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Game of Thrones
2011 · TV series · 8 seasons
Created by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss
Science FictionFantasyDramaActionAdventure
Seven noble families fight for control of the mythical land of Westeros. Friction between the houses leads to full-scale war. All while a very ancient evil awakens in the farthest north. Amidst the war, a neglected military order of misfits, the Night's Watch, is all that stands between the realms of men and icy horrors beyond.
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Watch any movie, typically the protagonist is good looking and antagonist is ugly. That's the whole answer.
In Game of Thrones director had a chance to make the dwarf (protagonist ) really ugly, like in the books, but they chose a good looking actor.
Same for Harry Potter, Hermione was supposed to be meh.
I could be misremembering but the Walking Dead season 1 and Game of Thrones season 1 came out around the same time, but didn’t really kill of any major characters until after the first season.
Both are based on pre-existing material but GoT source material predates the Walking Dead by 7 years.
> Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here)
Can I make a side-rant how since Game of Thrones, it seems to have become an expectation that characters must be killed off? Apparently readers are (expected to) be so desensitized that nothing below "the main party that is the main reason you're reading this story can die at any moment" registers anymore.
In fact, even that is just the bare minimum. To really make an impact, we need some mass casualties like the Red Wedding or Thanos' "snap" in the Avenger movies.
Can we go back on all of that?
What? It famously didn't on the streaming side. It had everything on DVD. For years I kept both parts of Netflix because a lot of popular shows—newer ones especially—weren't on it. So I could get DVDs of past seasons. Or go to Hulu for newer episodes.
Hulu was created at the same time, and launched in the same year as Netflix's streaming service, specifically to compete with less-convenient pirated streams of current-run TV with a free-the-next-day-with-ads alternative. And that stuff was never on Netflix at the same time.
High-profile not-on-Netflix-streaming-for-first-run things from the 2007-2014 time frame: The Office, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and honestly basically everything else broadcast and cable made during "Peak TV." It was big news and considered a big bet when Netflix debuted their own high-budget first-run content with House of Cards, because of how weird it was to see Netflix competing in the brand-new show space.
> But even then, it's still the phone, in my experience.
It's never been the phone for me, particularly. I just don't pick mine up very often.
To have much more time to learn things I had to learn one key skill: systematically lose interest in syndicated American television. Other people can watch Lost, Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother etc.; I will use my time elsewhere.
(OK so I picked three there that are apparently widely recognised as having a major letdown as an ending, but you see my point I guess.)
Once I stopped sharing an interest in watching every episode of some show that a friend or the general zeitgeist was obsessed with, that is hundreds of hours (per show!) for a hobby.
And these days it's hobby-enabling money, because in many cases these shows are the only reason to pick up an extra streaming subscription. You can buy a good 3D printer and some filament, or an electric guitar and a little amp or headphone effects unit for less than a year's premium plan for an American streaming service, and a fully playable guitar alone costs about as much as a year's standard Netflix.
I learned this long enough ago that I have gone without a television for decades now. I had to re-learn it in the era of streaming TV. If you think you want to see one of these shows, they will be around forever so you can watch them from a hospital bed one day.
Reminds me of the riddle[1][2] from Game of Thrones / A Clash of Kings:
Lord Varys: Three great men sit in a room: a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives, who dies? Tyrion Lannister: Depends on the sellsword. Lord Varys: Does it? He has neither crown, nor gold, nor favor with the gods. Tyrion Lannister: He has a sword, the power of life and death. Lord Varys: But if it's swordsmen who rule, why do we pretend kings hold all the power? When Ned Stark lost his head, who was truly responsible? Joffrey? The executioner? Or something else? Tyrion Lannister: I've decided I don't like riddles. [pause] Lord Varys: Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070135/characters/nm0384152/ [2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys-said-swirling-the-wine-in
> but it is often the case where you will get into the office at 9:00 AM - and everyone is talking about the biggest release/development that morning - and by lunch it's kind of old news and people have moved on to new thing
That's literally just gossip. The same dynamic existed with episodes of Friends and Game of Thrones.
Everyone gathers around the water-cooler and discusses the newest happenings, but that's not science and it's not engineering. You're not passing around serious white papers and looking over peer reviewed publications and datasets, it's just... gossip. It has the same value as gossip and is completely optional.
[Responding to all the comments, so you may need to read through the thread again if I miss context here]
> The war isn't happening as long as you don't look at it.
I'm not ignorant of the war, and yes I follow it; however my mentality stems from the sheer number of months of bad news happening somewhere. I can only give so much of my attention to The World when there's things at the local level to worry about. So I don't engage in "all of it" on the Internet. I have those conversations in person.
> But the answer is not about drowning yourself in pleasant fiction on Amazon Prime or ignoring current events.
I disagree, but also not drowning. Rather engaging online in the manner pre-COVID. You know, like Walking Dead "How would I survive a zombie apocalypse" or Game of Thrones "who's next to die". The 24/7 Internet chatroom known as "the comments section" just wants to deviate the conversation back to politics. I also disagree with the sentiment that we're in "Idiocracy", but I still enjoy the film.
> The fast moving clickbait media of Twitter and Facebook is trash. It's often incorrect, it's full of propaganda
So is every aggregator site. Agenda-Setting Theory [1] dictates what information you're receiving on any given day, and smaller scale Discords with self-promotion know how to gamify Trending algorithms (since most rely on some degree of 'velocity' based on time since post). Couple that with how we've over engineered attention by A/B testing thumbnails [2] and how the mind reads TEXT LIKE THIS [3] (which was also A/B tested for email campaign clickthroughs), I'm left with a curiosity of "what headline text is emotionally anchoring a sentiment"?
Heck, GET OFF THE INTERNET isn't even yelling [4], it's just me abusing that all caps does thing in brain.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory
[2] https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-videos-through-a-b-testing-f6155c4595f6
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.685756/full
[4] Reddit Version: https://v.redd.it/hlo2z6a6rctg1, Twitter Version: https://x.com/amgaweda/status/2040744192020717592; Gotta work on encoding cause something made my audio out of sync with the video
Ironic that a business with such a Game of Thrones sounding name would later have its buildings used to film interior sets for Game of Thrones.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in anything, let alone linguistics or language acquisition. Just reporting what I've found.
Effective fluency (C2+) seems to be really, really difficult without immersion.
Anything past A1 seems to be really difficult without dedication and active effort. Pimsleur is my foundation and I think it's debatable whether that will get you out of A1 by itself.
I do Pimsleur (practical listening and speaking and reading), InnerFrench (listening comprehension, roughly A2 where I'm at right now but I think it progresses through B1 and B2 as he speaks faster and rephrases things less for ease of understanding), and reading (_A Game of Thrones_, currently, which is handy because I've read the books in English before and can use that as leverage).
I also watch some French films, but that's less helpful at present. I can't always find good French subtitles for my (pirated) films and because I watch a decent number of foreign films (especially Polish, shoutout to Wojciech Has enjoyers), the trying-to-learn-French part of my brain mostly shuts off. This is just a place where I need to put in more effort.
I have a lot of other French language podcasts and some YouTube channels cued up, but I'm not ready for most of them.
And this doesn't really address two of the major components, which are writing and speaking French. I don't have much going on there. I plan to add 2-3x/week iTalki next year so that I get feedback from fluent French speakers.
So TL;DR: your skepticism is absolutely justified and it's an uphill battle, a significant challenge and a sink of time, money, and willpower. I've been doing it for a year, on top of three years in high school and another year in college, and I think it's getting harder, not easier.
So we'll see.
There's taste and there's product quality. I don't like Game of Thrones, but it's well-produced.
I actually like Discovery, but I can also point out a bunch of problems with it. Disappointing mystery boxes, questionable commitment to canon continuity, so much focus on a single character that many of the most interesting characters get no screen time. The fans often had better ideas about where the story is going than the writers did.
I also really like DS9, TNG, and Voyager, but you can easily also admit seasons 1 and 2 of each are... on the weaker side. They take time to warm up to the quality SNW and SFA nailed in their very first seasons. And bear in mind, we're working with ten episode seasons now, so even Strange New Worlds is barely past it's "season one" in classic show terms. Go find a single episode of Strange New Worlds or Starfleet Academy that's "Code of Honor"-worthy bad. You won't find one because there isn't one.
Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy are vastly better shows than Discovery or Picard. But more than that, LD, SNW, and SFA are some of the most classic-style Star Trek content you can get. We're talking largely episodic shows which heavily draw from TNG and TOS storylines and plot design, and often focused on discussing the very core of what Starfleet, and Star Trek in general, is about. If people are still griping about the Star Trek produced today, it's because they aren't watching it.
The weird part is these criticisms if pointed at Discovery or Picard might have held weight! But it's directed at shows which are a complete non sequitur for the claims made.
Not disagreeing with you, but the last time I experienced this was much later: with HBO's Game of Thrones. Everyone discussed the latest episode, it was an almost universal shared social experience.
It seems to have died for good after it ended, though.
Actors have a kind of legally-enforced monopoly. They're not employees you hire, they're products you buy.
If you want to make a movie staring Nicole Kidman, you have to pay whatever Nicole Kidman wants you to pay. You're legally forbidden from hiring an "off-brand" person and making her look indistinguishable from Kidman.
If you want to hire a Scala programmer, there's plenty of easily-replaceable people willing and able to do that job. No single person dictates how much money Scala programmers make.
Famous actors are basically a category that they're the only member of, and so they can set their prices. You can switch to a different category )(just as you can switch from Scala to Typescript) if one becomes too expensive, but that too carries some expense.
Franchises have a similar problem. If all your friends are watching Game of Thrones, you too want to watch Game of Thrones, even if there are other shows which are just as good. This means the Makers of GoT can dictate GoT prices, because the government gives them a legal monopoly on GoT distribution.
I wonder where the line for "porn" will be drawn on this topic.
Will this make a number of Game of Thrones episodes illegal? Should they already be illegal, as Cersei and Jamie are full, not step-siblings?
First of all, your timeline is off: A Game of Thrones was published in 1996, and the Game of Thrones series premiered in 2011.
Second of all, even if you were correct, that would only apply to the first book, not the subsequent ones, which were spread out across 1999-2011 (indeed, A Dance with Dragons came out the same year as the TV series premiered).
So perhaps you'd like to pick a different copyright maximalist strawman?
So what you're saying is that you think George R R Martin should not see a dime of revenue from the hit TV series made off of his books? Because Game of Thrones came out 20 years after the first book was published.
Not sure about a film, but maybe TV series? I thought Game of Thrones was not adaptable but then HBO did it.
> To each their own,
And that is the gist of the problem, isn't it? As we approach our forties and beyond, chances are we have lived more than half our lives. So do I really want to spend hours watching something I might hate and might leave a bad taste in my mouth? (See game of thrones season 8 or worse, Westworld the HBO series which I don't even want to know what happened in season 3 or 4). I am sure there are people who will enjoy those but for the average person it is highly unlikely.
I think it's important because there are a bunch of would-be claimants for intellectual property violation. Many people speculate that their work was used in training data, but it can be difficult to produce sufficient proof that their copyrighted work is present in the training data. If you could reliably get an LLM to produce 70% of a copyrighted book that would probably be enough to get a few lawyers salivating.
I didn't read the source paper referenced in the ars technica piece, but this statement about it makes me wonder how useful it actually is:
> But a study published last month showed that researchers at Stanford and Yale Universities were able to strategically prompt LLMs from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI to generate thousands of words from 13 books, including A Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and The Hobbit.
It seems like well-known books with tons of summary, adaptations into film scripts, and tons of writing about the book in the overall corpus make it way less surprising to see be partially reproducible.
So I guess that's a lot of words to say - yeah until there's something definitive that allows people to prompt LLMs into either unlawfully recreating an entire work verbatim or otherwise indisputably proving that a copyrighted work was used in training data, there's probably nothing game changing in it.
Wait, have I not written about why I picked game of thrones for good comparison? I feel deja-vu lol.
So the reason why I picked Game of thrones is that you can see my github username (SerJaimeLannister)?
Why'd you may ask? Because I had given some minor exam and was in my brother's dorm room. They started watching game of thrones. I started watching from s4. When I came home, I binge watched s4-s7.
I later, wanted a github username (my last one was lost as I was using keepassxc and that archlinux distro got wiped by me back then [I was still learning])
Actually lost my name@proton.me and many other good additions. Oh well, Anyways it was around this time that I ended up wanting a new github account as I lost complete access to previous one. And the story overlapped with previous and I always wanted some nice name so ended up deciding on serjaimelannister.
So Actually the AI suggested something like harry potter or something and I only wanted to compare to novel because I said in one of my previous comments that I may have written enough to write a novel (you can actually read that on HN when I got the idea)
But I thought the opportunity of using game of thrones when my name's literally ser jaime lannister was quite good :D
also after making github account,Then later watched s1-s2-ish. Still haven't watched s3 tho. No spoilers tho xD!
"Game of Thrones" was interesting because it did not follow any formula I could discern"
Introduction of character.
Dialogue.
Gratuitous sex scene.
Machiavellian discussion.
Reference to earlier episode.
Cliffhanger.
Once you know about "Save The Cat!" it becomes boring to watch a movie that follows the formula.
I noticed even back in the 80s that too many movies ended in the "chase through the darkened warehouse". The movie will be doing fine, until somehow the hero and villain wind up in a dark, abandoned warehouse, ship, factory, whatever. Then they have a long, drawn out fight. Then the bad guy gets killed. Movie over? Nope. The bad guy rises from the dead and has to be killed again. Sometimes even a third time.
Then there are movies with the party of 10 people or so. The point is to kill them off one by one, each in a gruesomely different way, until the star is the only one left. Movies also telegraph who in the party is going to die next. It's the person who reflects on something innocuous, like "isn't it nice to hear the birds singing!". Dead meat, every time. The only interesting thing to do with these movies is make bets on the order of the deaths.
"Game of Thrones" was interesting because it did not follow any formula I could discern, except for the last two seasons.
I remember when we organized our lives around television. On Saturday mornings it would be cartoons (including the first full-CGI television shows, Reboot and Transformers: Beast Wars), Wednesday evenings would be Star Trek: TNG, Fridays would be the TGIF block of family shows (from early-to-mid-90s USA perspective here). It felt like everyone watched the same thing, everyone had something to talk about from last night's episode, and there was a common connection over what we watched as entertainment.
We saw a resurgence of this connection with big-budget serials like Game of Thrones, but now every streaming service has their own must-watch thing and it's basically as if everyone had their own personal broadcast station showing something different. I don't know if old-school television was healthy for society or not, but I do have a feeling of missing out on that shared connection lately.
Game of thrones will be. No main character is safe since Ned Stark was killed on TV.
No ending was going to be good. Sopranos had a controversial ending too.
Silicon Valley captured the feel of the bay area and did a good job with satire.
2000s would be easier, I think 2010 is about the switch to super hero movies.
I don't think it should be taken as obvious that authors profiting off old works is a deserved right or positive.
Game of Thrones was originally published in 1996, but the more recent books are more recent. I think that GRR Martin's books would be giving him sizeable profit, even if someone else were able to make GoT fanfiction in the same universe, and the GoT TV Series would still have to pay him to use the more recent copyrighted books, not just the settings and characters from the original.
There is already intrinsic value in having written the original work, and that intrinsic value will make you the best person to consult on a TV adaption or make sequels, even if the original work is public domain and in theory anyone could adapt it.
If an author makes something 20 years ago, doesn't build on the universe any more beyond that, and is unable to compete in their own universe they built against other authors once it goes public domain and becomes popular, well, then tough luck for the author.
Let's look at how this works for software: every piece of open-source software out there is something that in theory another company could take and sell as their own. Red Hat Linux is Open Source, so sure anyone can make their own... and yet Red Hat can sell consulting services and new versions of it because they're the only group with proper expertise there.
> limit the number of copyrights held by a particular entity
Entities are unfortunately quite easy to fake and difficult to define in a fool-proof way.
If you can still license copyrights, then holding companies would become the norm. Like, right now LucasArts owns StarWars, and LucasArts is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney, but if we had a limit on how many copyrights an entity can hold, Disney wouldn't acquire LucasArts, and would instead pay for an exclusive copyright license.
If TV settings offend you, you should be offended by anyone watching anything made for movie theater on a TV or iPad or - gasp - a phone, regardless of settings. And it should be offensive to watch with the lights on or windows open. ;)
To be fair, 24p is crap. You know and agree with that, right? Horizontal pans in 24p are just completely unwatchable garbage, verticals aren’t that much better, action sequences in 24p suck, and I somehow didn’t fully realize this until a few years ago.
A lot of motion-smoothing TVs are indeed changing framerate constantly, they’re adaptive and it switches based on the content. I suspect this is one reason kids these days don’t get the soap-opera effect reaction to high framerate that old timers who grew up watching 24p movies and 60i TV do. They’re not used to 24p being the gold standard anymore, and they watch 60p all the time, so 60p doesn’t look weird to them like it does to us.
TVs with motion interpolation fix the horizontal pan problem, so they have at least one thing going for them. I’m serious. Sometimes the smoothing messes up the content or motion, it has real and awful downsides. I had to watch Game of Thrones with frame interp, and it troubled me and it ruins some shots, but on the whole it was a net positive because there were so many horiz pans that literally hurt my eyeballs in 24p.
Consumers, by and large, don’t seem to care about brightness, color, or framerate that much, unless it’s really bad. And most content doesn’t (and shouldn’t) depend on brightness, color, or framerate that much. With some real and obvious exceptions, of course. But on the whole I hope that’s also something film school taught you, that you design films to be resilient to changes in presentation. When we used to design content for analog TV, where there was no calibration and devices in the wild were all over the map, you couldn’t count on anything about the presentation. Ever had to deal with safe regions? You lost like 15% of the frame’s area! Colors? Ha! You were lucky if your reds were even close to red.
BTW I hope you take this as lighthearted ribbing plus empathy, and not criticism or argument. I’ve worked in film too (CG film), and I fully understand your feelings. The first CG film I worked on, Shrek, delivered final frames in 8bit compressed JPEG. That would probably horrify a lot of digital filmmakers today, but nobody noticed.
It's absolutely the producer's fault. They actively choose to release the product they did instead of making more episodes, taking long, bringing other people in to help, etc.
Martin has claimed he flew to HBO to convince them to do 10 seasons of 10 episodes instead of the 8 seasons with just 8 episodes in the final one [1]. It was straight up just D.B. Weiss and David Benioff call how the series ended.
[1]: https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/george-rr-martin-shut-out-game-of-thrones-seasons-1235339333/
Shades of the game of thrones creators telling us our TV settings were at fault when they decided to release an entire episode filmed in the dark?
Game of Thrones Season 8 was lambasted for having an episode that was mostly in darkness...in 2019.
You'd think television production would be calibrated for the median watcher's TV settings by now.
There are no contractions when you look at how unfair market advantages are being played to harm healthy incumbents.
Amazon helped dismantle the entertainment industry. Full stop.
It doesn't mean Amazon's home appliance and home automation product lines or platforms are harming competition. There is robust competition in this sector.
Amazon offers "free" entertainment, subsidizes the cost of series that rival HBO's Game of Thrones production costs using unrelated business units, market those movies and shows for free in the Amazon app, on their website, emblazoned on their delivery vehicles and on every item of packaging. Other companies have to pay hundreds of millions to match this. There is eyeball opportunity cost for consumers, and Amazon is flooding the zone with their free wares. This is a markedly unfair advantage.
Amazon moves US union jobs overseas and trains up low cost crews in Eastern Europe. They buy up once successful studios on the cheap because they all tried to catch up with the stupid steaming game.
Theatrical box office receipts are the biggest revenue driver for studios by a wide margin. Individually, studios could have countered Netflix and Disney by pulling licensing. Amazon in the mix threatened this, because they had existing content licenses and also controlled home media releases. The studios felt cornered by tech giants basically salting the earth. They had to give up healthy Box Office proceeds and exclusivity to chase streaming and defend their access to eyeballs as best they could.
You've heard of Disney eating the mid market film? Amazon ate everything. It left no oxygen in the fish bowl.
Amazon's entertainment business needs to be spun off.
All of that can be true and completely unrelated to Roomba. Nothing should have prevented their purchase of iRobot. That was insanity.
The collapse in production costs from AI video is going to change the volume and quality of what gets made. We’re headed for a world where studios and small teams alike can produce work that would have required a Game of Thrones budget not long ago. The pipeline for high end series and films is about to get a lot bigger, and the pace of experimentation is going to jump
It went off the rails with Game of Thrones. Before that hyperviolence was found mostly in horror movies, and that's fine imo, it's a specific genre. But nowadays it's in so many shows and movies.
The BBC Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell miniseries is excellent. One of those times (others might include the original LOTR films and early Game of Thrones) where a genre adaptation wildly exceeded my expectations.
This was a very foolish choice on Netflix's part. Most if the iconic IP from WB/HBO has gone down hill in a dramatic fashion over the last decade.
Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but half way through the fans started dropping almost as quickly as main characters. DC movies have had very few genuine successes, even if they've technically turned a profit.
Putting all that content up on Netflix would be unlikely to pull in that many more subscriptions, and would require dropping the existing streaming service(s) and agreements to allow for exclusivity.
This doesn't bring significant talent or IP to Netflix, it's just an attempt to grab market share. I doubt they'll try to move anything out of WB/HBO's existing streaming platforms or agreements. This just looks like an attempt to increase profits by simply buying a profitable company and letting them mostly continue to function with minimal changes.
In other word, this probably isn't the worst acquisition possible for consumers, but it certainly won't improve life for anyone to let it happen, and it does consolidate market share and control when it comes to media. This probably won't be hugely evil, but it won't be good either.
Hopefully I'll finally get to see Chernobyl and Game of Thrones. It's virtually impossible outside of US or Europe to legally stream so many movies and series.
HBO is destination television - it's the taste that Netflix lacks and so desperately needs.
WB and HBO together have the franchises that Netflix has been trying to build. DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings (film + game rights - tv rights), West World, The Matrix, Mad Max, King Kong, all of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
What does Paramount or Hulu have? It's a lot of fluff on the same or even lower caliber than Netflix.
Amazon gives some good stuff away for "free". Apple has good shows, too.
Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it.
If whomever buys HBO also also buys A24, it's over. That's all I need.
Game of Thrones and Good Omens would easily fit in the 14+14 model. Even Handmaid's Tale would be fine, although the new TV series would be outside of copyright. 28 years is still a long time in human terms, timespans longer than that are mostly beneficial only for effectively immortal corporations.
I don't know that A Game of Thrones is a good example, at all.
The series was already remarkable commercial success before the TV adaptation. A Feast for Crows debuted at #1 on the NYT list in 2005.
The series sold millions of copies prior to the TV series. That's more successful than the average successful Fantasy novel by orders of magnitude.
If the books sold even more copies after being adapted, that's because HBO put the story on TV, not because of anything the author did.
And, of course, even if the first book in the series lost it's copyright after 28 years (nearly three decades!), the all the rest of books in the series would still under copyright, and the HBO wouldn't be able to access the ending without the authors help, as it hasn't even been published yet. The most HBO could have done without Martin's involvement would have been to create glorified fan fiction, while leaving themselves open to lawsuits about any similarities to any later books in the series under copyright.
