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there isn't a culture that's ever
existed on the planet as far as we know
that doesn't tell stories and technology
has always been integral in that
communication we often find new ways to
tell stories that we really like in the
same way that when they first started
moving pictures
and they didn't quite know what it was
going to look like to tell a story with
moving pictures but they knew it was
really cool to make those pictures move
that's the place that I feel like we're
at with digital and built
worlds what's interesting about
alternate worlds like fantasy like
science fiction like alternate history
is that there thought experiments about
the way the world could be and I think
this kind of project is perfect for this
kind of world Intel labs and the USC
World building media media lab got
together we wanted to see what would
happen if we actually built these
digital worlds could stories begin to
actually emerge out of them could you
create environments that were Rich
enough and interesting enough that
people could have compelling story
experiences inside these Landscapes the
original Leviathan by Scott westerfeld
it's a Trilogy that reimagines World War
I in a landscape where you can create
your own animals the military of the
time has turned those animals into
creatures of war and so the Leviathan is
a Giant floating whale and that's the
world that we decided to create Scott as
an author is fascinated by and really
enjoys the idea of creating a platform
and then seeing what other people are
going to do inside that platform the
Leviathan series is basically about this
collision between Technologies so I
think that using new technologies to
tell that story kind of makes sense for
me the integration of technology and
story is long and interesting and now
we're creating digital environment ments
which are actually real places they're
robust and they're Ru driven and you can
walk into a place and be inside that
place and have it behave according to
its own rules I've been in the film
industry about 35 years and as the
designer my responsibility was uh to
create the context for the story it
suddenly became more like creating
something that looked much more like a
world and what we observed was that the
world itself started giving back and
stimulating and provoking different
reactions in the stor space the
challenge that we had from Tony and from
intel was how could we Imagine The Next
Step of Storytelling World building
evolved almost directly out of the
realization that the linear process was
not strictly relevant when you had these
immersive
tools we took a small collection of film
students and a small collection of game
students and basically locked them in a
room together and told them they had to
collaborate which turns out to be really
difficult ult film students and film is
based on tremendous visual control games
are about participation they're about in
many cases total freedom of the audience
to do whatever they want and so what we
really did is try to take those two
worlds and make them begin to combine
together one of the things that's really
unique about being in an interactive
media and games program that is in the
cinema school at USC is that you have
people that are able to think in really
compelling ways about storytelling as a
system
but also about games as a system we have
these Powerhouse students who are
absolutely hungry for exploring the
space of their imagination so we can
move really rapidly I think in very
unconventional ways a lot of our work
actually here in the lab we focus on
Lower resolution rendering we have to
limit ourselves to stories that we can
tell with high-end but available compute
because for our experimentation the real
value of having the students here is
that they are so hungry to tell this new
kind of story we want to give them tools
today not sort of Promise them tools
tomorrow in 2013 what we were using is
just a combination of sort of daisy
chain together desktop servers to drive
the world in the background and core i7
High compute tablets head-mounted
displays traditional game consoles and
traditional game controllers everything
we use is off the shelf so what we're
looking at here is the augmented reality
experience of the Leviathan project here
we have a projection screen and the
grayscale image of the border around it
is actually a marker which a camera on
an Intel Ultrabook can recognize and
when it recognizes the pattern it can
actually register its point in space so
here we have a shot of the Leviathan
entering the space but then it's going
to transition to an augmented reality
mode where an audience member can pick
up an Ultra Book can point it at the
screen and register the marker then we
can make the whale fly out of the
traditional cinematic two-dimensional
screen and fly into the audience space
itself so every time you build out the
world you also create space for more
story that's one of the things about
World building that's really fascinating
is it gives you narrative the Huxley was
something that I just sort of threw into
the books the media lab has done a whole
set of things where you can control a
Huxley you can sort of guide them and
and make them so so it's one of the
major game elements in the Technologies
they're creating so it's been kind of
cool to see something that is you know a
bit character a side character in my
book become a really important part just
because they found the idea interesting
and they found it visually fascinating
working with Intel is very interesting
when we're in this kind of fluid
creative imaginative space because
you've got a great tension between the
pragmatism of of engineering and maybe
the push back that we can provide here
which is the why the what if and the why
not that push and pull they inform each
other in a really balanced way the great
strength of this relationship is that we
are at the center of the next generation
of storytellers who are in turn at the
center of the narrative Media city in
the world so it's a very powerful place
to be looking at a future that we cannot
quite imagine but we can sort of prepare
ourselves
for I think the future of Storytelling
is an entertainment ecosystem in which I
get an opportunity to step in into that
world to play in that world and really
be in that world and we've actually got
these incredible new story containers
and we're just beginning to see what
stories might emerge from
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them