Machinima, Software GUI and the Aspirational User
I have of late been examining a range of real-time 3D animation systems for Machinima and pre-visualization. Recently this has focused on Antics and a full review will be appearing shortly on DMN sites and here on the basin. But in looking at Antics I was prompted to reflect upon another such machinima software system that I was beta-testing last year; Moviestorm, a new system in beta from ShortFuze. Antics and Moviestorm have the same aims, the same impetus. In terms of features, aside form the fact that Antics is older and by virtue more developed, the feature set is remarkably similar. But in spite of this the two are very, very different in conceptual approach and the paradigm they present to users.
The distinction between the two goes to the heart of something much deeper than a laundry list of capabilities or the one-ups-manship of software competition. The distinction points towards ideas of software 'language', the desires of users and the power of perceptions.
The interface of Moviestorm has a very appealing look and feel about it. Spartan and lacking in detail in places but that's obliviously going to fill out in development. But it is an interface that distinctly plays against all the traditional and established 'windows' paradigm language. Of itself this isn't necessarily a problem depending on the nature of the user group intended for the application.
For any software developer the central question to ask is the obvious - Who the app is for? But also, what is often neglected, is to also ask Who do those users want to be? And how do they see themselves?
Lets say for example that a key target market is 15-25 years old gamers who have an interest in movies; and movie enthusiasts with a bent for computers and games. That in particular both these groups are not professional movie makers or digital media producers. In this simple context a non-standard interface such as Moviestorm that is very accessible, very simple, even best described as almost 'cartoony', could function very well. A look and feel that is not like typical software, and which doesn't feel like a complex production tool, might have a certain cache in bringing new and inexperienced users to Moviestorm. Theres a strong potential for the tool to be seen as fun and funky. Laid-back. A piece of cake to use.
BUT... (and I think its a very big but...) This doesn't account for, and indeed flies against, how these same people perceive themselves rather than who they might actually be. A 15-25 year old gamer/movie enthusiast who is into computers, I would argue, perceives of themselves as a technology sophisticate and a wannabe professional. Any person in this category with enough enthusiasm to try and make a machinima film is more often than not going to have designs on actually becoming a full-time filmmaker, game designer, TV producer, etc.... Whether they ever achieve this is not the point, the perception is built of desire and its the desire that drives the perceived 'needs'.
In this context I would argue that you have to design the software not for who the target user is and what their skill/knowledge levels are, but rather design it for the type of people the target users perceive and wish themselves to be.
In this regard I think there are two very significant issues with Moviestorm interface paradigm; one that doesn't follow traditional Windows drop-down menu language conventions. The first is pure functionality; functionality born Not of good design but rather of familiarity. Right off the bat Moviestorm is harder to learn because it doesn't follow normal computer paradigms that are widely understood. Its a simple as that. In working with the beta release I spent far longer than I should just working out how to click, where to click, how things would pop up, and when they wouldn't. Not to have a standard interface model means your user has to learn a new language from scratch. Their prior knowledge and expeirnece is rendered in large part not useful. The double kick with this issues is that by dis-empowering the user of their familiarity (and in the case of Gamers and Computer Geeks you have a personality that prides itself on that familiarity) you steal confidence with the tool. The user is on the back foot right form the start. Now the Moviestorm interface is very smooth and uncluttered but when I got stuck i was really stuck because I could not relay on the usual trouble shooting methodologies. Its like being lost in a country where you don't speak the language is a far deeper state of LOST than being lost in a country where you do.
In such cases instinct was to go to the tool bar at the top and click HELP, except its not there so then i have to go looking. Things are not named with text but with icons, so i have to hover over. When i find it it has a special icon I have to remember that icon because its not like any icon I've ever seen. And so on and so on... The moment I step into a GUI which forges its own paradigms, its own language I move from being a confident user to a dis empowered one; even more so that I would ordinarily feel with a new software tool.
Obviosuly Moviestorm is a software tool that, being born of Gaming is using game-styling for its unique GUI. In the case of Moviestorm the major influence is the Sims. But I do question the wisdom for using Gaming itself as the basis of the GUI as it leads into conflict with what I see as the second issue, that of Perception.
