Technology, Connected - How AI and Virtual Reality Will Change Entertainment: Wevr on the Future of Immersive Media

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Anthony Batt and Neville Spiteri, co-founders of Wevr, join Thinking on Paper to discuss how artificial intelligence and virtual reality could change entertainment, communication and digital creativity.Wevr develops immersive experiences that combine interactive design, real-time computing and virtual environments. Drawing on careers spanning visual effects, gaming, VR and early internet platforms, Anthony and Neville explain what’s required to make digital experiences feel convincing rather than merely visual.A central concept is presence: the feeling of occupying and interacting with a virtual environment. As AI improves the responsiveness of digital characters, worlds and interfaces, immersive media could become more adaptive, social and personalised.In this episode, we discuss:How AI and virtual reality could transform entertainmentWhat immersive media may look like over the next three yearsWhy presence matters in virtual environmentsHow AI could change human perception and communicationThe technical challenges involved in building convincing virtual worldsHow intelligent digital characters could affect storytellingThe role of VR in learning, creativity and collaborationWhether immersive experiences can increase empathy and connectionHow entertainment may shift from passive viewing to active participationWhat creators need to understand about the future of spatial mediaAnthony and Neville also explain how advances in hardware, artificial intelligence and real-time rendering are bringing interactive digital experiences closer to mainstream use.This conversation examines how AI and VR could reshape the way media is created, experienced and shared, and whether immersive entertainment can produce forms of connection that conventional screens cannot.Please enjoy the show.--TIMESTAMPS(00:24) Craigslist(01:58) VFX Gaming & Unreal Game Engine(06:00) 3 Years In AI (09:32) What Will You Be Doing With AI In 3 Years?(13:47) Wevr: 10 Year In Emerging Technology(14:17) The True Immersive Experience(16:12) Collapsing Virtual Space(18:01) When You Are Not You(20:00) Shared Immersive Experience(20:33) Presence: The Missing Ingredient Of Virtual Worlds(24:27) Swimming With Whales In VR(28:47) If We Live 300 Years, Will You Be Bored?(31:30) The Cinematic Virtual Experience(37:13) Storytelling Machines(40:29) Virtual Brand World Building(45:35) Curiosity(48:02) Can I Be In Reservoir Dogs?(50:11) Harry Potter: VR Modes--Learn more:www.thinkingonpaper.xyzWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thinkingonpaper/videos

We are headed with regard to that. So we've got some folks from Weaver here today. We've got Anthony Batt and Neville Spateri. I'm going to bring them both on. And there's some interesting pieces to each of their backgrounds that I want to kind of get started really quickly. So welcome, gentlemen. How are we doing today? Doing great.

That's right. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for being here. So, Anthony, I looked at your website as I do my sleuthing and research. And you have a little bit of history. with a well-known digital classifieds entity. Is that correct?

Am I landing? I didn't want to use the name unless I was correct with that. No, you're right. Yeah, the backstories there. I moved up to San Francisco in like 94, and I was on like these early mailing lists and message boards. And I met my colleague, Craig Newmark there, and we started working together on building websites

It's in 94, almost like pre-browser. This is like just like when Mark and Drewson was coming out with Netscape browser. And we started building the early websites up there. And it was a very, very small community. I mean, I'm telling you, like maybe 20, 30 people that were all kind of doing it. And we, Craig started building a list serve. And he didn't know what to call it. And we were busy.

And I just had, call it Craig's list. We did some markup and kind of end. And like, that's really kind of the origin story of that. It was just a rad. He was rad. Yeah, it was cool. It was good time. You got to put a little stamp on something that's pretty iconic in how people search and buy shit beyond looking in newspapers. That's kind of awesome.

Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. Neville, your background, it looks like a lot of VFX, a lot of gaming, producer development technology. And what's one of the most interesting things that you found at the intersection of VFX and gaming? Because I know you're doing the same thing, right? but doing VFX for like a movie or a television show versus creating certain effects in a gaming environment. What did you notice like in between those two worlds

that was interesting? The Unreal Engine. That was a big game changer, wasn't it? It was a big game changer. It was really a clear point along the trajectory of development of all of the various processes and creative tools in making films and games, where it was a real turning.

point where for a moment you could squint a little bit and be like wow you know we can now do things in real time that that can approach kind of film quality and final pixel and you know i think that's become super evident now but it certainly wasn't you know sort of you know 10 15 years ago kind of when you know an earlier of the unreal engine um so i've been a i've been a big fan of that of that technology But it's also the evolution of how people think about, you know, creation and the use of real-time. And for me personally, it actually, my inspiration started out before getting into film was the computer. Was the ZX81 back when I was 12 years old, you know, in the early 80s on a 1K RAM machine. And for the first time seeing the giant block pixels, you know, moving on the screen with 7.

And it sort of occurred to me that, oh my gosh, you know, like code and software can be used to create visuals and audio. And so that was sort of the starting point. So I've always had a little bit of an eye towards how real-time technology and interactivity can kind of bridge those worlds. And it's an exciting time to be alive. Makes a lot of sense. And if you think about it, like code is actually like code is actually like the DNA to digital life, right? to digital experiences and you have these instructions that create environments that are interactive and the difference in Unreal is now we're now we're able to not just have a broadcast, right?

