1) Can old and new storytelling techniques be harnessed into a mature craft which will make internet fiction the emotional and artistic equivalent of more established types of fiction?

2) Will the potential for — and seduction of — authorial ambiguity in blog fiction create useful tension as a technique, or simply confusion on the part of the reader?  [ Read more ]

Getting Underway

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Launching even a small web site like this is both fun and frustrating. It’s fun because it holds promise. It’s frustrating because for every coding rule there’s an exception, or a variance necessary to coddle some third-party application or software or browser which steadfastly refuses to join with the rather blindingly obvious cause of standards compliance.

Still, at some point in the development process (which is itself a grand term for what I’ve been doing), the cobbled-together back end and the bells and whistles out front achieve a state of grumbling tolerance, and there’s nothing left to do but get on with it. Call it a shakedown cruise. Call it a public beta. Call it open-source testing.

All of which is to say that you’re going to find some glitches here and there as I continue to tweak this and that. If something doesn’t work for you, or displays poorly, please let me know.

— Mark Barrett

You Say You Want a Revolution…

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The more things change, the more they stay the same. When it comes to human beings and their actions and choices, I believe that.

But sometimes change really is change. And once in a great while, change is revolution.

Right now — today — is one of those times, because the internet is clearly a revolution. (At least until a global power shortage forces us all back to cold chisels and granite slabs for communication.)

I’ve been a professional writer and storyteller for more than twenty years, and for over a decade I’ve been making a living as a direct result of the advent of the internet. But that’s only looking at the internet as a communication pipeline that allows me to work for clients across the country and around the globe without leaving my chair. Amazing as it is (and it still amazes me), that part of the revolution is pretty much over.

But there’s another way of looking at the internet, and that’s as a medium — as this web site, web page, and these words attest. As a publishing medium in particular the internet is still evolving and growing, while powerful established industries such as newspapers, television and the book business are already reeling as a result of the force of this change.  [ Read more ]

Summing Up

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I’ve been working and living outside the walls of the interactive community for a year and a half now (maybe closer to two), and I have a few thoughts about the industry as seen from that distance.

Irony Abounds
Many moons ago the interactive world sneered at anyone who tried to use full motion video or other cinematic techniques to bring actors (and by extension, narratives) to life. That was back in the day when the processor was going to solve every problem, and we were going to be able to tell interactive stories on the fly. Because FMV was non-interactive – and inherently scripted – it was derided as an antiquated solution to a new-age problem.

Flash forward to today, and much of the talk in the IE community is about how GPU’s are spitting out dynamic scenes that look as good as film, and how scripted sequences are conveying the same force and power of the best motion pictures. And this is all being done with a straight face.

The awful truth is that most attempts to create real narrative interactivity have failed, and most of the techniques currently being used to deliver narrative force have been derived from the film industry. Sure, using game-engine graphics for cutscenes and scripted sequences provides cost savings over location shoots, safety during production no matter how crazy the stunts, and continuity with other graphics in the game, but the end product is still a movie.

Think about it. While a lot of the eye candy that helps sell the best shooters requires a processor, much of the narrative does not. Which raises an interesting question. How much of the entertainment value of a given successful title is due to algorithms, and how much due to the non-interactive authorial control being exercised by the designers? Even five years ago adventure game designers were derided for heavily scripting their games, while the case could be made that their craft knowledge is now more applicable and important than it ever was.

Years ago I wrote an article that talked about the need to focus on real interactivity, where choices determine outcomes, as well as the need to improve on magicianship, or the illusion of interactivity. In the intervening years, the one thing the interactive industry has really gotten right is convincing the user that a button click has determined an outcome, when in fact it is only revealing an outcome that has been pre-designed. Predictably, as products have tipped more toward these predetermined effects, the promise of interactivity – where each user would be able to make free determinative choices in a given environment – has waned. And serious commercial attempts to move past the current limitations seem to have waned as well.

Are people still fighting the good fight? Sure, but just as many people are faking the good fight, and there aren’t that many people in the industry who can tell the difference. If the industry continues to excel at magicianship, there may come a day when there is very little interactivity in any product, because it costs money to give the user choices and options.

Business models have firmed up, bureaucracies have calcified, and everyone knows where the sure money is so those are the products that get into production. The goal of providing interactive storytelling has been replaced by the goal of faking interactive storytelling, which probably isn’t a healthy development for an industry whose main selling point is interactivity.

Gatekeepers and Death
I was as interested as anyone in trying to advance the cause of narrative interactivity. But after having endured the disintegration of an incredible opportunity because of the blindness of that team’s leadership, I took a long look at the premise of leaving it up to others in life to determined when I would and would not have the opportunity to create. In the end I decided I’d much rather make my own stuff under my own direction, even if it was in another medium, than wait around to see if the fates would shine on me at the big table. I’ve just seen too many people grinding it out year after year, hoping that their self-absorbed boss or bottom-line company will give them a chance to show what they can do, and I don’t think that’s a healthy way to live if you’re driven by creativity. Unless of course you’re immortal.

Which brings me to my next point. Clearly one of the factors in all this is that I’ve gotten old enough that I think about how much time I have left to be productive, but that’s only part of the story. The main reason I can’t really trust the fates is that I just haven’t run across that many leaders and managers who understand that their job is getting the best out of the people they have, as opposed to getting what they themselves want out of the people they have.

That’s true in sports, too, where there are two kinds of coaches. The most common kind, by far, is the coach who has a system he or she likes. These coaches teach their system to their team, molding each crop of players into pre-assigned slots in the system, whether or not they’re ideally suited to those slots. The other – and much rarer – kind of coach is the one who looks at what each team member excels at and then builds the team around those skills and abilities. Unfortunately, I’ve been looking for that kind of coach most of my creative life, but I have yet to find one.

Caring About Caring
I remain convinced that the key to real mainstream success for the interactive industry is getting people to care emotionally about the interactive choices they make. That’s true for the illusion of interactivity as well as for real interactivity, but it’s emotional involvement derived from real interactivity that the industry needs to demonstrate. More than anything, users still want to care emotionally (as opposed to rationally) about the in-game choices they make.

If there’s a final irony in this for me, it’s that after watching millions of dollars get flushed down the toilet in the IE industry, watching failed designs get green-lighted due to incompetence, watching craft knowledge get trumped by ego, watching people with power and no talent abuse people with talent and no power, I ended up not caring about the industry. I tried to deny it for a while, but when I’m doing creative work I have to care about what I’m doing in order to do it well, and I didn’t have any reason to care about interactive entertainment any longer.

Next Steps
So, where to from here? As of today I’m about seventy pages into my first novel, and while I don’t know if it’s any good or not, I do know that I’m enjoying myself and feeling good about my work. I care about writing, and about what I’m writing.

I’m also learning the craft of stained glass, and I’m even doing a little drawing and painting, which I haven’t done in years. Chances are none of this will pay off enough to keep my head above water and I’ll probably end up driving a dump truck, but that’s okay, too. Provided the brakes work.

— Mark Barrett