So hungry were attendees at Milia ’95 for raw materials for the exploding new media market that even Ron Miller, an exhibitor in the New Talent Pavilion, was solicited to make a deal for his school project, The Music Garage. I was so surprised, I just didn’t expect that to happen at all, said Miller, from the Institute of Interactive Technology at Bloomsberg University in the US. If I had, I might have done something more complex. As it was, I just told them, ‘Hey, this isn’t ready to be a product, it was just an assignment.’ Lori Ludington, a sales engineer for San Francisco-based Big Top Productions Inc, was so incredulous about the heat from deal-making fever that she just had to inquire. Is it always like this at shows in Europe? I mean, people are wanting us to go off to the cafe with them and sign a deal on a napkin! That’s just not the way we operate, she declared, noting that one could certainly never make a deal without a lawyer present. The deal-makers at Milia clamouring for fodder for their CD-ROM publishing machines were no longer strictly traditional publishing houses or software companies, but classic computer and consumer hardware companies. Little wonder, given that market’s explosive growth.
Multimedia Studio
In its CD-ROM report, London-based TFPL Ltd. says the growth rate for consumer titles exceeds 70%, and the number of companies active in the industry exceeds 6,000, which has more than sextupled in five years. Despite having failed miserably in the past in the related domain of personal computer software publishing, IBM is undaunted by the challenge of entering electronic publishing. Following on the establishment of its Multimedia Studio in Atlanta, IBM Europe, for instance, has set up a European Electronic Publishing activity in Milan. At Milia, IBM announced that it had joined forces with Gamma Agency to produce a series of CD-ROMs on the world’s natural and cultural patrimony as part of Unesco’s Heritage 2001 Project. IBM Europe has also initiated a Young Creators Prize for three categories of CD-ROM, in which it will publish and distribute the winning titles. Milia, which existed for 30-odd years as a traditional publishing show and added new media last year, is now dominated by new CD-ROM and CD-I titles. But already, the leading innovators in interactive multimedia technology are agitating for more, and much attention is focusing on interactive network-based services. Marc Canter, president of Canter Technology and original developer of the multimedia authoring tool Macromind Director, quipped during his presentation on multimedia production strategies that CD-ROM is a dead media and you are all wasting your time! Declaring that just producing new CD-ROM titles is a myopic vision of the potential of multimedia entertainment, Canter said There has to be some stepping stone to the information highway or we’re going to be stuck in CD-ROM for who knows how long. For interactive TV, we don’t have a place to go to experience it like we had with MTV to experience rock video. We need media bars or cyber clubs – something between CD-ROM and MTV. You have to let creative people go wild; you can’t tell the artist who wants stampeding elephants in the video, ‘Sorrry, 8-bit graphics, 10 frames a second [with CD-ROM], you can’t have stampeding elephants!’ It will be great content that will get us there, and if you pigeonhole yourself into CD-ROM you can make a great dictionary but you can’t do content that will change the world. Canter says he is working with consumer electronics giants including Sony to establish such media bars where people can create their own music videos.
By Marsha Johnston
Siegfried Kogl, managing director for Discreet Monsters/MacGuffin in Munich, said his company’s concept of interactive TV is giving people the tools to let them create their own TV. The only problem with being able to do that, he said, is the lack of a suitable consumer platform. MacTV, Apple’s combined PC-TV edition of the Macintosh, would be suitable, he said
, but there just aren’t enough of them out there. Other companies are choosing the on-line interactive services route to advance the possibilities of interactive entertainment. Among the notable launches at Milia were Europe Online SA and Infogrames Entertainment’s Infonie. Europe Online’s exhibit in the booth of its largest shareholder, German publisher Burda GmbH (29.6%), was perpetually swamped by companies wanting to provide service, said spokeswoman Monique Feidt. Positively breathless, she said the company would begin a process after the show of analysing the candidates and making a selection, which could take some time. Although no list of service providers was thus available, the service intends to provide on-line news, Internet access, communication (electronic mail, forums, real-time conferences and chats, fax, telex), transactions and shopping, computing, games, business and finance, employment, database access, education, phone directory access, service to professionals, tourism, entertainment and leisure, reference and recreational service. Europe Online says services will be introduced in mid-1995 simultaneously in German, English and French, with other languages to follow. The venture, in which British publisher Pearson Plc and French publisher Matra Hachette Multimedia Online each has 15%, announced on the first day of the show that it had chosen AT&T’s Interchange Online Network software for the network. With Infonie, Lyon-based Infogrames has come up with a 90s version of services telematiques that should annihilate any interest from service providers in using France Telecom’s much-touted high-speed – 9,600bps – Minitel. Using a high-speed modem circuit, decoding procedures and specific interface and image processing functions, Infogrames has put together a selection of colourful interactive multimedia service interfaces that one reporter likened to on-line Nintendo. Once again putting France Telecom to shame, Infonie, once it is launched definitively in October, will run over common phone lines at 28.8Kbps. For between $19 and $28, personal computer users will get a futuristic-looking Infonie decoder that will give access to 95% of Infonie services, said Christophe Sapet, president of Infogrames Telematique. The monthly subscription will cover nearly every service, whereas with the Microsoft Network, you pay only a little every month and pay extra for nearly every service, Sapet said. Users will have to pay local phone connect charges, however, of $0.94 to $2.80 per hour. Although it is still signing up service providers, Infogrames has set up sections for education, practical living, music and cinema, boutique, games, sports, business, voyage, art and literature and news. In the news section, for example, Infogrames has agreements with RTL, FunRadio and FranceInter that will enable users to pre-select radio broadcasts, download them to the personal computer and listen to them later. Is Infogrames worried about competition from Microsoft and Europe Online? No. We believe people are underestimating the potential for interactive information services, said Infogrames Entertainment president Bruno Bonnell. As there are multiple cable TV channels, there will be several on-line services. Infogrames has targeted to sign 250,000 home subscribers within four years.
Move the camera
Infogrames, in association with an as-yet unnamed partner, will propose Infonie to the French government as a test project for its information superhighway initiative. Infogrames’ presentation at Milia was a preview; the official announcement will be in March, with a beta test launch set for June 1. Future plans for the system include putting it on the ISDN network in 1996 and then on a cable TV network, as well as extending it to Germany and Belgium in 1996. Infogrames, formed 1983 as a software developer, gradually moved into creating CD-ROM and CD-I game titles and creating Minitel and Audiotel services. Until the future of advanced interactive entertainment and network information services takes s
hape, CD-ROM developers will continue improving the tools and testing the limits of that art. Alan Buckingham, managing director of double Milia Award winner Dorling Kindersley Multimedia, noted that there is no key piece of software that lets us make multimedia titles easily. We need software to make animation, video and testing easier. We’re all looking for the one-stop solution that Quark Express was. Red Burns, chairman of the interactive telecommunications programme at New York University, summed up the state of play as he presented one of the Milia Awards: We’re at the same stage D W Griffiths was; we haven’t yet learned to move the camera. But until we do, we will be creating great products like this one.
