Exploration #113

Hate Longscrolling? Jump Around!

• If You Click Only One…

• Things to Think About…

• Things to Know About…

• And finally…

Hi all. This week we’ve got a burst of generative video announcements, weak signals hinting at the reawakening of the metaverse, and an AI image competition scuppered by some actual photography. But first…

Using AI to Do the Right Thing

I’ve got one last plug for the next edition of the Public Media Innovators 3rd Thursday Webinars. Our next session is tomorrow, June 20, at 1pET/10aPT and is titled “Integrating AI with DEI in Public Media: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunities”. Join us and learn how to spot biases in AI tools and implement strategies to combat these biases effectively. Discover practical approaches to ensure that policies and AI use promote equity and inclusivity in your projects and workplace, helping to create a more diverse and fair media landscape. Whether you are a strategist or a content creator, this session will equip you with the knowledge and tools to critically evaluate and enhance the DEI aspects of your AI-driven initiatives. Based on the registrations, this is shaping up to be one of our more popular webinars to-date. You can register for the webinar here.

What Have You Gotten Us Into? 

Last week I talked about the ability to use games for good. This week, I want to offer up a little industry context. Most of us have some degree of intuitive feel for TV and/or radio, but gaming is a different beast. This summary and assessment is courtesy of Jacob Schwitzer, a game producer/developer on the Nebraska Public Media Labs team. Earlier this year, Jacob had broken out some key themes from an annual state-of-the-industry report for our team, and I asked him to work up a version of that for you. The section header title is mine, but the words below are Jacob’s (and the stats he cites are current as of 6/17/24).

Earlier this year, the Game Developers Conference released its 12th annual State of the Game Industry report, which collected the perspectives of 3000+ game developers from across the world. Among other issues, this year the report tackles gender and racial diversity, the implementation of generative AI in the workplace, and the rise in layoffs in the industry. As a video game producer at Nebraska Public Media, I will provide context for this year’s headlines and offer some considerations for those in Public Media who are looking to join the games space.

Demographics

Much of the industry continues to be Caucasian (65%) and Male (69%). This has remained consistent with data over the last two years. With that, there has been a rise in DEI efforts at studios, with mixed results. The perceived success of DEI policies has dropped from 96% in 2023 to 90% in 2024. It should be noted that only 78% of respondents reported DEI initiatives in 2023, which itself was up from 74% in 2021, so this drop may be in part a result of a continuing trend of studios starting those efforts. As for the age of developers, Millennials make up the majority of the industry, with 68% of respondents falling between the ages of 25-44. This is the first year that GDC has asked for the age of developers, so this information may be used in the future to determine if there are trends in perspectives across age groups.

Tech Trends

The report highlights a rise in accessible feature implementation over the last year, jumping from 39% to 48%. Closed captioning, colorblind mode, and control remapping are becoming standard for gaming, but there is an opportunity here for public media to explore additional innovations in that realm, like the work being done over at PBS Kids with ASL captioning. Looking at emerging technologies, Blockchain and NFT implementation dropped from 2022 to 2023 (28% to 23%).

Generative AI, on the other hand, saw a lot of interest. Forty nine percent of respondents reported that gAI was being used at their company, with 33% saying that they themselves are using it. The majority of users are those in non-developmental roles, such as Business and Finance (44%), Community/Marketing/PR (41%), and Production and Team Management (33%). Programmers and Artists are using the technology as well, at 25% and 16% respectively. Users of gAI have gAI assist in their work and not completely overtake the creative process. Four-fifths (80%) of all respondents are concerned with the ethics surrounding gAI, with many worried about potential layoffs, copyright infringement, and issues of creator consent with the development of gAI tools.

Downsizing

Over-hiring during the pandemic, studio mergers, and rising costs of AAA game development led one-third of respondents to report having been impacted by layoffs within the last year - a trend that has been occurring over the last three years. An estimated 8,500 workers were laid off in 2022, 10,500 in 2023, and 10,800 to-date in 2024. As the game industry is now returning to pre-pandemic revenue projections, plateauing around $183 billion for the last two years, studios are now cutting costs. This has resulted in shuttering studios, layoffs, and canceling productions.

