The Banana Peel Project

I just love it when stuff like this happens. Production company Endemol, the creator of the popular reality TV shows Big Brother, Fear Factor, Deal Or No Deal, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is about to discover that mixing media is like mixing metaphors: to a novice it seems creative and daring, but it always ends up being very confusing and a little embarrassing.

In today’s press release (caution: pdf) , Endemol announced that they have begun a “creative partnership” with video game giant Electronic Arts (EA) to develop Virtual Me, “a new digital entertainment concept that bridges the divide between traditional TV and videogames.” EA, the creator of popular games for every major platform from arcade to Xbox including the popular reality game The Sims, will create an online digital world (much like Second Life) in which fans of Big Brother and other Endemol shows will be able to create cutting-edge avatars and participate in their very own online version of the shows. Frank Caron at Ars Technica also has a good (albeit short) piece on the Endemol/EA deal.

Judging by the press release, it’s unclear whether Endemol’s move is supposed to make a lot of money or is simply an attempt to save their industry from the unflagging advance of participatory media like the Internet. My guess is that it’s the latter.

Peter Bazalgette, Endemol’s Chief Creative Officer, writes in the press release that, “We’re told that people are starting to spend more time online than they are watching TV…Our opportunity with Electronic Arts is to develop ideas that fully embrace the way people are consuming entertainment today.”

Yeah. He’s right. People are spending more time online than they are watching TV. But Bazalgette’s very choice of words makes it clear that he hasn’t the foggiest idea how people engage with entertainment media. Digital entertainment from video games to Web browsing to TiVo is not something that is consumed. You don’t just sit there and let its soothing waves of entertainment wash over you. All media in the digital age are active, participatory, and engaging.

Now, reality TV is much more engaging than the television drama for a lot of reasons. The uncertain outcomes, the knowledge that hundreds of other people are watching at the same time, the “real” protagonists, and the voyeuristic aspects of reality TV all result in greater emotional and social participation. Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, always has more to say about this in his blog.

Nevertheless, reality TV is still TV. With the (questionable) exception of American Idol, fans and viewers cannot, try as they might, affect the outcome. You are still fundamentally just watching a show. Games, on the other hand, are wholly participatory. Online worlds like the terrifyingly popular (at least for media scholars) Second Life and World of Warcraft are so engaging that often the line between real life and the game world is blurred.

Television and video games are fundamentally different media. Trying to match content between the two media, at least in the case of reality TV, is an exercise in futility because some of the aspects of reality TV that make it so engaging cannot be carried over into more participatory media. Big Brother as a game will cease to be voyeuristic (since you’re the one playing the game), it will cease to be massively social (since only a limited number can participate in any one game), and its temporal unity will be undercut by players constantly signing on and signing off.

Online worlds in which you can look like yourself (or how you want to look), do what you want, and make new friends are fascinating and, in some ways, may represent the future of virtuality. But the content of the new medium will have to be organic and user-created, not fabricated by content producers, if it is going to engage people.

[the banana peel project]