Almost all the money almost any artist makes comes in the first 28 years. It is hard to see why we should deprive all of society from benefiting from using, building on, or remixing culture, to slightly increase the leverage that a handful of exceptionally rare winners get.
An of course, there is a huge gap between 14+14 and today's maximalist copyright regime.
Hollywood has always sold out artistic integrity. That's not new. What's new is the massive size and profitability of the superhero and teen action/adventure genres. Hollywood has found a product segment that pays, and it doesn't happen to have any sex in it.
Some long-form big-budget TV series, such as "Game of Thrones", do, of course, have good sex scenes. It seems to be accepted in that format. Long-form TV doesn't work like Hollywood. Movies have directors, but series have showrunners. The US tradition is that showrunners are writers, not directors. That seems to have an effect on content.
Comments from people in the industry?
My problem with 2) is: it works. If you look at most movies; both the way they are made and the stories they tell is really subpar these days and this has grown worse in the last decade or so. It's not the fact that CGI is used, it's the really lazy and sloppy way that it's used. Same goes for the stories: there are so few films that have a real story to tell that I have mostly stopped watching movies at all.
There's this YT channel - Like Stories of Old - I love who made an episode precisely on that topic: https://youtu.be/tvwPKBXEOKE?si=180Wkylrx-L5zOsI He calls it the haptic of a movie.
I'm totally convinced the industry can sell AI generated media just fine, even with the attitude you described.
EDIT: in similar vein the settings of movies/series are equally minimised, particularly in fantasy. Take for example Game of Thrones, Winterfell. This setting could never have worked in reality and yet people loved it. Brett Deveraux pointed out how silly it was and still.https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/
> how do people like him climb so high up the ladder?
I think about things like this...
Some people enjoy watching horror movies, and some people don't. Some people enjoy watching game of thrones, and others don't.
And I know a lot of smart people disengage from politics because it is a big mess.
In the same way, I think lots of people on and around the ladder disengage in the same way, and these people rise (and feel empowered).
I also remember reading how steve jobs would figure out if someone was a good employee. He would go to their coworkers and say "I hear xxx is shit". If people would defend xxx, then maybe he was ok, while if they didn't say much, maybe xxx was shit.
so... this might be the pattern.
> After Game of thrones season 8, people wonder why they should invest into a show when there’s a high chance it won’t pay off.
GoT was going downhill way before the final season. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by investing in a show. TV watching should be enjoyable, you dont have to watch things you dont like hoping for a payoff later on.
My personal theory on this is prestige TV is in a recession.
After Game of thrones season 8, people wonder why they should invest into a show when there’s a high chance it won’t pay off. Even for a good show it can feel like work. That plus the high cost for studios and over abundance of supply, meant studios pulled back.
Instead we’re seeing a reemergence of low effort TV. And YouTube plays nicely into that.
At some point this pendulum may swing back (remember in 2000s when everything was low effort reality TV).
> Can somebody explain the psychology behind these beliefs? I'm pretty sure they know how coal is mined. They must surely have heard about the black lung disease and COPD.
Of course they have? I'm sure you've seen pictures of miners back in the 19th century covered in soot? Why would the wealthy and powerful care about people who aren't them? You can't assume that everyone everywhere thinks "powerless people suffering and dying is wrong", that's quite demonstrably false. It might even be a plurality of people on earth who could not care less about the suffering of those outside of their immediate family and friends.
> I'm looking for an answer that doesn't assume that they're stupid or insane.
they just dont care! Why assume that people who ran for political office actually care about the welfare of others?
if the question is "why do this coal stuff when it's also unnecessary", well that gets into another MAGA value which is "dominance". That is, making people suffer and accept things that are horrible is also a big power play. Just watch any Game of Thrones episode for examples.
Rewatching season 1 of Game of Thrones is an absolute JOY! [first because it is soooo much better than the last ones! Also, because everything is already in place at the very first episode !!!]
I remember a viral twitter photo of Sophie Turner smoking a Juul while filming the last episodes of Game of Thrones
Juul changed the cultural standing of vaping and (for a very brief moment of time) made it "cool" by means of social media celebrity promotion. They were hit with pretty aggressive punishment for this by the US FDA if I'm not mistaken.
NPR had 3 stories last week in their NPR News Now Podcast about K-Pop Demon Hunters. Like I said it has 4 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 all in the top 10. It's the best performing movie ever on Netflix with over 236 million streams. It was so successful they actually did a run of showings on over 1,700 screens topping the box office charts for that week and grossing over 18 million in a weekend.
I'm not sure what else it would need to do besides dominate the music, box office, and streaming charts to be considered a success. It was widely covered in the news media as well. I predict that Rumi is going to be maybe the most popular costume with kids this year. My daughter and all her friends all claim they're going to be Rumi for halloween.
Stranger Things was huge, and maybe it's trailed off over the years. It never was quite as big as say Game of Thrones, but it was probably at least same tier as a Ted Lasso.
Wednesday is big as well, but hasn't dominated the work conversations as much as other shows, but I've heard it routinely mentioned in media. Wednesday Addams is also predicted as a top costume this halloween. The Wednesday dance was definitely a huge cultural meme last season.
But I guess to your point, there isn't something as big as a Game of Thrones out there right now on Netflix. But they have hit a pretty hot streak recently.
My current strategy is account hopping and ad blocking. I pay for Amazon Prime but I'm happy to pay less and have Firefox clean out the ads. I've cancelled my Netflix subscription for the third time. I'm soon going to re-enable Apple TV; probably for 1 or 2 months. And apparently HBO Max and Disney+ are now finally entering the German market. I will never pay for all of those at the same time. The more this market fragments, the smaller the pie gets for all of them.
What baffles me in this market is that there is all this unmonetized content that remains exclusively locked up in archives that is still very watchable earning almost next to nothing. The notion of cross licensing content between these networks seems controversial.
Take Game of Thrones for example. Exclusive to HBO. Some people in Germany may or may not have pirated that back in the day. Because HBO was not available in that market and there was no way to watch that legally even though world+dog was talking about that. Now it's old news of course. But Germany is probably full of people that might have payed for watching that when it wasn't old news yet. There are decades worth of high value series that you can buy (in some cases) but not stream. And I bet sales aren't all that great. Judging from the lack of marketing.
In the same way the BBC is sitting on decades of quality content. Same for most public broadcasters. Very hard to get your hands on any of it. Why are there no multi billion deals with Amazon, Netflix, Apple TV, etc. being closed about that content. Netflix is back filling their catalog with cheap Korean action movies and other filler crap instead. And they are cutting the budgets of the exclusive content that made them big.
Another example is that movie studios have been publishing 3D blockbuster movies for about 15 years now. These are almost all very expensive movies that only ran for a short time in cinemas. 3D only kicked off with the first Avatar movie. None of the big streamers offer any 3D content whatsoever. What's wrong with content publishers that they are allowing a good investment to go to waste like that? It's not a technical problem. TV makers have been trying to flog 3D tvs for ages. But without any content (not counting obsolete things like blue ray) there never was a reason to buy those.
This is the best show I’ve seen since Game of Thrones. It’s so unique and mind expanding.
The problem with the modern data driven approach to TV production is that it optimizes for the shows that are just good enough to get people to keep their subscriptions, and the truly visionary stuff gets cancelled.
The best shows always take a while to build up popularity because they’re so new that people aren’t willing to give them a chance at first. Breaking Bad and Mad Men didn’t become popular until season 2 or 3. TV execs have no vision anymore, it’s all run by hill climbing algorithms that look for the nearest maximum now.
The golden age of TV is behind us now. It’s just yet another example of enshittification.
Putting aside the astounding material and resource cost of this fantasy, the claim made here is an example of why people call AI proponents 'out of touch' or 'anti-human.'
Part of the reason why mass media entertainment - Squid Games, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Minecraft Movie, etc - is so popular is because it is a shared experience that is commodified and then widely distributed. People watch things because their friends and families watch them, and the shared experience is a sort of asynchronous social experience. The same is true of games - just look at the popularity of Lets Play content on Youtube and Twitch. The same is true of music - concerts are still the primary way musicians make money.
So long as this is true, the 'dream' of hyper customised, personalised Netflix-style entertainment is an utter fantasy that denies the human need to experience, share and discuss their entertainment. I would go so far as to call it a delusional claim, and also very dystopian - to realise this goal is to atomise the social lives of billions via a complete walling off of the shared lived experience.
(Maybe this is not true with porn, given it is a commonly viewed in a, uh, solitary context; although at the same time Porntube and pre-Verizon Tumblr both show that it turns out that many people share their porn taste with others.)
Have you heard of a television show called "Game of Thrones". It featured live actors, real humans with human bodies, acting out representations of incest and rape. And positive representations at that. It was a worldwide phenomenon and hundreds of millions of people probably watched it. It's still available to buy and sell GoT and related merchandise and payment providers don't bat an eye.
Video games don't even involve actual human bodies like GoT does. It's crazy that "Collective Shout" thinks this is worth invoking violence and violating peoples volition for. Certainly not consistent with all other aspects of entertainment in society. Makes me think there are probably other fame, power and money motivations behind their behavior. But it doesn't explain people agreeing with them. That's the weirdest part of this.
The last song of ice and fire book that Martin got out was released almost exactly the same time as the very first episode of game of thrones. I doubt the show could be the cause of Martin never publishing, it took the show 6 years to catch up with the source material, and it seems like Martin made no progress during that time
> unspoken "show-don't-tell" internal logic
This is another axis separate or orthogonal to worldbuilding.
Recent Marvel and Disney films, the Jurassic Park and Star Wars sequels, and most Godzilla / Kong slop doesn't build believable worlds. The writers don't spend any time writing the universe that the story takes place in.
Lord of the Rings (the theatrical film trilogy), Game of Thrones (save for the last seasons), and Jurassic Park (1993) all build vast and credible worlds. Intricately detailed, living and breathing universes. Backstories, histories, technologies, warring factions, you name it. They then create believable characters that occupy those worlds and give them real character arcs within which they suffer, rise to prominence, grow, and die. Multiple heroes with multiple journeys. You're fully immersed in the fictional world, watching characters you care about occupying it. It's masterful storytelling.
Villeneuve's Dune has the same vast world and literature to draw upon as many of the other great epics, but he makes the rare mistake of not communicating anything to you about it. If you haven't read the books, much of the story is easily lost. He doesn't spend time on character arcs or even as much as dropping hints to what the subtitles of the world are. It's a super rare misstep, because most bad storytelling is from under baking the fictional world.
Then there's the mistake of sequels that try to expand on the mystery of the original world. The Matrix films and countless others have over-illuminated the mystery of their stories in trying to build universes. In doing so, the magic has been lost.
I have had a question for a long time, and this may be my one chance to ask someone who actually knows how these things work.
When you were working on this, have you considered playing music that (and please don't take this the wrong way; this may be exaggerated but maybe you will understand what I mean) pre-retirement non-musicians would listen to, where the composer is still alive, and that hasn't been played in the same venue a hundred times? Looking at the Gewandhauses schedule right now, there's absolutely nothing for me.
The San Francisco Symphony plays a top-tier movie (Top Gun, Titanic, Lord of the Rings, etc.) with the film music performed live by the orchestra every few months, and I go to many of these. I got tickets for the Game of Thrones series finale concert (different venue). I absolutely loved Video Games Live, which actually has been in Leipzig too, but in the Arena, and well over a decade ago. I went to a Lindsey Stirling concert, who I knew from YouTube.
So my question is: Why can't the Gewandhaus do something like that regularly? Why can these events only be available in large cities like San Francisco? It's actually frustratingly difficult to find such events in smaller cities. Is it licensing/artist fees? Not interesting for the local musicians? Events like this reliably book out large venues several times in a row, so can it really be lack of demand? Maybe only from the wrong customers?
I think you hit the nail on the head there, you and the author are simply from different cultural zeitgeists. I also remember Star Trek and Dr Who being a big deal, but I was entirely too young to care. And I continue not to care, since I don't watch live action shows much. Never seen an episode of Friends or Game of Thrones either for example. Just a starkly different generation and subculture.
A whole series would involve writing thousands of prompts, not just a few seconds. But since you bring it up, one thing I think we can eventually expect is an avalanche of fan created continuations of cancelled shows, like an 8th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, or a decent 8th season of Game of Thrones. Instead of writing a tie-in novel, aspiring genre authors will write screenplays and turn them into AI movies.
Related trivia (he mentions he worked on low budget shows prior to this), 650 million dollar budget for show's two seasons or 26-27 million per episode: https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/andor-tony-gilroy-genocide-pretty-effortless-1235127755/
For reference, Rings of Power, Jupiter's Legacy and Citadel (US version) cost about twice as much per episode on Amazon, and Game of Thrones on HBO started at five to six million per episode and went up to 15 million by the final season.
>Wolf Hall ...
you're nitpicking. it's a high class, well-produced, well-acted, British-made TV show, by the BBC, of a very high quality that would be well-regarded in any era (if you ignore the weird racial thing they did in S2)
>Line of Duty
your opinion is absolutely in the minority, which isn't to say it's wrong, but it's a very well regarded, high class show that's widely seen as well above "decent procedural"
>Adolescence
whether it's liberal or paid for by Netflix is irrelevant to whether it's a high quality British-made tv show
>you haven't watched the others
then you're going to struggle to give a useful opinion on this matter, aren't you?
>Hardly in the class of historical Beeb
every historical BBC show you can name will have myriad minor subjective criticisms of the like you've just produced
>let alone contemporary US brilliance.
if you think US TV is even remotely comparable with UK TV, you're not paying attention. the US is long since out of its golden era, which pretty much died with Game of Thrones. US media has an order of magnitude more financial means than that of the UK, and yet what have they created of any real quality in the last few years besides White Lotus? they repeatedly fail to even remotely approach the class and quality of our TV. on the rare occasions they do get close, it's on the back of British actors or British production
Humans dont like change.
https://www.jalopnik.com/every-car-looks-like-this-thanks-to-a-gigantic-regulato-1849837803/
Everyone hates the cybertruck because its different than the generic white ecobox.
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Why-do-all-smartphones-look-the-same_id124123
What happened to flip phones and physical keyboards?
Can you go into a mall anywhere in the world and go buy a starbucks before you go to H&M? Doesnt even matter if you go to H&M or zara because its all the same clothing.
Getting back to film and tv context. The skill of the author is what lets the change or difference come through. Goerge RR Martin had a different take and did well. How did he do it? Game of thrones is empathy. Empathy lets you escape the narrative prison. Show the trauma of the villian to make them a victim.
The Fairphone still looks like a generic smartphone but they sell it via empathy of ethical, sustainable, and repairable parts.
I did not state Catholicism is an aesthetic. I replied to vFunct's comment "vFunct The whole Catholic aesthetic is amazing. Really is the tops." "with religion is more than an aesthetic." An aesthetic is using symbols and atmosphere, architecture, to create a beauty. A religion may use these objects, but also has values that do not depend on them.
Also, another person posted: " echelon "It truly is. As is the Ancient Roman aesthetic. There's a reason why Final Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and many more fantasy series lean heavily into the look and feel."
So people suggesting video games and tv shows, even with lots of violence (particularly GoT) is an "aesthetic", is a lot more shallow than my basic point that religions aren't primarily aesthetic. Maybe you replied to the wrong comment.
What ending for Game of Thrones? Wasn't it cancelled after Season 6?
I'd agree with limiting copyrights but would do it based on money earned rather than time, so something like when you make $X million, the work becomes public domain.
As a specific example — _A Game of Thrones_ was released in 1996. It picked up awards early on but only became a NYT best seller in 2011, just before the TV show aired.
It would feel harsh for an author to loose all their copyright because their work was a "slow burn" and 5 years have elapsed but they've made little to no money on it.
His take down of the "steppe nomadic warriors" nonsense in movies and TV shows, and especially of the Dothraki and how they don't make any sense, is also very interesting.
To me the most surprising thing is that Deveraux considers Lord of the Rings more grounded on history than Game of Thrones, when GoT was "sold" to audiences as a grittier, more realistic take on medieval fantasy. But very little in GoT makes any "medieval" sense, it's almost entirely fantasy with a "grimdark" tone instead of a fairy tale/folklore tone.
(Which, like Devereaux points out, would be perfectly acceptable as artistic license ... if only GoT hadn't been sold to us as "more realistic" by George Martin!)
> Yes I exclude that,
So humans steering diffusion is off limits? No Krea, no Invoke, no articulated humans?
It's like you're taking away Premiere or Final Cut here. Text prompts are not the currency of AI film. Controllability levers are essential to this whole endeavor.
> I do not think something that augmenting that input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creating media.
You haven't spent much time on set, then. An animator can do a performance capture on their webcam and adjust the IK. That's way different than booking a sound stage, renting an Arri Alexa and lenses, and bringing out a whole cast and crew. Set dec, wardrobe, makeup, lighting versus the moral equivalent of a Kinect and a garage studio.
My 6 AM call times, early mornings climbing up to the top shelf of the prop house to grab random tubas and statues, and signing countless legal forms and insurance paperwork all beg to differ with your claims here.
> AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human actors.
I don't think it necessitates this at all. Kids are going to be flocking to the media to turn themselves into anime VTubers and Han Solos and furries and whatever they can dream up.
Artists want to art. They're going to flock to this. We're going to have to open up the tech for that reason alone.
I'm sure fast moving marketers and the cottage industry of corporate workplace training videos won't use humans, but the creative side will. ElevenLabs is great, but there's also a reason why they hired Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, and Jack Black in the Mario movie.
> For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month or 2 that meets the success criteria above.
I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this creative explosion.
It is a pretty magical experience when you have your torrents automated.
I used an RSS feed based setup for years, and my first awareness that four episodes of game of thrones and one uncensored episode of south park leaked was the notification popping up on my PC telling me that a download completed.
I've recently been using soulseek (with nicotine+) more, since a lot of unseeded or obscure things appear on there.
GRRM procrastinates writing A Game of Thrones books by making A Game of Thrones TV shows. Patrick Rothfuss procrastinates by doing cheesy charity work (whose positive impact is dwarfed by what he could do by donating the money from a third book) and playing D&D on youtube or some shit.
George RR Martin once commented that he wished he could create a character like Rome's Titus Pullo (or something to that effect). Maybe Game of Thrones would have had a much better ending if the writer's of Rome had been in charge of it. Even though Rome ended abruptly in Season 2, it still ended in a much, much more satisfactory way than the crappy last seasons of Game of Thrones which really butchered the whole storyline with poor writing.
> Don’t have temporary people make permanent decisions
IMHO, this one line summarizes remarkably well why Hollywood wrecks fictional universes: Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Fantastic Beasts, DC Universe, and even parts of the Marvel universe.
I see the absence of an auteur capable of respecting themselves and therefore their audience as the root cause of clichéd moves such as "war is bad so let Wonder Woman kill the God Of War". Clearly, the person making such a decision simply does not have a reputation to uphold; what remains is optimizing ticket sales, one movie at a time.
Yes please? If only TV and movies would show the full range of human sexuality and not just cater exclusively to the vanilla fetish crowd. To quote the immortal words of the Joffrey gif from Game of Thrones, “talk shit get hit” can be comedic, dramatic and, in a well-crafted context, sexy content in a movie. Romance novels and fanfic have been well aware of this for an eternity, and certainly pull no punches when it comes to people slapping.
The issues with Bond are that he’s uniformly portrayed by white men who are only portrayed sleeping and slapping women. Give us a Bond who sleeps and slaps men with the same abandon that he does women, and interest in Bond movies will go through the roof. And:
An intelligence agency that only employs straight male secret agents is an intelligence agency doomed to fail from the start. I have to hope someday that the Broccoli family grows a spine someday and shows us a Bond who is a woman, being just as much of an arrogant slut as Sean Connery’s Bond. They did a great job with that Bond, and certainly that’s a desirable archetype! It’s just gotten boring and overplayed to see that leading Bond role manner only played by the same boring and overplayed white men for decades now.
I love this blog in general for the picking apart of modern movie tropes and the writing is surprisingly engaging for discussing logistics etc. The "Game of Thrones" collection is probably my favourite for absolutely ripping apart the poorly thought out battles. (Though I am a fan of the GoT series up to a point)
https://acoup.blog/tag/game-of-thrones/
Yes, that is the question to which neither of us has an answer. Streaming deals happen as bundles, and my understanding is the opposite of yours: the old stuff gets thrown in as a piece of the bundle to help make the catalog bigger, while new content actually sells subscriptions. In other words, the back catalog has some marginal value to the streaming service (and the studio), but it's the new releases that actually sell subscriptions.
Releases of "The Mandalorian" got people subscribing to Disney+, and new seasons of "Game of Thrones" had the same effect for HBO, for example.
In other words, a bundle of 100 movies for $10 million could be attributed as "$100k per movie," but that's almost certainly wrong. More likely, that bundle is a combination of something like $5 million for one movie, $1 million for a few others, $100k for a bigger set, and all the way down to $1000 or less for the remainder of the catalog.
No. I am suggesting that short copyright terms should be tied to the medium of delivery.
If someone writes a book, copyright will begin when they publish the book and the 10-15 years copyright expiration would only be applicable for paper book medium. After the copyright for the paper book medium expires, anybody can republish it. But, only the original copyright owner can "recreate" the work again in another medium - like Games, TV/ Films, Virtual reality etc. Even if that happens after the expiration of copyright on the first medium it originally appeared on.
With the Game of Thrones example, with short copyrights, Martin would lose the copyright on the books (the first original medium it was published on) in 10-15 years. But he would retain the copyright on his work for other medium. So if 20 years down the lane, HBO wanted to recreate his work for TV, they would still have to get his permissions to do so. Once Martin's gives HBO the rights to his work for TV, HBO would own it only for the 10-15 years, and after that, anybody could use it freely too, but only for paper book and TV medium. This means if Meta or Apple want to recreate Game of Thrones as a virtual reality show, they would again have to approach Martin to get his permission. If they do, then they own the copyright to his work, on virtual reality medium, till it expires in 10-15 years.
In this kind of system, the original author would continue to retain the future rights for any new future medium of delivery too.
Apparently the TV series Game of Thrones cost just under $600m to produce[1], and George R. R. Martin earnt something like $100m from royalties as its original author[2]. Although access to the author for advice and publicity must be valuable, that is nonetheless a very large proportion of the profits that I'm sure many studios would rather not have to share!
[1]: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/100996
[2]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6182197
The only part that feels weird about a shorter duration like that is tv/movie adaptations of books. The game of thrones show came out 15 years after the first book, does that mean they would have been able to make it without licensing it from the author?
> I can't think of other examples where the novel was developed alongside the film but I expect there are!
Game of Thrones?
> It's quite possible for one broadcasters 480p30 to be a higher bitrate than another broadcasters 720p60
Yes, I don't think anyone's disputing that.
> I remember watching the last season of Game of Thrones on one streaming provider, which topped out about 3.5mbit but claimed it was "1080p".
