Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture

[AlexReid]

Just a reminder that you are scheduled to read the first two chapters of Jenkins' book this week. I will be posting here tomorrow to get our conversation started and get you thinking about what you might do on our wiki with Jenkins. (That's assuming that I don't spend all day in line trying to vote.)

[Vicky]

An example of convergence I found quite interesting was Jenkins’ mention of a panel discussion regarding the “relationship between video games and traditional media.” He mentions how filmmakers see movie-related video games as “a means of expanding the storytelling experience” as opposed to just having another product to stamp their logo on.
“They wanted to use games to explore ideas that couldn’t fit within two-hour films.”

You always hear people say that “the book was better than the movie” because it had more story-telling detail that the movie didn’t have the time or resources to include, it allowed you to use your imagination and the movie simply hadn’t lived up to what you pictured when you were reading. I’ve been hearing that from people who recently saw the highly-anticipated Twilight.

Ironically, the ideas that can’t fit in two-hour films and used to be from books are now being fabricated in video games. There are even movies now based on video games, i.e. Resident Evil, Tomb Raider.

When movies are based on books or video games in some instances, it is typically because they were best-selling, top-rated or fairly successful. But what happens when the movie isn’t based on anything, and you’re basing the video game off the movie? A lot of issues arise.

“Should the game company try to align its timing to the often unpredictable production cycle of a movie with the hopes of hitting WalMart the same weekend the film opens? Should the movie producers wait for the equally unpredictable game development cycle to run its course, sitting out the clock while some competitor steals their thunder? Will the game get released weeks or months later, after the buzz of the movie has dried up, or worse yet, after the movie has bombed?”

There really is no way to answer those questions unless you can see the future in a crystal ball. It’s challenging since it’s impossible to know if the movie itself will be successful until it hits theaters. In that case, is it worth it to create a video game for it at all? And if you do decide to release the video game the same weekend as the movie comes out, and it sucks, no one is going to buy the video game. And you’ll have invested a great deal of money into an unpredictable failure. But if you wait too long to develop and release the game until later on, you may lose out on a great deal of revenue as well because by then, the hype is over. It seems the only solution is to go with your gut, or perhaps to conduct consumer surveys to get a better direction on what decision to make.

The convergence of different media opens a great many doors of possibilities, but it brings uncertainties and questions along with it. Do you shut the door or open it? If so, when? How can you predict or even have some vague idea of the outcome? How can you get people to step out of their comfort zone to actually be open to the convergence of different technologies? The questions are infinite but the answers are almost non-existent.

[Isaac Wheeler]

American Idol has definitely gotten more popular over the years because people love listening to Simon's remarks and people crying thinking they are good. I think some of this is staged and the media really pushes the emotion on the show. This show is very commercialized. The karaoke they have out now, and just the clothing and other general things they have.

I have not read any of the spoilers and am not sure how I feel about them. I guess they could keep the interest of views and keep conversations going. I think the reality shows are leading to a new kind of "freedom" on television. People can say and do a lot more things and get away with it.