# Film and Television LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Most original fictional ideas appear in magazine, comic, or book form first, because these are far less expensive to produce than movies or TV series (or even stage plays). Many of the top-grossing movies, year after year, are based on stories or characters that first appeared in print. Unsurprisingly, the influence of film and television on virtual worlds falls into the same categories as does that of books and comics: - Direct. Star Wars Galaxies is set in the Star Wars [^89] universe. There are textual virtual worlds based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer [^90], The Lion King [^91], Battlestar Galactica [^92] and Tron [^93]—to name but a few. - Partial. There are virtual worlds derived from the concept behind A Bug’s Life [^94]. Toontown [^95] is a graphical world set in the Disney cartoon universe. - Indirect. The original Sailor Moon [^96] comic books were concordantly made into an animated series, which in turn was implemented as a virtual world (indeed, several of them). - Meta. The Truman Show [^97] says much about virtual world design, of narrative, and of the nature of reality. Because of the crossovers between the media, the treatment of virtual worlds in film and television has paralleled that of novels, from the theme park beginnings of Michael Crichton’s Westworld [^98] to the neural implants of the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix [^99]. Superficially, then, it appears as if books and movies will always tend to explore the same themes. This is not, however, necessarily the case. It is the nature of books to tell and films to show. Thus, Westworld showed damaged robots being repaired for re-insertion into the virtual world (identifying what later came to be known as spawning), whereas Dream Park told what it was like to play (presaging the “it’s just a game” arguments that still surface today). By showing, a movie or TV series can present a situation in a direct manner, whereas a book (or even a comic) would take time to tell the same thing. If you see an image on a screen, it can convey in an instant what might take a minute to read. There are limitations on what can be shown, though, that don’t apply to what can be told (you can’t really “show” thoughts, for example, just the consequences of people having had them). Books are about imagination, whereas films are about sensory experience. Films concretize what books visualize. It’s not an inconsistency of law that heavily pornographic movies are illegal but heavily pornographic literature isn’t: With films, what you see is what you get; with books, what you get is what you see. For designers of virtual worlds, one of the most important tropes from film and TV that would not work as well in print is the holodeck from Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Next Generation [^100] and spin-offs (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [^101] and, in particular, Star Trek: Voyager [^102]). The holodeck is a programmable environment with which real (in the context of the TV show) people can interact as if it were (their) reality. For example, a character might create and then enter a simulation of Victorian London, assuming the role of Sherlock Holmes. This works on the screen better than it does on the page because the world and the character’s degree of immersion in it are immediately apparent; they require no unveiling. The situation is at once accepted, and the episode can progress to examining the issues it suggests. This can’t happen in a book unless you’re already familiar with the concept of holodecks from the TV show. Holodecks, although occasionally used for serious purposes such as testing engine designs, are primarily viewed within the Star Trek universe as an entertainment medium. From this perspective, the main lessons to be learned from holodecks are - They allow characters to express sides of themselves that they may not be able to do in reality [^103]. One captain may play a low-life film noir detective; another, a romantic lead. The holodeck is a liberating, albeit temporary, release from reality. - They distinguish between undirected and directed environments. A representation of a bar where characters can go to hang out would be an example of the former; an interactive “holonovel” to prevent a 1930s-style evil emperor from ruling the galaxy (while rescuing a feisty princess) would be an example of the latter. - Creating virtual environments is in itself a fun activity. - The representation of a living person without their permission is rude, but not forbidden. This is just as well, given that they always find out. - They are a magnet for alien life forms unable to distinguish between the false reality presented by the holodeck and the true reality in which the holodeck exists. It’s a metaphor for people who believe everything they see on TV [^104]. - They malfunction to the extent that they pose a greater threat to the health of crewmembers than a direct hit from a photon torpedo to the ship’s hull with all shields down. This is as a consequence of Star Trek itself being subject to the same laws of drama that it imposes on its holonovels. Many of the virtual worlds that exist today are, in some ways, more mature than Star Trek’s vision of the future; this is particularly the case with regards to the