Do the developers of Moviestorm wish to have their app viewed 'as' a game? Certainly that's what the interface suggests and likewise how its designed to work. If the user group is, as I believe they are, driven by a perception of themselves and what they'd like to be (filmmakers) rather than the reality of what they are (gamers, hobbyists, amateurs) , then this approach is fundamentally problematic.
People who perceive of themselves as 'filmmakers' and digital artists, who want to make films that people will want to watch, that hope to be paid one day to make movies; these people I would argue, do not want to use a 'game', or a 'toy' they want to 'feel' like they are using 'real' and 'proper' tools for 'serious' production. This certainly doesn't mean they want the tools to be complicated or hard to use (quite the opposite), but that they do want to feel like filmmakers and using serious tools, that look like serious tools, makes them feel like a serious filmmaker.
The example of this 'culture' I'd use to illustrate is the marketing of the Final Cut Pro editing system from Apple. 75% of all users of FCP are independent, semi-pro, hobbiest, enthusiast, student filmmakers. And yet, all the advertising for FCP, that Apple push so hard, is focused on FCP's use in large budget feature film production; how high-profile Hollywood directors Walter Murch, David Fincher, Francis Ford Coppola use FCP to cut their films. That high end is absolutely Not the main market for FCP but what Apple understand so very well is that perception is reality. That whilst the overwhelming majority of their users are at the low end, they all Want and Desire to be at the high end. So Apple marketing aims to sell the fantasy, they sell the idea that FCP is a high-end tool so if you want to be a high-end filmaker this is what you should get, even if right now you're doing low-end.... Its a pile of marketing bullshit that has no actual validity I real-terms but it is highly effective and taps into the aspirational element of the digital age of accessibility. Developers need to 'sell the dream'; tapping into what the users Want to be and perceive themselves as being.
This concept I believe is the same with Moviestrom and points towards it's fundamental difference with Antics. Antics offers all the same tools as Moviestorm, a software system for real-time 3D machinima and pre-visualization. A self-contained tool that allows for staging, animating, virtual directing, virtual cameras and export of video sequences and even finished movies. But where Antics differs is in how it presents itself. Antics presents as a professional digital media production tool and almost every element of its interface toolset borrows from other digital media tools. It's movement of 3D objects is commensurate with those in any major 3D tool such as 3DS Max, its timeline window very much in touch with the timelines from NLE's such as Première and animation tools like Flash, its browsing and asset management features not at all removed from those found in any digital production system.
By doing this anyone who has even a modicum of experience with any of these applications immediately comes to Antics with an internal familiarity that aids a confidence with the software. At the same time the 'experience' of using Antics, the perception it presents, is a professional, detailed, consummate production environment; an environment that very much matches the perception its uses have, or wish, for themselves. Moviestorm by comparison could easily be mistaken at a glance for being a game, a children's toy.
Many, many independent video producers I have known, working for corporate clients, have often commented with despair that it's not their show-reel that got them the job or impressed the client but the size of the camera they were using or the how flashy the hardware that filled their studio looked. Along these same lines Sony have recently released the HVR-1000u HDV camera, a remarkably inexpensive camera that on the inside is a low-spec, little more than consumer grade, sensor with mediocre lens and significant shortage of features and recording options. On the outside however it's a shoulder mount, bulky camera that looks the impressive professional part. The 1000u is seemingly a camera conceived by market research that pointed towards the power of perception.
These two elements are at the heart of what might make or break a new software tool; Language and Perception - Designing a GUI and a production paradigm that taps into existing language tenets and the Presenting of a perception of what the user aspires to be rather than what they may actually be. So many of the greatly successful creative software tools on the market have found their success in exactly this combination and Apple's Final Cut Pro is the prime example. FCP brings virtually nothing unique to editing but rather it borrows enormously from its predecessor Adobe Première the language of editing tools and then packages itself into a clearly defined perception of the aspirational Professional. Subsequently you can read any given review of FCP over its history and see the same rhetoric surface 'The Professionals Choice' and 'Intuitive, easy to learn'. Both these are really, simply, the product of a crafted market perception of association, and the exploitation of established language frameworks.
It's both these that Moviestorm, as a creative platform, is overlooking. There is no argument here about right or wrong, good or bad, but simply that Moviestorm may have misjudged the aspirations of their desired users.