Why the scare quotes? That's a perfectly reasonable bitrate using modern compression like H.265, especially for a TV show that's filmed at 24 fps.
The conveyor belt analogy from this article is deserved. I feel like this has been true for a long time, like 20 years or so. Remake after remake. Yet another superhero film. Uninteresting pipelines of shows and movies that recycle existing IP but also destroy existing canon (look at Star Wars). There are exceptions - we still have some great films (like Interstellar ten years ago) and shows (like Game of Thrones). But it does feel like most of the content from traditional media is noticeably bad.
I also think though, that Hollywood has become unlikeable and polarizing for many other reasons. Some of those reasons are the political culture of Hollywood (with bias in one direction). Some of it is the moral culture (like Harvey Weinstein). But a lot of the exhaustion with Hollywood is simply that the faces of Hollywood - celebrity actors - just seem really self aggrandizing. The award shows. The unwelcome public stances on random topics. The ostentatious displays of wealth (fancy cars, mansions in exotic places, etc). The worship of celebrity that is practiced through glowing magazine interviews, coverage of personal issues (like divorces), and merchandising.
Democratization is coming for a lot of different industries, and Hollywood is one of them. The availability of high quality cheap audio and visual equipment, the over supply of talent, the low costs of techniques like CGI, the prospect of new tools like generative AI, and social media for publishing are all pulling attention away from traditional channels. I think this will be great for viewers. Independent content creators are becoming very good at what they do. It doesn’t mean the death of Hollywood entirely, but it does mean that only the very best can survive.
I also think this affects movies and TV shows differently. People have appetite for great TV shows still, and outliers like HBO will survive due to exceptional content quality. But movie theaters, as a way to market and draw viewers, are a dying concept. The industry keeps trying to evolve by offering different gimmicks (like 3D and “4D”), luxury experiences, dining experiences, and so on. But you can’t get away from the fact that it is very inconvenient to have to go to a theater, deal with noisy crowds, etc. We also all have much more awareness of how illness spreads after the pandemic. Theaters will go away, except for maybe the possibility of film festivals or other such events. That’s a big change for movies, but TV shows aren’t losing anything from the death of theaters.
Isn't the film industry struggling too? Perhaps not as much financially but still.
Holywood is dominated by Marvel and a handful of recognizable directors like Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino, and they are struggling to fund and distribute their projects too. Actual cinema theatres are dying a not-so-slow death, accelerated by the pandemic, and streaming seems to be very ineffective for movies unlike TV.
TV is doing okay, but it has obviously declined from the golden-age of Breaking Bad, early Game of Thrones, early House of Cards, Stranger Things... Just off the top of my head. There is still some good stuff coming out but the overall density in quality has dramatically gone down. Netflix and Amazon Prime are not doing great financially, HBO just about managed with the weird Discovery merger, Apple TV remains small (seemingly intentionally).
And the music industry? All but gone really in terms of a real money-maker. There's Talor Swift and all the Spotify beggars.
Is there any creative industry that is actually in a healthy growth stage? Podcasts? There's just too much supply and not enough demand at this point, people have only so much free time.
I liked TV better back when there were a few "main story arc" shows, but the majority were random, unconnected plots. Like the X-files where most of the shows were "monster of the week" but they would occasionally return to some main theme and move it forward. We're re-watching Deep Space 9, and I think that series had the right ratio.
As opposed to something like Game Of Thrones, which was basically a single 70 hour movie split arbitrarily.
If I had to speculate about your question, I would guess that a) there was almost no digital video to matter a few decades ago, b) there was different culture regarding digital media (or maybe I'm misremembering), trailers were more tame and there was less of them overall (I'm not from USA btw), like maybe 1 or 2 before the movie, not 5+. There were much less story based TV shows with contiguous plot, which are all the fad now. Making a trailer for Seinfeld can be done easily. Now making a trailer to say Game of Thrones will most likely involve some major spoiler (or a dozen).
So my guess answer is - the social pressure finally rose high enough that there is now critical mass of people who care about spoilers and got spoiled a few times by official media. That's why there are more posts about this. More instances of the issue multiplied by vastly bigger market due to cheap internet and streaming.
>and then for a few weeks the cultural conversation would be dominated by this - a book of poetry. Which people 50 years from now would be reading in lit classes.
I'm too young to remember this for poetry, but it certainly was true for music, TV shows, and movies for long after it was true for poetry. People are still talking about The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, various highly-successful movies from the 60s-00s (Lord of the Rings for instance), TV shows like Game of Thrones, etc. However, I'd say it's less true today, but TV for instance seems to have lot of this still going on with people talking about various high-caliber shows like The Expense, Silo, etc. I think poetry simply went the way of theater: other art forms surpassed it in popularity, though it still has its niche audience: New York's Broadway is still quite popular. And people spend lots of money on music concerts.
>I cannot honestly say anything on YouTube comes close to the production in an episode of Top Gear or Game of Thrones.
>Content on YouTube is terrible in new and terrifying ways.
Most of the YouTube's content is amateur UGC(user generated content) and it works pretty well for what it is.
Well hey, I'm on the same page. I don't pay for cable these days, nor put up with adblockless YouTube in the first place. But content on YouTube - particularly popular content - is a race to the bottom worse than Keeping up with The Kardashians ever was. I've watched Mr. Beast videos (at the behest of my ex) and haven't found anything except hyperactive filmmaking married to absurd and ill-considered ideas. It's deconstructed short-form entertainment in ways that TikTok is probably envious of. Truly, they've cracked the marketing code for an ADHD-addled era of content consumption.
And therein lies "the problem" - this shit is garbage. I like some YouTube content too, but holy fucking cow is it worse than everything that came before it. TVFilthyFrank was just doing the same thing Jackass did with fewer safety considerations and lower production value. Historians making documentaries are basically recouping the task of The History Channel on a smaller budget with fewer regulations on construing truth. At the end of the day, as much as I hate cable television, I cannot honestly say anything on YouTube comes close to the production in an episode of Top Gear or Game of Thrones. It's garbage all the way down, supported by marginal advertising, kept out of Google's Graveyard by horrific levels of rentseeking and AdSense monopoly abuse, and ultimately propelled by sensationalist and meaningless content tailored to offend as few people as possible. Content on YouTube is terrible in new and terrifying ways.
i wonder how long would it take for this technology to advance to a point where nice people from /r/freefolk would be able to remake seasons 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones to have a nice proper ending? 5 years, 10?
Sooo... there's a whole story here of interacting forces, technology advancements, etc...
I've recently dipped a toe into this space because I got myself a camera that can shoot 8K HDR "raw" footage with 12-bit color. As I learned to edit and process this into something I can upload to YouTube I got a glimpse into the madness that's going on in the industry.
Basically, digital cameras got really good really quickly, and at the same time OLED monitors and super-bright LCDs with local dimming become available for mere mortals.
The industry meanwhile was stuck in the mindset that there is only one standard, and it is basically "whatever the RGB phosphors of a CRT TV made in the 1980s did". The software, the hardware, the entire pipeline revolved around some very old assumptions that were all violated by advancing technology. The changes were so rapid that mistakes are still common.
Essentially, video editing tools had to "grow up" and deal with color management properly, but there was an awful lot of push-back from both the editors/colorists, and the vendors themselves.
Examples:
- Professional grading monitors have buttons on the side to emulate various color spaces. These buttons generally don't "report back" the active color space to the OS or the grading software. It's possible to complete an entire project and not notice that what you see on your setup is not at all what anyone else will see. ("Oops.")
- Some OLED grading monitors are so good now that in a dark room you won't notice that you've accidentally packed the brightness range into the bottom 10% of the signal range. (This is basically what happened with that episode of Game of Thrones.)
- Both recording devices and color grading software like DaVinci Resolve treats color "artistically" and are basically incapable of the equivalent of "strong typing". Video from the camera is often not tagged with the color space used, which is just crazy to me, but this is the "way things are done"! Similarly, these tools generally don't have a strict mapping into the working space, they allow overrides and it's all very flexible and squishy.
- Colorists are so used to the specifics of old formats that they think in terms of RGB values in the encoded output space. Same as Photoshop users who think in terms of 255,127,0 being a specific color instead of a specific encoding. ("In what space!?") This extends to tooling like Resolve that shows the output-space values instead of the actual color space in all controls.
- Video cards and monitors "do their own thing". Without closing the loop with a hardware calibrator, there is absolutely no way to know what you're actually seeing is what others will see.
- The software has a mind of its own too. It's absurdly difficult to avoid "black crush" especially. It just happens. Forums are full of people basically fiddling with every combination of checkboxes and drop-down options until it "goes away"... on their specific monitor and driver setup. Then it looks too bright on YouTube... but not NetFlix. Or whatever.
- Basic assumptions one might have about HDR editing are still mired in the SDR world. E.g.: I would expect a fade-out to be equivalent to turning down exposure of the camera. It isn't! Instead it's the equivalent of blending the output tone mapped image with black, so bright parts of the scene turn grey instead of less bright.
For reference, outside of the video editing space, tools like Adobe Lightroom (for stills photo editing) are much more strict and consistent in the way they work. RAW stills photos are always tagged with the input gamut and color space, are automatically mapped to a very wide gamut that won't "clip" during editing, and all editing controls operate in this ultra-HDR space. It's only the final output step that tone maps into the target HDR or SDR space.
As a random example of this, switching from SDR to HDR mode in Lightroom will just make the highlights get brighter and more colorful. In DaVinci Resolve, unpredictable brightness shifts will occur throughout the image.
Wasn't there a Game of Thrones episode which had this exact scenario? As I recall, it didn't go well for the runner guy.
>AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand.
Yeah there's a bunch of movies/show I'm not interested in watch but fascinated by aftershow content, i.e. all the game of thrones podcasts/recaps. It's interesting the variety you can get in a 5 minute recap, a 20 minute one, or a 2 hour one. There's alot of mid movies out there that I'm satisified with just the recap. Ditto with all the channels summarizing entire seasons of TV shows. I'm just waiting for a selectable X minute recap/summary/synopsis slider for content. Bonus choosing how recap is done, i.e. I really like game of throne wiki because it feels more like history book with drama stripped out / toned down.
This is the least suitable market for AI that I can think of. People love writing summaries for TV shows and movies. They do it for free. Why not focus on making AI do jobs that humans don't like.
I also don't think people actually long for having the machine recommend new movies and shows. At least I get enough of that from my human friends and family. ("Have you seen game of thrones? You have to watch game of thrones")
The game of thrones accents are pretty cringe though, leaning way too hard on the "dark featured eastern beauty with an unintelligible accent" trope whenever there is a brothel scene. I'm glad they realized this was stupid and had Myseria unceremoniously drop much of her fake accent for Season 2 House of the Dragon.
>geeks and nerds shouldn't be gatekeepers about what the entertainment is, or the literature, because that cuts out a lot of people who should feel included.
But the sports fans never felt this way, and were always happy to cut out the geeks and nerds that didn't give two shits about the sportsball game they watched that weekend. Why should the geeks and nerds need to worry about including the sports fans, but not the other way around?
>I think social media, politics, streaming services, etc. have totally blown away these shared frameworks in society, and it's kind of a bummer, even though it's great to have lots of choices. People used to watch the same TV shows and talk about it the next day.
When Game of Thrones was the new hot TV show, it seemed like everyone and his dog was watching it, and that included the sports fans and the nerds too.
>I guess sports is basically the last thing that's shared.
Back to my first point. I don't know any sports fans in my circle of friends and work colleagues (who are all techies of course). If any are, they keep it to themselves, thankfully.
But the problem is less with the source material and more with the execution of the movie. Look at Game of Thrones and what happened when they ran out of source material.
Something about the (modern?) movie making process just sucks out the good.
probably because it's was boosted to popularity by game of thrones, a nerd tv show.
Once a movie's defence involves it having "politics" that is a bad sign - even a 3-hour movie isn't really long enough to give politics a treatment that is interesting; the storytelling is too turgid. Game of Thrones seasons 1-3 had politics, intrigue and a bevy of nuanced characters and showcased why something like the Star Wars prequels didn't really work. A good political story needs to be long and gritty and requires an inspired writer with a deep grasp of social dynamics (Lucas fell down here pretty hard - if he had a better grasp of his own limitations he wouldn't have attempted to tell a political story).
And the politics of the prequel was uncomfortably black and white. "There is Good v. Evil and Evil Won At Politics!" is an approach with a frustratingly low-functioning level of emotional intelligence; that just isn't how interesting politics works. Part of what made GoT such a sensation was political storylines were done properly.
They can. You know they can, others (ie: the pirate versions you mention) do. Larger files consume more bandwidth and storage on the CDN, which makes it more expensive. And while there are indeed some issues with lower quality (especially in dark scenes, I'm reminded of the muddy mess in the final episodes of Game of Thrones), most folks are "fine" with the quality we get today. Fine enough, anyway, that they keep paying for the status quo.
That's not to say that they're not interested in providing more quality. There's heavy investment in per-video, and sometimes per-video-section encoding and next generation codecs like AV1. The goal for them though is to get more quality with the same or less storage and bandwidth budget.
Yes I shouldn't have used the word episodic. The problem with your third solution is that it seems to be difficult to do with the current way TV series are financed and produced: You can't commit to multiple seasons at the outset and you also want to have an arbitrary number of episodes depending on how well the show is doing (milk more episodes if the show is doing well). There is also incentive to create cliffhangers so that subsequent seasons can be produced.
There are lots of mini-series which do book adaptations but it's hard to come up with examples that span multiple seasons: "My Brilliant Friend" did it I think and maybe you could argue early "Game of Thrones" but the story was never finished in book form either so it couldn't be said to be telling a complete story.
I don;t think "The Wire" gets enough credit for creating a format that conformed to the constraints of TV production while still being able to tell stories that spanned many episodes. You could have ended the series at any season (had it been cancelled) and it wouldn't have felt incomplete and yet the final season did feel like it completed an even larger story arc.
> So they put up a banner after these laws went into effect, only in states affected. My original point was where were their banners during the last 20 years?
No, your original point was, and I am literally quoting you here:
> They should be proposing systems that they believe are reasonable to meet their obligation, but they are not. Instead, they've gone from at least requiring credit cards to... absolutely nothing. They've frankly brought this on themselves.
This is categorically false. Not only are they proposing alternatives, not only have they only pulled out of states that do not offer a government ID system (even though it's offered criticism, Pornhub has not pulled out of Louisiana), they also proposed systems way before this legislation took effect -- like you said, RTA standard has been around for ages.
No, Pornhub has not preemptively lobbied for it to be legislated, but that is hardly unusual and hardly a cause for criticism; companies generally don't preemptively lobby for themselves to be legislated unless they're shooting for regulatory capture. Quite frankly, usually when companies lobby against regulation, they don't put forward alternatives. It's unusual that content companies are going this far out of their way to try and help solve the problem instead of just pointing out flaws with the government proposal.
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> Like now I really don't understand what they're suggesting.
There are several ways of approaching this: one is to do age verification using a standardized system -- ideally that system would be standardized on a federal level. Where states have such a system, Pornhub hasn't pulled out. This is the least-good solution, but it is a solution that Pornhub in specific seems to be generally fine with.
A better way of approaching this is to do age verification using a standardized system that is purely device-bound -- ie, a system where a flag is set purely locally, possibly with one-time verification through a company like Apple or Google, and where requesting websites are sent no data other than a general "yes/no" byte alongside requests. This would be a considerably better system for privacy and security, and it is the ideal that Pornhub in particular is advocating for. One reason why this system would be better is because once verified, verification data would never need to be transmitted off-device at any point. It would also not run the same risks of training customers to upload ID information to arbitrary websites, which is a large phishing risk.
Pornhub's stance on this is weaker than my own. I would prefer for this to be handled entirely through filtering. In practice, the vast majority of parents can easily enter an age into a device when creating an account, and then any standardized age verification system could pull from that parental control with no need to ever expose sensitive ID information to even Apple/Google/Microsoft. Or, even better, parents could be given the option to be more granular with their filters, relying on devices to filter specific content and pages based on their own determinations about what their children can and can't see.
Pornhub also advocates for filtering solutions, but is comfortable with verification/blocking if there are systems in place that make that secure and private.
I don't know the specifics of Utah's digital ID system, but given that Pornhub hasn't pulled out of Louisiana, I would guess the reason they have pulled out of Utah is because they believe that Utah's system isn't secure enough or comprehensive enough to meet their needs. I can only guess what the reason would be -- whether it's a lack of desktop support, or whether the app transmits more data than Pornhub would like to receive, or some other critique. Maybe they will eventually adopt that system in Utah.
But the biggest critique Pornhub has around these laws is a defacto requirement to use 3rd-party ID systems or to collect data themselves. Because they (very correctly) point out that 3rd-party ID systems have security risks, are generally run by shady companies, and generally teach users bad data and privacy habits. Again, their stance is less extreme than mine, Pornhub is only lobbying for a workable ID system, I would argue that these ID systems are inherently insecure, inherently raise 1st-Amendment questions, and as designed fundamentally do a worse job of protecting kids than labeling laws would. I would also argue that several of the states pushing these laws have directly proposed creating registries of trans and LGTBTQ citizens and that like 3rd-party verification industries, those governments themselves should also not be trusted with touching ID verification data at all (again, I would note that none of the bills bar collection of data for these purposes).
But Pornhub is OK with those systems... if they exist and are (somewhat) secure and private. Pornhub has some other critiques that I think are pretty reasonable (and that have been spelled out in the articles that I've linked), including the fact that the enforcement mechanisms (lawsuits rather than direct regulatory action) generally leave smaller and less responsible porn sites untouched and make kids more likely to visit them. And we've already covered how these laws fail to protect kids from porn spread on general social media like Reddit and on non-commercial sites like Mastodon. But the most basic critique Pornhub has is that the 3rd-party ID verification ecosystem as it exists today makes it dangerous to do this kind of verification.
> Why are they starting discussions with Apple and Google to build it? Shouldn't they be integrating with the wallet provider who already has?
A general solution here built into platforms is obviously preferable to a state-by-state solution, particularly given how bad most states are at building secure software. It makes a ton of sense to work with Apple and Google directly on this -- governments themselves should be working directly with Apple and Google on this.
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> My read at this point is that this is more an attempt at stalling tactic.
Okay, think through this for a second. This doesn't make sense. Pornhub is pulling out of these states. Pornhub does not win in any of these interactions; there's no benefit to Pornhub to stalling, every day they stall hurts their business.
Paypal "stalls" when I try to withdraw money because they get something out of it, they get continued interest on the money they hold. Apple "stalls" on app store regulation because they get something out of it, they get continued revenue from the app store while regulators go back and forth with them. Pornhub doesn't get any of that -- they get zero revenue from these states while this is being litigated.
This does not make sense as an analysis. If Pornhub thinks that they're going to need to go back to these states, they lose more money the longer they wait. Clearly there's something else here going on other than just greed.
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> Movie ratings are not mandatory because they are not obscenity without artistic merit. An R rated movie will be safe. A porn movie likely not.
What percentage of Reddit porn doesn't have artistic merit? This is nonsensical, you're still looking at a situation where 50 Shades of Grey and Game of Thrones are legal to show to children. That content would rightly fall under NSFW classifications on most sites, and I think most adults would agree that content shouldn't be shown to minors. By any reasonable definition, 50 Shades of Grey and Game of Thrones contain pornographic content. But it's still legal, and you're arguing that this kind of content wouldn't be covered under these laws.
> As far as I know no one's challenged it.
This does not necessarily mean that if it was challenged, it would hold up. Most of the movie industry voluntarily restricts access beyond what the law requires. What we do know is that when these laws have been challenged, particularly on the federal level, and particularly where the Internet is concerned, they've been difficult to defend and have been struck down in high-profile cases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act)
Regulations on technological capabilities are not free from constitutional risk, but they are far less likely to run into these problems.
Now, if your point here is that these filtering laws are only going to protect kids from X-rated full-on smut with no plot, and that artistic pornography won't be covered -- then these aren't effective laws. They're not protecting kids. Yes, we have obscenity laws in the United States, but if we're going to go in-depth on those laws, we have to start with the point that "porn" and "obscenity" are not the same thing legally speaking. Porn can be obscenity, but not all porn is classified that way. You draw a bright line between R rated movies and X rated movies, but it's not the government that makes that classification, it's a completely arbitrary industry-drawn line. Where content online is concerned, there is no easy test to determine whether a pornographic piece of art or video has artistic merit -- and in fact R-ratings are not based on artistic merit or social value, only on how graphic or disturbing the content is.
Yet the laws you're championing require making that distinction on such a large scale that we would be able to tell what percentage of a website consists of obscenity. It's not realistic, it can't be done without disregarding 1st Amendment concerns.
If you're trying to protect kids from porn, it is not enough to target obscenity -- there is plenty of 1st Amendment protected pornographic speech that should never be shown to children. Which is why filtering laws in these situations are preferable; because they dodge (some) 1st Amendment concerns while allowing parents agency to filter material that would not fall under obscenity law, but that is still probably not a great thing for kids to look at it.
> The phrase “sweet summer's child" became a popular way of describing an innocent, naive person (especially among American writers) during the early Victorian era. It was used by a number of authors during the 1840s, notably:- Fredrika Bremer (1840), James Staunton Babcock (1849) in The West Wind and Mary Whitaker (1850) in The Creole. It has been used in a number of other novels, poems and speeches (especially by US authors) throughout the 20th century. "The West Wind," by James Staunton Babcock, New York, 1849::Thy home is all around,:Sweet summer child of light and air,:Like God's own presence, felt, ne'er found,: A Spirit everywhere! The 1996 fantasy novel A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin adapted this former usage for a passage in which a young boy is called a "sweet summer child" by an old woman, since seasons last years in the novel's world and he has yet to experience winter. It was later popularized by its use in the episode "Lord Snow " (2011) of the television adaptation Game of Thrones .
Are you sure it's "Americans" or is it the Internet? Our experience of Americans may not be identical. Even just my co-workers and family seem to rarely if ever be aware of the same things on television I care about, granting I watch far more nature documentaries than anything else and had no access to broadcast networks until they launched streaming services in the last couple years since I cord cut around 2011 or so. The only thing from the past 15 years I can think of that seemed widely at least known about to most people I talked to was Game of Thrones, but even that was far from universal. My HVAC guy commented that I looked different because I had long hair and a ponytail the last time he saw me a few years ago and I said it was because I grew my hair out for Khal Drogo cosplay and he had no clue what I was talking about. He'd never even seen Game of Thrones or probably any other television. I actually remember that about two of my ex-girlfriend's dads from when I was in my early 20s. They were both small business owners and had no knowledge whatsoever about pop culture. They were so focused on their businesses that they never watched any television or saw any films.
In any case, even though there is nothing on television I watch with any regularity currently, I would still rate my sofa as a fairly important piece of furniture. Not as important as my bed, but it is the largest piece of furniture and the centerpiece of my largest room. My kitchen/living room is open floor plan townhouse and I cook quite a bit, and I can't just stand all day, so that's where I rest, even though I'm just listening to music when I do so and not watching television. When I lay down to read a book, that's also usually where I do it. If I take a nap during the day, it's typically on the sofa. We usually eat dinner there, too, even though we're not watching television, just because it's more comfortable than any other place we have to sit. I even work from my sofa pretty frequently.
