AutoMovie: A Man and His House
Gamers are no strangers to this kind of presentation, as classic AVG games have long been able to achieve a similar effect, with a wider variety of themes and content than interactive episodes or videos. Today, interactive episodes in the Internet age use text (lines and images) to allow the user to understand the plot and make choices that affect the plot and the ending, which borrows a lot of gameplay elements and creates a more complex branching direction.
Having multiple branches and endings means that users will put more time and effort into them, and the exploration and sorting out of the different branches is also destined to bring more heat to the work itself. Even if it's not an episode, Detroit: Become Human proved it could generate enough buzz on video platforms, and The Invisible Guardian, with its hybrid of games and episodes, has gained popularity beyond gamers.
For the video platform, the heat is equivalent to the flow, look at the major video platforms in China, the exclusive broadcasting way to control the good drama can only get the advantage of a moment, the user is still with the flow, want to use the traditional content of the drama to attract the user to spend more time, the interactive drama has become the major video platforms of the "new track".
Which is easier, "adult" or "fame"?
July 8, B station on-line "interactive video" function, three days later, Tencent video released interactive video technology standards, and will launch a one-stop interactive video open platform. Earlier, Youku, Mango, and Aqiyi also launched interactive content works and future plans.
Overseas, interactive episodes or videos have actually been in development for a long time, and the related functional support has also matured.
In 2008, Hong Kong directors the Lam Brothers produced what they called "the world's first interactive drama," "Tram Man Chasing Woman," and the "drama" itself borrowed a lot of Galgame elements, with users clicking on different options to change their role as "Tram Man. By clicking on different options, users can change the way they play the role of "Tram Man" and "Goddess" dating. After the launch of this new approach, a number of similar episodes have begun to appear on emerging video platforms.
"Tram Man Chasing Woman" was more of a fun skit
The idea of "Tram Man Chasing Woman" was excellent, but the quality wasn't amazing, and the mature mainstream market didn't look favorably on the format.
"Chasing women" 10 years later, the American director Steven Soderbergh picked up this piece of diamond in the rough interactive drama, directed by him, produced by HBO's U.S. drama "Mosaic" (Mosaic) in one fell swoop to open the "interactive U.S. drama" precedent. If the traditional way to play "Mosaic", the audience will get a linear narrative, a **** 6 episodes of the traditional American drama. But by downloading the mobile app, viewers will be able to experience more branches over and over again, and get a more definitive ending than the traditional open-ended version.
Black Mirror: Pandasnakee's popularity is not proportional to its quality
The precedent in overseas markets is clearly influencing this trend of interactive dramas at home, where major video platforms are fostering interactive video productions that have a lot of **** in common.
On June 20, Aqiyi launched the web series His Smile. Like most webisodes, it's the youthful-looking teenage boys and girls and their love stories that can go on indefinitely that offer smiles to fans of the show, but in this one, players can change the direction of the episode with a simple text option, much like Black Mirror did.
So, animal or rainforest?
Today's Netflix audience is also very demanding of quality, and they can't stand plot flaws and interactive options forced on them to highlight interactive features, and a quick look at the reviews of His Smile on Douban shows that this attempt wasn't perfect.
Tencent and Youku didn't miss the buzz, either. Two interactive web series, Fistful of Quadruplets and The Female Forensic Scientist of Datang, will be available to fans later this year. Like "His Smile," these two dramas will be based on the sentimental and emotional question of who to fall in love with.
The poster for Fistful of Dollars features the faces of four "beautiful young men" who will help fans experience a "youthful campus love story that breaks through obstacles and ultimately fulfills their hearts' desires.
The story of the female forensic pathologist takes place in the Tang Dynasty. Ran Yan, an 18-year-old downtrodden noblewoman, learns to examine corpses at an early age, and as an adult, she meets a group of beautiful men and solves countless murder cases by hand. So far, the theme of the drama is "ancient officialdom promotion" plus "famous detectives", and the publicity content reveals "sweet favor detective", "pile of cases are love cases" and so on. The keywords "sweet favor detective" and "a pile of cases are all love cases" may easily make people forget that the motive of the female lead is to find the truth of her mother's suicide.