So when we're watching a movie, we're sitting there and we're watching it and we can just take in this broadcast. But like with Unreal now, there's so many interactive components to it. If I do this, then that happens. Like it's bringing us closer together to these things, isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, when I was at Electronic Arts, we were using Unreal Engine on a game and franchise called Medal of Honor, which was a kind of World War II first person shooter. And I was working on the cinematics part of the game.

So there was a time when you would actually have to transition from the real-time part of the game to a sort of pre-rendered cinematic sequence. And on Medal of Honor, we were really exploring using kind of early versions of, of Unreal, how we can completely blend seamlessly between those two, so that effectively a cinematic becomes indistinguishable from regular gameplay. And that was a lot of fun. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right.

Well, so we thread our episodes together. We like to kind of pass the torch between shows, between disciplines, and that sort of thing. I want to ask you this carryover question from Kura Pika that was with us last week talking about decentralized finance from Factify. And I don't want to let this question take us down too far of an AI rabbit hole, but the question was AI-related. And then I want to circle back into this interactive human experience kind of thing. But his question was, where are we heading in terms of the cross-section between

humanity and AI? He can almost see this as a unified thing. But where do you guys think will be in three years at this convergence of, AI and humanity. We can each take a stamp, I guess. But I will say that three years is a very interesting timeframe, right? Because if you think about where we were three years ago, that's one way you can frame it, right?

The intersection of AI and humanity. Well, three years ago, there was a lot of activity happening in AI as we know it already. Perhaps it wasn't as well known on kind of on a mainstream basis. but there was literally a whole, you know, sort of build-up of algorithm development from the kind of early neural nets and deep learning. But you could already, there was a very active conversation in a certain niche community already about how AGI is going to happen. Not only is it in our lifetime, but it's, you know, relatively soon on a relative basis. And, you know, certainly people who sort of peeked in and were curious enough. Anthony being one of them, we're like, you know what, the cat's out of the bag.

This is emerging. This was three years ago, right? Now, fast forward from today and three years from now, one way I think about it is, well, it's kind of like more of the same, but much more of it, right? And so it's not, there's no quantum leap there. But there is actually another version where in three years there is a quantum leap that is really actually hard to even visualize or imagine what it's. like given, you know, how disruptive some of these capabilities and technologies are. So I'll

pass it over to Aritini here, but it's something we talk about very deeply. And it's a, it's, it's, it is a very deeply human topic. I mean, this is a for the first time, right, as humans, we are, we are really sort of facing not, you know, some alien intelligence landing here that is, you know, more advanced than we are. It's something that is developing right by us, right? That is, clearly has surpassed us in certain dimensions of intelligence measurements, already metrics already, and it's going to keep going. So it's, you know, I think Jim Cameron's, Jane Cameron's sort of, I thought, very astute articulation of how he's thinking about, you know, the evolution and the next three years and the dimensions there is something that we resonate with. But over to you, Anthony.

Yeah, the AI is, you know, the classic AI is old and this new AI, the gen AI is rather new and exciting. And I could see why everyone's sort of very interested in it. But in like, just for me, fast-forting in three years, I think what will, I think where, where I see it is, I think people's mindsets are going to change, right? Like, because like the, the old. Old AI, make sure that every Instagram photo that you want to see, you see, and every route on your GPS gets you there. That's old AI. The new AI is really about generation, and it's been handed to everybody in a sense. And as people start playing with it as just a user or even a developer, the next three years, you're going to see all these, like, novel ideas where people are connecting AI in ways that you've never thought of.

and that will happen across the arts and sciences and business. And it will create a way people think, just like how people started to change the way they think and act when the internet arrived in 94, 95, 96. So I think it for years we'll just see like people, you know, there won't be Googling something. They'll be AIing something and they'll be getting something back. And whether it's, you know, a hallucination or an approximation

or an actual fact, it's just going to change how we are as people. You know what I mean? And it will be weird and interesting and exciting. And I'm, you know, I'm encouraged by it. I'm not afraid of it at all. There you go. I like that. And, you know, to add my two cents into this piece, you know, the history of AI, you know, basically some really smart people back in the 60s thought they figured, thought they would all get together during a summer at Dartmouth and have it all figured out by the end of the summer, right?

And, you know, little did they know, you know, 60 years later, we're literally still trying to, trying to kind of figure it out. What I hope doesn't happen with it. The only thing that I have, like, slight reservation is human nature is like humans are optimization seeking machines, right? And we look for shortcuts to get us to certain things quicker, right? and if we get used to using a shortcut, are we going to leave our ability to critically think and do some of those things that we do so well here, are we going to over time lose that superpower? Yeah.

Have you guys ever thinking about that? Yeah. Oh, yes. For sure. I think the answer is yes, if you look at how much less arithmetic do we do in our heads because of the calculator. Oh, yeah. I mean, extrapolate from there.

Yeah. Yeah, like I'm not a great speller and my spelling's gotten worse as a result of just me being able to type gibberish on the line and being able to go back and sort it out. So it's like I don't strive for like, let me really learn this because I know I'll have a machine come back and like sweep it up. So I think that that, you know, we could argue that that we might be losing that. But we also might be unlocking people that that like there might have been a lot of people that were unable. able to kind of do things that they can now actually do a lot more and we're unlocking them. So again, I'm, I'm not afraid of it. I do think that we'll just shift.