But I've got no complaints, personally. I paid $300 or so at the PX when I joined the Army almost 20 years ago and bought my first house and still have the same sofa. It certainly didn't fall apart on me. It's moved with me four times. My wife and I debate getting a nice one but always decide not to because our cats are going to tear it up and puke on it all the time anyway.
One example being once the phrase "sweet summer child" came up with someone asking where it originated and why it was popular all of the sudden. Some were insistent it was a common phrase in recent times prior to A Game of Thrones using it and others were saying it's always been a common thing and GoT was just the latest media but not related to its modern usage. A default ngrams search will show some decent activity in the 1800s then the phrase catching on a bit in the early 90s, staying steady through the late 90s, until it took off in the late 2000s. The phrase turns out to have definitely been said in the 1800s but maybe not with the frequency the graph might hint at initially because of the infrequency of recorded material at the time. Then unsmoothing things and shrinking the date range you'll see it really didn't take off until just after 1996 where it died down pretty quickly until 2011.
I.e. what initially looked like something that had been a common phrase before and into popularity in recent times turned out to be something that had been previously mentioned but not really in use then lines up exactly with the release dates of the book and movies for A Game of Thrones instead of something which slightly preceded it. This shows how easy it is to end up with two opposite conclusions by using Ngram Viewer slightly differently.
Alright, enough rambling about the hazards of Ngram Viewer in a post focused on Moore's Law :p.
> The article mentions several other examples of fictional languages in television and movies, including Game of Thrones, and they spent some time talking about those.
Yes, but Petersen worked on that one too.
The article mentions several other examples of fictional languages in television and movies, including Game of Thrones, and they spent some time talking about those. So, I was surprised they left of lang belta, which is a pretty well developed fictional language, probably better than any of the examples from the article.
One thing I absolutely loved about the first Dune movie was the incorporation of secret hand signals (covert sign language) from the book. The use of secret hand signal conveys the gravity and peril of the world they live in.
I think Apple just wanted their own Game of Thrones flagship, and on paper, Foundation seems like it should be that (epic scale, big ideas). But honestly, it needs a more subdued treatment: mostly talking heads in rooms, and an anthology that jumps forward decades with each episode, rotating characters as necessary.
Blockbuster narratives need heroes, which works directly at cross-purposes to the long-term systemic thinking that defines the books. There was probably never a scenario where the high price of buying the rights could match up with the size of audience for a more faithful adaptation. (And rightly or wrongly, non-book-readers seem broadly positive on the series.)
>is that ideological opponents are naturally the Confederates, and thus racists
They are literally, purposely, as it's "their history", flying a damn (historically inaccurate no less!) battle flag of the confederacy! A rebellion that took less time than Game of Thrones the television show!
Seeing as the confederacy was openly about protecting slavery as the SINGULAR issue separating them from the Union, choosing the fly a flag that represents a short rebellion (and open treason) against the US is definitively choosing to represent yourself as a confederate.
Seeing as the confederacy was openly about slavery, and southern US slavery was openly about a broad belief that black people were lesser than white people, and savages that god gave them dominion over, you know, racism, it should not be controversial to call someone flying a confederate flag a racist. That flag represents nothing else.
People who are giddy about doing another Sherman's march sure are weird though. Sherman himself didn't even like it. Arguably it wasn't some all out massacre save for one city that "supposedly" the boys got too roudy with, but he wasn't exactly proud salting the earth so aggressively that you can still see it flying over the area to this day. There are plenty that consider themselves "liberal" or "progressive" even, that happily adopt violence as a means to their chosen end. There's always someone willing to bend their interpretation of reality to a form that "requires" they violently act to be the hero. I wouldn't exactly call the left the originator of this violent rhetoric however. "Democrats should be shot" isn't exactly a rare thing to hear from conservatives in the US, and not in jest, and it is not new.
Specifically on the topic of "avoid using long" I don't disagree; I was mostly replying to the general sentiment of "you should never assume 64 bit because this changed in the past and will change in the future". That said, if you're writing software specifically for Unix systems (as much software is) then it de-facto works, so it's fine. That's why people keep doing it: because it works in all cases where the software runs.
Starting C in 2024 is like starting Game of Thrones in the middle of Season 5. Dubbed in Esperanto.
Does this mean more episodes of shows like Game of Thrones because of advances in AI ?
I am thinking of Stargate SG-1 Season 11. And remaking Game of Thrones after Season 5
Game of Thrones Season 8 will be great in a few years.
I'm not sure there would be much demand for purely custom/individualized episodes beyond the novelty and maybe for fun with a group of friends. Most of the reason people watch TV or movies is for the shared experience that you can discuss with others. It could definitely drive down production costs though, hopefully HBO uses it to eventually redo Game of Thrones post season 4
That explains the Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones season 8
> movie references
I was once tasked with reverse engineering a competitor's product, figured it might take a while but within minutes of running strings on one of the binaries it became clear one of the engineers must have been a major Game of Thrones fan. Talk about making your encryption passwords jump out :eek:
Random strings, folks, much safer to stick with random strings...
Heh. I wonder if it is still tradition in universities to assign quirky network names to their machines? Would anyone even notice these days, as these names are way less prominently displayed these days?
They greybeards who came before me used names from the lore of LotR. I used house names from A Song of Ice and Fire (better known as the early 2000s tv series Game of Thrones, though the first book was released in the 90s). The youngsters after me used Pokémon names.
Game of Thrones was a massive outlier in its cultural impact, especially for a TV show. Many games have as much or more cultural impact than many TV shows or movies, probably more on average - even than major shows. And among children, it's almost entirely the opposite.
> It's weird because TV is also culture. Game of Thrones isn't just some random piece of personal, single-player entertainment: it was, and is, an important cultural phenomenon for at least half of the planet. > > That's what makes the dynamics so weird: it's not just, or even primarily, about your personal entertainment - there are social aspects involved, from wanting to belong with your peer group (e.g. talk about latest GoT episode with your cow-orkers at the water cooler)
OTOH if you don't have that in common with other people, you just talk about other things. It is the same thing with soccer for example which is the #1 subject around coffee machines for men (and now increasingly women).
It's weird because TV is also culture. Game of Thrones isn't just some random piece of personal, single-player entertainment: it was, and is, an important cultural phenomenon for at least half of the planet.
That's what makes the dynamics so weird: it's not just, or even primarily, about your personal entertainment - there are social aspects involved, from wanting to belong with your peer group (e.g. talk about latest GoT episode with your cow-orkers at the water cooler), to all kinds of rituals (e.g. watching romantic comedies with a date/spouse).
Same applies to books and musics, to a lesser degree to magazines/news media. For some reason, it mostly doesn't apply to videogames; I used to think it was because they're a new thing, but these days, I think it's rather because the experience is much more individualized and requires much more effort (and time), making it a poor social object.
You're missing a 4th group: people who would enjoy watching content X, but simply won't bother if it's too annoying. The alternative isn't piracy, it's just doing something else with your time. There's not that many shows or movies that I care enough about to keep one subscription open for it. I had an HBO subscription for Game of Thrones, but I also enjoyed Succession, Last Week Tonight, and some other random stuff. After Game of Thrones shit the bed, I canceled HBO and simply don't watch those other shows. I never finished Succession; I'd like to one day, but it's not worth either the subscription or pirating.
This just shows that the availability of piracy is NOT the problem. It shouldn't matter to HBO whether I've pirated it or not: I could be a paying customer if their prices matched their catalog's value, but it doesn't, so they get nothing, piracy or no.
I'm so sorry to those pissed off about the spoilers. I was under the impression that for movies, it is like "about a week-ish" before hinting on spolers, and about "couple of days" for TV episodes!
Let me make it up to you. If you haven't seen it, there is a TV series based off George RR Martin's work, Game of Thrones[1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones
Edit: Huh! I can't add even a subtle hint of a joke, even on the weekends? :-(
The benefit of linear TV was that everyone was on the same schedule so all the post-viewing social aspects worked better. It also helped the social aspects that there were three or four networks with all major content, so the odds were very good that any particular person watched the same thing as you did.
Almost the only substantial TV or movie discussions I've witnessed in the last ten years were about fandom-style properties - Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, the MCU, Star Wars. TV and movies in general are rarely discussed. If you share a fandom with someone you can talk about the fandom, if not then the two of you may as well be from different planets regarding media.
> "What were the writers thinking?"
As for the Game of Thrones -- that's exactly what JRRM envisioned. At some point he sat together with GoT storywriters and producers and laid off all the plans, how who dies, and of course the finale.
I think the finale was awesome -- what a nice populist autocratic ruler may become. That sometimes life is not what you want it to be, and you cannot change it. That your favorite characters don't always win.
PS: I only regret they pictured protagonist Tyrion (the dwarf) somewhat nice. The whole GMMR's idea was that his character was repulsive, incredibly ugly, but did good things all the way. That would stand off from pretty much all the movies, when I can tell who's who from the first minute (good are cute, bad are ugly).
I feel the same way about Game of Thrones. I really loved the first few seasons, but I can't bring myself to start rewatching them as I know where it inevitably goes.
It's even worse than How I Met Your Mother in my opinion, for two reasons - first , GoT is much more focused on a long running story, making the conclusion more important. But more importantly, HIMYM is a sharp decline; you can simply skip the last two episodes and have a perfectly fine ending. GOT just declines ever more, making it hard to set a point at which to end the show.
It can be.
It seems that everyone wanted to be Game of Thrones, with huge budgets on sets, CGI, etc. That also means less episodes per season.
Some of the best episodes of Star Trek (all of the series) were just the actors in the usual sets with minimal special effects. The new Star Trek shows are all big bombastic productions with large budgets. The writing on Discovery was poor. The writing on Strange New Worlds is pretty good, but the limited amount of episodes is a bummer. They could spend 40% as much per episode, set aside some extra for more writers, have more episodes, and everyone would love it even more - in my opinion.
All you need is good acting and writing. The rest is just support.
The stats for watched shows are pretty interesting - https://fortune.com/2023/06/29/netflix-amazon-disney-others-spent-a-record-23-billion-on-original-new-content-last-yearso-why-is-everyone-watching-movies-and-tv-from-the-past-aden-ikram/
Nothing prestige, almost entirely NFLX. A lot of it is back catalog licensed stuff. NCIS, Criminal minds, lol. Disney+ on the scoreboard with basically a couple kids shows plus the Simpsons.
Previous year stats pretty similar - https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2022/streaming-grew-its-audience-in-2021-drama-reality-and-kids-programming-lead-the-content-wars/
Prestige stuff like Game of Thrones, Succession, even each of the Disney+ Star Wars shows is $100M/season. None of these make the scoreboard for views.
Meanwhile most people are watching boomer reruns and midbrow stuff. Even Seinfeld licensing only cost $100M/year for NFLX to end up one of the top 10 viewed shows.
The problem I notice is even though we might create niche interest groups online, they're hard to translate into real life. Makes it hard to connect with others when you meet them for drinks, find a movie to watch or some other sort of entertainment.
I feel very lucky I was already out of university by the time algo-feeds became mainstream, otherwise it would be hard to chat about "latest episode of Game of Thrones". Or just generally chit-chat about "some stuff that everyone saw online".
> There's valid reasoning why a company wouldn't let another company make a movie or TV series. It cheapens the IP if the movie/series goes bad.
Season 8 of Game of Thrones.
The spin off was alright but I didn't really care enough to keep it up, and I get a lot of people didn't. LOTR comes to mind too, ditto for a lot of the "slop" that Disney has been pushing for Star Wars.
There is a lot more stuff out there, and most of it isn't great, so Ima tune it out until the test of time determines if it's worth it.
I’ve also seen this with the two sentence blurb about TV series episodes on streaming and broadcasting services.
Eg, I was really pissed off seeing Sky TV spoil Game of Thrones like this. I browsing TV schedule one night to see was on, and accidentally saw a GoT episode summary scroll by : “After the death of XXXXX, the characters try to…”
> shows are mostly watched within a year of its original air date.
This depends a lot on what else is available. One of the most successful shows on netflix this past year was Suits, a show that was released 12 years ago. Even before the strike old shows do very well on streaming services. Schitt's Creek gained huge popularity two years after it's original air date.
> So much choice that there isn’t any specific shows that people watch because everyone else is watching and will talk about it on Monday during lunch (a la Game of Thrones)
That's why streaming services have started to withhold episodes and only allow you see one episode a week. They want to control who is watching what and when. When people can watch whatever they want to on their own schedule they might not get around to shows immediately and advertisers don't like that. It also makes it harder to control the conversation on social media.
The Tick was canceled after it didn't get enough views just 6 weeks after release, but as you said, there is so much to watch right now, and so much else besides TV competing for our time, that those kinds of metrics are meaningless.
It'd be better for netflix to make sure their library is filled with quality and to have confidence that audiences will find those shows on their own time than to worry about how many people are watching the newest thing immediately and cancel anything that doesn't show immediate success.
I don’t think so, to be honest. The landscape for media consumption is so much different than 10-15 years ago. Without any supporting data, I have a hunch that, shows are mostly watched within a year of its original air date. New shows aren’t on a rerun (I recall Scrubs, House being on from time to time), they are not turning into a comfort background tv show (like The Office, Friends) or have a religious fanbase that’ll just follow along because there are 20 seasons of it (NCIS, Greys Anatomy and so on.).
On top of everything, media is extremely fragmented. So much choice that there isn’t any specific shows that people watch because everyone else is watching and will talk about it on Monday during lunch (a la Game of Thrones). So all these companies are left with churning new shows trying to find a holy grail of the Stranger Things size to bring them new subscribers. Until then, anything that doesn’t stick on the wall, will get cut off.
We have a huge movie industry scene in my city, so you hear from people who jump from working show A to show B. None of the shows I’ve ever heard of and never will. But producers are still hoping for a genre defining hit somehow.
Microsoft is going to walk away from the most strategic deal they’ve made in a decade to save the Loopt guy’s ego?
I feel like everyone should be forced to watch a few Game of Thrones episodes before commenting. Organizations act in their own self interest. Leaders are convinced they’re irreplaceable all the way to the gallows steps.
If Sam can sabotage OpenAI or if the remaining people can’t capably run the organization then sure people will walk away. But if they keep things from falling apart nobody is going to give a fuck.
> How is this different from any book, movie, or other form of entertainment?
I'd say if you spend millions to make a movie to be shown in the cinema you don't expect that by default 50% will walk out before the finale. But even more crucial: If that would happen, your ticket-sales would plummet week-by-week.
> Case in point: I have not yet watched Game of Thrones, but much of my momentum to watch it was stymied by fan outcry of just how atrocious the final season was. If I do watch it, I will probably stop before I get there.
The final season of Game of Thrones was based on the success of the seasons before it, it was produced AFTER Season 1,2,3,4,...
> Even the content that made it into the game will never be seen by most users, as most buyers of a video game will never complete your game. But if the ending is not satisfying for those who complete it, they will impact the buying decisions of those who never play through it anyway.
How is this different from any book, movie, or other form of entertainment?
Case in point: I have not yet watched Game of Thrones, but much of my momentum to watch it was stymied by fan outcry of just how atrocious the final season was. If I do watch it, I will probably stop before I get there.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I find that too many shows and movies add sex scenes unnecessarily. It doesn't add that much, except to drive the maturity rating up from PG->R or something like that. I think that sometimes, it's done intentionally because there's a category of viewers that won't watch anything PG/PG-13 rated.
Imagine if Game of Thrones eliminated all nude/sex scenes. Would it be a better show if they focused on character interactions rather than 'edgy' scenes? How many horror movies are R-rated because of a singular 15 second sex scene?
I'm hoping that we reach a point where shows/movies don't add in sex scenes unless they add some value to it.
I don’t think I have to say anything more than “Game of Thrones” to prove you wrong in most people’s minds. The last episodes sullied the whole series, and I have no longer any desire at all to revisit any of the first seasons, even though I enjoyed them a lot when I watched them originally.
Huh, I wonder if it was intentional to leave it ambiguous. I have recently (3-4 years ago) gone through vaguely similar conversations about various characters in the Wheel of Time, albeit those conversations were generally a lot more acrimonious. Overall, I just think it's weird how people get so hung up on ethnicity specifically. I understand it if someone's got a sore spot about not being historically represented in the culture they live in, fair play, but some people get really involved in it with no such concern. About the Wheel of Time, there were some people saying that they couldn't watch the show because some of the cast didn't match their headcanon in terms of appearance, and it's just like... if the obsession is that bad, maybe you should reframe this as "I can't deal with adaptations" rather than targeting it at the cast specifically.
Anyway, sorry for getting sidetracked. I just can't stop thinking about Wheel of Time since the second season finished, what an incredible series of television. I haven't felt this way about a TV show since early Game of Thrones.
I'm surprised, I had pretty much the opposite experience. I used Xbox Cloud Gaming to play through Halo 5 (the only game in the series to not have a PC port) in four sessions over a few months, wrapping up last weekend.
I'm on a high spec desktop playing with an Xbox controller connected by USB. The desktop is on Ethernet, 200 Mbps down / 30 Mbps up.
In my experience, the game frequently failed to start. Most often I would watch the rocket ship loading screen for about a minute, then close it and retry. Probably about 1 in 10 times the game would start instantly, otherwise it would display the loading animation forever.
My understanding is that the game runs in 1080p on the original hardware (launch Xbox One) and runs in 4k on modern hardware (Series X). I'm not sure what the source resolution is for Cloud Streaming, but visually it looked like an old YouTube video. The game was designed with a large visual dynamic range. Video compression made it very hard to see in dark areas (think The Long Night episode of Game of Thrones). In colorful areas with more contrast I experienced lots of macroblocking.
Input lag made the game very frustrating to play. The Halo series is known for having generous aim assist, even so I found precision weapons useless and too hard to line up a shot. Occasional dropped button inputs got me killed too.
All-in-all I can't recommend Cloud Streaming to anyone. Looking at their catalog, maybe it would be more acceptable for games with limited motion like Phoenix Wright or Car Mechanic Simulator, but those run natively on cell phones or low-end hardware. Even then repeatedly failing to start a session is a turn off. Experiencing all of these problems every time I played makes me think it's not just a fluke.
"Too bright" depends entirely on the context. I control-tab and alt-tab like a maniac these days (might reduce that by getting a fourth display, used to think that would be excessive but the Overton window has shifted and I'm coming around on the idea).
The default UI here on HN features your username in #828282 on a background of #F6F6EF [1], a contrast ratio of 3.54:1. The up and downvote arrows are #999999 on #F6F6EF [2], a ratio of 2.62:1. On a high-brightness screen, these less-intense contrasts look great. And this is far from the only place with 'nice calm greys' that are intentionally used by designers to reduce eye strain.
I run Visual Studio in dark mode, and Windows Explorer in dark mode, and Notepad++ in dark mode, and Omron Sysmac Studio in dark mode, and Autocad Electrical in dark mode, and Alibre CAD at the default (light gray) theme, and they look great. I'm in a nice, bright office, with (4) daylight 4' T8 LED bulbs directly overhead, and a whiteboard as the backdrop to my monitors, so it's not like I'm a recluse in a dark cave. The monitor brightness is not wrong.
At least, it's not wrong until I win-right or alt-tab over an Excel document or an old version of Studio 5000, where the color profile is stuck at black text on a white background. Then I'm instantly blinded. I can't set half the monitor (just the part over the Excel spreadsheet) to the right contrast and brightness to make Excel acceptable, because then I can't see better-designed apps.
And don't get me started on opening up a movie or game after work's done. "Set your brightness so the logo is barely visible." Yeah, no. "Game of Thrones is a cinematic show and therefore you have to watch it like you’re at a cinema: in a darkened room." Wagner and Snyder are watching their productions on studio-grade OLEDs. I won't put a show on the integrated screen of my old Thinkpad or Precision laptops, I know those displays are trash (and they're small, I only put stuff that's easy to see on them), but no brightness setting on my relatively nice IPS LCDs can comfortably handle the diversity of content they're used to display.
[1] https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=828282&bcolor=F6F6EF
[2] https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=999999&bcolor=F6F6EF
> Video streaming services need to take Gabe Newell's words to heart. Steam still heavily beats pirating games, and so I pay up for games
Absolutely. I do think there are subtle differences and bits of strategy that are often overlooked here though.
First off, the risk of using pirated games is significantly higher than that of pirated music/films/tv. You can't put malware in a video/audio file (modulo codec bugs), but it's fairly trivial with a game binary.
Secondly though, Steam has sales, regularly. The amount I care about content exists on a spectrum. I'll pay $30 to see the new Dune film in an IMAX cinema, but the 87th episode of House MD is probably not worth $1 to me. TV/Movie companies never seemed to understand this, with things like buying on iTunes, and it was left to retailers to sometimes price down DVDs, but even then there were restrictions (e.g. Disney). Streaming sort of solved this, but is now un-solving it with so many streaming services having their own pricing setup based on their perceived value of their content.
Steam nicely side-steps this with a range of sale prices – I can buy stuff I care about soon/predictably at high price, or I can buy stuff I don't care about later/unpredictably at a low price. And I do buy across a range of price points based on how much I care about the content.
Edit: another aspect that is maybe under-valued is that Steam doesn't seem to do regional releases. I've never experienced a game not being available in a region. However with TV/movies/streaming this is regularly the case. It's so common for a hit TV series to come out in the US, for the online discourse to be in full swing, and for the studio to just have plans to maybe possibly launch it in select other countries in a year's time. How did they think most people in the world were watching Game of Thrones?
> 5 years is incredibly long. Sales are front heavy.
No. Look at A Game of Thrones as an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones
It was published in 1996. It became a bestseller in 2011 after the worldwide promotion it got due to the TV series.
Happens already. Product placements in TV shows and movies are already a thing. Even fantasy dramas like Game of Thrones :).
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/31/emilia-clarke-spills-beans-on-game-of-thrones-coffee-cup-culprit
After Game of Thrones season 3 I've began ignoring film adaptations of books I enjoy. I think the risk of tarnishing my experience with a good book is much worse than any possible film enhancement I've experienced.
The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though.
Our school had a gnutella network on the campus network. It was incredibly fast, and some people were fairly prolific with their content upload reputations. E.g. I remember the highest quality Game of Thrones episodes being uploaded within minutes of them airing.
Though my understanding was that Gnutella worked better than torrents because it was an incredible fast local network, i.e. our campus was connected with the fastest network I’ve ever experienced personally. I don’t think Gnutella works as well over the public internet.
no one flippantly calls game of thrones or rated r movies porn even though many of them have a far larger ratio of sex and nudity to non-sex sex and nudity scenes than you will find in fate/stay night.
fate stay night is a 90 hour visual novel with a few short sex scenes that are effectively bolted on after the fact and are even cut out entirely of most releases of the game at this point.
even the ones that did have cultural relevance (like game of thrones or house of cards) have been pretty well "culturallyl liquidated" at this point. ain't nobody going back for a rewatch of game of thrones, or at least not past about season 5.
it's funny, a couple years before the show was finished (during the first time when they stalled out for a year) my sister gave me a box set of the blu-rays, at first I was a little bummed because I'd inevitably end up with a couple mismatched DVDs/not in the box set, but it turns out that stallout was also the point where the show started imploding.