Giving fans "sugar" is what similar dramas are good at
Interactive video and games, which emphasize interactivity, are inextricably linked. And in the domestic market, it's not just the interactive options that are relevant, but perhaps the core of the content as well. In the Japanese manga "Welcome to NHK," the protagonist tries to get out of a difficult situation by making a game, and the easiest and most likely to be profitable is a Galgame with a pornographic element, which is undoubtedly a true reflection of reality. In the domestic online drama market, the introduction of ancient love, modern love, change the story of love is probably the simplest and most likely to get the revenue choice, only limited by the market rules, the "cloth" will be covered more tightly, the core will not change - "Raiders" different love stories, and the core will not change - "Raiders" different love stories. "The fact is that there is no difference between the different characters and the different storylines that are unlocked.
Not only along the conservative way HBO and Netflix experimented with, the video platform manufacturers are also trying to produce a series of innovative content. Mango based on the "Star Detective" (a "murder game" as the theme of the web series) produced "set mystery" on the use of O2O (from online to offline) interactive way, in addition to watching the video, the fans of the show can go to the social network accounts and offline "crime place The show's fans can also visit social network accounts and offline "crime sites" to look for clues. Youku, on the other hand, has enabled the "Cool Look" feature for the recent high-profile "Twelve Hours of Chang'an," which allows fans to click on characters, official positions, and place names on the screen to learn about them while watching the video - a feature that coincides with the tutoring machine.
Fans can choose whether or not to turn on the "Cool Watch"
Among these different attempts at interaction, Tencent's program is relatively creative, and the one closest to the game format. And the web series "Antique Bureau in the Bureau" *** enjoy a world view of the "propaganda video" "Antique Bureau in the Bureau: the origin of the Buddha's head" need to be opened on WeChat, is essentially a H5 "small game". The story is set against the backdrop of a master and his disciples exploring an ancient tomb during the war, and the characters need to slide or continuously tap the screen for QTE when they encounter battles, as well as to play a number of small games to distinguish clues and memorize routes within a limited period of time. The short ten-minute process also includes a built-in crisis of trust (the apprentice is a mole), a moral decision (to save the apprentice or not), and multiple endings and branches that arise from these options. If you want to experience the full story content, you'll need to spend exponentially more time trying.
Saving or not saving leads to different endings
Doubling the "game time" naturally costs more than a normal promo. In the H5 simply show a paragraph of the process does not need to consider the level design and repetition, once you want to seriously produce this game, and scale, in order to weigh the script ornamental and interactive gameplay, the investment is of course quite painstaking. It's enough that Antiques: Origins of the Buddha's Head achieves its promotional mission, and this relatively good example can only be limited to a "taste" rather than being scaled up, at least not for a full-length episode any time soon.
In comparison to traditional video portals, B-stop's interactive video output relies more on the creativity of its own users. After all, the users' own productivity has boosted B-stop's popularity over the years, and it's become even more important to use the station's Up to attract audiences, especially after a large number of dramas have been taken off the air.
In the batch of interactive videos that came out in July through the "Interactive Video" feature, talented netizens were the absolute workhorses. The more convenient production system reduces the cost for the producers, but in order to control the quality and direction, the B station did not completely hand over this tool to the users, only the Up master with more than 10,000 fans can participate in it.
In fact, B.com has been able to use "advanced pop-ups" to jump from one video to another before, but it's a lot more complicated than the simple interface we have now
Even so, most of the interactive videos on B.com haven't yet broken out of the same old "Trolley Boys Chasing Girls" formula that was used 11 years ago. For example, "Brainstorming: Unexpected Ending! The ending you can't guess! The plot is up to you! B Station's first interactive video on garbage classification! The core content of the video is to differentiate between different types of garbage, which is far from being "brain-teasing" as claimed. The actors and actresses in the video forcefully create laughs with convulsive laughter or incomprehensible behaviors, and the same approach is used in videos such as "Manipulating Square Dance Mothers to Fight the Demon King" and "You're a Dad", which are different in their presentation styles, but nonsensical is the same theme.
"Maniacal Laughter" made the biggest impression
With limited filming resources, production levels, and experience, we can't expect too much from these videos. The only thing we can say is that the Uploaders have worked hard enough to satisfy the biggest need of their audience - to have a good laugh. After the hilarity, there doesn't seem to be much left to savor.