Like, you know, like the, you know, as, you know, like I, and our teacher used to say that the kids these days that I work with said they have like, they have floppy hands. They don't, they don't have the dexterity to draw because they all start using tools like mouses way earlier. So then they kind of get in and draw like really nice. fine art drawing lines. They've lost it, but they didn't do like 10 or 20 years of doing that. They went to a mouse at 10. That's really interesting. We may lose some stuff, but we also may gain stuff. I think we'll gain stuff, Anthony, because in the same way, like, I don't know how to hunt

or farm for my food. I mean, there's a whole bunch of skills, which I clearly don't have, but I spend more, more, you know, my time doing other things, which I've learned and developed along the way. So I think I actually am quite optimistic about the fact that it's still a potentially for leveling up for humanity because we will be able to focus on other things and develop different kinds of skills, which we certainly couldn't have anticipated skills required to navigate the internet, you know, even a hundred years ago. Like there was like, there was no conception of like why you would have certain abilities that you need. Using a mouse a hundred years ago, it's like, what is that? You know, why would you ever need to move your hand in this precise way on a flat surface? But sure enough, it's pretty useful. And that's unlocked a whole bunch of capability for us.

Yeah. All right. So let's land on our aggregate decision that it'll potentially, it'll allow us to explore things and reallocate energy in ways that offload things that we don't need to do and point us into things that we really want to do. and it's up to the human to figure that out. So let's stay in this thread a little bit. So you guys have been in immersive experience, environment, XR design for quite a long time. You're actually celebrating or recently celebrated 10 years with this company Weaver, right? 10 years is huge, man.

I mean, that's a tremendous accomplishment, number one. Number two, 10 years in the technology world, in the same lane of a technology world is equally more incredible, just because of the exponential leaps that happen. I want to unpack the key elements of a truly immersive experience, immersive digital experience. And two questions related to that. Number one, what does the human need to feel for a truly immersive experience? And then what does the tech need to include to enable that feeling?

I'll take a stand with that. I think to me that the core sort of differentiator or quantum leap with immersive tech and head-mounted immersion is really presence, right? The word presence, which has technically been defined as, you know, the sub-12nd latency between updates in your visual system and your perception and movement. And I think that that's a really interesting, I think, very clear threshold. where something very different happens in our brains when you're able to achieve that bar. And 10 years ago, it was right around early 2014 when I got to experience a demo up at Valve

in Seattle, Washington, where they had this, the infamous room demo, where I got to experience true presence for the first time. And it was absolutely life-changing. There is no doubt about it, you know. And it kind of really sort of inspired us as a team and the company to be like, okay, over time, this is going to be a fundamentally new and important modality for how humans and machines are going to interface. And it may take a while, but let's jump in because this is the future and we want to be

part of it and help shape it. But I do think that, you know, to your point specifically about what is the experience, what is that feeling? How do you define presence? What is that quality? And there's a number of ways that we think about it. One of it's the sense of that you've sort of collapsed space between where you are as a perceiving entity and this virtual thing that is being projected.

out there. It really blurs the line between what you would consider real versus not real, right? And that is actually what we believe to be one of the most transportive or transformative aspects of the medium, primarily because it allows you to have, you know, to commune with, with whether it's the natural world or whales swimming by or another human that is not necessarily physically in the same room with you, but you can certainly feel a lot closer. So quick, quick follow up, not to interrupt you. I just wanted to kind of, this, even my brain was headed based on what you're saying. Like, would you say there's kind of a liminality or like this, this idea of almost like a coming

together with the environment that you're in, almost like, I'll use an example. So we were talking about earlier, Anthony, you and I talked about music earlier, right? So when you go to a concert, right, I walk up to, I walk up into a concert. The three of us walk into a concert. We're going in together. We're as individuals, but we're kind of a group, right? There's three of us. But then we go into this concert.

The lights go down and we go from a group of three people to an audience. Is that like what you're talking about, about this presence, about this snap in to the environment? That is one way to describe it. Anthony, I mean, I think I don't know what your perspective is on on what, on what makes immersion. Yeah. Can you guys hear me? Okay? I mean, because my mic kind of freaked out. Yeah, the, I think you do become, like, when you become audience, like you are, you are, you are not you only, right?

Because it's shifted. The perception is shifted, right? And I think that happens. But what's interesting in the sort of the, like, the AR, the VR space, it's like, and I think what we're trying to actually get people to do when there's more than one person is to kind of have that collective viewpoint because in a concert it does shift like you're all hanging lights go down you're darkened so you're you've been put into this other mode and then the focus is the stage right and the activity there which which is interesting because um what we've what we've

sort of moved to is we've wanted to actually create more shared experiences where that doesn't happen Like, right? Because like in a movie theater or in a concert, it's like there are performers performing. And the way the theaters have always been designed is they darken the crowd and they're like, look at the stage and this is where you're at. And I actually think this kind of goes back to the AI question where we're talking about how mindsets change. I think people want to be together. They want to actually have their device with them. They want to see each other and they want to actually participate with each other in real time in a sense. space that's happening around them in real time. It's kind of shifted where they don't want to sit back and like be dark. Now there are times for that. But where we want to, where we're thinking

where these sort of immersiveness comes is like how do you build spaces where you can put people in that immersive state, but have them also be like you said, it's just the three of us and we're all talking and going through it and taking photos and doing stuff. But we're actually in a summer, we're in an immersed space. Whether that's very like a synthetic like we've joined a a sim together, a simulation together, or we've gone somewhere and we've constructed a simulation that you go into and it's surrounding you like with projectors and LED systems. We call those like, we're actually calling those like shared experiences, but they're deeply immersive. Everything's been designed to like allow you to be somewhere else while together.