I like to joke that after she gave me the set they never finished the show, haha what are the odds!? /s
What do you mean by “new”?
Superman and Batman have been around for almost 80+ years. Pokémon is approaching 30 years.
Hollywood movies made in the 1920s were remade in the 1930s which were remade in the 1940s which were remade in the 1950s and so on.
People have also been writing articles that mention this “new” normal for decades. But when does it stop being “new” lol?
How were those new-ish Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings shows marketed? (I didn’t watch them.)
That's what historical stage combat always looked like so, I can live with it. To an extend, that is.
What really gets me so, is large battles. For some reason, it is cool to just break formation and charge a tightly packed enemy some 200 meters away. While screaming as loud as possible. Or the helmets in the last duel, hell, collored cloths over armor and insignias have exactly been developed in medival Europe to identify famous nobles and knights without seeing their faces... Plenty of occassions to show some famous actors in other scenes.
All of that is toped by the really bad writing we have in last cpuple of years. I mean TV took off with things like Breaking Bad. And the we got season 8 of Game of Thrones, to pick just one famous example...
A couple of points of clarification are needed:
It's not "my take", it's ACOUP's (though, to be fair, I'm convinced by it): https://acoup.blog/2019/06/04/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-ii/
Second, GoT seems to fit within the Late Middle Ages / Early Modern period. In fact, ACOUP points up that the armor worn on the TV show at times looks to be Early Modern / Renaissance! If this was Early Middle Ages, there would have to be a lot more chainmail and far less plate mail. The Early Modern period (not the Middle Ages) would make more sense for acts of sacrilege shown in GoT because it also saw the rise of professional armies who didn't act because of deference to neither church nor king, but because of pay. But besides Bronn and the mercenary companies outside Westeros, most of the armies within Westeros proper seem to be motivated by allegiances to noble houses, and so they must defer to tradition and religion.
Third, ACOUP is talking of religion in general. There are some characters in GoT that believe in their religion (possibly some of the Starks and their "Old Gods", Melissandre and her Lord of Light) but most of the world of Westeros is skeptical of any religions at all, not just the mainstream one. But as ACOUP points out:
> "This is the mistake my students make – they don’t believe medieval Catholicism or Roman paganism, and so they weakly assume that no one (or at least, none of the ‘really smart’ people) at the time really did either. Of course this is wrong: People in the past believed their own religion."
The vikings before converting to Christianity had their own gods, and they truly believed in them. In contrast, most of the nobles of Westeros don't believe in any gods, pagan or otherwise. Which a serious historical mistake if one is trying to reflect -- albeit with fantasy divergences -- "real medieval society".
I bet you Charlemagne truly believed there was a god judging him.
What's pretty interesting about ACOUP is that when contrasting Tolkien's Middle Earth with George Martin's Game of Thrones, from a realism perspective... it's Middle Earth that ends up winning.
If you peruse the many articles of this blog on both works of fiction, you'll realize the author (a scholar on medieval history) thinks Lord of the Rings is more realistic (in scope, military logistics, scale of the armies and even tactics) than Game of Thrones. This was surprising to me, because GRRM "sells" Game of Thrones as a fantastic [1] but "more realistic" [2] take on the Middle Ages. ACOUP takes him to task, because almost every "realistic" detail in GoT is, according to him, wrong. This also includes the purported cruelty of nobles towards the populace, GRRM's take on religion, etc.
Let me delve on that last point: ACOUP asserts that GoT's take on religion is wrong. In GoT -- especially in the TV show, but also in the books -- the take on religion of many major players is cynical. While some characters are fanatics or really believe, others are skeptical. Most of the Lannisters seem skeptical of any gods. Cersei goes so far as to blow out the Sept (cathedral), an act that in the real Middle Ages would see her hanged, burned or beheaded, and would lose her the support of her army. ACOUP makes the point that the nobility and kings of the Middle Ages really believed in their religion and gods!
----
[1] after all, it's a fantasy work with dragons and zombies. Then again, LotR has orcs, elves, ghosts and wizards and it manages to be more realistic!
[2] George Martin: "I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like, and I was also reacting to a lot of fantasy fiction. Most stories depict what I call the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’—there are princes and princesses and knights in shining armor, but they didn’t want to show what those societies meant and how they functioned."
While it makes some good points, I think a lot of it depends on what content you are consuming.
I feel like there used to be a lot of family oriented shows in the past. There may have been some innuendo for the adults, but nothing really sexual, no vulgar language, etc. It seems incredibly rare to find a show like that today. Think Brady Bunch vs Modern Family.
There are plenty of shows available today that are highly sexual, but most of them have moved out of the mainstream because you can cater to the niche more than if it were for a general audience. Sex Life, Spartacus, etc has lots of sexual content. I'm not sure if Game of Thrones fits with the author's take or mine, but there are likely examples of each depending on the scene. We don't really need this content in blockbuster movies when we can get even more graphic content through these shows.
Exactly. And big-budget movies are trying to maximize their audience, that's all that's happening.
If you want something adult and horny, there's plenty for you on HBO and so forth. Euphoria, Game of Thrones, The Idol...
The elephant in the room might actually be US-American prudery. But to confirm, we'd have to check if prudery became stronger in the last 20 years and if non-US movies have still the same (or more) amount of sex in it.
But it's actually a well-known meme in the rest of the world that entertainment from the US has no problem depicting violence, but god beware you see the nipple of a woman...
Game of Thrones was extremely unique and "Non-American" for the nudeness and many sex scenes.
Some of the fandoms are toxic, although that's more an internet/social media issue and those involved tend to be teenagers more than "working class".
> Then game of thrones proved it was possible to make an adaptation that was both faithful and good cinema
.. up to the critical point where they couldn't be faithful because GRRM hadn't written the ending, so they wrote one which everyone got mad about.
Anyone who complains about “toxic fandom”, particularly for a franchise they inherited (which includes all of marvel and Lucas film) is thumbing their nose, you can call it what you like but the behaviour is evident. It used to be, when an adaptation was bad, writers and execs would blame each other and audiences would sorta side with writers. Then game of thrones proved it was possible to make an adaptation that was both faithful and good cinema, so now writers and execs blame audiences when they fall short.
You end up with more Game of Thrones season 6. Where Benioff and Weiss (2 inexperienced writers) try to write a season without George R. R. Martin and turn it into a steaming pile of shit.
Yes, anyone can write a passable show just like anyone can write compilable code.
> the final series of game of thrones retroactively killed the cultural phenomenon that it was
I agree with you on the observation. Subjectively I feel the same. I wonder if someone has hard data on this. I wonder if there is some executive somewhere looking at a graph of polling results, or merchandise sales or anything like that and feeling terrible that they have screwed up (at least privately, even if they would never admit publicly).
I believe that the latest few seasons removed from my enjoyment of the whole franchise. It even made the earlier episodes worse, in the same way a flat punch line ruins even the most masterfull lead up of a joke. But does this feeling also appear on the bean counting level? Fundamentally a franchise is a business enterprise with the goal of making money for the owners. Does “ruining” a series this way also effects the bottom line in a way which can be expressed in the accounting?
I know this is conventional wisdom and also is very true.
however, the funny thing is, when eventually a film maker comes along and makes a film that is both new, unique, and outlandishly successful, then suddenly its "obvious" and Hollywood starts to copy that, but it takes forever for the right person to be in the right place for that to get moved forward, so you end up with rinse wash repeat stuff for the longest time.
For example, HBO taking a risk on Game Of Thrones or the initial conception of the new Marvel movies (I'm talking about Iron Man, the first one from 2007, and so on, when it was still novel), Breaking Bad was novel when it came out too. Same with The Walking Dead (the plot elements, not so much the idea of a zombie horror)
Its so weird how this industry appears to work from the outside
As a newer MS employee, the funny thing about these videos is that employees only have to watch the current "season" (ie: this years rehash of the same training points), but they have plot points that involve prior seasons (ie: prior years' training that covers the same points). It's like jumping into Game of Thrones on season 5.
Having read the book it was still hard to watch that movie without constantly thinking "how is this supposed to make sense"?
Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones had a bit of that, where you know reading the books made the show easier to follow, but that Dune movie felt hollow
Stranger Things is generally a much better show than Game of Thrones (in my opinion of course, but I’m pretty sure I’m objectively correct). But Game of Thrones seemed to make a much bigger cultural splash. Stranger Things—a season comes out, and then we all binge it, talk about that season, and it it all done in a month or so. Game of Thrones had weekly episode-by-episode articles written about it.
I don't think I agree with this. Novels can take years to write, and to have their copyright expire after only a few years may not be enough for the author to write another book. What would be the motivation to write a series if the series isn't worth printing after only a few books? It goes doubly if the novel might be up for a movie or a TV adaptation: the game of thrones tv adaptation didn't happen until much later after the first book... does this mean George R R Martin should be paid 0 while HBO makes a killing on the first few seasons? How would any artist retire ever if they cannot make money off their existing body of work?
> * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright?
We can have a world where:
- Every child has access to humanity's best information
- We cure cancer
- 90% of American's media is controlled by 6,000, not 6, corporations
- College tuition costs drop dramatically
- Lower taxes
- More income equality
- No more opioid pandemics
- Making the world resilient against AI domination
Or a world where:
- We make sure that we don't risk disrupting new Game of Thrones spinoffs
I know what I choose.
Hmm, at least those I watch, if they have less episodes than its often 40-60 minutes instead of 20. Or maybe its different type of show, dunno. I think the cost of complexity of shooting have skyrocketed, before for a scene you needed few good actors and very primitive generic setting. Now hunt for perfection is much bigger on both sides of screen, plus required digital changes afterwards.
It stunned me to see ie what actors wore in Game of thrones in later series, when budget was high. A robe which was on screen for 1 minute max, and I focused on face of actress and scene so didn't notice it at all, had such details and beautiful ornaments sewed in by hand, crazy amount of work to create 1 unique piece just for that scene. Multiply by X actors there. Must have cost a small fortune to make, even for such a well oiled machine like Hollywood. Compared to ie Streets of San Francisco, guys wearing the same basic suit outfit over whole series.
> It first materialized in a big way back during the late seasons of Game of Thrones. Episode after episode, people furiously tweeted about how hard it was to see, well, anything going on on screen.
From an enthusiastic GoT fan back then: I don't really know where the author got that "episode after episode" from. I remember exactly one episode, where overdark scenes were an issue, S8E3 "The Long Night" - and in the episode, darkness was a plot device and a deliberate stylistic choice.
There was an unfortunate scene in which the characters were unable to make out whether the enemy was approaching or not, due to intense darkness. The filmmakers chose to visualise this by making the scene almost pitch black, with literally not enough information in the pixels to see the characters. I'm sure that must have looked impressive in a test screening in a cinema, but when streamed, it caused lots of viewers to be distracted by their own reflections and turn up their TVs to maximum brightness - because the scene sort of looked as if you should be able to see something, even though really you weren't.
I think that was a visual experiment by the filmmakers which, frankly, failed - but it was at least a deliberate choice and not blindly following some trend.
> You'd think people would have learned after the mess with Game of Thrones.
Given how ridiculously dark House of the Dragon was in some episodes, with the entire season only set in candlelight, I don't think they've learned anything.
It's not just movies. There was an episode of The Mandalorian with cave scenes so dark that they were literally unwatchable for me with the shades open. You'd think people would have learned after the mess with Game of Thrones.
I was thinking few days ago, In 20 years we will probably be able to say something like “Make a TV show that is mix of Game of thrones and Lord of the rings, has 4 seasons with 10 episodes each and main character is played by Tom Hanks and co-star Sandra Bullock” and you just start watching, probably tweak it as you go, saying more fighting, explore more story in desert about dragons…
That section about "Game of Thrones" -- surely there was a precedent : The Expanse TV series?
Game of Thrones used tons of CGI too. But they did it right. They built out parts of the set, then did the rest in CG. This allowed them to create something which looked real(for the most part).
Problem with these Marvel "films" is there is so much CGI there's nothing left to ground them in reality, and then it looks fake no matter how many millions they poured into it.
Haven't finished Mad Men, so I couldn't speak to it. Though I am planning to because it's become a lot more interesting to me as I've grown older compared to when it was new.
As for Game of Thrones, it doesn't fit into my list because the quality of the writing really nosedived, starting in season 5 to my mind, though seasons 6 and 7 is where it took a turn for the drastically worse. And season 8 was a disaster. So it's exactly in the opposite group that's too long to exhaustively list.
Consider the comparison images:
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/csgo/images/csgo_react/cs2/maps/overpass_lower_tunnel_s1.jpg
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/csgo/images/csgo_react/cs2/maps/overpass_lower_tunnel_s2.jpg
(The former is CS2, the latter CSGO). In my office, with the sun streaming in through the double windows, with relatively low-gamma, lower-contrast old IPS monitors that don't suck but aren't 4k professional OLEDs, yeah, I absolutely want everything to be bright. It kills the horror-movie feel, where your eyes are at the edge of their abilities, squinting and peering into the foggy shadows for barely-perceptible hints of motion, but if you want to actually see what you're doing you want flattened dynamic range.
If you're not watching on an HDR monitor in a pitch-black home theater, you can't see anything in Batman (2022) or Game of Thrones, or any of the modern "realistic", "gritty," underexposed shows. It's definitely more artistically appealing in ideal conditions, but if you're not going to perfectly recreate the ideal viewing conditions (and crank up the gamma on your display to compensate a bit while you're at it), it's pointless.
I have the same complaint regarding dynamic range with regards to sound mixes, too. I understand that the real battlefield sends soldiers home with tinnitus because explosions are head-splittingly loud. I don't want that realism when I'm in-game, flashbangs should not be mixed in Counter-strike such that their own monitors and headsets/speakers physically incapacitate the players if they turn the volume up to be able to hear the radio commands. When listening to a movie, I usually just accept that I have to turn on subtitles (even though my hearing is fine) and will have to read the dialog if I don't want to wake up my kids with the house shaking when there's an on-screen explosion.
I think Q was right about us all along. That episode's conclusion only made sense because the humans in that fantasy timeline are nothing like real-life humans. And of course, that's why ST:TNG is such a pleasure to watch (except for a few stinker episodes): it shows humans you'd really want to hang out with and work with, instead of the backstabbing rats that exist in real life (as you see on much more realistic shows like "Game of Thrones").
The obvious solution is to wait until series are done before watching them, if lack of narrative closure upsets more than watching with everyone else excites you. E.g one of these days I might get around to The Wire or Breaking Bad, but probably not Lost or Game of Thrones or Twin Peaks, because I'm aware people were annoyed at how they ended. On the other hand I'm perfectly happy with seasons 1-3 of The Office or season 1 of Stranger things, or Season 1 of Severance even though it was a total life hanger, so it's not impossible to make something that's good even if it's not clear how long it'll run.
More seasons are fine and can add to the story. Game of Thrones should have actually been a season longer, but the directors got greedy and wanted to wrap it up so they could move on to their new contracts (that thankfully evaporated after the disaster of the last couple seasons).
Sitcom style shows are also perfectly fine being left open ended. It's kind of an annoyance that British and Japanese shows will spend time creating funny characters in an interesting environment and just end it in a season when there was plenty left to explore.
But serial dramas should have an ending planned from the beginning and an early cancellation should have some kind of early exit clause to wrap the show in a limited number of episodes.
The walking dead went from an intriguing story line to a complete waste of time when I read the show runner had no interest in exploring the origins of the outbreak or finding a cure, he just wanted multiple series to explore the outbreak in various parts of the world. Just a complete and total disrespect for the audiences time, since the thought of an ending wasn't even considered.
It's also completely disrespectful when networks pull the plug early. There was so much hype around Westworld with multiple seasons that were building and then HBO cancelled it without the final season and took it off the service, so there isn't even the option to watch the nearly complete series.
> The parent comment originally advocated putting hardcore porn into all content, but was edited.
That's a mischaracterization if I've ever seen one. My comment was originally written as this:
> Twitter and Reddit have shown that the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else. [Including hardcore porn.] It's fine, it's fun, and it's harmless.
I originally stated that Twitter and Reddit include hardcore porn as well. My intention was to demonstrate that nobody gives a fuck that that these websites depict humans having sex (because they don't). Reddit nor Twitter makes any attempt to scrub sexual content because that would be suicide. Tumblr is an excellent example of how prudishness sucks the life out of the things it latches onto.
These are major platforms people use at work and school and include as a normal part of day to day conversation. Journalists and academics use these platforms. Brands use them. Nobody gives a damn that they feature nudity or porn, or even (gasp) nude bodies moving in pleasurable ways.
HBO and Netflix already show boobs, penises, and vaginas. Again, nobody cares. It's natural and normal.
The point of my comment was to show only a small percentage of the country gets wound up about this. People were thrilled that Game of Thrones was edgy and racy and sexy. That it wasn't just more violence.
It's time for us that aren't offended by basic human anatomy to move on from the prudishness and push our art forward. We're limited and held back because we can't invoke that dimension of humanity.
In any case, I edited my comment after I saw yours. You latched onto a three word sentence ("Including hardcore porn") and spun a wholly different argument. I didn't want the thread to get derailed further, and this simple observation didn't contribute at all to the substance of my argument.
"Hardcore", for the uninformed, does not equal "fetish". It's just intercourse.
Let me make my argument simple: it's okay for social media and films to show boobs, penises, and vaginas. Very few people care, and it's not going to kill anybody.
Twitter and Reddit have shown that the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else. Even hardcore porn. It's fine, it's fun, and it's harmless.
The American WASP prudishness needs to die. We love our violence in film and drama. We should love our sexuality too.
Game of Thrones was better for it.
I want to see a TV series adapted from the Liveship Traders [0] series by Robin Hobb. A perfect mixture of Game of Thrones and Black Sails.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liveship_Traders
"Or how failing to account for how some images handle compression led to HBO shipping those unwatchably dark Game of Thrones episodes. I guess directors targeting streaming nowadays know not to do that?"
That blame lies on the service encoders. They should be allocating more bitrate to dark scenes, and gently debanding them, rather than relying on decades-old x264 defaults.
But to be fair this wasn't well known back in early GoT days.
I guess if game publishers care about how their content will appear in streaming channels they might adjust their graphical approaches to avoid things that won’t compress well.
Similar to how pop music production values changed as kids started listening to music over phone speakers.
Or how failing to account for how some images handle compression led to HBO shipping those unwatchably dark Game of Thrones episodes. I guess directors targeting streaming nowadays know not to do that?
But I don’t think this passes as normative advice for all game developers. If as a game dev you value how your game looks on Twitch, you might want to think about some of the graphical flourishes you include.
On the other hand if, as a game dev, you want people to experience your game personally and you want to discourage streaming consumption, maybe you crank these features up to the max so your game looks terrible streaming. Entirely up to you how you use this knowledge, really.
It also doesn't have TV shows like Game of Thrones, House, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc etc
Seems to me that movies these days have gotten a lot longer than 90 or even 120 minutes. Now, 2 hours seems to be a bare minimum.
One thing I really like about these serial TV shows (like Game of Thrones) is that they're limited to 1-hour episodes. So I don't have to dedicate 3 hours or more of my time to a single viewing; it's a lot easier to fit 1 hour into an evening. And then I can see more of the story in following evenings. I also don't have to sit in a theater holding my bladder for 3 hours, since TV shows are seen at home, and I can pause it if I don't want to wait until the end for a bathroom break.
No literally the opposite. Instead of having to create blockbusters that appeal to everybody and therefore none at all, we can create stuff that appeal to smaller audiences and try new things.
If you are the type of person who complains about the fifth transformer movie, or ask why Hollywood doesn't want to take a try on new things, the cheaper a production can be made, the better the ods that somebody can make it.
In a world where you need 200 million dollars to create a game, only studios of that size can make the games, and we never get Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld or Minecraft.
As a quick example of movies: Pearl Harbor would have been a great war movie if it had toned down the rom-com part by about 80%, but then it would have lost a big part of the audience. On the other hand, it would have been a great romantic movie if it had turned down the war content by about 80%, but then it would have lost the other part of the audience.
As it is, it is too long, and not a good movie in the first place.
Now it appears to me from your comment that you want to find a way to hate this no matter the merits, but honestly most people will want to watch things they like, and then be delighted and surprised. Game of Thrones did as well as it did because of the plot twists, not because it was predictable. The CGI and general budget went up for the last seasons and they are universally looked upon as the worst ones.
As a challenge for you: which movie, that you consider art, sold at least 10 million tickets in its original theater run?
You won't see anyone smoking in films these days either. Which is also bad for noir.
See also https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ ; it's a conundrum of modern action movies that they're allowed unlimited violence but must be strictly unshocking in all other ways. And then there's the total dominance of superhero CGI.
To a great extent this stuff just moved to TV. Would Game of Thrones meet your criteria for domestic violence?
I learned about Flanderization [0] on HN recently and was surprised to read that Rick and Morty is a show that consciously tries to avoid it.
Honestly, I think they’ve done a pretty good job and as a result the show still feels fresh and entertaining in the 6th season. But I imagine that’ll be quite a bit harder without Justin.
Whatever they were doing they had a formula for making some dang good tv. R&M is far better than any other adult cartoon I’ve seen, to the point that I think it might be one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen.
Here’s to hoping that Justin gets in a better spot, and the next few seasons of R&M don’t pull a Game of Thrones.
[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanderization
IMO, that's part of what made Game of Thrones fall off a quality cliff. It wasn't just subpar writing on the main plot lines when the source material ran out. The world itself became hollowed out, and the main characters stopped existing within an organic world. It turned into an avengers movie, where the leads were largely alone on screen only interacting with each other (except for designated Crowd Scenes).
