It's Time to Gamify Hollywood

AI resistance and creative sensitivity are holding us back

Psychologically, making art is appealing because it often becomes a convenient opportunity to safeguard our most vulnerable, personal experiences with control. The stereotypical, defensive artist must protect their creations at all cost. After all, anyone from rude internet trolls to corporate overlords to unsupportive parents could be lurking behind any corner, ready to dismantle the precious thing we’ve built in the dark. Artists are outliers because of our often contradictory personality traits: it takes an incredibly thick skin to endure the inevitable rejection we face, yet so many of us are crumbling under the disruptive new landscape of AI. 

Let’s entertain the looming fear of many film and television writers right now. Let’s visualize total collapse in the entertainment industry. First, we can acknowledge what it means on an existential level if anyone on the street can make something visually comparable to professional grade cinema with Avengers-level VFX and sprawling cinematography. I’ll admit, this does make things feel less special. As a species, we have been allowing things to become less and less special for a long time. Talking was considered an act of creation itself, and linguistic superstition made language sacred. Jump cut from that moment in human history to today, where we’re uploading 30,000 hours of video content per hour, each minute of it less valuable than the last. As the aggregate volume of our “creative” work balloons, we are left with a feeling that the act of creating isn’t very special after all. 

When it comes to art, we enjoy things we cannot reach (or achieve ourselves) because that’s the way we were taught to consume them. Much like a museum, the consumption of film has always existed through a one-way window. Audience members are deliberately separated from the content, unable to touch, interact, influence or engage directly with the narrative. For decades, our desire to be cinematically dazzled did not expand beyond typical, static movie viewership, because nothing more immersive or interactive was possible. Our desire to break this wall has manifested in a rich world of gaming¹. I think the gamification of Hollywood is inevitable because standard, traditional film and television just isn’t lucrative enough anymore. The best case for this can be seen in a quick comparison between the net worths of Meta and Disney (about $1.2 trillion vs $193 billion). 

The Russo brothers argue that a generational gap in how we consume media has caused a rift among viewers, making box office numbers plummet. How do we satisfy and entertain everyone in the family, when parents who grew up watching two hour films have kids who strongly prefer short-form video content? If there is a generational divide in the kinds of content we consume, it’s safe to say the same divide exists in how we create it. AI tools that flatten and disrupt the video content production process might feel disastrous to some right now, but the next generation that grows up with them will do what young people always do: use technology to innovate. We already know there is an increased demand for interactive media, which is why I think directors will eventually be more like dungeon masters, curating possibilities instead of a fixed narrative. The observer will be empowered with collaborative agency that could double or triple their engagement time with the product (or “experience,” if calling your art a “product” feels too commercial for you).

At NAB Show in Vegas this spring, I heard jittery executives talk about gamifying old TV series and movies, hoping to recycle content that is currently collecting dust on shelves. It’s not hard to imagine why companies want to do this: film and TV episodes tend to perform well if people enjoy them and tell others to watch, but a post on a social media platform does well if people engage with it directly. Of course, there wasn’t really a plan or a starting point to truly gamify existing video content, yet, but across the board there is an urgent necessity to keep squeezing money out of TV series and films that already exist, as opposed to investing in new ones. Depressing as that might feel for writers like me, this way of thinking about our content is a preview of the future.

Fearing the total destruction of film and television is unfounded, mostly because Hollywood is a masterful shapeshifter. Ironically, Hollywood has become an AI hallucination of itself, one part old guard gatekeeper, one part futuristic tech robot, mining the cavities of the internet for a magical IP-generation tool that eliminates the need for human artists and guarantees billions in box office revenue. Networks and studios and production companies will (and are) selling, merging, morphing and withdrawing into a chrysalis of board meetings until their new identity is ready for a relaunch. This forced hybridization is necessary for their survival. Right now, the sale of Paramount feels like an inside joke. I get it, it’s hard not to feel like the sky is falling when one of our most beloved studio lots is up for grabs like an abandoned office building. 

All doomsday rhetoric aside, the use of AI in production and post-production will not completely replace the jobs of skilled crew members. Getting rid of human labor remains a C-suite fantasy. Real footage is still needed to make an AI-enhanced film any good. You still need expensive equipment, you still need to have technical skills. You must be able to build a story. You must create a compelling, relatable character. What I’m trying to communicate to my fellow TV and screenwriters who fear and reject AI is that we get to have the same job, with different toys. With better toys. 

The reason I don’t believe we will ever be on autopilot, allowing AI provide us with entertainment on its own, is because our desire to interact with media is too strong. That’s why I think we will use AI to gamify things we couldn’t previously interact with, such as film. We should be making it easier, not more difficult, to interact with each other’s work. As writer, director and educator Dave Clark has pointed out, we live in a remix culture. Even Tarantino openly admits to his inspirations, often borrowing the exact shot or framing from his muses’ work. Today’s content creators are no different. On social media, we iterate on each other’s viral work constantly and meme formats spread like wildfire. Creative responses, niche tangents, wild, off-topic left turns can all perform well in video content simply because they catch our attention, and this way of interacting has already gamified our social media experience. As many influencers have realized, letting people iterate on your work increases engagement. I see no reason that filmmaking can’t be the same way. 

I can’t shake the feeling that AI resistance from writers and storytellers comes down to a nefarious kind of nostalgia, a controlling urge to put the audience member back in their rightful place as static observer while the real artists show everyone how it’s done. It’s a difficult transition, this process of allowing our work to be meddled with, iterated on, and consumed in ways we previously couldn’t imagine. We were trained to defend our work with barbed wire fences, to obsess over drafts until they are perfect. I wonder if our coddled liberal arts college environments and cushy emotional support groups have made writers fragile, not more resilient. Community only empowers us if we are willing to challenge each other. I challenge my creative peers to embrace AI workflows, and at least experiment with generative AI tools. They might just reveal a path to streamlining your own creativity.

The fundamental difference between Hollywood and the gaming industry is that gaming both requires and encourages interaction and engagement. 

Between the two, I’m betting on the one that wants people to engage with it.

If you haven’t read it yet, check out my story about winning a first of its kind generative AI eSports tournament in Vegas.

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As an experiment, I cloned my own voice to generate the “article voiceover” at the top of this page. You can hear it start to hallucinate and break down towards the end - these tools are far from perfect, but once they are refined, content creators will save so much time.

1. This phenomenon is not exclusive to film, it’s happening in advertising, too. Brands whose online presence has stagnated are trapped in the illusion that content is static, that creating a post is the real work and once it has been posted, the work is done.