Bonding experiences. (Multimedia).

Theme parks, video games, books, movies, the Web, toys, theater, concerts, CDs, DVDs, personal video recorders, wireless phones--we are surrounded by an endless range of entertainment experiences and technologies. Yet these forms and formats have remained almost entirely separate from one another. Why hasn't the entertainment industry been able to bring about content convergence--given the expanding technology divergence--and combine the strengths of each platform to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts? What will it take for them to meet this challenge?

One of the first hybrid forms of digital entertainment was interactive digital cinema. Unfortunately, commercial implementations of interactive cinema have thus far left much to be desired. For example, the 1995 film Mr. Paypack, a 20-minute interactive movie, came up short because even though the audience could steer the plot--by voting with joysticks--the story itself wasn't compelling, which left participants unsatisfied.

Other attempts from the entertainment community, such as Loren Carpenter's Cinematrix Interactive Entertainment System, which uses a paddle-voting system, demonstrate that audience members can successfully collaborate on solving complex tasks. But approaches like these have yet to be adopted by current content producers, largely because of previous failures with less-capable systems.

Another recent example was introduced by the video game industry. Electronic Arts came close to something truly amazing when it released Majestic, a game that was played in real time over cell phones, fax machines, email, instant messaging, and the Web. It successfully integrated these existing technologies, creating a game that had no distinct physical entity. Alas, the game play was less than desirable, and the interaction was minimal, resulting in an experience that was more a mixed-media narrative than a game.

Perhaps the most successful attempt to integrate a variety of media into a coordinated set of experiences has been with The Matrix. In fact, an entire franchise has been built around the film, including The Animatrix--a series of nine short animations (ed. note: see "The Matrix: Anime-ted," June, pg. 18), as well as a video game, and two new films, all with intertwined plot lines. The content of these stories weave in and out of each other, while each remains a self-contained body.

We don't fully understand what it will take to craft truly engaging interactive experiences. We don't know what the killer app will be. However, we ...