So that dissociative, not in a bad way, but like you're kind of out and away from you, but you also have this element of individuality while you're in the experience. That's kind of trying to do a couple of things, which is super interesting. Speaking of presence, dare I say, Mark Hilding is here. Oh, I heard audio.

Testing, testing. Hey, there he is. So, 150-odd shows. This has happened once. And is it a coincidence that it happened on the day that Microsoft forced me to update my operating system and reset every permission? on my computer?

I think not. It's wonderful to walk into a conversation and you're talking about presence in virtual worlds. I missed the first 20 minutes, but I think presence has been for a long time the missing ingredient in much of what at least I've experienced in virtual worlds.

There is no presence. It's very disjointed. So it's great to walk into that point of the conversation. That's good. Welcome. So Neville, let's go back to you and let's talk about, So we talked about this idea of presence. We kind of tried to define it a little bit what it means to feel presence, to feel part of something, whether it's an environment or a group of people and maintaining your individuality within a group of people.

What does the tech know-how? What are the systems? What are the stacks that are important to trying to create that kind of presence? Yeah. So I think there is a very clear definition technically. that has been measured, right, neurologically, to achieve that sense of presence, which is this, as I mentioned earlier, this sub-12 millisecond latency between visual and auditory and vestibular updates in the brain, so that as you're moving around, you're seeing things updating

and you have no disconnect there between what you're doing, your embodied perception, and what you're experiencing. So that kind of threshold's been met. And if you're running on modern day advanced headsets, whether it's the META, for example, that threshold has been achieved. So the technical capability to deliver media that achieves a sense of presence

we've had now for 10 years. And you can go out and spend $2.99 today. and buy, you know, the 3S, and it's a wonderful device, and there's a lot of content available there, and the ability to experience presence is there. That said, though, I think, as you said, Mark, it's like a lot of the stuff that is out there is fragmented and doesn't feel like it's delivering on that promise, because it's still very much up to the creator to go through all of these established principles of experience design in order to actually pull together all of the elements and ingredients to create

that sense of presence and have it be delivered. Not purely on a technical basis, but in terms of literally how you design the space, how quickly do you change environments, how do you borrow from all of the principles of IRL and the fact that we're embodied so it takes time to walk from one room to another, right? And so all of these principles influence the degree to which, you know, an experience can kind of deliver that, that sense of presence. And some people have even used the word empathy, where you can empathize with what you're experiencing more when it's designed. We've played a lot with that. You know, I think probably our first and most iconic example of that was the whale encounter, which was a very early VR demo we did.

10 years ago, that was the first to be released on the valve device at the time, which became the HDC Vive, the first edition. And we just had this giant whale swim by, and it gave you an opportunity to look into its eye and have that eye to eye moment. And we had, to this day, people take off their headset and some people are in tears from having that experience. Tears of joy, not tears of sense. There's the empathy thing is huge and and I think we all can agree the world needs to learn how to cultivate that I think a little more on an individual level and in global level and technology can do that it's great there was a producer that that I worked with a few years ago that created this can't remember what it was called maybe it was called the tree or something

anyway it was like a melitza zek yeah yeah we interviewed her she's great okay yeah totally yeah so she created this whole experience as like what it would literally feel like to be a tree, right? And from from growing up to expanding to reaching for some light to being chopped down, like that is that is invoking some empathy, I think. Did you, I went to the X theo, the installation with her when she had it. And you actually, I think as I recall, you stood in the tree. Yeah, I didn't, I never, I never experienced it.

She just told me about it and I was like, that is fascinating. That is fascinating. She had a really great. thinker and creator. How did she broach the aspect of time with the tree? Because being a tree, they're hundreds of years old. And I think a great big part of a tree is just living with the passage of time and how extraordinarily boring we would find that.

How does she come and get a quote over that, Jeremy? You'd have to ask her. That is a deep challenge because what's the fundamental part of being a tree is the average brain. Man, refresh, refresh, you know. Have you guys gone to an old growth forest in like California and you stand next to a tree that's like like literally hundreds and hundreds of years old? You do get like an you do get this like feeling it like geez this is like like this has been here five, six hundred years. Yeah.