The milestones (from the source code):
//<10 seconds 'A single frame of a film': 100ms, 'It would take light to go around the Earth': 133ms, 'A blink of an eye': 400ms, 'The time it takes light to reach Earth from the moon': 1255ms, 'The fastest Formula 1 pit stop': 1820ms, 'The fastest 1/4 mile drag race time': 3580ms, 'The fastest Rubik\'s cube solve': 4221ms, 'The fastest 40-yard time at the NFL Combine': 4240ms, 'The fastest 1 liter beer chug': 4370ms, 'A skippable Youtube ad': 5000ms, 'A full bull ride': 8000ms, 'The fastest 100m sprint': 9580ms, //10 Seconds 'The Wright Brothers first flight': 12000ms, 'The fastest 200m sprint': 19190ms, 'The fastest 50m freestyle swim lap': 21300ms, 'The Westminster Kennel Club dog agility record': 28440ms, 'A typical television ad': 30000ms, 'The fastest NASCAR lap at Daytona': 40364ms, 'The fastest 400m sprint': 43030ms, 'The fastest NASCAR lap at Talladega': 44270ms, 'The fastest 100m freestyle swim lap': 47050ms, //1 Minute '"Just a minute"': 60000ms, 'The fastest Formula 1 lap at Monaco': 74260ms, 'The fastest Formula 1 lap at Monza': 81046ms, 'The fastest 800m sprint': 100910ms, 'The fastest 200m freestyle swim lap': 102960ms, 'The fastest Kentucky Derby time': 119400ms, 'An NHL penalty box time for slashing, tripping, or holding': 120000ms, 'How long it takes to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge (without traffic)': 135000ms, 'The duration of the "Millenium Force" roller coaster': 140000ms, 'The longest Super Bowl national anthem': 156000ms, 'One round of a boxing match': 180000ms, 'The average song length on Spotify': 183000ms, 'The fastest 1,500m run': 206000ms, 'The song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley': 215000ms, 'The fastest 400m freestyle swim lap': 220140ms, 'The fastest 1 mile run': 223130ms, 'The duration of the "Steel Dragon" roller coaster': 240000ms, 'The duration of "The Beast" roller coaster': 250000ms, 'The song "4:33" by John Cage': 273000ms, 'The longest sky diving freefall': 276000ms, 'The Any% speedrun of Super Mario Bros for NES': 294948ms, //5 Minutes 'An NHL penalty box time for fighting': 300000ms, 'The average duration of a typical sky dive': 330000ms, 'The average time for a drive-thru order': 356800ms, 'The time it takes Jeff Bezos to make $1 million': 402000ms, 'The fastest race car lap around the Nurburgring': 403300ms, 'The time it takes light to reach Earth from the sun': 500000ms, 'The time it takes a rocket ship to reach outer space': 510000ms, 'A typical marching band show': 515000ms, //10 Minutes 'The length of the first space walk': 600000ms, 'The longest a human has held their breath (non-oxygen assisted)': 695000ms, 'The average duration of popular Youtube videos': 702000ms, 'The time it takes an average human to walk 1km': 710000ms, 'The fastest 5K run': 757350ms, 'The average time to bake a pizza': 810000ms, '1% of the entire day': 864000ms, //15 Minutes 'A typical commute in the United States': 960000ms, 'The fastest superbike lap of the Isle of Man TT': 1002778ms, "MLK's \"I Have A Dream\" Speech": 1020000ms, 'An average baseball inning': 1200000ms, 'The song "2112" by Rush': 1233000ms, 'The first angels to appear in the movie "Angels in the Outfield" (1994)': 1275000ms, 'An episode of The Office, Seinfeld, or Rick & Morty': 1320000ms, 'The time it takes to drive the entire Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel': 1380000ms, 'The song "Octavarium" by Dream Theater': 1440000ms, 'A typical Super Bowl halftime show': 1500000ms, 'The fastest 10K run': 1584000ms, 'It takes for Bobby Boucher to get his first game snap in the movie "The Waterboy" (1998)': 1719000ms, //30 Minutes 'The average time to bake a cake': 1950000ms, 'The time it takes until the launch in the movie Apollo 13 (1995)': 2081000ms, 'It takes WALL-E to arrive at the Axiom in the movie "WALL-E" (2008)': 2164000ms, 'The shortest war in history (Anglo-Zanzibar War)': 2280000ms, 'It takes Harry Potter to arrive at Hogwarts in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\'s Stone" (2001)': 2381000ms, 'The album "Thriller" by Michael Jackson': 2539000ms, 'The album "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd': 2589000ms, 'An episode of Breaking Bad, House, or Firefly': 2640000ms, 'The boot camp sequence in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" (1987)': 2730000ms, 'The album "Abbey Road" by The Beatles': 2823000ms, 'It takes Simba to become an adult in the movie "The Lion King" (1994)': 2849000ms, '10% of a typical work day in the United States': 2880000ms, 'The album "Kid A" by Radiohead': 2996000ms, 'The time limit for the essay portion of the SATs': 3000000ms, 'The time it takes a standard ice cube to melt at room temperature': 3150000ms, '0.01% of an entire year': 3155692ms, 'The album "Fearless" by Taylor Swift': 3221000ms, 'The time it takes for the basketball game to start in the movie "Space Jam"': 3222000ms, 'An episode of Game of Thrones, True Detective, or The Sopranos': 3300000ms, 'It takes Harry and Lloyd arrive in Aspen in the movie "Dumb and Dumber" (1994)': 3394000ms, 'The album "Jagged Little Pill" by Alanis Morissette': 3443000ms, 'The fastest half-marathon': 3451000ms, //1 Hour 'An episode of Top Gear': 3600000ms, 'The inception of Robert Fischer begins in the movie "Inception" (2010)': 3847000ms, 'Riding the longest subway line in NYC from Queens to Inwood': 3900000ms, 'The time it takes Jeff Bezos to make $10 million': 4017600ms, 'It takes before Sean Connery says "Welcome to the Rock" in the movie "The Rock" (1996)': 4022000ms, 'A flight from Syracuse to New York City': 4140000ms, '5% of the entire day': 4320000ms, 'The album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John': 4580000ms, 'The album "Scenes From A Memory" by Dream Theater': 4626000ms, 'The movie "Primer" (2004)': 4740000ms, 'It takes to fully charge a Tesla (at 440V)': 4788000ms, 'The ferry duration from Long Island, NY to New London, CT': 4800000ms, 'The movie "Toy Story" (1995)': 4860000ms, 'A drive from Syracuse, NY to Rochester, NY (87.5 miles)': 4920000ms, 'The movie "The Lion King" (1994)': 5280000ms, 'The longest State of the Union address': 5280000, //Duplicate time... //1.5 Hours 'The movie "Mony Python and the Holy Grail" (1975)': 5460000ms, 'The movie "Monsters, Inc." (2001)': 5520000ms, 'An average duration of a soccer game': 5700000ms, 'The movie "Reservoir Dogs" (1992)': 5940000ms, 'The longest Innaugural address': 6300000ms, 'A drive from Orlando, FL to Tampa, FL (84.6 miles)': 6660000ms, 'An SR-71 flight from New York City to London': 6896400ms, 'The movie "Alien" (1979)': 7020000ms, //2 Hours //'25% of a typical work day in the United States': 7200000ms, 'The average duration of an NCAA basketball game': 7200000ms, 'The movie "Star Wars: A New Hope" (1977)': 7260000ms, 'The fastest marathon time ever ran': 7299000ms, 'The time it takes to listen to every studio album by Nirvana': 7667000ms, 'The movie "Dogma" (1999)': 7680000ms, 'The average duration of an NBA basketball game': 7860000ms, 'The movie "The Matrix" (1999)': 8160000ms, 'The movie "Fight Club" (1999)': 8340000ms, 'The movie "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)': 8520000ms, 'The movie "Forrest Gump" (1994)': 8520000ms, 'A drive from New York City to Philadelphia (94.6 miles)': 8520000ms, '10% of the entire day': 8640000ms, 'The movie "Inception" (2010)': 8880000ms, 'The movie "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018)': 8940000ms, 'The movie "Pulp Fiction" (1994)': 9240000ms, 'It takes Voyager 1 to travel 100,000 miles': 9360000ms, 'The movie "Avatar" (2009)': 9720000ms, 'The average duration of an NHL hockey game': 9750000ms, 'The movie "Saving Private Ryan" (1998)': 10140000ms, 'The movie "The Godfather" (1972)': 10500000ms, 'The movie "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001)': 10680000ms, //3 Hours 'The average duration of an NFL football game': 10800000ms, 'The total time limit of the SATs': 10800000ms, 'The movie "Avengers: Endgame" (2019)': 10860000ms, 'The average duration of an MLB baseball game': 11280000ms, 'The time it takes for a standard ice cube to freeze in a freezer': 11700000ms, 'The movie "Titanic" (1997)': 12600000ms, 'A drive from Boston to New York City (215.9 miles)': 13560000ms, 'Alex Honnold\'s free solo climb of El Capitan': 14160000ms, //4 Hours 'Half of a typical work day in the United States': 14400000ms, 'The flight time from New York City to Los Angeles': 19800000ms, 'The time limit of one session of the Bar exam': 21600000ms, 'It takes Voyager 1 to travel 250,000 miles': 23400000ms, 'The fastest swimmer to cross the English Channel': 24900000ms, //>8 Hours 'A full typical work day in the United States': 28800000ms, '0.1% of an entire year': 31536000ms, 'The time it takes Jeff Bezos to make $100 million': 40173000ms, 'The time it takes to assemble a car': 57600000ms, '1% of an entire year': 315360000ms, 'It takes for the Lōʻihi volcano to rise above the surface of the ocean becoming a new Hawaiian island': Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER //285,616 years
But it is Game of Thrones... simply kill off the characters as needed.
I think the issues with the next books come down to deciding:
- how the Army gets south of the wall
- how far south they get before encountering defeat (IMO they are the big bad, and if they don't make it down to the heart of the Kingsland slaughtering everything into a near-unstoppable horde, then the entire literary point of them is meaningless)
- how to plausibly defeat them
The failure of the TV series to address those three macro tension points to the whole series was the essential great failure of the series. They are the existential dread, they are old testament retribution for all the human sins on display in the series, they are nature's revenge for our failings as a species. An extinction level event where it's not just you dying, it's everyone dying. Really they are cold-to-the-bone fear that you're supposed to feel.
At this point why GRRM doesn't simply hire people to ghostwrite for him and he executive edits the final books is beyond me. There are fanboys likely of great writing ability and talent that would happily contribute for contracting money and not care if GRRM shovels the novels out the door with only his name on the finished product.
I'm the opposite. I prefer to wait until a whole series has finished and then watch the seasons that were decent, and screw the rest. I watched 2.5 seasons of ~Tits And Dragons~ Game Of Thrones, and honestly, that was 1.5 seasons too many. I'm also perfectly happy to rewatch Firefly knowing that they never finished it of with some bullshit final series or movie* that tried to tie it up with a bow, and ultimately fail.
*I know
Edit: awww, hn doesn't have strike through markdown support :(
It's also a poor excuse. I have a full-time job, am raising multiple children, and I fit gym and meal prep into my schedule just fine.
When people say they don't "have time", examine their television, video game, or social media habits. You'll find that 99% of the time they are liars.
We all have plenty of time, it's just a matter of priority. For many, imposing an unnecessary burden on the healthcare system is a small price to pay for having watched plenty of TikTok and knowing the minutiae of Game of Thrones. On their (premature) deathbeds, they'll all wish they'd finished Season 6 of The Expanse and clicked on more heart icons.
> the quality of films/TV produced in the west has been in steady decline for quite some time
I could agree the average quality has dropped. But surely you agree that the sheer volume of high-quality content has ballooned. How many high-quality TV shows can you name from the 90s?
Compare that to the last 10 years of shows like: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Queen's Gambit, The Handmaids Tale, Better Call Saul, Ozark, House of Cards, Stranger Things, Silicon Valley, The Crown, Fargo, Mr. Robot, True Detective, Veep, and even (controversially) Game of Thrones.
Yes, I think the golden age of television definitively ended with the disaster of the final seasons of Game of Thrones. Today's TV shows are inspired by the golden age shows, but the quality is a definite step downwards.
This will sound incredibly naive, but ... just make movies with a smaller budget.
The thing is FX tools are getting cheaper, distribution is cheaper, the production tools are cheaper. That leaves ... labor.
What may really be dead is the megastar, unless that megastar brings the bacon (for example, Tom Cruise is basically a producer for the films he stars in, but then again he has the money of dozens of former "hits" in the old model).
But then again, we are in the golden age of television. Movies might be suffering, perhaps because television is so much better. Television has the budget and FX is cheap enough that the OMG effects are no longer the monopoly of the film business.
And the article fails to address the shocking lack of good new IP and movies that are coming out of the film industry before the sea change of the subscription services. I personally point to the Matrix as the last time a good movie that wasn't just a sequel or a template or a remake was made. Yeah, uh, that was 1999. Funny writing that date, because it almost sounds like a date from the 1800s. There used to be multiple tentpole event movies every year before then, iconic movies.
What changed? Is there LESS money available now with mass release? Is it the lack of DVD revenue? China revenue means less creativity to offend The Central Party?
And what is a producer ultimately? The go between the financing and the "real" creatives. Is the guy really just complaining that his role in the modern pipeline is reduced, the financing more distributed and available from more sources, so they are less valuable? D&D from Game of Thrones were getting crazy amounts of credit for the series, but the pipeline of content ran out and suddenly they didn't look like geniuses anymore.
Really? You must not be very creative. Chat GPT is pretty much DOA for anything really creative.
Try having it write a movie scene where one person is abusive to the other. It won't do it. Ask it to tell you an offensive joke, it won't do it.
Why was "Game of Thrones" such a popular show? The Lanister's were hostile, nasty, abusive, vulgar people. Why is Hamlet still considered a master piece to this day? I mean, he says to his mom "Get thee to a nunnery" if you translate that to modern language he is calling is mother a whore. Try having Chat GPT write anything where it calls a woman a whore, it won't do it.
Look I don't expect it write Shakespeare level stuff, I don't expect it write Quentin Tarantino level stuff, but it ought be able to attempt to emulate both of them (including having characters that aren't PC). If you ask it to give you a sitcom premise and come up with a page of dialogue it will come up with the most boring, flat, uninspiring crap you have ever read. You can iterate over it asking it to make adjustments and improvements, but sooner or later you will probably want some fucking depth to your characters, which means some of them will be assholes, which Chat GTP will refuse to do.
Ask it to make an argument that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, no problem. Ask to make an argument that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, again no problem. Ask to make an argument on the importance of diversity, no problem. Ask it to argue why diversity is not important, HOL UP THERE COWBOY! Seriously, you mean to tell me there are positions so heinous and bad that you can't even entertain the arguments that someone make in favor of that position? When I was in school we were FORCED to come up with arguments for BOTH sides of a topic, this was immensely helpful (however difficult it was) and it is the proper way to learn and teach.
ChatGPT is simultaneously one the coolest pieces of tech I have encountered, and the lamest.
Maybe I am the only one, but I am very disappointed how sterile, boring, dull, ordinary, and stale ChatGPT is. I mean don't you want something that will occasionally blow your fucking hair back, or make you spit out your coffee? I mean I am not asking it to be overtly offensive on purpose, but when I ask the damn thing "Tell me an offensive joke" I would like it do so and not lecture me on how being offensive is mean.
Seems like maybe you're are just a cog in machine though, you seem to only care about "productivity". For me though creativity == productivity, and no one was ever creative without being, or at the very least risked being, highly offensive.
God forbid ChatGTP ever offend someone. Meanwhile, I am sure it would happily help you code a system that guided missiles so that you could literally kill people.
See I somewhat agree with you, but you have a limited perspective in a way, that maybe as a gay man I can help expand on without being shouted at for being MRA trash just because I notice things.
You say "video games allow you to shoot and stab thousands of virtual people", this isn't true. In actuality, video games allow you to shoot & stab thousands of virtual _men_. Replace the baddies in a game with women and or children and people will go mental.
Same thing with media; Television/movies - plenty of men are brutally gored on screen with no one batting an eye, but generally the camera will cut away if there's violence against women &| children. The only time you do see it is when they want to make a very strong impact ie "this guy killing this woman is a V E R Y bad guy, and you know that because it's not just some anonymous dude he's goring".
There's plenty of hypocrisy in it; Game of Thrones people famously complained about the Cersei rape scene (also in the books, although more ambiguous) meanwhile the average episode spends a good portion of the time showing us the insides of three dozen guys' ribcages.
Or Altered Carbon where in the book series where Takeshi is forced into a simulation as a woman, where he is tortured; media at the time said they were glad that it didn't make it into the show because it would be "mysogynistic torture porn" - apparently none of the gratuitous violence against male characters was considered to be bad.
And _that's_ why it's different. Because certain types of porn could be generated that infringe in the protected classes that society creates.
This comic is no longer relevant; you can see every Game of Thrones episode in existence by visiting hbo.com, and following a very straightforward streaming sign-up process. The price of admission is cheaper than all the legal options the character tried in the comic.
I guess The Oatmeal author forgot to update their decade-old comic to reflect the current state of things.
They did manage to add an update to the bottom of the website though, which says "Please don't steal." This either contradicts the message in the comic or piracy only matters when it happens to Matthew Inman specifically.
The Oatmeal has a relevant comic, but for a TV show: https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
You're probably right about that, I have noticed a pretty good line up on there when we had it for Silicon Valley, Game of Thrones, and Barry.
But I'd expect that of HBO also. They were the original channel to go to if you wanted to see great movies when I was a kid.
It seems like it should trend more and more that way as time goes on. I like new things, variety is the spice of life after all. However, a natural part of that journey is disappointment and lots of middling enjoyable experiences, be it food, movies, or anything else.
That said, once I have found a good thing (Star Wars) I want more of that good thing in addition to new experiences. I am enjoying the new take on Game of Thrones, the new take on Lord of the Rings, and really looking forward to the upcoming new take on Harry Potter (hog warts legacy). As more time passes the tried and true franchises should continue to produce while new things are tried on the side in an attempt to build new franchises.
I think you're absolutely correct. The show was campy, and in time, would have become grating and fallen apart.
Star Wars, once lauded, has been milked dry. There are a few good works, but by and large they're beating a dead horse.
The same thing is happening to Marvel. People checked out after Endgame.
Game of Thrones was so near to perfection. It had an unusually large cast of a hundred characters and an expansive world to draw down. But even if the new show is good, the magic is gone.
The mystery of Stranger Things after season one ended. We're getting a rehash with common character tropes you can find anywhere.
The allure of Westworld softened after season one attempted to open up to bigger themes, but actually cut down on the possibility space.
The third Godfather. Dexter. Every single Jurassic Park but the first. Jaws. On and on.
Chiefly, it's simply a function of multiplied probabilities to continue with a success streak. Eventually the odds do not pay off in your favor.
But I think another contributing factor is that our brains begin to fit the shape of the setting, the motifs, the character arcs, the narrative world - and we just aren't surprised or pleased any longer. Few people would ask for twenty seasons of a show. Or ten movies in a given franchise. Our brains learn the shape of the landscape and grow bored.
What you are talking about is the visual experience. In my opinion, this will be mostly a problem BECAUSE the visuals have been there already. All of those movies following Blade Runner did their part of the Neuromancer-Cyberpunk thing.
However I consider the hardest part being the emotional depth of the characters which get their unique taste through the authors way to describe them. The Burroughesque touch and the unknowns is what makes Gibsons early works truly special (it gets easier with his latests works as we can see with the current adaptation of Peripheral). The show needs a true artists touch. It doesn't have to be what Gibson did but it should be something special, not mainstream.
Dune on the other hand is a straight forward dynasty drama at the beginning and only later escalates into a philosophical exercise later on before it explodes into something completely different towards the end (of the original books).
The beginning has been done already in Game of Thrones for example and is pretty much doable.
Neuromancer is harder but I think Apple can pull this off because I feel this brave approach from them. A feeling I had with Netflix at the beginning.
I used that adapter to watch a bunch of Game of Thrones episodes with no noticeable lag issues. But the device casting was Surface, so maybe it's just a case of vendor optimizing for its own products.
I have actually seen some of those, including two (Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones) to fruition. Those two are actually excellent examples of what I am talking about, and you even called it out by cutting off the later seasons of Game of Thrones.
The types of TV series that are not episodic seem to always devolve in this way towards worse quality and inter-character romantic relationships, not to mention having cliff hangers at the end of every episode. It's a tension and resolve tactic that gets pretty annoying.
Black Mirrors is just a bunch of unrelated short stories which aren't that great compared to a movie.
Bojack Horseman is pretty good indeed, but mostly because it's a comedy. The drama isn't very interesting.
I've heard that a character dies in every Game of Thrones episode, which means some characters will lack depth since they won't have the time required to develop it.
This really comes down to opinion, and I happen to think there are comparable shows which have aired in the last year (Better Call Saul is as good as, if not better than Breaking Bad in my opinion)
But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)
But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes
The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.
Game of Thrones is an example of why serialized adaptations can be great.
Apparently (I haven't seen it for myself, but all the reviews suck), Foundation is simply not such an example. This doesn't mean serialized adaptations don't work. Similarly, I can find lots of examples of movie adaptations that suck; this doesn't mean movie adaptations can't work.
I’m 41 and I’m utterly baffled by my 24 year-old SO’s interest in binging an apparently infinite litany of TV shows from streaming services. I’ve watched the first six seasons of Game Of Thrones, the first season of Dark, all of The Expanse (reading the last book of the final trilogy now), His Dark Materials (because I read the book) and Andor. That’s it. I watched some Star Trek TNG & DS9 as a kid and was horrified by what snippets of Discovery and Picard I came across. I find the bulk of modern entertainment to be an utter insult to viewers.
Can't hear dialogue? What about not being able to see anything that's going on. Yes I'm looking at you Weiss and Benioff for that travesty that is season 8 of Game of Thrones
The Bourne Identity, Skyfall, Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and so on.
It does not have to be original. And I don't mean only the intro but the entire soundtrack. Often, the theme song is reused over and over during the film with many variations to set the tone of a scene.
Bad movies skimp on soundtracks.
Purchases of DRM movies are like purchasing an unlimited free rental card from Blockbuster. They are not yours.
Streaming services will even edit or censor movies as they please.
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/hbo-edits-game-of-thrones-coffee-cup-1203207545/#!
https://scribe.citizen4.eu/everything-80s/why-are-streaming-services-editing-our-favorite-movies-6a03efc32168
Honestly the only way to preserve most digital-only video media today is piracy.
> Was hoping they were finally headed to space in season 5
That would have been an interesting setting for sure.
But, I just did a re-watch of it these last couple of months and I finished season 4 this weekend; Doloris clearly states it was going back to West World (wild West) in the last episodes. And the whole World was being re-built (from memory?) in order to play one last game [0].
To think this launched at the same time as Game of Thrones, which I never bothered with as it's just a mangled recount of the sordid dynasties and ruling classes of of former empires, but Game of Thrones was asking some much needed questions in regards to the implications of a Society more heavily reliant on technology. And while AGI will likely never come to fruition in my lifetime, 90s kid, it's still a rather good juxtaposition if it will just accelerate our demise and lead to our hasten extinction in this headlong pursuit and seemingly more dystopic existence.
Sidenote: The Cyberpunk theme of season 3 was visually interesting, with some solid premise (the importance of free will rather than a dictatorship via technocracy) but woefully bad as a whole in it's execution. Zero HP Lovecraft's gig economy app was heavily influencing the RICO app plotline for sure.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QFTwl7OE90
Netflix should have bought out NBC, CBS/Paramount, Discovery, or (most significantly) HBO/WB. Or even just their perpetual streaming rights back in the 00's.
Letting Discovery acquire WB was one of the biggest mistakes they've ever made. Just imagine if Netflix had the HBO and WB slate. Game of Thrones, all of DC, Cartoon Network... HBO has the superior content lineup, and they let that slide through their fingers.
They should have bought the LotR rights. They still don't have a major fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero franchise outside of Stranger Things. And that universe is tiny.
