The BBC - out of the game?

The BBC - out of the game?
Yesterday I attended the BBC seminar 'A new future for new media' today, delivered by Bill Thompson, Samantha Smith, Richard Dawkins, Tony Ageh, Tom Loosemore, Pete Clifton. They talked about the future of technology and of the BBC.

A couple of things struck me:
Firstly, despite the in-depth research into the area of games commissioned by the BBC, the BBC at large does not understand the games community - nor does it feel it needs to. Roughly speaking the BBC sees programme making as a legitimate way of discharging the entertainment part of its charter whilst games remain an illegitimate activity. As regards the BBC's growing interest in 'online' and 'multi-platform' approaches, there is a tendency to think only in terms of 'web pages', despite the fact that for an increasing number of people 'entertainment' and 'online' are likely to be experiences delivered via a games platform. The resulting spectacle is that of an elderly organisation desperate to move boldly into the new environment, but clinging to an outdated notion of entertainment - as 'quality' programme-making. This, despite the fact that its most successful online presence (in terms of user rating) is predominantly an online gaming site (Ceebeebies)

Some of the more pertinent indicators that this is, indeed, an error are as follows:
- 59% of 6-65 year olds in the UK are gamers (26 million gamers), 48% are heavy gamers- audience-wise, there are 9 million players in the Warcraft virtual world alone (to give only one example of a game.)- gaming platforms are online - the xbox360 has its own content distribution network allowing users to get music videos download games etc. (So, for example, Ceebeebies games could currently be made available free to UK xbox users - but aren't)- even the smallest, most affordable games platforms (such as the nintendo DS) allow internet-based gaming and community functionality.- the nintendo Wii (due for release this Friday) is part of an aggressive marketing strategy to broaden the appeal of gaming to all age groups. It comes with a web-browser, flash 8 and ajax capability. It costs £180.

Games consoles (ranging from the nintendo DS to the Playstation 3) will likely become the default channel for accessing the web from home, with games consuming an increasing share of personal entertainment time (PET) as programme viewing diminishes by comparison.
Today, however, a great deal of the BBC's thinking around 'web 2.0' and the online future is skewed by a focus on the weird and wonderful developments happening in web-pages.
For my part, I like to imagine a parallel universe in which the widespread introduction of multi-functional games consoles is accompanied by an explosion of free interactive content provided by the BBC, ranging from immersive role-playing games through to gripping historical recreations.

The other thing that stuck me is how people whose background is predominantly technological (programmers etc.) over-ascribe the success of specific technologies to 'luck'. This is because they generally overlook the significance of the one constant in the equation: people. As a thumbnail sketch, what happens is that a creative programmer sees a opportunity to build something. They build it principally because the software can do it and as a consequence what people actually do with it comes largely as a surprise to them. Two examples: nobody anticipated the success of txt, and nobody foresaw the failure of video-conferencing. The key to understanding the rapidly changing technological environment, then, is to understand the slowly changing human environment. What seemed surprising to me was that whilst the BBC is working furiously to understand and make use of a vast range of new media technologies, there seems only to be a cursory or implicit analysis of what people are going to want to do with it - with the likely result that technological commentators will rationalise the success or failure of a given technological venture as 'chance'. In sum, the BBC's approach to new media appears to be founded on trial and error and ignores the most significant area of expansion in the entertainment sector.

The final thing that occurred to me is that, in the days when I had a television, I loved that moment when Patrick Stewart leant forwards in the captains chair and, with a bold gesture of his hand, uttered the words 'engage'. Now I hate the bloody word.
The original charm of the phrase had much to do with its mechanical connotations, I think. In this context to 'engage' might mean to connect the idling engine to some kind of driveshaft via a clutch mechanism (the star ship enterprise actually employed a similar mechanisms to that of early type ford fiestas), the significant feature of a clutch being the two interfaces, one of which spins the other of which is stationary - that is until the two are brought together and friction is sufficient to transfer the rotational momentum from one to the other.
And I think maybe this is what people mean when they talk about 'engaging' content - there has to be friction at the interface, something in programmes that 'catches' with audiences and moves them. Interactive content aims at interpenetration, at meshing, whilst 'bumpy' content has emotional peaks or dramatic turns - surface features that work with the emotional receptiveness of audiences.

I found Pete Clifton to be engaging, and a comment that he made stuck in my mind: that in the self-service news environment two of the biggest stories of the year had been the bear chased up a tree by a cat, and a man who married a goat. It made me wonder how much more there is to discover about how to engage audiences.
In any case, I am happy to announce the successor to engaging content - 'alien' content. This is content that literally bursts from your screen and attaches itself to your face. Over the course of the next few days it actually hijacks your nervous system, eventually subverting your entire body for its nefarious ends - at which point it bursts free from your stomach ready to infect some new host. The rough cuts look promising.