It's insane notion. And I'm a I'm a fruit fly that's going to be gone in 30 seconds. Exactly. This tree has seen so much compared to us. Yep. Yep. Well, so as we kind of continue to to. kind of broach this this subject of you know humans in the technology to create experiences

that humans that will resonate with humans in in an immersive way um i got a fun thought experiment i always like to throw these out every episode but if you could short circuit one rule of physics what problem would you use it to solve to make xR everything it could be yeah i well for me it would like it's a it's a it's a kind of a cluster of of physics because you can use a couple it's okay what what what's bothering the what's happening with xr and a r and all that stuff is actually just the just that we have to have a device right so it's like the photon it's the it's the battery it's the energy so like but what i'd love to be able to do is just be able to like get rid of all of that so that it's like at any moment that you you you it's a maybe a maybe

Maybe it's the lightest device. I'm wearing glasses because I have a hard time seeing. But if it's as simple as that where I could just go, like, I want to shift into an alternate reality with whatever physics that that reality wants me to have. But I don't want to be encumbered by battery or weight or anything. I just want it to be like that. Like I just spawn into a new reality. And if we could get there, which I know we have engineers working on,

I really think we unlock, like, then all we're doing is competing creatively on storytelling, on like what alternate reality we want you to enjoy. Do you want to be in an adventure time reality? Do you want to be in an underwater reality? And I think that that just changes the world. And I'll tell you, I actually interviewed the guy who talked about singularity, which is the name. Cursewell? Yeah, I interviewed Kurzweil.

And I actually asked him, I was like, I was like, dude, if we're going to go live 300 years, aren't we going to be completely utterly bored, right? It's going back to the tree thing. And he was like, no, because you'll live all these different alternate reality lives. So you could kind of go, I want to go into like 18th century London or I want to go into like 6th century, you know, Persia and live there for quite a long time. Not like you play that game level for maybe 40 years of your life. And it kind of made sense so that as we're on this gradient of changing all these realities in the current space,

we actually probably have to find ways to actually entertain ourselves for like big chunks of time. Therefore, I think that the getting this, removing the physics of light and weight and battery stuff is going to help us deal with living for maybe. You are saying two or three hundred years, I'll pass it over to everyone else. Ray Kurzweil has been reading E&M Banks and the culture novels, which I think I recommend to Jeremy on a weekly. Every episode. Essentially what the culture do is that. And they use, so they use, I think they use drugs, essentially fabricated drugs

that they use to change their consciousness and they go into these places or they upload. So Jeremy's all about uploading your brain onto computers. They do a lot of that. And they're exactly that. You choose where you want to do ancient Persia under the water in the sky, whatever, you 80 years or 100 years and that's how that's what you do with your time.

Personally, I would never get bored at 300 years, 800 years maybe, 300 years. He's got a lot of stuff he wants to do. Neville, same question to you. It's actually somewhat of a similar answer and that it's really from a physics perspective, right? If it's making the device lighter and more comfortable, I mean, before we get to direct implant

and direct, you know, using drugs or other mechanisms, direct manipulation of the neurochemistry in our brains. I think we're still talking about a physical device that you're augmenting, wearing on your face. I think that that's the trick, right? It's like how do you magically, how can you magically keep solving? And I think, you know, meta in particular and several companies and Apple are heavily investing in making it like or smaller, lighter and still deliver the fidelity in the field of you that we need.

So if we had a magic wand, I would wave that one to accelerate that process. The combination of comfort and price point makes this a lot more accessible and then a lot more exciting for all of us. Well, one of the threads we explore on the show, we did a whole season on quantum and quantum computing. So maybe we can point quantum computers at a way to naturally unlock our, you know, capabilities into the digital realm. Super interesting.

So, Mark, I've been, I've been commandeering this discussion. Where does your head go with this kind of stuff? What questions do you have for these guys? You've been commandeering because I wasn't here. I wasn't present because Vlau's just joining. Yeah. I don't know what I missed at the beginning of the conversation. I came in.

You were speaking about musical experience. I'm very interested in cinema and the cinematic experience today. I mean, what role does the graphics play? Like, how important are those in terms of presence? And what are you doing, if you haven't already spoken about this, about the cinematic experience? How do you, does the cinematic experience need changing? What's wrong with movies?

What's wrong with sitting in the dark and being transported to another world on your own? Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just, it's like, it's a hundred years old, right? It's just like, like, it's been the king of, of communication. but like or or storytelling and it's probably i think it's a phenomenal system to tell stories right um but there's also been gaming has been like playing like this shadow role right and it's like it's been ever growing so i just think that people want to be in the game right they want to be in the simulation so it's not it's not one's better than the other by the way what's interesting is

like we're like in this like podcast format right now which you know 50 years ago would have been called radio right we'd have been on a radio show right and like radio kind of like went away in a way but the actual so the pressure on radio was actually to make a diamond was to make lots of podcasts which has like the so i think what's happening is we're just shifting formats and i think people want more agency in those like actually radio blocked other people from actually having radio shows use they are owned by conglomerates now you guys can have one we can have one i can have one we can all have one and we can all like do these things. So I think gaming

unlocks and simulations unlock more people to make and to create really great stories and let them have a hundred year go at it. So in a hundred years from now, a fellow like you could be like, well, what's wrong with living in a simulation? They wouldn't even be talking about the movies. So I just think it's like

