REDUNDANT TITANS
I grew up in the 1980s, when some of the greatest and most profitable entertainment franchises were created—ones that are still in a state of perpetual exploitation today—like the line-up of toys that filled Toys ‘R Us which Hollywood is still making movies of and toys and video games are being produced about.
In the 80s and 90s, all of my entertainment was derived from corporate-owned, network-distributed media. TV and film, all produced by Hollywood
An entire city was named after an multi-faceted transmedia entertainment enterprise: Hollywood. The advent of the motion picture camera enabled a move from radio shows to visual entertainment. The movie was born, silent at first and then recording technology allowed sound and video to be irreversibly coupled. Then additive color changed everything—and how lush and vibrant that color was—then gimmicks like 3D expanded new markets. Studios passed like hot potatoes between corporate conglomerates for the better part of the 20th and 21st centuries, cementing big money as the only way to produce mass market material.
However, as the 21st century turned, entirely new opportunities for independent media creators manifested. The growth and expansion of the Internet birthed new platforms like eBay, Amazon and a plethora of art-sharing websites. Previously, creatives had to go hat-in-hand to middlemen, editors, producers and beg for a chance to either have their creative works be financed by the parent corporation who hired the middleman, or to merely be hired to work on other people’s projects. Now, this is no longer the case. Funding can be done directly by customers to the creatives and the products can be delivered to the customers without the need for an external distribution service. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter allow for early initial cash flow and then transitioning to others like Amazon, eBay and Shopify create opportunities for perpetual, sustained cashflow.
With AI increasing what can be delivered on decreasing budgets, the need for corporations to finance creative projects—thereby limiting what can be produced—has also diminished. If you’re a video game developer, free tools are plentiful and some of the most popular games of the last twenty years have been made by individuals or small groups of people. Armies of hundreds of developers in rows of cubicles under the yoke of corporate servitude aren’t the only method to produce interactive digital entertainment.
YouTube is viewed more than Netflix, where the democratization of hundreds of thousands of independent entertainment producers use YouTube as a means to deliver videos directly to viewers. YouTube finances nothing directly but merely provides ad-revenue sharing with individual channel owners. And it works.
Andy Warhol once said that, in the future, everyone will get fifteen minutes of fame. However, it’s now possible for everyday people to gain audiences that stay with them for years. The Angry Video Game Nerd has been on YouTube for nearly two decades and many such personalities have seen generations of viewers grow with them.
Between Steam—where tens of thousands of independently-produced games are sold—and YouTube, the new economy fully supports creatives who hold no contract to any corporate masters. This is the present and future of entertainment and it’s never been a better time to be an independent creative professional.
Speaking of creative independence, if you’re into horror and action stories, I’ve got one such story up for early access at Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stratum/hotel-erebus-an-elijah-crowe-thrill-ride-pulp-novella
