Could Disney-Pixar’s 3D film Up lift virtual worlds?
Disney Pixar's Up
Disney-Pixar’s opened the 62nd Cannes film festival last week, the first full length animation ever to do so. It is also the company’s first ever full length animated feature to be filmed in 3D and some are comparing the transformational potential of 3D for cinema as being as significant as the shift from silent to talkies. Apparently the glasses aren’t a gimmick and it really does work.
But what is the relationship between this and the mainstream growth of virtual worlds? It may be time to dust off an excellent white paper from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
In 2004 I was working for a large international education organisation with a fast changing e-learning brief. “Make it happen” had become “Find out if it is going to happen …. for anybody” I got to spend a lot of time and a little money figuring that out. The tricky part was what to look for. What were the metrics or indicators which would act as a reliable guide to the uptake of e-learning, in this case for the learning of English as a Foreign language? The dangerous assumption that it was going to happen therefore we just needed to get a feel for connectivity and internet penetration in target markets. Does that ring a bell with the SecondLife evangelists? As soon as the computers are good enough and the bandwidth is there …
Amongst other things, I commissioned a few reports and bought canned research but it turned out that out one of the most useful sources was free. There had been a white paper from the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2003 called e-learning readiness rankings. Its resonance can be seen by googling the title: 3 years later people were still referring to the findings.
What they said was eventual uptake would depend on far more than connectivity. They grouped factors into four main areas which they called the four ‘C’s. Direct quote from the introduction:
- Connectivity (the quality and extent of Internet infrastructure)
- Capability (a country’s ability to deliver and consume e-learning, based on literacy rates, and trends in training and education),
- Content (the quality and pervasiveness of online learning materials)
- Culture (behaviours, beliefs and institutions that support e-Learning development within country)
Straightaway there are some interesting parallels with the pervasiveness (or not) of gaming. The Disney-Pixar feature made me think of the third area – content. This refers to the importance of there being sufficient material available i.e. accessible and in a language you understand on the web for people to see the web as a potentially valid source of information and, eventually, learning. Obvious in retrospect but very insightful then.
The virtual worlds analogy for me is the following: how many people who don’t or even do play games have had a 3D experience which appears valid beyond gaming? If those 3D glasses really work for Up and future productions a lot more people will be having valid 3D entertainment experiences.
There are plenty of arguments against: it is only a cartoon. SecondLife is full of real people, really relating to one another. Indeed but think about the number of people you know who don’t get virtual worlds or why anyone should spend time in them as opposed to something healthy like, um, watching TV. Then think of the number of people – a lot of the same ones – now using Facebook who previously would have sworn they had no use for their own homepage. And while you are thinking about that, here is a trailer also featuring a discussion of the different ways in which 3D was implemented.
