How You Can Finally Live the Dream of Being James Bond

With Virtual Reality, you can become James Bond, seduce the girl, kill the bad guy and save the world.

Remember Big Brother? The "human zoo" airing every minute action performed by of a group of telegenic young people cohabitating in a trendy house, in capitals around the world? The bold experiment was so successful it unleashed a slew of similar cohabitation experiences, like The Osbournes, and "reality" contests like America's got Talent or The Great British Bakeoff and more recently, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Bachelor and the Real Housewives of Atlanta.

How Reality TV Was Born

After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 Cable companies flourished thanks to a generally deregulatory environment that enabled the cable industry to accelerate deployment of broadband services. The upgrade to broadband networks enabled cable companies to introduce high-speed Internet access to customers, and competitive local telephone and digital cable services later in the decade. This, in turn, allowed consumers in urban, suburban, and rural areas to entertain more choices in information, communications, and entertainment services.

Following the deregulation of cable companies, access to broadband allowed companies more access to cable, but with high production costs, the challenge was filling all that air time. Cheap and available talent in the form of Reality TV was born.

We are currently witnessing a revolution in the delivery of 5G internet, faster more powerful computers, high-resolution 3D imaging, 6DOF and lower-priced virtual reality headsets. Add months of seclusion for students and workers forced to spend hours on low-quality Zoom calls, it is no surprise that VR is taking off.

According to a recent study,

52.1 million people will use VR and 83.1 million will use AR at least once per month in 2020. This represents 15.7% and 25.0% of the population, respectively.

As in the early days of cable television, there isn't much to watch online. Not yet. Networks have dabbled in virtual production as limited stunts, but now that real-life experiences and pop-ups have stalled due to the pandemic, other forms of interaction are needed.

Virtual Reality is perfectly positioned to fill that gap.

Adoption is Easier than Ever

After months of Zoom calls, the hurdle of getting people accustomed to meeting online has passed. The first of many habits that may well remain with us when we migrate back to schools and offices. It's not just luring people online, its the expectation of interaction. Of being involved in a live event. And it is transforming our viewing habits today that will have an impact on our entertainment and media consumption from now on.

Now, with the impressive Oculus Quest platform accessible for under $400.00, the timing is ripe for content acceleration. Indeed, in a few years, I fully expect that media will evolve classic TV and film franchises to branched-narrative experiences, games where you can play the Bachelor or be James Bond, play poker with the leaders of the underworld, seduce countless women, kill evil and save the world. Night after night.

For example. Here are other examples of how the media has begun to successfully explore interactive and immersive entertainment.

How Gaming Opened the Doors to Our Newest Addiction

In 2017, the exploration game Tacoma from Gone Home studio Fullbright. Tacoma is a game about exploring the traces of people’s lives in an empty world and incorporates holograms, AR and a mystery to solve aboard an evacuated space station. The multiple tasks and media to explore is a fascinating journey for anyone from amateur sleuth to seasoned XR enthusiast.

...And How Interactive Media is Designed to Get You Hooked

Similarly, Eleven Eleven summons your inner investigator to solve a disaster on a space station in a series of six interlocking stories set during the last 11 minutes and 11 seconds of life on a planet called Kairos Linea, which is about to be bombed into oblivion while its corporate overlords escape to a space station. Each story follows a different resident of a small spaceport. And as the viewer, you can move like a ghost through the entire city — exploring the 3D environment, following individual characters, and rewinding or fast-forwarding the action to figure out how they all connect.

When Netflix debuted Black Mirror: Bandersnatch late last year, it put a spotlight on interactive storytelling outside the traditional gaming industry. Bandersnatch’s “choose your own adventure” format is one method of telling these interactive stories. The dystopian anthology series ran for two seasons on the U.K.'s Channel 4 before switching over to Netflix, and an interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

Bandersnatch is an interactive game as well as a television series. The challenge was in the writing. Series creator, Charlie Brooker abandoned linear writing, instead, he had to keep track of each narrative thread created whenever a player made a decision, and keep track of how those decisions interacted with the rest of the story.

Said series creator, Charlie Brooker,

“What was weird is, usually when you’re writing a script, sometimes you hit a point where you get into it, and it gets longer and longer. And this [Bandersnatch script] got longer sort of horizontally as well as vertically.”

Why This New Medium is a Revolution for Advertising and Marketing

The ground-breaking of Bandersnatch showed Netflix the possibility of leveraging its platform and features to make product integrations much less intrusive and more curated around the specific content. It also shows the way for interactive advertising, Easter egg placement, and mystery marketing across social media platforms. With different endings and seemingly infinite different combination patterns of actions; the shortest route, without any redo’s, takes 90 minutes to complete, but in order to get through every possible ending, it may take viewers two to three hours to complete. By the end of this adventure, viewers will be left questioning every move they make: inside the movie and outside of it too.

In an interview in PC Games, he explains how it was made: “Because Netflix is so fucking clever, they invented this whole bit of software that we could literally sort of import my code and the script into, and we could drop video clips into,” he said. “So some of the stuff that actually plays on the service is based on little logic fucking gates, effectively, that I was setting up,” he said.

Your Choice: Who Get's Slimed?

Taking Slime On the Road: Brought to You in Real Life

At Aventura Mall's Slime City pop-up, the main attraction is - you guessed it - getting slimed. Stations with buckets filled with the green, gooey goo hang ominously above your head. Then the countdown begins, “5,4,3,2,1” and...Slime time! The branded experience was housed in a 20,000 square foot interactive playground and was inspired by the mega-popular Nickelodeon’s TV shows “You Can’t Do That on Television,” "The Kids Choice Awards" and “Slime Time Live” in which viewers selected who would get slimed.

The live experience, expected to tour across America, is currently closed now in both Aventura and Atlanta due to Covid-19 the experience. Nevertheless their popularity shows the appeal of sharing interactive experiences both on broadcast media, and in real life. An international "Slime Cup" is expected to launch in the summer of 2020.

International Slime Awards to Challenge the World Cup

The14-week, multi-territory, multi-platform event will drive participation across both Nickelodeon channels and digital sites and will feature a range of land-based events in select markets including specially created retail offerings, theme park and mall experiences and live events.

The three-month campaign will start and end with two TV events. “The Nickelodeon Slime Cup Challenge” will air in June and feature the live-action stars of all four teams as they compete in three rounds of slime-filled challenges to earn slime for their teams. The campaign will culminate in August with the second TV event, “Slime Cup: Tournament of Champions,” featuring animation stars and revealing the winning Nickelodeon Slime Cup team.

Fronted by Slime Cup ambassador, SpongeBob SquarePants, four teams consisting of the network’s most popular characters will battle to take home the Nickelodeon Slime Cup trophy.

The Link between Interactive Media and Broadcast TV

As in TV platforms, interactive media lets digital publishers engage their audiences and derive new data. It allows them to complete the feedback loop on their content, and get better insights about what their audiences are interested in. It is the perfect vehicle for advertising and Easter eggs, requiring multiple viewing and "retreads".

Interactive TV: A Stronger Audience Connection

As platforms compete for attention and people seek personal connection, interactive content experiences are not only vehicles for advertising or entertainment, but create a stronger connection between the user and the platform, a kind of direct link brands have always dreamt of since the rise of Facebook.

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About the author:

Catherine D. Henry is Global Innovation Strategist at Palpable Media, where she helps companies bridge the gap between new technology and enterprise, media and entertainment.