Netflix, frankly, does not have content production as a core competency. Most of the shows and films they produce are terrible. Their in-fighting amongst top exec tastemakers is a testament to this fact.
I dunno, some people's works are only discovered or are rediscovered years later - think Kate Bush and Metallica's recent surge in popularity due to the Stranger Things TV show. Or book authors whose work is picked up decades later as source material for a film or TV show - the first Game of Thrones book is from 1996, yet the TV show earned and is earning the channel (and the author, I presume) millions.
Absolutely, particularly if you see this as simply another tool in the belt, like how Jurassic Park's thirty year old special effects absolutely stand the test of time because of them being a convincing mix of early CGI and puppetry.
It's not hard to imagine that this kind of thing could end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting for things like background scenes in the future, opening up the kind of stuff we saw in The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones, and the LOTR film trilogy to increasingly lower and lower budget productions.
It's funny. I haven't been enjoying RoP and I read this with interest. But then he started listed problems, and I have to say I disagree. The point of the endurance test isn't honour, it's a power play - after feeling scorned the dwarf wants to put the elf in his place, and once the dwarf feels he has the upper hand his ego lets him engage, the elf knows this and plays along- master diplomat indeed. Galadriel is a bad ass. Yes, in LOTR you could kind of just gesture at it and say "Oh yeah she's 1000 years old and 800 years ago she kicked ass", that's fine when it's not her story, but this is her story. It wasn't executed well, but they did need to actually do it, and she can't act all calm and composed when she's meant to be relatively in her teenage years coping with the loss of her brother.
To me, yes there are execution problems. But the core problem is different. It is trying to be Game of Thrones. It's telling several different stories in parallel - the harfoots, the humans, Galadriel, the other humans, the elves. Clearly, one day, these will combine, but at the moment it's five under-served, boring stories. None of the characters are worth getting to know. This is because they're trying to do the complex plotlines of Game of Thrones. But they miss that GoT started as 1 plot. It was the starks of winterfell. Stark went to the capital. End of season 1 he dies and his kids are thrown to the wind and it's only then that the multple plot lines start to explode. By that point you've got a deep investment in the characters and it evolves from there. The exceptions to this - Dani etc. struggle through this, I remember watching the Dani scenes in game of thrones and thinking "For gods' sake when is this going to actually link up with the story" and entire plotlines fail when they don't keep the thread (Dorne).
My only complaints with the new LOTR and Game of Thrones shows is that they seem to be rushing through the story. Part of the appeal of the originals (movies... series.. respectively) is that they feel like more of a "quest" or long adventure, with side stories and character development. Obviously this made for longer content and it took years for GoT to finish, as well as LOTR being longer movies (especially with the extended cuts).
These new series seem to jump around time and traveling much quicker. Overall, I still am enjoying them though and don't understand a lot of the internet criticism.
That seems to be changing, though, for many popular (expensive?) shows. Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, all the recently-new Star Trek series, The Expanse, The Mandalorian, The Orville... They all have seasons in the ballpark of 10 episodes.
> It's not a movie, it's a TV show that will have a run time of ~40 hours.
Game of Thrones is 70+ hours start-to-finish, that wasn't an excuse to slow the pacing down or write impotent dialogue. It knows how to direct characters, and the showrunners understand that 60 seconds of horse riding doesn't make good television. Allegory is used sparingly, and the world is fleshed out through it's characters rather than CGI environments. It leads to a story that can be followed by bookworms and football dads alike.
The Rings of Power doesn't build it's world in the same way. Instead we're whisked away to exotic locations that most viewers are unfamiliar with, and the following scenes do nothing to really characterize the world these characters inhabit. It's like the writing team and art directors never met to share notes. I'd argue that this lack of cohesion makes it decidedly harder to follow than other contemporary fantasy shows.
> The ones mentioning the budget as if it had been allocated to the first 4 episodes are even worse.
Okay, I'll be generous then. Why can't $125 million dollars buy better writers?
This!! Most speakers/soundbars suck, and if you don't have a center channel in your sound system, voices will wash out with the background noise/music since the speaker (as in person speaking) is usually the focus of the shot and mostly audible in the center channel.
There's supposed to be sound engineers on every show/movie to make sure it sounds good but the gap lies between your audio system and the reference systems they use. A good analogy is the infamous Game of Thrones battle that was too dark. They edited that episode on reference grade monitors where you could see what was happening, but the average lower end tv and viewing environment couldn't translate the same black levels and details that the editor's had seen when they worked those scenes (they were also intemtionally edited to look dark and chaotic on the reference grade monitors*, which added to the problem)
That being said I still use cc with a lot of content. I think it would be less prevalent though if it were not for the gaping holes in most audio setups.
I know I'm in the minority here, but let me explain why it's not terrible audio mixes or bad actors.
The overall trend in TV and movies has been towards greater realism in all aspects. Less stage-audience sitcoms, more single-cam. Less "look at this actor" and more "look at this real person".
Actors aren't mumbling, they're speaking how real people speak. Trust me, screen actors have more stage training than ever -- they know how to enunciate but if they do, the director tells them to stop because they seem like they're giving a fake theatrical performance rather than being a slice of real life.
And because more and more people have huge TV's with great contrast, 5.1 surround systems, or are watching with AirPods with spatial audio... TV is becoming more film-like both in range of brightness and loudness. For many people (like myself) this is a godsend. It's like I'm at the cinema every time I watch an hour-long drama. It's amazing.
We could go back to low-contrast everything and overly enunciated actors, the way sitcom TV was, designed for small screens and terrible speakers. But that just feels so... backwards and limited and fake.
HOWEVER, I do firmly believe that modern TV content should be made more accessible, and that it's high time to build adjustable "end-user compression" into all TV's and video players. Let the user apply automatic volume equalization so quiet parts are just as loud as the loud parts when you're watching TV in your living room with lots of activity around. (And with 5.1 signals, you can even always keep dialog louder than sound effects and music.) And brightness equalization so you can see what's happening in the dark scenes of Game of Thrones when you're in a sunlit room.
The key to producing a great virtual event is to understand that you are actually producing a TV show, and lean into that.
The linked blog post makes that point implicitly by comparing to Saturday Night Live. I want to make it explicitly: virtual events ARE shows.
That doesn’t mean it needs to be SNL or Game of Thrones. More like a newscast, probably, for most events. Watch Meet the Press or one of the evening cable shows, or even a network nightly news show to get a feel for the pacing, how they mix monologue, dialogue, and canned video, and any little extra details like lighting or transitions.
The biggest thing is that a minute is a really long time in a TV show. The networks cover all the most important news of the day in one 30-minute broadcast (more like 22 min of content after commercials are accounted for). Why do you need 90 minutes?
(It’s ok to go for 90 minutes but you better account for the value of all 90 of them.)
It makes the days of planting favorable newspaper articles seem quaint.
However, the Russians have been fomenting revolution almost 100 years now, they are very good at it.
But this article is from the NYT so it won't be by trolls and bots. NYT is way up in the political influence sphere. The Sulzbergers were thoroughly compromised long before the internet came along. They get to keep their power and influence as long as they color inside the lines, and also they enjoy the not insignificant protection of the US Government.
TL:DR; A Game of Thrones was a documentary.
Personally, I want to see The Lord of the Rings given the Game of Thrones treatment: a TV series, with six seasons (one for each book), and at least a dozen episodes each season.
In that format Bombadil will make an excellent episode. In anything shorter it makes a lot of sense to leave him out. I agree that Jackson spent too much time showing battles, but it wasn't my movie to make.
In hindsight, it is amazing how much happens in the first episode of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. I recently rewatched both, and it felt like watching half a season.
Compare it to the first to episodes of Game of Thrones, House of Dragon, Breaking Bad, Firefly or any number other good shows.
Its also not really a good slow burn either. If you want to see that done expertly check out True Detective Season 1. That story draws you in.
And this episodes were very long and all the story lines are slow.
- A Story: Galadriel wanders around without doing much in the first episodes and swims around not doing much in the second episode. She has basically 1 expression, her motivation is the most basic revenge story plot ever and its totally clear that she is right and everybody else is dumb. The scene of going to Valinor standing on boat in full armor looked dumb and it was totally clear she would not go, but I guess show runners wanted to drop a couple million on special effect.
- B Story: Hartfoots mostly slice of life and some interaction with a mysterious wizard that amount to nothing so far. Kind of cute but not interesting and totally different tone then everything else. Including with slap stick humor.
- C Story: Basic Elf-Human love story with neither of the characters being very interesting and they have little chemistry. Also evil is rising, but I don't really care about those characters so I don't really care, for now its just random orcs. Nothing to connect to, no large conflict or the other characters. This is even worse then the love-story the added to the hobbit.
- D Story: Elron goes to the dwarfs and we get lots of exposition about (mostly nonsensical) backstory that is required for the current plot to make sense and some character setups for the dwarfs. Honestly maybe the most interesting part of the first 2 episodes, but not actually that interesting.
The tournament/birth sequence in the first episode of House of Dragon had more interesting character moments, character development, story progression then all of the Rings of Power had in the first 2h.
Or compare it with the story that happen in the first 2h of Lord of the Rings (~10h) total vs Rings of Power (10h).
The source material is subject to criticism as well, but it should also be given credit. The reason we're even talking about it is because the books were really good and had a huge impact around the world. It's no coincidence that movies based on books tend to be great. Authors think through their world in detail which serves as a foundation for the screen adaptation. Deviating from this is risky, as directors have different skills, and more than likely they won't write a better world and dialogue than a renown author.
This was very clear with Game of Thrones with George RR not being able to finish his saga, and this being so obvious after season 4 (or 5). The quality dropped dramatically and it all crashed and burned by the last season. Had they planned it more carefully, so that George was in charge of the story until the end, I think we would have seen the most successful fantasy show of the century.
We have no idea if character arcs and payoffs are well set up in the first two episodes because we haven't seen if anything is paid off or resolved later. It's been a while but I remember the first season of Game of Thrones being similarly slow and ponderous to start with. I enjoy the slower pace, it suits the scale of the conflict and it suits the source material which never felt like it needed to hurry along.
>How the hell you are going to review a series based on just first 2 episodes?
The series may turn out to be worthwhile, but the first 2 episodes are objectively not good. The writing is poor, the dialogue isn't good, the characters are not compelling and the episodes themselves aren't well put together. I don't see how anyone can watch the first 2 episodes of this series and then watch the first 2 episodes of breaking bad and see any comparison. The vibes I got while watching this show reminded me of the last season of Game of Thrones after it had gone off the rails. The difference here is we haven't spent years getting invested in the story line and the characters, which kept us watching even as the quality was poor. I won't be tuning in for episode 3 and certainly won't feel like I've missed anything.
>>>What I wonder though is how much those stories are a part of the average Afro American active culture. Do they grow up reading those books too, or they do so reading Tolkien instead?
I read Tolkien, because my mother was a nerd, and shared her love of sci-fi/fantasy with me. I presume she got her exposure to sci-fi/fantasy at university (graduated 1973), despite attending an HBCU. I really do wonder who introduced her to Tolkien.... I can't say I've ever consumed any "high fantasy"-like stories of African origin.
>>>If the experience of an Afro American child is Marvel Comics, Disney movies, and Tolkien stories, and you continue to exclude them from the characters, it just seems wrong.
This is a bizarre line of thought that has really only emerged in the past ~15 years or so, IMO. Growing up, I never once looked at Sean Connery as James Bond and thought "I can't relate to this guy because his skin is too light." My favorite Marvel character in the early 90s wasn't Blade or Black Panther, it was Cable.
All of this cultural squabbling is the fault of a loud demographic of predominantly-young, emotionally-immature, college-brainwashed intersectionalists, deep in a the Hollyweird bubble. We have members of the black community who are critical of this nonsense, but they are often marginalized by the mainstream. JustSomeGuy on YouTube (a black guy from Chicago) shits all over the "woke" LOTR community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy089HU5Ksc
Also Eric D. July ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhFvd5vkB8o ) who calls out modern "diversity" characters as "tokenized": they're not actually black/minority characters, they're just the exact same white characters with a lazy skin-color/sexual orientation change. That's why Eric July went and created his own entirely-new comic book universe, which pre-sold $3M+ dollars of comics in just a few weeks. Almost no coverage from mainstream comic websites, and discussion of his success is banned on the major comic sub-Reddits.
>>>And maybe this is my point as well, if you write fantasy, but your experience is American, why wouldn't you include people of all color in your story? But if you did, you'd one hundred percent get some folks come out and say that fantasy stories are European inspired and should only have white people in them.
I think this is a strawman. I've never heard such criticism for Game of Thrones. My understanding is Westeros is based on the War of the Roses period in England, but the world is still built with other regions and non-white cultures (Dothraki = obvious not-Mongolians, etc...). But if they had cast Wesley Snipes as Eddard Stark, there would be a rightful uproar.
Op here. So my arguement is looking more at fantasy TV/movies in general rather than a particular focus on lord of the rings per se. But it is part of a wider discussion on representation in the European fantasy genre. As you know, what I am arguing for is that, I think it would be good to continue to have some shows which are 'diverse' and other shows which follow a more tradional casting. Do both. My concern is that there is political/media pressure to push always for diverse castings in all European fantasy shows. And this could go against good storytelling.
If I'm watching a story about a Japanese Fantasy story - it will feel less immersive if you introduce a blonde character. Likewise with an Indian, or African story. Everyone would think this reasonable. What some people get upset about, is if we also say this about European fantasy stories. And I don't agree with this (the point that a tiny tiny fraction of people living in Europe may have been nonwhite in the 1400s and below I find mute quite frankly). I also find it... Not considerate to call someone racist for making this point. And quite frankly its a great example of where we are right now. Film and TV studios terrified in their casting decisions and feeling like they have to please the media etc. Nor am I convinced that global audiences want to see themselves in European fantasy stories. I don't want to see a blonde white guy (or black or Indian guy) in a Japanese Fantasy story etc. etc.
I do feel that including a multicultural diverse population in a European fantasy story does have a large risk of less immersion and I don't agree thats 'racist'. You can do it, but it's a different world and a different experience. What I'm arguing again, is fine do that. But not everything fantasy driven needs to be like that.
The lord of the rings trilogy was not diverse and quite frankly was astounding. Game of thrones was not diverse, and was astounding up to the final season.
The latter was savegly attacked by woke groups for not being diverse and I just so disagree with that view point.
Let's have diverse stories and let's have traditional too. There are lots of good fantasy stories by Western authors that do include diversity (fifth season, and Ursula la guin Wizard of the sea story etc.)
That’s just lazy writing, akin to those cheesy horror movies where everyone has to be a complete idiot to die to the monster.
A much better story is where smart, cunning characters vie against one another. There’s eb and flow, give and take, maybe a few pivotal movements that set the characters down a path they’ll resist but ultimately succumb too. Where when they reach the end despite their best efforts looking back they made the (mostly) same choices but still failed. Early Game of Thrones was a masterpiece in this regard.
I think they also buy these IPs for the cultural impact. With these massive brands like Star Wars/Marvel/Game of Thrones, people get a strong sense of FOMO because they know everyone else will be talking about the new show or movie and they don't want to be the only one who hasn't seen it. These names are so big that they influence pop culture, and that's why media companies are paying huge sums for them.
I have to admit that I did chuckle a little at some of the 10/10 quotes ( caps preserved ):
<< As a REAL Tolkien fan, I couldn't have asked for any better. Anyone who complains otherwise isn't a Tolkien fan, but a Peter Jackson fan, and can't accept someone new showing their creative vision for the lore.
<< They STORY is ALSO EXCELLENT IF you LISTEN! (Abhorrently, that seems so infinitely difficult for some to do). TRUE, that there is a much longer than necessary scene 2/3's of the way through which almost put me to sleep (and it is the reason I am not giving this a 10)
<< As said above, I will not deny there is some mediocrity, but I cannot fathom why/how a massive 30% of all the ratings are 1 stars... does not seem genuine to me.
<< This is honestly already on par or better than game of thrones
<< Listen...we know it is not book accurate. Much of The Lord of The Rings and Hobbit movies (modern era non cartoon versions) weren't either. NO length of television show or movie could capture what Tolkien put on pages. So GET OVER IT.
I agree they should have kept at least few 1s for pretends.
> Movie theaters and video rental places tend to refuse to serve minors for X or R material, and (if they look quite young) even PG-13 films.
that isn't a law, movie ratings are a voluntary system designed to help parents make smarter choices about what they will allow their kids to see. It is not intended to police the actions of adults so that parents don't have to do their job. That's the extent of "Support from outside entities" that exists in all other mediums (with the exception of FCC regulations on broadcast TV and radio which were themselves commonly seen as a mistake which is why we didn't see them applied to cable TV, satellite TV/radio, or the internet)
> t's the Internet's model that's an aberration, requiring parents to take active steps to keep prevent kids from seeing hardcore porn or extreme violence or whatever on the same device they have to use to do homework, rather than having to take active steps to enable seeing those things, as they'd have to in most other contexts. Isn't it?
Nope. The same TV that shows sesame street shows porn, HBO shows both kid's movies and Game of Thrones, the same theater that shows G rated movies shows R rated movies, the same car radio that plays disney songs plays howard stern. It has always been the job of parents to monitor how children consume media. Always.
> I don't think "parents have always had to actively work to keep their kids from being exposed to awful stuff without substantial help from government and the private sector" really holds up, unless I'm missing something.
Having "help from government and the private sector" isn't the problem. There are lots of things the government and the private sector can do to help parents which would be perfectly acceptable. The rating system on movies is a good example. Requiring adults to scan their faces every time they want to access a website isn't one of them. Requiring adults to scan their IDs to every website they visit isn't either.
Maybe I can shine some light on the debate from an concept artist standpoint that works in VFX and advertising. I worked on feature films (3 of them in the imdb top 100), tv shows (like game of thrones) and hundreds of AD campaigns.
In the last 10 year the work of a concept artist changed dramatically we have gone from purely painted concept art to mostly "photobashed". Photobashed means basically that you rip apart other images and stitch them together to get the desired image. Some start with a rough sketch for the composition or make really rough grey shade 3d model and "overpaint" them. When it comes to "photobashing" the disregard for copyrights was always there and it's the worst in smaller studios and a bit better in the leading ones. Still most of the time everyone argues that if you only use really small parts of the images it is covered by fair use. There are some examples were studios got sued but mostly without bigger financial impact.
A few months ago I started working with "DiscoDiffusion" to generate the images I use to photobash. "DiscoDiffusion" can produce great "painterly" images but struggles with photorealism and is slower, not as coherent as "StableDiffusion". Still the adoption rate in the concept art community was insanely fast. This all got topped by "StableDiffusion" in the last week. Ofc there are still people that want to do it the "right" way and not use AI but we had the same discussion years ago when "photobashing" came into place and some artists still wanted to paint the whole image. As concept artist you are mostly paid for your design thinking that means it is less about the process and more about the finished product. The turnaround time for styleframes got reduced from 3-4 hours while painting to 45 min - 1 hour when photobashing with stable diffusion me and my peers in the studio are now at 20-45 min per styleframe. When "photobashing" most people constrain themselves on their image library and ressources like Photobashing Kits. Not only does "StableDiffusion" cut the time in half it also gives greater freedom in composition and design especially if you are using img2img.
So where does this leave us? For the work in fast paced art environments like VFX, games, conept art or advertising "StableDiffusion" is a welcome gamechanger. Tradionalists and Artists outside of the industry might feel threatened but for us in these industries it's a god send.
AI: remake seasons 5-8 of game of thrones, based on the critical consensus version of the final two books autocompleted by GRRM-style emulating generative network.
> Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones is a sitcom in your world?
AI: remake seasons 5-8 of game of thrones, based on GRRM's final two books which he finally finished.
Everyone is aware AGoT has a lot of inspiration on the Wars of the Roses. Its fantasy depiction of fantasy nobility and feuds is more "realistic" than, say, The Lord of the Rings (the work of "medieval fantasy" that looms large over all others), so I'd say it does a good job at it. It also has dragons and magic, so let's not take this inspiration too far, shall we?
The author of the blog we are quoting understands this, fortunately. He's being nitpicky for fun's sake, as he readily admits in one of his initial articles about AGoT [1]:
> "But first, I want to answer a question: Why am I bothering? Isn’t this all a bunch of useless nitpicking? Well, first – what did you expect from a blog named A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry? Useless nitpicking is our specialty."
He then goes on to say:
> "But – for once – I think this is useful nitpicking. For a great many people, Westeros will become the face of the European Middle Ages, further reinforcing distorting preconceptions about the period."
It's true that fiction, especially in movies and TV shows, reinforces what people think they know about the past. See how many people (and games) repeat terrible tropes from the wildly inaccurate movie "Enemy at the Gates", and think the Soviets basically constantly mowed down their own troops at the first sign of wavering, or that at Stalingrad there were not enough bullets or weapons for every soldier.
So I feel the author's pain. Then again, neither the AGoT novels nor TV show pretend to be about real medieval history, they just claim to be inspired by it. If the audience thinks this represents real history to any degree, maybe they should have paid more attention to all the dragons, magical weapons and undead zombies in the show?
PS: the blog author's point about how medieval armies were raised, their numbers, and the involved logistics is fascinating and extremely interesting. It obviously doesn't work like this in AGoT or Lord of the Rings!
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[1] https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/
I like this blog, but "ridiculous" and "shallows" are not words I would use to describe escapist fantasy fiction.
It simply has goals that are different from history documentaries. It thrives in fantasy stereotypes whose intersection with history is flimsy on purpose; these are stories about dragons and magic, after all. This is not Braveheart being hilariously erroneous while at the same time purporting to be about real history, only "slightly" exaggerated: Game of Thrones completely disregards the real world, and because this is on purpose, I think criticisms from "realism" are unwarranted -- unless being done just for fun, like this author seems to do [1].
Besides, it's a sliding scale: Game of Thrones, by real world standards, is probably more realistic in its unreality than, say, Lord of the Rings. Neither is wrong to be unrealistic, being more parables or entertainment than actual history.
Of all the criticisms to be made of A Game of Thrones as literature, I think "being shallow" is not one of them.
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[1] https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/
> "Finally, before we dive in, two final caveats. First, this is not a criticism of George R.R. Martin’s world-building. There is, after all, no reason why his fantasy world needs to be true to the European Middle Ages (we’ll talk about known/possible historical inspirations as they come up). I do not think Martin set out to design a sneaky medieval culture lecture in fantasy novel form, so he cannot be faulted for failing to do what he never attempted."
Personally I think the problem is just our need to consume everything as fast as possible.
Content being spread out means you use one for a while, then switch, the content won't run away (unless of course HBO's new CEO has something to say about it).
But it's us, we're the problem. Like for example, you have Game of Thrones back on HBO and you have Lord of The Rings coming up next week on prime. Logically you subscribe to one, watch one, then cancel and switch to the other.
A lot of people just can't do that, they must watch both as fast as possible, they must consume the content the moment it releases.
Game of Thrones was the one weird exception to that. Would have been so much better if they had given themselves 10 more episodes to wrap up, rather than the crazy schedule they set themselves.
