Virtual NBC Launches in Second Life. Communicators, Rethink Media

Reuters reports today on Virtual NBC which launches [a movie promotion] today in Second Life.  It appears I wasn't too far off in my earlier post about iVillage's Girls Night Out in Second Life signalling NBC Universal's intention to explore 3D environments for new programming categories.

With CBS' Star Trek project also in development it is simply time to Rethink Media.

If you've doubted virtual worlds are a force to be reckoned with in communications, this should make you sit up and take notice. 

Televison is a natural fit for virtual worlds.  We can fairly easily see how stories in moving pictures translate well into 3D environments.  Afterall, in a production environment there are 3D sets which replicate a "real world" environment where actors take on roles and words to tell a story.  With film and tape, the experience for the audience is 2D.  No more - and we won't have to wear those silly glasses.

Our brain's pre-frontal lobe has a natural capacity to simulate experiences in our minds.  Add the sensory, interactive and spatial properties a 3D environment offers and you have the ultimate "theater of the mind."    

TV (and film) is about telling stories.  So is business communications.  The term "telling stories" is part of our professional lexicon - telling the company story, advocacy story, the product story.

As communicators, we often rely on massive media to tell our stories.  They will always be part of the media mix.  But, if the channels for our stories are beginning to think 3D, we will need to provide them with appropriate content.  We need to think 3D.  Our audiences will think 3D (game babies already do).  We need to think new content categories.

Framing virutal worlds as theater of the mind opens new possibilities for all types of business, media and learning applications.  The ability to create and set any virtual stage, build the props and animate the environment is bringing performance art to a new level - the desktop.

January 12, 2007

Comments

[Gary Goldhammer]

Excellent analysis and comments. We (communicators) all need to do a much better job at telling stories, and telling stories across multiple mediums.