The "horror game" that features an escape room has potential, as long as the script is in place
Just after interactive video content opened up on the B site, Uploader Cat God Chili Pepper Sauce turned part of the flow of the indie game "The Geeks' Earthly Adventure" into an interactive video for the B site. It's relatively easy to turn a text adventure game into an interactive video, as long as you record the game's screen and link up the branches of the game, you don't need to design the plot, draw pictures, etc. This kind of "transportation" of the game is a good idea. This kind of "porting" of a game has sparked a lot of controversy, and in addition to the controversy, Cat God Chili Sauce's behavior also violates Article 2 of B.com's Interactive Video Submission Rules, which prohibits the use of the interactive video function to directly reproduce the game itself. Perhaps the Uploader himself realized the problem, and the video was deleted after a short while.
Cat Chili Pepper thought the game was "not as good as the Invisible Guardians I played before"
In response to being "ported", the maker of The Geek's Earthly Adventure, Shibei, said that he had more than just options for the game, with interactive videos such as puzzles and mini-games. There are also puzzles and mini-games, and other elements that can't be replicated in an interactive video. Nevertheless, this kind of porting shows the game in a more comprehensive way than a video, and the fact that Uploaders can profit from porting it (B site Uploaders can earn money by rewarding and charging) makes the behavior itself no different from piracy.
By coincidence, on the same day that the interactive video content went live, B-station Uploader "Infiltration C" uploaded a video of part of the process of the web game "Project 911". The game, produced by the Russian team Room485, is centered on domestic violence, and uses real footage to show how difficult it is for women to avoid the dangers of domestic violence.
While Project 911 is available for free on the official website, the video from Penetrating C can be used to generate revenue through bounties and recharges. The video initially just mirrored the game's content, without commentary (which seemed to sidestep some of the controversy), and then a few days later, Osmosis C uploaded a version with commentary. In the video's introduction, she included the game's address, and also emphasized in the video that if you want to experience the full content, it's best to try the game yourself. However, the video is bounty-enabled, so the Uploader could still be the beneficiary of secondary free game content.
It's hard to immediately conclude whether part of the process on B is helping to publicize the game, or hurting it
Interactive video products in China are just getting off the ground, and there's a little bit of an indication of where they're headed from there, with each one taking shape.
In the hands of video platforms that focus on movies and TV dramas, the new ideas for interactive video are still carrying the same old content from Netflix. When the "twelve hours of Chang'an" and other domestic dramas choose to attract viewers with higher quality scripts, better historical reduction and better acting, the interactive drama chooses a relatively stable return on the subject of youthful love, which is very much like the road when the network drama is just beginning to active - to choose a subject in front of the majority of the audience to eat in front of the beginning of the experiment, at least to avoid the beginning of the encounter with the youth, and then the audience will not be able to see the audience, and the audience will not be able to see the audience. This is very much like the way it was when it first became active - picking a subject that would be popular with most audiences and starting to experiment with it. Now, if you want to see domestic dramas that are equal to "Mosaic" or "Black Mirror" in terms of subject matter and quality, you'll have to spend more time waiting.
"Interactive American drama" "Mosaic" has nearly 8 hours of content material, domestic interactive film and television in the near future, I am afraid that it is difficult to see the same level of work
The content of the big factories are still focused on the drama, which is the capital on which they rely for survival. In contrast, B station's content output is closer to the game. Themes such as solving murders and escaping from secret rooms are enjoyable and easily accepted by young people.
Not only that, but directly stealing other people's work and profiting from it can also indirectly affect game sales. Even though the examples of Escape and Detroit: Become Human demonstrate that the spread of process videos actually helped to increase sales for both games, how many games can claim to match the quality and popularity of those two?
When the fruits of a producer's hard work are shown and profited from by others, it's not just the producer's emotions that are affected, it's also the investors behind it, which can be detrimental to the entire gaming industry.
Earlier this year, Invisible Guardians proved that role-playing games like Netflix could garner word-of-mouth and sales, and it's only natural that more game makers will try their hand at the genre. It's good that people are willing to pay for these kinds of games, but let's hope that the "spring wind" of interactive video doesn't "blow out" this good sign. After all, when creators don't get their money's worth, and copycats get their money's worth, it's not just the individuals who get hurt, it's the entire gaming environment.