Deborah: Whaddya feel like tonight? A little arcade action, a
little role playing, a little simulation, or another episode in
the online soap?
Terry: This is what the audience for interactive media -- the
gameplayer, the Websurfer -- has to ask himself. And if you as a
writer are looking to expand into the interactive marketplace,
you need a good grasp of what genres are currently in vogue, and
what are some titles within each.
Deborah: It seems like human nature to categorize our
entertainment choices. We want an entertainment experience to
suit our mood. Most of us love surprises, but we hate not
getting our expectations met! Audiences want to know
whether they're getting a horror movie or a film noir --
Terry: And with rare exceptions, they're usually put out if you
mix and match genres much. (Though personally, I love it when
someone tries to mish-mash genres.)
Deborah: Yeah, but that's because you're one of those writer types.
Sales and marketing types love genres, big time. They
want to know which aisle to place that little video or CD-ROM box,
and it helps them target specific demographic groups for the
property.
Terry: The Interactive world wants to pin its little butterflies
to their specimen boards as well, but guess what? The butterflies
wriggle out sometimes. Though Interactive is very much genre-driven,
it's not unusual for a title to span several genres.
Because interactive media is still inventing itself, it refuses to
play completely by "the rules", despite the best efforts of sales
and marketing types.
Deborah: This month, we look at some online entertainment genres
that offer some potential to professional writers. Next month, we
stalk the Wild CD-ROM in its native habitat, and try to slap a
genre on everything we find...
ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT GENRES
NOTE: This is anything but an exhaustive look at Web genres.
If you have examples or favorites of your own, or are actually
working on one, let us know!
- Online serial/soap opera.
- An inevitable genre for The Web, especially given its
bandwidth constraints (i.e., Text and photos are still the
media elements best suited for The Web because they occupy
the fewest number of "bytes." Audio and short animations now
work pretty well, but video is still more fantasy than
reality).
Online soaps can be just like a book: click here to turn
to the next page. But the exciting possibilities here are in
making a soap that's more like Slaughterhouse Five: where
the audience can slip around timelines and experience
something deep but fragmented, rather than shallow and
the typical linear structure.
The most famous online soap was the first: The Spot.
But alas, the production company has gone belly-up (the whys
of which are the subject of a future column).
One of the longer running soaps is at
www.eastvillage.com -- lives and loves in New York's arty
East Village, as the web address suggests.
One predictable challenge that online production companies
are now facing (and this is good news for professional
writers): how do you write a compelling serial day in and
day out for a mass audience? Checking out the writing in
most of the online soaps should give you an even greater
appreciation for how consistently good the writing is on One
Life to Live, General Hospital, and other Guild-written
serials.
- "Game Shows"
- Many producers of online content believe that the best
online entertainment experiences are short and sweet: plenty
of audience interactivity and reward 'em so they'll come back
for more.
The most successful example in the world of TV game shows
transmuted into Web-entertainment is You Don't Know Jack,
which started as a CD-ROM title. It's
funny, it's got attitude, but strip away its trappings and
you're really looking at Jeopardy-on-Speed. Everything old
is new again. Trivia games and scavenger hunts seem to lend
themselves to The Web. Look for more examples on MSN and
AOL.
- Episodic TV "Add-Ons"
- Is this a genre? Hard to say, but it certainly is a
comer. More and more TV shows are adding actual
entertainment content to their promotional websites.
Homicide has "Homicide Night Shift": stories involving
completely different characters, but still working within the
universe of Homicide. Nash Bridges has offered prequels
to many of its episodes. For now, these stories are
primarily text -- but how long before they become episodes
all their own, involving the use of video, sets, actors,
etc.?
- Virtual Worlds
- These are primarily "chatroom" experiences, but now taking
place in rich graphical environments. The Palace, a
prime purveyor of this genre, now offers a Laugh Factory-type
environment -- an "auditorium" where one or more comedians
performs his act, and gets his laughs or risks insults and/or
brickbats from the audience. How far away is Saturday Night
Live On The Web?
- Simulations, Strategy Games, MUDS
- Big. Some of this ground overlaps CD-ROMS, and we'll take
a look at that next month...
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