social norms that have evolved through their use. However, where the concept of the holodeck is most useful is in thought experiments: Were holodecks to exist, what new areas of narrative, performance, and self-awareness would they enable? Are these desirable or undesirable consequences? Could these new areas already exist—or be made to exist—in some form, using the technology of today? The difference between showing and telling is not the only one between books and movies. Equally important is that, in general, movies will get more exposure (and will therefore be more influential) than books. This means they will provide a greater cultural touchstone. Few people have read Philip K. Dick’s short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale [^105], but the movie it inspired, Total Recall [^106], grossed $119,394,839 in the United States alone in 1990 [^107]. The movie might cause virtual world designers to consider how to stop player involvement derailing prewritten plot lines; the short story won’t, simply because few—if any—designers have read it. In the same way that some worlds work better as books than on the screen (for example, C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia [^108] series) and some work better as movies than in print (for example, George Miller and James McCausland’s Mad Max [^109] series), some virtual worlds work better in text than in graphics and vice versa. The reasons for this are explained in Chapter 4, but for now it’s enough simply to note the fact because it leads to an interesting analogy (that most readers will doubtless have figured out already). Basically, it can be constructive to regard textual virtual worlds as being like books, and graphical ones as being like movies. Books and textual worlds are cheap to create, more amenable to risk-taking, and they talk to the imagination; movies and graphical worlds are highly expensive productions, less inclined to experiment, and they talk to the senses. Similarly, few textual virtual worlds have the same profile as graphical ones, so when people see that Star Wars Galaxies has a hairdressing skill and think it’s cool, they won’t necessarily know that text-based games like Castle Marrach have had the same thing for years. They just think Star Wars Galaxies is better than EverQuest. So it goes. Books and movies, well known and respected art forms that they are, nevertheless rarely contain practical information that virtual world designers can actually use. They can suggest genres, directions, issues, problems, and (occasionally) solutions, but not in any great detail. It’s like using a Canaletto painting of Venice as source material for a novel set in the city in 1740: You may get a great sense of La Serenissima’s atmospheric grandeur, and may in time be able to construct an impression of what everyday life there might have been like, what challenges the people faced; on the whole, though, a resident’s diary would be far more useful for your purposes. So is there an equivalent to the resident’s diary for virtual world designers, for those times when realism is preferred to idealism? Yes, there is: role-playing games. [^89]: George Lucas (writer and director), Star Wars. USA, 20th Century Fox, 1977. [^90]: Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. USA, WB network, 1997. [^91]: Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton (writers) and Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff (directors), The Lion King. USA, Walt Disney Pictures, 1994. [^92]: Donald P. Bellisario, Battlestar Galactica. USA, ABC network, 1978. [^93]: Steven Lisberger (writer and director) and Bonnie Macbird (writer), Tron. USA, Walt Disney Pictures, 1982. [^94]: John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton (writers and directors) and Joe Ranft (writer), A Bug’s Life. USA, Walt Disney Pictures, 1998. [^95]: http://www.toontown.com [^96]: Naoko Takeuchi, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. Tokyo, Nakayoshi, Kodansha, February 1992. [^97]: Andrew Niccol (writer) and Peter Weir (director), The Truman Show. USA, Paramount Pictures, 1998. [^98]: Michael Crichton (writer and director), Westworld. USA, Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer, 1973. [^99]: Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski (writers and directors), The Matrix. USA, Warner Brothers, 1999. [^100]: Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Next Generation. USA, Paramount, 1987. [^101]: Rick Berman and Michael Piller, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. USA, Paramount, 1993. [^102]: Rick Berman, Jeri Taylor, and Michael Piller, Star Trek: Voyager. USA, Paramount, 1995. [^103]: “Reality” here is in the context of the Star Trek universe, not ours. [^104]: Or read in books, such as this one. [^105]: Philip K. Dick, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. New York, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mercury Press, April 1966. [^106]: Ronald Shusett & Dan O’Bannon and Gary Goldman (writers) and Paul Verhoeven (director), Total Recall. USA, TriStar, 1990. [^107]: Source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/y90.html [^108]: C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. London, Geoffrey Bles, 1950. [^109]: George Miller (writer and director) and James McCausland (writer), Mad Max. Australia, American International Pictures, 1979.