The Future of Storytelling Media: Changing the Game and the Implications (Short-Form)
Across societies and cultures, stories have always fascinated us. Not only do they help spread and develop our culture, but they also provide an escape from the sometimes mundane world in which we live. Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Hunger Games have seen roaring success because they transport us to Hogwarts, a galaxy far far away, and District 12.
While media experiences have entertained us thus far, they have been standardized and passive ones. The future of storytelling lies in making the experience more personalized and interactive, bringing us even deeper into storytelling worlds.
In this piece, we will cover the path to changing the game, through three levels, and the implications it will have. We will dive into:
- how data will be used to understand the user experience;
- artificial intelligence’s role in developing narratives;
- what interactive media experiences look like;
- why producers like Netflix and HBO might not be best set up for success; and
- what this means beyond storytelling.
This piece is a short-form version. If you find this interesting, feel free to read the long-form version, from which this piece is derived.
Level One: Better Monitoring and Predicting Consumer Experience
Currently, digital media producers rely on viewership counts, box office results, and critic ratings to obtain feedback on a movie or TV series. With more data to understand how audiences will react to story lines, content producers will be able to:
- better predict what stories will be successful with artificial intelligence; and
- employ artificial intelligence to deliver better content.
Collection of data could include monitoring internet response to content or tracking user eye movements, heart rates, and facial expressions. Better data will provide tremendous insights on content response, but privacy concerns will be the main driver of how this information is obtained and to what level this is possible.
Predicting successful story lines
When provided with the plethora of data needed to understand storylines that work well, SVOD producers can develop artificial intelligence tools that will predict audience reaction to a story line with significantly increased accuracy. Thus, they can produce content with a much more informed view of how audiences will respond. For example, a director may identify that a character does not have its intended effect on the audience and alter the story.
Employing artificial intelligence as a storyteller
As its capability develops, artificial intelligence can play a larger role in not just anticipating box office results, but also by actually crafting narratives that it knows will likely deliver good results. Rather than serving as a validator of a story’s likelihood of success, it can start to make recommendations to tweak story lines or even develop narratives of its own.
This technology in its required capability does not exist yet, but it is not far from what is possible today. Artificial intelligence has already produced a movie trailer and a full script for a car commercial.
Level Two: Leveraging Dynamically Changing Content
With the data fidelity needed to support frequent and reliable feedback loops, the next step is to optimize by making content changes, in real time. By combining historical knowledge of successful narratives with current audience reaction, narratives will change in real time to optimize for user outcomes. This difference is a fundamental paradigm shift, diminishing a foundational part of storytelling of the past — the role of the storyteller in crafting the narrative. Instead, the stories of the future will overwhelmingly focus on the consumer of the story and be delivered by artificial intelligence.
Dynamically changing content through traditional methods is not feasible as filmmakers simply cannot produce enough content to keep up with the provided feedback loops. To fully take advantage of the engagement data, content must be produced quickly enough to keep up with the feedback loops. Thus, artificial intelligence technology, as described above, would need to advance considerably to continue the narrative and update the visual and auditory components accordingly.
Level Three: Immersing the User
Beyond just developing narratives that look to optimize for the viewer, the audience will also have the ability to intentionally influence the narrative. Before, they had no control over what they view, but in Level Three, the viewer takes control.
A seamless choose your own adventure
In the future, the user will be able to materially impact storylines. Viewers will transform from passive observers to impactful agents.
In doing so, choose your own adventure books will effectively be brought to the digital world. Though premature, this exists today too. Netflix released, through the Black Mirror series, Bandersnatch, a story with decision points that produce different outcomes in the story.
Though certainly novel, the movie did not grip the media world as the new format for storytelling because it is still lacks full empowerment of the viewer as many decisions were trivial. There were instances where decisions would yield a “wrong choice” response, show the same video, regardless of which option you chose, and impact something relatively meaningless like the soundtrack. This prompts the question — were these really impactful decision points? To engage viewers, it must feel like they have meaningful influence on the storyline.
The main limitation here is content production — Bandersnatch needed to have a limited number of true decision points because they could only produce content for so many scenarios. Producing for more scenarios would have linearly increased their budget, rendering it unfeasibly large. Developing artificial intelligence technologies to produce video in an instant, as discussed in Level Two, will lower the marginal production cost of new content. The number of choices could become limitless. You can even make a decision whenever you want, rather than just when prompted, like in Bandersnatch.
As these technologies begin to realize their full potential, imagine not rooting for a character in Game of Thrones to end up on the Iron Throne, but actually helping one of the characters rule the seven kingdoms. Better yet, take them all down and end up on the throne yourself! For those who want it, this can increase story engagement immensely. This has the opportunity to truly make media a first party experience — one where the viewers are as much a part of the story as they want to be.