Opportunities for Public Media

First, over-hiring, studio mergers, and rising costs are mostly issues that larger studios are facing. Public media stations can avoid those issues by prioritizing the creation of smaller development teams focusing on smaller games and collaborating with other stations that have invested resources into the games space. Stations can also quickly build their institutional knowledge base by accessing the pool of talented game developers suddenly looking for work. After finding your footing, you can begin sustainably scaling your team and look at making bigger games.

Next, the game industry is very male-dominant and has historically created many games with the perspective of majority culture in mind. Public media has an opportunity to enter this space and help facilitate this change, just as stations have done over the years in radio and TV. This starts by creating a team that celebrates inclusivity and makes games that immerse players in different perspectives. By telling stories and creating experiences that express a diversity of perspectives, stations can create games that connect with more players beyond the majority culture. Additionally, by employing accessibility features, stations can create games for players of all abilities and ensure that these stories and experiences are accessible to everyone.

As you begin to develop your team, you may find yourself not knowing what platform to release your game on or which game engine to develop in. There are many platform options, but for stations beginning to explore game production, I would recommend developing for PC, Web, or mobile devices (interest in iOS and Android is at 19% each). Depending on your intended audience, those are the easiest to start developing for and only require purchasing your target hardware (game consoles require entering an agreement with the publisher and purchasing a development kit). In terms of game engine selection, respondents report using Unity (33%) and Unreal Engine (33%) to develop their games. Each engine has its own special features, with Unreal prioritizing visual scripting and high-fidelity 3D graphics and Unity allowing a range of graphical pipelines and being one of the few engines with web game publishing, an important feature for us at Nebraska Public Media. There are other options beyond those as well, such as Godot, a free and open-source game engine.

You may feel a little hesitant about investing resources into game development right now. I would make the case for the opposite; this is the best time to begin experimenting with video game creation. By analyzing the successes and failures the industry is currently facing, we can use this report as a guideline for how to best approach entering this arena and use video games to help us reach a wider audience.

Okay, on to the links…

If You Click Only One…

How KQED is enriching its ‘Forum’ archive with generative AI (Lowell Robinson - Current) - Lowell provides a thoughtful explanation into not only how KQED went about staging their experiments, but also why. There’s a lot to learn here if you are thinking about how your organization should be experimenting with generative AI.

Things to Think About…

Your town’s online group matters more than you think (Eli Pariser - New_ Public) - Pariser, who coined the term "The Filter Bubble" back in 2011, co-founded Upworthy, and has a long history with MoveOn.org, is back with a new endeavor that seems worth tracking. Frankly, I can't read this and not see "metaverse". They aren't saying it explicitly, but I believe what they want to accomplish intersects with initiatives like this (and missions like ours) at some point in the future.

Countering Google’s AI Summaries: A Survival Guide For News Organizations (Jon Accarrino - TV News Check) - H/t to Liz Maestri at PMVG for this one. At this point, for all their false starts, it seems evident that AI will be baked into search sooner or later. But this key line should provide a bit of a balm: "The news-based publishers that move beyond generic utility news to become essential local community resources and destinations, will likely be in the best position to thrive."
—Accarrino wrote a companion piece that's also worth perusing. If you know the basics of good SEO, these tips will have a familiar resonance, but they are good to read, all the same: Surviving Google’s AI Overviews: Expert Strategies For News-Based Publishers

Is NotebookLM—Google’s Research Assistant—the Ultimate Tool for Thought? (Dan Shipper - Every) - I've been a fan of Steven Berlin Johnson's work for more than 20 years. His book, Everything Bad is Good for You reshaped my understanding of media at a critical point in my career, and, of course, 10 years ago he had his PBS series on the history of innovation, How We Got to Now. Among other things, he now works for Google. But as much as this piece is thinly veiled content marketing for Google, it’s also a "steal this idea" approach to summarizing a podcast episode, and it gives you a great look at how a creative thinker and storyteller, Johnson, uses AI to help excel in a competitive field.
—Here's the YouTube link for the conversation where Johnson also screen shares his process.
—And for a different take on writing with AI, Daniel Nest's The Skeptical Writer's Guide to AI is also a worth a read.

