Last week I did the first part of a big post-GDC rant on games and mass media and copyright and all that stuff, and while I wanted to follow up on it before now, I was plagued with some network connectivity problems and just general hectic-ness at work. But anyway, the basic point I was trying to make with the first part of the post was that most traditional forms of mass media (TV / Books / Radio / Films) are designed to be “consumed” passively by the audience. They offer no opportunity for direct interaction, and the cost of distribution has usually been high enough to limit the viability of self-publishing.
But this has not always been the case. “Mass media” itself is a relatively new concept, and for thousands of years before the advent of radio, television and audio / video recording, the only way that most people got to experience music, theater and similar forms of culture and entertainment was by making it themselves, or by seeing a performance in person. Even as recently as one hundred years ago, making music was not something that a “rock star” did; it was something that *you* did, along with your friends and family.
Of course, not everyone was a Mozart or Michaelangelo when it came to musical & artistic talent, but since the odds of a live performance by Amadeus himself were pretty slim (outside of Vienna, anyway) most people just had to make do with what they could muster up by themselves. The results might not always have been stunning, but that was beside the point. People sought reward and enjoyment in simply making music, telling stories, dancing or etc., and the objective “quality” of their performance was mostly a non-issue.
And so how did we get from art & music being something that everyone made at home (for free!) to something that people were willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually to experience? Well at first, the economics of mass media were pretty inflexible. Owning a microphone in the 1920’s or a film camera in the 1940’s was a pretty expensive proposition, not to mention the even greater costs associated with duplicating and distributing film and recorded audio. The only people who could afford to do this kind of thing were film studios, record labels and so on, and for them, the payoff on the initial investment was huge!
Since it was now possible to record and duplicate performances, the economics of entertainment were irreversibly changed. A single recorded performance could be seen and heard by millions, and the best part was (for the label & studio owners) you only had to pay the performers once! Every movie ticket and phonograph record sold was pure profit for these guys, and they were understandably pretty pleased about the situation. Of course, at this stage of the game, it’s hard to find fault with the one-sided way that the media business was being run, since with the cost of media production and distribution so high, the studios were the only ones capable of doing it. Furthermore, while art & music were still very much thought of as “something that everyone did” at this point, the process of actually recording music or making a film was still pretty technical and out of reach for amateurs.
And so things proceeded for a couple of decades. Film and recorded music became more and more popular, and while they didn’t replace the idea of “Do it Yourself” entertainment completely, they certainly changed the way in which people thought about singing, dancing, storytelling and all that. With the advent of radio and television broadcasting, it became even cheaper to distribute music and films. At the same time, the equipment needed to create audio and video recordings was quickly getting cheaper. For the folks who had already gotten rich in the entertainment business, this was a serious problem. More on this tomorrow! (Or the next day, or next Saturday… but hopefully, *probably* tomorrow! =)