69 GENIUS INTERVIEW Gaël Seydoux
Another thing that’s essential is that creators build worlds that you want to be connected to all the time. You want to be on your smartphone, you want to be on your laptop, you want to be on your TV, and then the merchandising is a continuity of that in the real world. The kids of this new generation don’t care if it’s virtual or real. One time I came home and my kid was playing League of Legends with his friend online after school. When he came to the dinner table later, he said: ‘I did this in the game and did this in the schoolyard’ and he was telling me this story about League of Legends assets in the real world and in the virtual world connected to his friends. All those worlds were mixing with him, half in the game and half in the schoolyard. That’s their reality. FEED: So what needs to happen technologically to make that virtual reality work? GAËL SEYDOUX: Now the problem is the form factor. Today, the goggles are firstly too expensive. Microsoft HoloLens is $3000, but it’s not mass market. And the form factor is very invasive – they’re heavy and you sweat. It’s the same for the virtual reality goggles. We need to miniaturise and solve the problem of light guiding inside the goggles. In fact, we are working on a project now to create grating inside virtual reality glasses, where the light is guided using nanotechnology structure. I think if we can get to a device that is like a pair of glasses, that’s it. You would have your phone, watch, headphones and then the goggles – and then you’re all set up. FEED: Being a climber, you must have a very good sense of being in the concrete present. How does that prepare you to live in a virtual world? GAËL SEYDOUX: I’ve always educated my children to play the piano, do sports, do fine arts, to be in the real world. At home, STORIES. YOU THINK IN TERMS OFWORLDS I THINK YOU NO LONGER THINK IN TERMS OF
Take for example, the Game of Thrones franchise. It’s a world built on characters, assets, stories, landscapes, objects, fields, lots of things. And inside those worlds, they tell stories. It’s the same with gaming environments. I worked at Ubisoft for nearly nine years, and their popular game, Assassin’s Creed, is a world in which stories happen. So we no longer build stories, we build worlds and then stories. That’s essential. And just think, today those worlds can collide with our real world. In the future, I will be wearing my headset or goggles, I will be here talking to a virtual version of you. But maybe it is a Game of Thrones asset or an Assassin’s Creed character looking back at me. And you have goggles too and are seeing my own character. Suddenly, there is a connection between the virtual and real worlds. I think that’s the future of storytelling. It’s no longer going to a cinema to see a movie.
It’s sitting down, wearing my goggles, and I could watch a movie, but then I have a slider where I can also bring you inside my story. Or I can then choose to interact with the characters, so it becomes more like a game. There is this slider that goes from real to virtual and also between narrative to interactive. FEED: How do you think that would affect the creation process and the writing process? GAËL SEYDOUX: I think writers will start by building a universe. If you look at Tolkien, he’s built a universe where there can be various different stories – The Hobbit story, the Lord of the Rings story, and there could be others. Star Wars also did this – and sometimes it can be annoying, because you have the feeling that you’ve visited that world too much. You’re fed up with it and want to move to another world.
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