SocialMedia404

I have not played a video game since the early days of Doom, last night I was at a friends place and we played Call of Duty. Even after I played Doom, I never understood why video games were so popular, bigger than Hollywood and climbing. Now I do.

Mike (my buddy) and I sat on the couch and made our own movie. Within the context of the game, we wrote the plot, called the pace of the action, tried out various options within scenes and so on.   And, we did it all collaboratively without the intervention of a central institution, Hollywood. 

No wonder it’s bigger than Hollywood already, its inclusive, creative, and full of endless possibilities that individuals get to explore together.  Wow, the ultimate social media platform.

As a 40 something with three kids and as many jobs I have little time or interest in video games. But as a student of social media, I am blown away. I can see this in a few years being a very mainstream form of entertainment. Get out of the way Hollywood, here comes everyone else.

Right now games are limited to people who don’t mind memorizing hundreds of arcane commands like Command C to crouch, S to run and F5 to switch to the grenade launcher. But think about a controller that anyone could use, and plot lines that more people were interested in and technology that makes it realer, faster and easier to make as many “movies” as you want. People will get together Friday nights and make full length feature films with studio quality sets, editing, sound and special effects, and they will use star actors and all the other belles and whistles too. When they are done, they will publish “their” movies as a unique version for anyone to see. Why not? The pieces are there now, so this is only a few years away.

I don’t think Hollywood is going to disappear. Some people will always want to be told their stories, but some people will want to make them up together too.

Posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 9:56 am and under Society category.