Posted at 12:00AM Feb 10, 2008
by Mike Jones in 3D graphics & gaming |
I'm not sure I fully agree with you as to whether Moviestorm may have "misjudged the aspirations of their desired users". The learning curve for Moviestorm is higher, but not by much. I'd put it at the same level as learning the interface of a good PC game. User expectations are important, but Moviestorm is being built by machinima filmmakers and there may be benefits that aren't always easy to perceive because of it.
Posted by Ricky Grove on February 10, 2008 at 04:36 AM EST #
There may be a good reason for my being a quick study of Moviestorm, a reason which actually does support your main point about paradigm... I came to Moviestorm as someone who'd been doing machinima the original way (via games) for years. So for me, that Sims-like feel was an asset not a liability. But for the larger userbase, you have a very compelling point: it won't be intuitive at all. And it remains to be seen whether the "gamey" interface will appeal intellectually, or put people off for not having that "Final Cut" I'm-a-pro-too magic.
The way you feel about Moviestorm's GUI, I felt about Blender the first time I encountered it. I found myself cursing in frustration at the flagrant disregard for the traditional UI approach. But over time, I've come to respect that daring approach to challenge those traditions (or obliterate them) in the interests of redefining intuitive. Time will tell if Moviestorm has success in doing so. As will a proper help system, something which has lagged because of the dramatic evolution that UI has gone through in the past 12 months.
Thanks for taking the time to examine both of these tools in detail. As Ricky said, your take is very insightful, and I know it will not go unnoticed by their dev team.
Posted by Phil Rice on February 10, 2008 at 01:46 PM EST #
But do we really think that 10 years from now young people making machinima will have any idea that it originally came from hacked or exploited Game engines? Of course not. The threshold machinima is very soon to cross is into simply being a form of Animation or even more simply a form of Real Time filmmaking. Just one option for creating moving image media amoung many.
Time will ultimately come when the distinction between Machinima and just Filmmaking in general will be negligible.
Posted by Mike Jones on February 10, 2008 at 08:26 PM EST #
Posted by Matt Kelland on February 11, 2008 at 04:15 AM EST #
I've noticed somewhat of a similar thing (whatever that may be, from my less-than-stellar comprehension) with (free, non-professional) music software (for the purposes of what it sounds like, as opposed to creating actual ink-and-paper sheet music), where having to deal in the idea of actual notes on a staff is something very, very limiting. There's one thing having to point to something, then point to a key on a piano, then point to another note, etc., all with the mouse -- this gets very inefficient, especially if you know exactly what you're trying to type in and you're trying to prototype it as soon as possible. On the other hand, there's another thing with simply hammering it out on the keyboard -- literal note names in the case of Denemo, or even something close to a physical arrangement on the keyboard and having a piano roll / chart type thing, as in the old, original trackers on Amiga or DOS.
For one, it's much, much easier just to punch it in on the keyboard, partly out of not having to deal with a sort of shoehorned application of a music staff (such as if you were trying to do the same in Excel: Type something in, hit Return, press the arrow keys, repeat -- do you need to edit something? No instant replacement, but instead hitting F2, selecting with Shift or a double-click, typing again, etc. (just one extra keystroke for every single row makes all the difference)) -- but, most people would have something of an easier time at least understanding the music staff just by looking at it (as in, learning the actual program is another thing entirely, but it'd be much more immediately recognizable than just a textual chart-looking-thing). A tracker, however, is not something you'd really see floating around nowadays, beyond being reinvented in any such professional MIDI / electronic music software, but such an arrangement made sense to the (varyingly) musically savvy folks who were otherwise primarily demoscene coders (i.e. pretty familiar with computers), as opposed to (no offense to anyone -- merely for the sake of this sentence) a musician or producer who writes [or actually uses the] software.
Of course, then, maybe you're one or the other, looking at it, and saying “It's so obvious -- why didn't they do it this way instead?” -- because... it looks different from the other side. Outside of the realm of computers and computer games and legacy stuff rebadged and repackaged for a newer audience, you probably wouldn't be hearing about trackers being used anywhere in a production- or professional- environment very much at all (well, most of the time). It's almost a soundbite: “I filmed and produced this in a computer game” vs. “I filmed and produced using some 3d pre-visualization / modeling / rendering software” -- one is not necessarily any better or worse or more obtuse than the other.
