A Tale Of Two Televisions

Converging Entertainments, June 1995

A good film, the oldest of the electronic mass media, always pulls a crowd, at the box office or on television. There's something about clear and powerful images, sound, and storyline that rivets you to your seat from beginning to end. But computers and other new sound and image technologies are changing the 100 year-old world of film making and its audience, first bringing multichannel digital sound and special visual effects, and finally, making is possible for you to play a part in the very story that underlies the film or video.

The emergence of two ways to tell and experience a story - from start to finish to an immobile audience, or interactively, presenting many different alternatives to actively choose from - is affecting the kinds of products being made by the entertainment industries. Not only have major Hollywood studios formed alliances with computer and new media companies in nearby Silicon Valley to exploit interactive film, television and CD ROM's but the new territory has been named "Siliwood" to cement the relationship. With the video game industry in the US now turning over six billion dollars a year, several hundred million dollars more than cinema box office receipts, Hollywood itself is at stake.

These days, parts of sophisticated multi-million dollar CD ROM games are shot on film with full cast and crew, then mixed with computer animation and transferred to disc to be played with by the viewer. Similarly the film industry is now venturing into the uncharted waters of interactive movies backing films that offer the audience choices in the plot from a control panel in the seat.

Another twist in the plot is the range of video game, telephone and media companies teaming up to open virtual reality and role-playing "intertainment" arcades with virtual "rides" and group galactic missions to save the universe. Arcades and theme parks turn over seven billion dollars each year in the US making it a bigger industry than either games or movies and very attractive to investors.

Here, Kerry Packer's Channel Nine and Village Roadshow's joint company, Village Nine Leisure (VNL), operates Warner Bros Movie World on the Gold Coast, complete with the Batman "ride movie". Last month, VNL opened the Intencity arcade in the Westfield Shoppingtown, in Hurstville, Sydney and has seen over 200,000 people through the gates in the first few weeks of operation. Video game company Sega also plans the world's largest virtual reality arcade or VRcade at Sydney's Darling Harbour. Between them they want to open nearly 20 more arcades around Australia and competitors plan many more.

Meanwhile, we poor viewers might feel a little insecure if we're the last one left on the block at home watching television when everyone else is out at their local interactive venue. You needn't concern yourself, however. The latest feature proposed for both the computer-based Internet and interactive cable television is to deliver virtual reality right into your livingroom.

As the ads say, you may never have to leave home again.

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