I just think it's like just new levels, new devils. And we always have these new things coming. We have to actually figure them out. And that's what humans like to do is they like to discover and figure things out and that's what we're on what what percentage of people would you say just speaking super generally that uh that want to have agency in an entertainment experience and what

percentage of people just want to have Netflix and chill I mean I think most people want to lean back so let's be honest like I like like I don't want to be the director I want to be actually the viewer and I'm quite happy in it but I also think that when you when you give people the controller and you could give them the ability to be their own hero, they do do it. Like Neville's held a lot of time making games, they've been around a lot of people that have made really great games. There are hundreds of millions of people that actually want to play the game. Yeah, I mean, I think you look at this various consumer metrics, right, for consumption of linear media versus gaming. I mean, from a dollar spent perspective,

clearly there's and time spent perspective. You have a larger percentage of population now that are inside of agency-based, you know, games, whether it's worlds like Fortnite and others. And so, but I don't think that in any way replaces the option that any human has to lean back and watch something. You know, Anthony and I, just two days ago, where in Vegas we went to see the sphere. And we were very happy to be sitting in a giant, dark, spherical room having with extraordinary screen-based experience. What was the show?

What did you see? It was Adam Aronofsky's movie. Oh, wow. Which was, you know, beautiful imagery of nature. And it absolutely works. It's one of the most transformative and wonderful experiences I've had in a very long time. I don't think any of that goes away. I mean, one of my favorite things to do using my Applevision Pro is to watch movies.

It's an incredibly comfortable, amazing viewing device. But certainly when I talk to my 13-year-old nephews, they're far more excited about being in rec room and Fortnite than they are watching any movie. One note on, I think, what Mark has said is still. what is supreme as story, right? It's like, like, why am I here? What am I doing? Like, why do I care? That, like, if you drop anyone into something where it's like, you know, none of those things are sort of immediately answered in a way, it will suck, whether it's a game or a film or a book or a magazine

or anything. And so I think that what's magical about, I think, humans right now is, is we want to tell stories. We have been telling stories. They're very important artifact of humanity. And our tool set is increasing and the speed in which we can create is increasing and it's giving people that might not have the ability to tell stories as well as others there's new tools to allow them to unlock that right and that is really i think the good story here the good news is that we're unlocking more and more people to tell more stories more broadly now there's a bad side of that because they can tell negative stories and get people hyped up on negative stories but nevertheless i think that the um the the way we are floating in our space right now is we are storytelling machines and story consuming machines.

I think that's really a point, your point. To your question, Jamie, I'll just try to find out if Bandersnatch is the most watched Black Mirror episode. I can't find quickly the statistics for that, but it's one of the episodes that everybody remembers. And that's, you know, it's choose your own ending or choose your own part. It's choose your own Black Mirror episode. And maybe that's it.

We all are storytellers. We're born. We survived. We create. We evolved via a story. Maybe it's in us somewhere. But how we want those stories to progress, how we... Everyone has a different ending, don't they?

You watch your films. I didn't like the ending. I liked the ending. Oh, they should have done this. They should have done that. They should have done the other. And maybe that kind of immersive, choose your own story. Like, everyone agrees, okay, the hero's journey.

But at some point, okay, They don't go this way. They go that way. I want this to happen instead. And maybe that's the gamification that you speak of. When you're playing a game, you have much more freedom and choice of not the actual story, but maybe direction of the story. There's something in that. First of all, I still can't unsee the Blackmail episode with the Prime Minister and the pig.

Oh, God. That's the third. You said that. I'm like, oh, it just hit me again. And I just can't. It's very horrible. It was diabolical, man. So as someone who lives in English, England, it was very, very accurate.

There you go. Fair enough. So, Anthony, we were talking earlier about story and how story-consuming machines and how we actually come together through stories. And we have a book club. I'm not sure if you guys are aware, but we're currently reading Harare's Nexus right now. Nexus talks about it. We basically break it down chapter by chapter.

But we're going through this idea of like the big, movements aren't one-to-one relationships with the people in the head of the movement. It's one-to-one relationships with the story behind it. And we're so susceptible to stories, which is dangerous in and of itself, too. Yeah. Yeah, this, all right, so let's, let's tie this back a little bit into the world of someone that runs a company, someone that runs a brand that is adjacent, is hearing about these technologies. And over the course of the last two years, three years, they've had consultants, agencies, basically say, you have to build a game.

You have to build a world. You need to buy land in this digital environment. Like we, you know, you got to do it. You got to do it. The one missing link and a lot of that, to your point, Anthony, was story, right? There was no reason to be in these worlds and they were all dead and nothing was happening. So if you were talking to a brand or a head of audience for a certain company, what would you tell them today?

that is important to consider as they tiptoe into this, because they're going to have to be in these worlds eventually. Like, what advice would you give them? Yeah, I mean, I spent so much time doing that and building gores for brands. But, I mean, yeah, I'll be quick so NEP can jump in. I mean, I think you said at the top, I feel like brands need to be frequent and consistent.

And I think you pick your channels, right? You pick your space. And if you if you and it's okay to fail, right? It's okay to like, hey, we really want to be, you really want to do this and it's like, it's not working, right? It's like, okay, well, that's maybe not the channel for you because your audience isn't there or they don't want you there, right? But if I was talking to like, I have this like, I like donuts. You guys can't see me, but I probably beaten enough donuts where I show. But I don't I do a company like Dunkin Donuts, which is a U.S. brand of donut.