Posted by anonymous viewer on February 11, 2008 at 07:50 AM EST #
I just returned from the DIY summit at USC. I stood in for Paul Marino at the Hands-on Machinima Workshop where I helped about 20 people (of a wide age range) get their feet wet with Moviestorm. I gave them all a short script I wrote, the audio files of dialog I recorded and began explaning the basics. Each had the program running on their own work station.
As we were just beginning - I barely got to show them how to place a wall - latecomers arrived and I paused my lesson plan to help the new people catch up. What I found was that the attendees didn't wait for me. They immediately began playing with set building like it was a game. They took to it like someone initially diving into a game instead of someone initially cracking the manual for 3DS Max.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ease at which they constructed sets on their own. And none of them that I could find had any prior experience with the application.
There were for the most part only difficulties finding all of the "hidden" treasures of the menus on their own; for example, I needed to show them how to click on a face or clothing while in the character shop to cycle through those choices, or how to right click a chair to get the sizing and color change abilities.
Last year I personally initially experienced to a degree what you have stated in your article. Moviestorm's tool interface was not what I was expecting. But the documentation was virtually non-existent as well. The camera manipulation had me very frustrated, but it only took a ten minute demonstration from Matt to put me on the path to rightness.
I think it will be a wash between a new user either being intrigued or turned off by the gamy-ness of the layout. Just as someone might be impressed or totally intimidated by a more 3DS-style interface.
Posted by FLeeF on February 11, 2008 at 08:05 PM EST #
1. Re "Antics and Moviestorm have the same aims, the same impetus." Is this really the case? I thought Kelsius had targeted Antics at pre-viz, as a tool that existing professional non-machinima film-makers could use to reduce costs. It was way out the budget of a new maker of machinima until fairly recently. Whereas, Moviestorm was aimed at the latter market from the very start. If not incorrect, I think this is important context when considering whether either made a particular deliberate choice re the aspirations of their intended user.
2. When it comes to the more "widget"-like aspects of user interace (buttons, sliders, menus, etc.) I agree that an unconventional and nondiscoverable icon-heavy GUI is probably not a good idea, even if it sometimes seems clunky to have to force your funky new domain abstractions in line with existing conventions. In my limited experience, novel widgets are more of a barrier to new users than a developer/designer tends to predict. A conventional fully-labelled GUI with discoverable shortcuts and power tools below the surface is often a necessary compromise in order to cross the chasm.
3. The idiom isn't "game" so much as "shooting film in a virtual world". And I think that's probably a much better idiom than "timelined CGI animation". However, I accept that this is pretty much down to how I conceptualize machinima, which is surely a religious issue!
Thanks for your interesting post.
Posted by Anthony Bailey on February 12, 2008 at 07:20 AM EST #
(Uhh, bummer, that math question, not sure I will manage...)
Posted by BeruPly on February 12, 2008 at 09:29 PM EST #
I've had the chance to evaluate both tools during beta test. Guess I'll have to add another perpective: storytelling
From what I've percieved the huge amount of Machinima movies come from people who are not even game and deep into computers. And most of them don't even 'wannabe professional'. They just have little idea/story to tell and want an
easy to use tool that helps the getting started/inspired making movies.
You are right that with the group you have in mind Antics has a greater appeal. But running workshops
with different kinda groups I noticed that most of the 'wannabe professional' are more distracted by the cartoony style of the graphics or the animations of both of these tools show anyway.
Where on the other hand a lot of people who want start telling their stories find it easier to start even or maybe because of the 'nonstandard' GUI approach.
That is from my point of view the user base Moviestorm is looking at. I've not seen many stories told with Antics compared to Moviestorm or Sims/The Movies. And I still believe that it's your final movies and not the kinda tools you use that decides if you'll become a pro later.
Posted by Mach on February 12, 2008 at 10:24 PM EST #
Cheers
T.
Posted by tony bannan on March 20, 2008 at 10:16 PM EST #
I was writing you a response here - but it got a bit out of hand in terms of length, so I've gone and posted it over at my own (less than stellar, haha, but you get that ...) blog.
Feel free to have a read, and tell me what you think -
Posted by Peter Larkins on July 18, 2008 at 05:44 PM EST #