The Future Cost of a Good Synthetic World
In a post at Terra Nova, Edward Castronova, an associate professor in the department of telecommunications at Indiana Univeristy, speculates that investment in world development for multiplayer games could skyrocket, based on the high level of investment required to produce an hour of filmed entertainment. It's a reasonable conclusion based on muddled economics.
Film entertainment can be made inexpensively, but the star system works against that. Hiring top Hollywood talent makes production budgets seem high. Really though, that's a front-loaded marketing expense and investment hedge.
Castonova's cost comparison makes more sense in the context of special effects-driven films and computer animation. Yet even there, the business models are quite different. Because films are the same every viewing, their novelty half-life decays at a high rate. Multiplayer games, on the other hand, should remain novel for a much longer period, which argues for a subscription-based business rather than a pay-per-viewing model.
More fundamentally though, films are passive entertainment and games are active. Different types of content are not interchangable.
Castonova admits his analogy isn't apt. Still, he's no doubt correct that synthetic worlds will see more investment in the future.
Search
About
Categories
Archives
Syndication Feed