This should not be confused with getting everything that you want — that is boring! Being challenged and surprised yields a much more rewarding and entertaining experience. Because of that, viewers will only be able to influence narratives, not dictate them.
Traditional Media Will Be Disrupted
The future of media will collect tremendous amount of data on user engagement, optimize for the user experience, involve the user as part of the story, and adapt story lines according to user input. However, traditional media firms are not the best set up to lead us into the future. Video games are closest to the future of storytelling media. The video game sector has seen tremendous growth and people are spending more time playing video games instead of watching TV or other media. As Reed Hastings has alluded, Netflix’s biggest competitor was not another SVOD platform with hit titles like HBO, but instead the most popular video game — Fortnite.
The video gaming industry is poised to see continued success in the future as it is developing its technology and capabilities along the same trajectory that the future of storytelling media requires. Take the 24 hours it takes Pixar to render an animated frame, referenced earlier. While it produces a spectacular end product, new content will need to be developed in real time. When you do something (e.g., move your character, shoot a gun, etc.) in a video game, you are creating a new frame, one that has never been created anywhere before in 1/60th of a second. Solving for this constraint is already baked into the technological development of the video game industry, giving them a head start over traditional media firms.
Traditional media is starting to take notice, highlighted by Reed Hasting’s comment on Fortnite, but it is possible the gap is too large to catch up. Even if they begin focusing their attention on making stories more about user outcomes, the video gaming industry has several years of a head start. The traditional media industry is a well-oiled machine to predict what story lines will be well received by audiences, but while they’re tremendously good at that, well-oiled machines are not very good at doing what they’re not programmed to do. When the objective switches focus from developing great narratives to producing technology that seeks to engage and entertain users by autonomously generating content (i.e., the jump from level 1 to 2), traditional media firms may struggle as many incumbents do with disruption. To be successful, traditional media companies like NBC, HBO, and even Netflix must begin to build competencies in deeper immersion like those of their video game focused peers.
The Impact Beyond Storytelling
These changes in storytelling media may very well have implications beyond its own domain. As increased personalization and interactivity are brought into stories, people may begin to crave similar experiences everywhere.
Other types of media and television that are not story-based, such as sports and news, could change as well. With news media, for people who are more interested and engaged with different topics — what the viewer sees may be altered to cater to their interests.
This idea is already playing out in esports. During an event, a viewer can often choose to watch the main broadcast through the publisher’s stream, or they can choose to watch an individual stream of a player. With the main broadcast, a viewer can get overall commentary and a diversity of action, but following a streamer allows you to see their specific gameplay in much more detail. Depending on preference, viewers can choose accordingly. In fantasy football, many tune into NFL Red Zone to see if their player is going to score. What if Red Zone synced to the players on your fantasy football team (and any other players/teams you want to follow), instead of showing everything?
In social media, Tik Tok, which has reached the same number of users as Instagram in half the time, has adopted leveraging artificial intelligence to determine what content its users see wholeheartedly. Unlike other social media platforms, where content is primarily sourced from your social graph — people that you are friends with or follow — Tik Tok uses engagement optimizing algorithms as the primary way to deliver content. People love it. Tik Tok’s average session durations are 1.5x Facebook’s, 2x Instagram’s, 2.5x Twitter’s, 3.5x Snapchat’s.
This will accelerate the use of AI to deliver content and experiences in other areas, and proof of value in those areas will yet again inspire others.
What does this all mean?
We have gone over a lot of ideas, a high-level roadmap to the future, and the implications. But what does this mean for you?
- If you work in the media business, rally and lead the troops to the future. Leverage some of the ideas discussed in this piece to refocus your company’s vision.
- If you work in the video gaming industry, think about whether your strategy is aligned.
- If you are an investor, consider taking a closer look at the video game industry to deliver the returns you desire. Furthermore, think through some of the second-order effects of how other areas might be affected.
- If you’re an entrepreneur, find out an area you can stake out and contribute to this evolution.
- If you are a fan of TV shows and movies, get excited! The future of entertainment is going to be awesome. Get ready to dive into highly engaging story lines with your friends and family, or by yourself!
The details of exactly how this will play out are unclear, but what is certain is that users will both crave and expect personalized, engagement-oriented experiences. Because of that, the impact of the future of storytelling will have far-reaching implications both within and outside the industry. The media industry, the video game industry, investors, entrepreneurs, and fans alike should take note.
If you have any questions, thoughts, or would like to connect, please don’t hesitate to reach out via LinkedIn, Twitter, or e-mail at iandsilva96@gmail.com!
Disclaimer: All thoughts and opinions are my own, do not reflect the views of my employer, are for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon to make any investment decisions.
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