Things to Know About…

Top 10 Generative AI Models Mimic Russian Disinformation Claims A Third of the Time, Citing Moscow-Created Fake Local News Sites as Authoritative Sources (McKenzie Sadeghi - NewsGuard) - I mean, this makes a certain amount of sense. Garbage in, garbage out. And when you consider the NewsGuard report from June 11 that the number of pink slime websites has now surpassed the number of legitimate news websites, the problem starts to take on epic proportions.

Luma AI debuts ‘Dream Machine’ for realistic video generation, heating up AI media race (Michael Nuñez - VentureBeat) - While the world waits for OpenAI’s Sora to come down off its mountain top, other companies are continuing to iterate on claims they staked last year. Luma is among the latest to turn heads, not least because they plan to offer editing tools as part of their feature set.
—See Luma’s Dream Machine here.
—And then, sometimes you have to take a step back and just admire the self-reflexive nature of internet culture: People are using Luma Dream Machine to animate memes — here's 5 of the best examples (Alyse Stanley)

Runway unveils Gen-3 — AI video just took a big leap forward (Ryan Morrison - Tom's Guide) - Not to be left behind (see above) generative video tool Runway (the OG of generative video, in fact) has started previewing clips from its Sora competitor. Like Luma, Runway will offer editing tools built into its new version. We all need to start thinking and talking about the guardrails around using generative video tools. This technology will be in our hands and will be usable for digital video, if not broadcast, very soon.
—See Runway’s Gen-3 demo here.

Google DeepMind’s new AI tool uses video pixels and text prompts to generate soundtracks (Emma Roth - The Verge) - Over a Google the beat goes on. Except in this case the beat is created by video pixels and text prompts.
—See also, Generating audio for video from Google's Generative Media Team

Apple isn’t paying OpenAI for ChatGPT integration into OSes (Benj Edwards - ArsTechnica) - last week I alluded to Apple shelling out handsomely to play catch-up to Microsoft and Google. So, I'm including this tidbit as much as a correction as anything else.

CFPB Report Targets Games and Virtual Worlds – What Blockchain Game and Metaverse Companies Need to Know (James G. Gatto & Maxwell Earp-Thomas - National Law Review) - This week's "boring but important" entry is yet another sign that web3/metaverse/next-gen internet is a dragon stirring in its hibernation. But attention from the CFPB is also a sign of the power and import video games have in society as well.

Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive will capture Apple Vision Pro content with two 8K image sensors (Andy Stout - RedShark News) - This week we got two product announcements that could begin to open up the world of spatial 180-video. Personally, I still don't see how 180-video is better than 360-video, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. If someone has a good argument out there, I’d love to hear it.
—Here is the second announcement, courtesy of Maari Innes: Canon expands VR Shooting with new EOS VR System DUAL FISHEYE Lens. This will be Canon’s second dual fisheye lens. The other, released in 2021, is a more professional build and primarily intended for its R5 prosumer camera bodies.

Why the Vision Pro is still no match for your computer (Janko Roettgers - FastCompany) - I very much appreciated this reality check from Roettgers. I think thinking about the Vision Pro as a replacement for any other type of device ignores our capacity to come up with - or parse out - new use cases for our devices over time. The potential of spatial video, see above, shouldn't be discounted either.

VRChat Severs 30% Of Team: "We Need More Time And Runway To Execute" (Ian Hamilton - UploadVR) - VRChat is a rich (and sometimes NSFW) collection of subcultures that has endured after metaverse competitors like AltSpace and Mozilla Hubs failed to attract a real audience. Of note here is the messaging that these layoffs help facilitate a 5-year plan for the company. In this age of AI, that is like a lifetime, but it's worth noting that even if you aren't hearing about the metaverse every week, companies are planning long term for its return.

And finally…

Real photo wins AI photography award in classic 'man bites dog' moment (Maari Innes - RedSharkNews) - And finally, it was bound to happen at some point. Photography FTW!

Have a creative, productive week!