They're such an iconic brand. they could show up in like a fortnight world where they could have like a whole donut world where they could actually really embrace kids fun happiness donut eating donut battles etc etc and i would encourage a brand like that to like embrace that and be there and really sort of think like they have to entertain not that they're thinking like they have to advertise right because advertising is interruption generally and entertaining is actually like you're you're placing a deposit you're not doing a withdrawal. And so what we have to encourage brands to think, which is really, really hard, and most of

them can't and won't, and maybe they shouldn't. But they have to think as a publisher or as an entertainer. And I think the very best do, and we all point back to Red Bull what they do because they do so well. Because their origin story with that DNA was that, like, they're just going to do outlandish things that are entertaining. And not all brands can do that. So I would continue to tell them that and I'd say you have to be brave and you can't be so scared of everything and go for it.

I'll throw it over to net what he thinks. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's numerous brands that have successfully found their way into Fortnite and Roblox. And I think that what clearly works is if there's an audience. that clearly has a proclivity to hanging out in Roblox worlds and they're talking to each other and playing and they're having fun, you essentially make sure that you just allow your audience to do exactly that. First and foremost, they're in Roblox, not to interact with the Gucci bag. They're there to interact with each other, have fun. They're doing what they're already doing. It's a behavior they're doing every day and more for more and more hours every day. and you just carefully layer in.

If there's some agency that affords you to go pick up a bag somewhere, prime opportunity for that to be a Gucci bag. So, you know, I think if you actually sort of analyze which executions work and which don't, there's some clear patterns there, which ultimately really are like we've been talking about story. It's understanding what is the story that's being played out. It doesn't have to be like a linear script. The story could be, here's a story about a bunch of kids who are really, having fun, jumping on trampolines, and that's the story. They're talking to each other

about whatever it is they're talking about while they're jumping on trampolines. How do you embrace that story and layer in the sprinkling your brand? And that's been fun, and it's a really fun process. And we love doing that at Weaver, and we love to collaborate with, whether it's an IP owner or a brand owner, to see where the audience is currently engaged and build on that. We did that with Harry Potter, right? They were an iconic book, and then they became a movie. But we were, we explicitly told, you know,

J.K. Rawlings' team in Warner Brothers, it's like, I think that the magic would be to give the wish for film of a kid to actually cruise, you know, Hogwarts, and just do that and also go on a story adventure. And we were successfully able to do that. And they actually partnered with them. us and we made that. Like, we directed that. We wrote the story, we directed it, and we put it inside the Harry Potter store in New York, and kids went through it. And they're mind-blown

because we were able to kind of do all the things we talked about. We were able to construct the world at life size. We were able to kind of give them the opportunity to go in. There was enough wander time where they had their own story, but we knew that we actually had to drive a story because there's a certain time limit of time they needed to be in there. We're able to kind of do that. And that worked for that brand because the brand was a story. Right? And that story is really owned by the audience in a way. But and so that was a lot simpler, but people that don't like that are just a brand like a donut brand, it's like, well, what is our story? You know what I mean? They have to help develop it. And so we think we love doing that.

Like, I mean, that's just like that's the, that, you know, you're, you're, you're all about curiosity. Like, we like to actually unravel that. And we're very curious about how to tell story for brands. This is a good question. Is it, is it deeper access to something? that someone really loves? Like if someone's a big Harry Potter fan, they've read the books, they've watched the movies,

is this, are you providing a key to deeper access, maybe even more meaningful access? With our daughter, my daughter would, I'm not going to tell her about this Harry Potter, a world you did, because she'd be absolutely mind-blown by it, and she would go to the ends of the world to experience something

like that, and many people for many different experiences would do the same. you know like it is deeper access the the thing that we learned when we were doing the harry potter thing was so we had a we had a constraint of of space and time right so like we were in the store we had really we had two hidden spaces so you could fly a broom and go on a story about flying over london and battle death theaters it's about eight minutes long and then we had about 12 minute story in another part of the store so six of your friends could go in and do this.

We learned, like, we had to actually move them through an 11-minute story. But to your daughter's point, what we happened is as soon as you kind of got your headset on and you saw your six friends, your avatar was in your house colors, and immediately they wanted to just, like,

hang out with each other. But we didn't have enough time. But, like, our pitch to Warner Brothers was like, we need to give the audience. They already know the brand so well that they just wanted to, wander around and like unlocked their own story like they wanted to be a hair so we actually made you a harry potter student in hoggwar so it's like kind of like drop the mic right there right but we

actually kind of had a story for them so if we had to do it again we'd be actually like introduce the space and say you know like do you want to do you want to go on this story in like in story fiction do you want to go on the story or do you just want to wander around with your friends. But, but that's the direction we want to go into. And we are actually now able to do that in a space where we could put a hundred people in the bay, all wandering around. Wow. And just, just so I can decide, okay, same idea, different genre, reservoir dogs, one of my favorite films. So could, how far are we off me going to a place to watch reservoir dogs 10 where you're inside the set, where you come?

where you can feel as if you're walking around the movie set as it is being projected out. So in reservoir dog, you can be in the car when he's been taken back or when they do the diamond heights. You can be in different points and locations as that story is unfolding. Is that kind of way? I mean, well. Robert's there already. Yeah.

