Content Creation 2.0

Last summer I received an email from Matt Zitzman, the CEO of Kamcord. He wanted to meetup at Unite but I wasn't attending. After a few emails I realized how cool Kamcord was and I jumped at the opportunity to utilize it in c.AR, which took things to a whole new level. After talking to Matt a few more times he recommended using Kamcord with Airspin. This ended up being a great idea, netting 4 million recordings and some 15,000 social media shares.

During this time I mentioned to Matt that I'd like the ability to save the videos locally so I could do some editing and spice them up. Especially with c.AR, things were pretty limited and it was hard to get a perfect recording without some ability to edit and append videos together. Furthermore it was apparent to me that most of the content created with Kamcord was, for lack of a better term, junk. It wasn't Kamcord's fault, it's just that no game had been designed to take advantage of video recording.

I knew right away that we were on the dawn of a new age. Playing video games had become a content creation process and it was time to start designing every game to be as fun to watch as it was to play. Apparently, Nintendo realized this as well. While plenty of people have been watching Twitch streams as well as EveryPlay and Kamcord videos; I think it's safe to say that most pale in comparison with the recent Luigi death stare videos.

At Midnight Status we've been working on some solutions to this issue, that if executed with gameplay correctly could yield some truly compelling double content. The first is our 3D Rendered Video Chat solution. Most gameplay videos are pretty devoid of personality, expression, or emotion. The Luigi death stare is a big step forward, but imagine how much more powerful live people would be in the same crazy situations we usually find during play. There's a new art of improvisation just waiting to be exploited here.

Of course, the current recording solutions still won't let you edit and append video content on the fly, or store it locally. So even with live improvisation, your double content plan could be ruined. That's why Midnight Status has acquired Screen Recorder. Currently, this technology only functions on iOS but the core will be expanded to go multiplatform in the future.

Every so often something new refreshes the perspective of the gaming industry. Designs change, monetization methods change, and we change.  That's what makes the whole process so exciting. Today is a new day, are you rolling Content Creation 2.0 into the design of your game?

@jeremyalessi