A Night At the Virtual Theater

One of the advantages of virtual worlds is that they afford users the opportunity to do things that would be difficult or impossible to do in real life.  You could walk on the surface of a virtual recreation of the moon, follow the path of a red blood cell as it travels through the virtual human body or.... go to the movies. Bah?

You heard right.  Warner Brothers and Sony have recently signed a deal with Gaia Online to start showing major motion pictures in online virtual theaters.  Why would you watch a movie in a virtual theater?  Because virtual worlds are cool?  Because your couch is lame?  Because you can?  Because its "social".  Because there is nothing like the smell of virtual artificial butter toping.  You decide.

But being the ever curious one, I decided that this little virtual movie theater business was just the motivation I needed to scope the scene.  And...well... Gaia is something =)  If you're over the age of 16 it will probably make absolutely no sense to you whatsoever.  Though I can understand why Gaia is growing in popularity among the younger crowd.  Part social network, part virtual world, its got an easy to use flash interface, tons of customization, message boards filled with the word avatar spelled with an "i" and best of all, everyone looks like an anime character!  But I digress...
 
Sadly there were no showings of the Matrix currently going on when I strolled into the Gaia theater.  But I did get to sit in a "room" for 5 minutes with 10 other avatars while people threw popcorn and flashed some combination of a laser pointed and a lightsaber at the "screen".  Amazingly, it did capture the experience of sitting in a movie theater filled with insane teenagers quite nicely.  It was ...stimulating to say the least.  Then I realized that I had just wasted several minutes of my life, and promptly logged out.

But despite not having actually seen a movie in the Gaia's movie theater, I did come away intrigued.  Not because I'm sold on Gaia or because I have a problem watching movies on my couch, but because watching movies in a virtual world environment does unlock some interesting possibilities. 

State College Pennsylvania isnt exactly one of the top 5 largest metro areas in the country.  Or 10.  Or 50 ;-)  And as such, there are times when limited release films don't find their way to our local theaters.  It seems like an obscure situation, but it happens more than you'd probably think.  And when it does happen, you can either drive 3 hours to the closest major city, or you can sit on you keester until the DVD is released.  I know very little about the business behind releasing movies, but I can only assume that limited releases have something to do with cost.  I'm not suggesting that servers like Gaia's are cheap, but they might offer a more affordable way to distribute movies then through traditional means.  Or imagine a geographically dispersed group (professional, religious, political, social, whatever) that would like to share some sort of movie activity together.  What might have been impossible before is now very realistic.  It might not be face to face, but it affords opportunities for people to come together, share an activity, and even communicate with each other all at the same time.  Or imagine friends or a family members sperated by hundreds of miles, having the chance to watch a movie together.  It might sound a little hokey or far fetched, but now, its all possible.

Perhaps more interesting are the educational possibilities.  I took a cinema class as an undergraduate, and a critical part of the course was watching movies.  One class day a week was devoted to movie viewings, and if you couldnt make the class, you were expected to rent the movie and watch it on your own time.  But is there any reason that same class experience couldnt occur online?  Or better still, why cant that experience be translated to distance education classes?  And these ideas are only the tip of the iceberg...

And despite the potential opportunities this move opens up, let us not overlook the obvious statement it makes regarding the significance of virtual environments to the future of mainstream media.

It might not be easy to share a bag of popcorn in a virtual theater, but at least its possible to share an experience.  Interesting stuff.