Yeah. It's two things. It's like, since you love reservoir dogs, we could make a synthetic version of it. you would immediately probably see that this is synthetic versus like actually, you know, um, RGB colors. You know what I mean? Um, we, we've, we've,

so two things. We think actually, we'd love to do that, by the way. Um, the, we made a, we made a 10 series, um, video series, which was, so it doesn't, it doesn't give you the same depth perception or presence that like, you know, three dimensional unreal engines do. But we gave you this. ability to shift POVs. So you had like, if you were in a car, the car scene, you could just say, I want to be in a back seat. That's going to be my POV. But if you found out someone was in the

trunk, we would actually allow you to like change the position of the story to the trunk. But we'd always have this universal timeline. So we've been exploring like how to how to add those capabilities. But I feel like the best stories are, are ones that you are, that you're in a simulation. So like you're not like video video doesn't allow you to change POVs. It locks you in. So I think our our mission is to kind of create the highest fidelity stories where you have a lot of, a lot of agency of moving yourself in it and seeing it. And if it's if the story is an anime story, then the fidelity is the best anime.

If it's Harry Potter, it gives you the closest proximity of Harry Potter. and you could be a witness or you could be actually a player. And I think that those are really cool modes because that actually gives you the place where if you just want to lean back and just watch, or if you want to actually take a role, an active role in the story. Yeah, it's going to be a tricky balance trying to figure out how much mechanics you want to put in there to drive people through something very directed versus. the time spent just exploring an environment. And it's got to depend on audience. It's got to depend on the IP, the content, all of that.

That's a tricky mission, guys. That's not easy. We could spend hours just on that one topic, the tricky mission of the balance of linear narrative versus agency and all of the nuance. It's a fascinating, wonderful topic to explore. It's like a mix of Westworld and the Truman Show and then this immersive experience or different, yeah, choose your own.

I love it. Well, for those of you just popping in, we're talking to some amazing veterans of immersive storytelling with a company called Weaver. They've been at this Weaver's been at it for 10 years. These two gentlemen far longer than 10 years. But I would encourage you to visit their website, which we'll post and check out and send some links out to for those interested to dip in their toe into some. of this stuff. These guys really, you know, know what they're doing. They got the experience.

Talk to, all right, so we're at the point. I'd love to continue this conversation for quite a long time. I want to be sure, like my grandfather always said, to land the damn plane at some point. What would be, so this, I explained the rules of the carryover question. It can be about anything. So this is the idea to leave a question for our next guest. Mark, do you want to give any insight into who our next guest is or do we want to leave it open? This is the last show of the season. So the next show will be in the new year. I believe my memory is not that good.

But I think it's a quantum episode, but it doesn't really matter. Quantum computing? I think so. That's a mind-boggling topic too. Bonham is one of my favorite wormholes these days. Yeah. Yeah, well, I guess my question would be,

how is quantum computing going to change, you know, how we perceive that tree? Is it going to allow us to really go back in time or somehow really explore or change our perception of what time is and what the passage of time for a tree is? I'm really, really interested in that because the little bit of stuff I've read is just mind-building. I love that. That's a great question. And I could riff on that for a minute, but I'm not going to. I'll save that for the next episode. Anthony, what about you? What would be your question?

Yeah, my question is a little more back to the AI. What, like, will future creators accept, well, actually, will current creators that have used the tools to create accept new creators that use AI to create masterpieces? Ooh, that's a great question. That's a great question. So will new artists be looked upon in the same light that used AI to create their art as artists who did in the past? Wow.

Yeah. Yep. I love it. Mark, we should do just a show on that question. That could be a great show. So Mark, you kind of walked in, made a conversation. Any thoughts? Any takeaways from you on this discussion?

Yeah. my takeaway is to go back and listen to the first 20 minutes of the show and see what I missed. Virtually. You know, I love cinema. I love story. I love technology and combining those three into something more immersed. It's something that takes us to the culture of the Ian M Banks novels, which I love so much.

I just love that kind of the small steps we're taking. And I'm also interested in the whale bit. I missed the whale story. So I'm going to go back and look at that. Awesome. Awesome. Well, great. This has been a wonderful discussion, guys.

Thanks. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll post a bunch of information to Weaver where everyone can check out your backgrounds, your work, and hopefully connect with you if they have some questions. We also have a book club. We mentioned this book club. We're reading Nexus right now, which is very pertinent to what we're, what we talked about today.

story kind of controlling how people come together and do things, right or wrong, is largely driven on story. So we're unpacking another chapter tomorrow, live at 10, no, live at 11, Eastern. And it's all about witches and witchcraft and what happens when you tell the wrong story and people buy into that story and you end up murdering innocent people as a result. How about that? How about that for a log line? All right, guys. So more on us, thinking on paper. like, subscribe, all that fun stuff. And thanks again to our sponsor, Album Dig, speaking of this immersive experiences,

these guys create digital environments that are houses inspired by your favorite records. It lets you step into the music. Check them out, www.w.w.bubdigs.com. Until next time, be curious. Stay disruptive. Do they do Electric Merit, Ladyland? They have done Hendricks.

They did Bold as Love, I think. Okay. Keep thinking on paper. Take it easy, guys. See you next night. Bye-bye.