I think a bigger difference is that books are just astoundingly cheap to produce compared to TV. That gives more freedom to take risks and try a huge number of different ideas, some of which will pay off and produce something great.
For the cost of one episode of Game of Thrones, you could publish hundreds of books. Even cheap garbage like reality TV costs enough per episode to publish several books (through a real publisher, would be even more if you count self-publishing).
>MGSV flashed his name at least five times on every load and every mission before it let me start anything
It's meant to be like a tv series, just like how Game of Thrones or The Wire flashes the directors name before an episode.
Just how MGS 3 was meant to be a James Bond style movie so starts with a female vocalist singing a overly passionate ballad. They're stylistic elements from cinema, and in that case TV he's bringing to gaming to set a tone.
Even on TV, HBO retroactively edited out George Bush's head from the spikes Joffrey makes Sansa look at in season one of Game of Thrones, all the way back in 2011. George Martin just joked about it in his interview on the upcoming House of the Dragon.
> I found it much different than I remembered. Layered story with actual shades of gray that Hollywood isn't capable of producing. Only movie I can think of where there are multiple factions and none of them are clearly good or bad
Actually I feel like western movies and tv tends to be more morally ambiguous than anime. In terms of multiple factions where none are clearly good/bad, Game of Thrones comes to mind
Binge watching and on-demand viewing aside, there's also just a lot more fragmentation of TV viewing. Even a hit streaming show like Game of Thrones has much lower viewership than hit network shows did at least in the US.
But certainly the asynchronous watching has an effect too. "Everyone" watched Seinfeld etc. on Thursday night. Today, even for shows that drop weekly, most people are just out of the habit of watching shows as soon as they come out.
That's why I don't like when shows release all episodes at once. There's something about sharing the same experience and talking about it for a week, year after year. I remember how Game of Thrones was a worldwide phenomenon. I think it's getting rare now. What was the last show that had a similar impact on popular culture?
I miss that experience when reading novels. Best I can do is go online and find some people who read the same book 3, 8, 20 years ago. That's not the same.
To chime in about how the article is cherry picking rather than doing deeper analysis: Dark and gritty superhero deconstruction was a product of the '80s and maybe early '90s, and then the '00s had the gritty reboot/reimagining trend for TV shows and movies in general. You also had a lot of prestige drama doing gritty realism with complex, dark antihero male protagonists starting in that era, which kicked into high gear in the '10s. Sopranos to Breaking Bad. Also shows where society was the gritty complex realistic antihero. The Wire to Game of Thrones.
I wouldn't say contemporary culture is any more unhappy than that era, it's just harder to read because there's no GOT type "event" series that everyone is watching right now. Maybe there will be a new cultural phenomenon, or maybe with this glut of streaming content, there won't be. (And if we look at blockbuster films, so many of them are shiny happy Disney-MCU fare, which are definitely not dark and gritty.) It just feels like right now we have a huge array of choices. When presented with that variety, it's really hard to say that it's generally more or less happy.
I do wonder what will replace comic books as the dominant subgenre of pop entertainment. I was hoping we'd get a reconstruction trend with comics like Astro City or Kingdom Come getting adapted, but in writing the previous section, I realized there's no need. For every dark and gritty realistic The Boys, there's multiple Disney+ shows. Batman is a character who's inherently going to have darkness. The majority of superhero comic screen media is escapist and optimistic, and this not-study is cherry-picking.
They are probably hoping this is season 1 of 10 of a breakout show. Impossible to do that if you use famous actors in season 1 (unless they die in season 1 like Sean Bean in Game of Thrones) because they will all be demanding untenable salaries by season 3 killing the shows ability to continue. I’m stoked for such a high budget fantasy show to be coming out and don’t really care how true to Tolkien it is so long as the story and characters are compelling.
Having Jackson even nominally involved in the project would be a pretty terrible sign for me, after the Hobbit fiasco (which in turn colored my appraisal of ROTK and, in particular, the extended LOTR editions).
As for the writer's room on this show, it looks solid to me:
* Jason Cahill wrote a bunch of episodes for The Sopranos
* Justin Doble wrote 4 episodes in S1 and S2 of Stranger Things, and those are the only two good seasons of Stranger Things
* Gennifer Hutchison won a WGA award for her work on Breaking Bad, which is one of the best shows ever to air
* Bryan Cogman wrote 11(!) episodes of Game of Thrones
* Stephany Folsom was a writer on Toy Story 4 and Thor: Ragnarak
The two show-runners (JD Payne and Patrick McKay) are people I'm not familiar with, but so was DB Weiss before Game of Thrones.
Except for Sean Bean, I didn't know any of the GOT actors either; they're all famous for GOT now. The Amazon LOTR show could be a debacle, but it won't be because they chintzed out on actors.
[Spoilers Below]
I think you are spot on about ASOIAF, but I don't think this is the reason GoT ended badly. Books and TV Show started diverting much earlier, and the show had substantially fewer storylines, which is a good thing in this context I think. I also suspect that the ending we got is based on notes GRRM left. Daenerys turning evil is heavily foreshadowed, Bran ending up on the throne kinda makes sense, and so does Jamie not cashing in his redemption after all. WW not being the final arc mirrors LotR, and GRRM has repeatedly stated that he loved that way of storytelling. The first book is called Game of Thrones, the ending is about that as well.
The problem in my opinion was just terrible execution: It was all really rushed and with terrible dialogue, so none of the story elements were developed in detail, and felt artificial and wooden.
Yes, some of the best titles have none or just 1 top tier actor at the time: Star Wars (Alec Guinness), West World (Anthony Hopkins), Game of Thrones (Sean Bean), Breaking Bad, The Wire. I'm sure there's other's I can't remember.
Some directors prefer fresh actors for some movies. It s not necessarily a red flag, but it could be. Time will tell.
My opinion on this matter has less to do with stretching and more to do with creating. It feels like the further we get from what the author actually wrote- in terms of dialogue, characterization, etc.- the worse the final output is. LOTR isn't just good because hobbits, it's good because Tolkien's writing is good. The Jackson trilogy was close-ish to Tolkien's writing, the Hobbit films further, and this even more so. I'm of the opinion that this was a major issue with the last few seasons of Game of Thrones as well.
D&D had written a lot of movies (25th hour, troy, kite runner, wolverine, brothers) and there were some “known actors” (Lena heady, Peter Dinklage, aiden gillan, Charles dance, Sean bean).
And I think the biggest problem with game of thrones is that the show runners crapped out after GRRM ran out of material. So I would want a better runner for Tolkien.
I don't know. 465 million seems still steep for 8 episodes TV show. I am all for it cause Disney has seemingly skimped on their CG budget for their newer shows. So more competition means more TV shows will have film quality production.
But it is a concern, if their show costs more than something like Avengers: Endgame which had some of the biggest actors in Hollywood involved in addition to the probably insane VFX budget.
Obviously COVID would have affected the budget for the show, but I have a feeling that it went way over budget than was initially intended.
Although I agree with the marquee concept. HBO had their own marquee show: Game of Thrones, though it produced a lot of quality stuff like the Pacific, Band of Brothers, Sopranos etc that can be watched for years to come. Game of Thrones on the other hand was a big disappointment for the fans and its negative reception probably made HBO wonder what they would do after it was over (hence the Targaryen origin show and the Jon Snow series are being developed... personally I'm skipping both)
> Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt the profits from that will help them earn money to cover up the remaining 300 million or so they have still invested.
Probably all of the above plus it's a long term move.
Amazon needs to build up a strong catalog and marquee TV shows are long term attractions. As an example, Mad Men, especially because it's set in the 1960s will probably still be watched in the 2060s. Game of Thrones would have been the exact thing but D&D completely tore it apart in the last 2 seasons.
I like blade runner, but I'm one of the people who finds the pacing horrible and I think most people in the general audience agree with me. Blade runner definitely is not blockbuster for this reason.
I sometimes meet people like you and the parent who actually like the pacing of BR and I totally get it. It's like reading a deep novel.
Though I wonder, are you guys able to empathize with why pacing is actually important to the general audience? Was something like Game of Thrones (probably one of the most masterfully paced pieces of cinema) just too "busy?"
According to Chuck Klosterman in his book on 'The Nineties' more people watched an average episode of Seinfeld than watch the finale of Game of Thrones or The Sopranos.
About the only thing that remains for mass audiences is sport. Even there on demand replays of sports are changing things.
Also don't best selling records or streams or whatever actually indicate far less revenue and a far smaller share of what people are listening to than they used to ?
I've ranted at length about Netflix and how insanely useless their data analytics are. I quit Netflix earlier this year. It was obvious to me Netflix would falter when they started using that "Top 10" leaderboard as their primary recommendation engine. It was a tacit admission that they, having all the money, talent, and 20+ years of detailed subscriber data (that every studio would kill for) couldn't figure out how to use that data. I would not be surprised if Netflix pops the data analytics/ML bubble. The curtain has been pulled back and the wizard has been revealed to be nothing more than a simple list of the most watched shows.
> you need the right people involved
Even then it's tough. The Mandalorian was great. Then The Book of Boba Fett came out and was not only a disaster, but also made the entire two seasons of The Mandalorian pointless. Similar to season 8 of Game of Thrones killing the entire show, because who can recommend a show that sets up the central expectation in season one that is so horribly resolved in the very last season. It's now a show I'd recommend to my enemy rather than my friend. TV is tough. And I don't think streaming is kind to shows that don't nail every season. This is content that is part of a catalog. It's not something on NBC on a Thursday night. Syndication isn't just a nice windfall. It's the entire point now.
> Derivative works don't change the originals.
Often repeated as a mantra, but do they actually not?
Classic example: The plummeting of the rewatchability of Game of Thrones Seasons 1-4. Also, Star Wars.
> Classic movie music seems to be doing well
Yeah, probably because it's more bound to follow popular tastes than classical music meant to be played only in concert halls. I also like mostly anything by John Williams (Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park etc.), but I'm sure that would be too "pedestrian" for many classic music aficionados (quote from the article "Some of them, such as Korngold and Franz Waxman, were writing film music in Hollywood—a sure way to be dismissed by the anointed"). If you like the Game of Thrones soundtrack, you should also check out the Westworld soundtrack, which is also by Ramin Djawadi - because it's set on Earth, he got to play with reinterpreting pop/rock songs with classical instruments, e.g. "Black Hole Sun" on a (slightly out of tune) player piano or "Seven Nation Army" played with Indian instruments.
Classic movie music seems to be doing well - like the Star Wars music, and the Lord of the Rings music. The Game of Thrones theme music is very good, too.
What I complain about is the decline of the trumpet. Modern music has completely abandoned it in favor of terrible synthesized horns.
If you want to hear how incredibly good horn playing can be, Maurice Andre and Herb Alpert's horn playing are just sublime.
Chicago was a horn band, and I like their tunes, but the horn skill was rather pedestrian.
Interesting point. I would love to see my personal perfect TV show.
But I would also love to see the perfect show for a combination of people, like my loved ones, so we can watch together.
And lastly, I would love to see the perfect show for a large majority of the population, because there is something special about a shared experience like Game of Thrones or Friends. To this day I can shout “pivooooot” and most everyone gets it.
> Do you mean that just the end of the last season was bad, and it was so bad that people immediately stopped talking about it when it finished?
Exactly this. Pretty much no other show has disappeared so completely from the zeitgest after it was over. People are actively not talking about it and aren't recommending it to their friends because of how very very very bad the last 1-2 seasons were.
Regular fans without meta knowledge got pissed about the bad and ill-fitting ending to their favourite story. The one that they had watch-parties for and theoretised with their friends between episodes. Even during COVID lockdowns when everyone had watched everything on every streaming platform, no-one bothered to rewatch Game of Thrones.
Mega-fans knew the behind the scene things. Like the fact that HBO was literally throwing money at Benioff & Weiss to make two more seasons in order to finish the story according to the original plan they agreed with and GRRM approved. But they wanted to go make a Star Wars trilogy instead so they rushed the ending. Which went so badly that Disney dropped them from the planned SW project. Now they're doing a Three Body Problem TV show for Tencent, because no western studio would hire them.
Sounds like a great game of thrones episode
Game of Thrones had a horrible final season. The first six seasons were maybe the best in all of television.
It's rare for a TV series to be excellent and stay excellent it's entire life.
This doesn't really seem unique to Netflix.
There's a ton of movies, shows, books - where the first installment is outstanding and the rest are trash.
My favorite example as a kid was Maze Runner. The first book has terrible prose - but is actually pretty well paced and a good story. The second two are utter garbage (fun fact: the editor quit after the first book AND the publisher dropped the author when the first one was the next best selling sci Fi / fantasy since Harry Potter... That's how bad the sequels were).
This happens more times than not.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
I've never heard of crash and burn I'll check it out!
Waiting on stranger things to end
I enjoyed Breaking Bad, Narcos, Battlestar, and some of the game of thrones seasons.
If you liked Narcos you might also like ZeroZeroZero. It's a miniseries on Amazon with really high production value.
Agreed, I never watch TV unless it's, weirdly enough, a social setting. My wife and I watch TV together all the time, we have shows that we like to enjoy together and talk about. My roommates and I would watch TV together all the time in college, and every now and then there will be a show that I'll go to my friends houses to watch (game of thrones). But now that I think about it, I don't think I've watched a TV show by myself in over 20 years.
hey this is ATT we are talking about(CNN's parent owner), they paid $85B for Warner bros in 2018, and really haven't seen much a return on their investment with Game of Thrones winding down, the new matrix movie being horrible, and then spun it off for half its value ($43B). Lets then look into directv the other dud that ATT bought for $67B and spun it off a few years later into a $16.25B standalone company. For those who are keeping count thats $92B lost in the matter of a few years which is astonishing!
CNN itself is a deeply troubled network, its old CEO(Zucker) had to step down due to sleeping around with a direct report, Chris Cuomo (a cnn exec)was fired for helping out his brother(the Gov. of NY) escape sexual assault allegations, another top CNN producer(John Griffin) was arrested(and fired) on child molestation charges. In addition to all that the viewership is sinking like a rock so its not surprising that CNN+ was dropped so quickly.
I'm not sure how, but you seem to have deduced that I am somehow against... spoilers?
My point is that a plot can seem interesting and mysterious while you are reading it, but only the ending will tell you if that feeling was justified or not. For example, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is not in any way dulled by knowing how it ends, the moments where you were reading about Orpheus trying to reach Hades and not yet knowing if he'd succeed are not in any way wasted if you know how it does end - the dramatic tension is beautifully resolved, if tragically so.
If instead the story ended with Orpheus, given the right to try to leave hell with his beloved if only he never looks back would turn around to ask her what time dinner would be ready, as he just kinda forgets about Hades' deal, or he starts remembering some other woman he likes more and doesn't even care if Eurydice is no longer there; then the whole thing would be easily written off as a hack job and not remembered for some 2000 years later.
Simialrly, the reason the ending of the Game of Thrones TV show destroyed the value of its entire story isn't simply that we found out how it ends, it's because most of what seemed in earlier seasons to be building up was proven to have been irrelevant.
For example, for the longest time, you wondered if the world could band together and whether it could survive the threat of the White Walkers. However, the show made that out to have been an irelevant worry, since the whole White Walker army was easily defeated by a random assassin with a random knife (well, one made of good steel, but nothing more), who just had to find a moment when the main baddie had his back turned. The White Walker army turned out to be unable to even defeat half of the armies that stood against them in an open field - they were really a non-issue in the end.
Even the themes of climate change, of politics and old rivalries and mistrust getting in the way of necessary action - these are all wiped out and proven to have been incorrect readings of the show. The White Walkers weren't a metaphor for external problems that an inward looking system can't solve, they were just ice zombies that are hard to kill individually, but easily coapse if you kill the queen bee.
Similarly, for the entire duration of the show we look at Daenerys Targaryen and see how she confronts the antiquated, monstrous systems she encounters, and wonder if she can truly defeat them. Then, near the moment of her opportunity to do so, she snaps and goes crazy (according to the writers themselves) and decides to burn down the very people she has been trying to help. Any character building she had shown is made irrelevant, as it's simply the bad genes she inherited from her mad father that make her fantasy Hitler in the end. Not her haughtyness, not her tendency for retribution, not her belief in her own rights as a monarch - things that could have led to an interesting descent into madness or evil - no, just her bad blood.
This is what the Game of Thrones TV show proved: overall the show should not be considered a masterpiece, even though the early seasons seemed good at the time, since the stories they were telling mostly led nowhere.
Oh, for only you could provide that wonderful evidence of which you talk about -- that proof for the first half of this quote. If only you could enlighten us all, cast the drapes from our eyes, and elucidate what difference lies between the fact of merely hinting at plots, and having an ending written, versus having the plots written, but the ending languishing in dreams.
Sure, it had its excellent moments, but that's about it - overall, it was a show about the good guys winning easily, women being irrational and just kinda forgetting, armies fighting without consequences, and so on. The fact that the early seasons made you think it would be a different story was proven an illusion by the end.
Thus, I am to take it that you feel the end of a work invalidates the whole?
If I may be so bold as to talk about my experience, I find myself most content to read the latter half of a work, and circle around to the start. While I find myself most humble in hopefully not alluding to presume the minds of others, I do not think that the majority of people who cast their eyes over The Lord Of The Rings do so merely because they wish to find out what happens at the end? Surely, if they do so they must be rather disappointed by all of the videos and movies put forth in the years hence, that describe to one's eyes and culture the most intricate details of the ending in exact terms. It seems rather well documented, indeed -- it has been subsumed into our very culture, that the short of stature hobbits win their restless battle, in the end. That "Good" wins, and "Bad" fails.
Alas, what reason is there to read the book now? For you already know the ending, why should one know the journey? Why open a book for which you know in advance the ending?
Oh, simply the writer's prose, I suppose. Perhaps even, the skill and wit and deft of description. Merely the entire story and content of those soft white pages, before the last handful. From your perspective, surely you deem such things to be inadequate? After all, since a story only holds merit, if the ending holds merit, how could such things matter!
I'll assent, that to be let down by an ending that you feel is shoddy or hastily jotted down by a perhaps all-too-sleep-deprived author, feels like being besmirched by their very hand at a prim and proper dinner party. And I shall even assent that these are all personal feelings, forthwit!
What a dull and dreary world you must live in, it makes one sad. I truly pity you, and hope you too one day come to know the pleasure of taking the journey of things, and not just the finality.
I don't know The Kingiller Chronicles so I'm not going to comment on that, but I don't think you can call A Song of Ice and Fire a masterpiece until you see it's ending. A lot of the quality is in the intricate plots it implies, but it has yet to resolve the vast majority of them, and if it falls flat, a lot of the majesty of what was started will turn put to have been smoke and mirrors.
This is what the Game of Thrones TV show proved: overall the show should not be considered a masterpiece, even though the early seasons seemed good at the time, since the stories they were telling mostly led nowhere. Sure, it had its excellent moments, but that's about it - overall, it was a show about the good guys winning easily, women being irrational and just kinda forgetting, armies fighting without consequences, and so on. The fact that the early seasons made you think it would be a different story was proven an illusion by the end.
No, Game of Thrones is a series of violent smut novels and a television series based on said novels.
Game of Thrones really showed how successful it can be. Season 1-4 really was an amazing time to be a fan.
But that also made it possible for them to succumb to mainstream fan culture, the cult of the badass and so on, they wanted to ride the attention wave :(
I don’t know about movies, but a few years back, it seemed widely accepted that we were in a golden era of television. During the penultimate season of Game of Thrones maybe.
Netflix has produced a lot of fairly solid content. Not at the level of the all-time great prestige TV shows like the ones you mentioned, but enough to keep a lot of subscribers happy for long periods of time at an accessible price. House of Cards (at least until the Kevin Spacey scandal blew up), Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Disenchantment, etc are a few that come to mind that I watched and enjoyed.
I think Netflix has two big issues. The first is the way they drop seasons all at once prevents the natural cycle of pre-episode hype, post-episode interviews, speculation and leaks, fan anticipation, fan arguments (ship wars, etc), etc. Fan culture can't develop around this content as easily because there's never any breathing space for fans to collectively sit with the story so far. The shows that become a cultural force like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones need us to keep coming back to the conversation every week. They have us talking about what happened last week and will happen this week with our colleagues at work and around the dinner table. How can these Netflix IPs enter stable orbit in the cultural zeitgeist when they're once-a-year events? It devalues the work, positioning it more like a movie that you watch and then forget rather than a story you become invested in over a long period of time.
Full season drops also allow people to binge a whole season of content for a single month's subscription and then immediately churn (ask me how I know). I assume they have some data-driven reasons for doing this, but it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Besides that, I think they should put more wood behind fewer arrows. They've developed a reputation for aggressively cancelling smaller shows with passionate followings which makes a lot of people not even want to bother until something has become an established mainstream success. I think of them now as the Google of content-creation, putting out a lot of solid (but not amazing) products and then cancelling them once people start to grow attached.
In all of the examples, the smaller competitors banded together. Who are the "smaller competitors" here? Disney certainly isn't smaller than Netflix by any reasonable measure, and Amazon has a built-in customer base because of bundling with the free shipping.
Perhaps all of the "also-ran" services Paramount, Hulu, Peacock will band together, but I wonder how successful that will be vs. just leasing their material to Amazon or Netflix.
Streaming is also interesting because of the less-fungible nature of flagship content. The Witcher is not precisely a substitute for Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time is certainly not a substitute for either. The main reason to not switch from "Bank of my local village" to a Bank of America is friction, and "Bank of your local village" doesn't directly compete with "Bank of my local village" but both compete with B of A, so there is a natural alliance there.
[edit]
Also, VCRs; Betamax was more expensive and had a shorter runtime, while quality of self-recorded material was less important to consumers. VHS won by being cheaper and better matching customer use-cases; maybe that was because it was open, but it was not directly because it was open.
[edit2]
> [Netflix] has pursued the wrong strategy, and doubled down at every opportunity. The company has spent billions of dollars on proprietary films and TV shows in order to create a position of market dominance with a totally closed system. But that was only phase one. We are already in phase two, with Disney, Paramount, and others removing their offerings from the Netflix platform, and trying to create their own powerful fiefdoms.
Netflix would be out of the streaming business today if it hadn't pursued this strategy; the writing was already on the wall for content-owners doing their own streaming before Netflix produced original content. Streaming platforms are being commodified, but streaming content is not.
[edit3]
> Do you think Netflix can match that with its proprietary approach? The company will be forced to open up its own system, or face inevitable decline, perhaps even obsolescence
Again, Netflix isn't pursuing a "proprietary approach" by choice; if you want to sell Netflix any license for your content (exclusive or otherwise), they are more than happy to do so if the price is right. Look at everything available that isn't "Netflix Original" (and note that even some of that is not exclusive to Netflix, as they may have only partial ownership).
[edit4]
> Here’s the bottom line: Netflix might be one of the largest companies in the world, but it’s far more vulnerable than it looks at first glance. And it doesn’t have the brand franchises it can milk like Disney—which can churn out Marvel and Stars Wars movies with reasonable assurances of market success.
This is the only paragraph related to Netflix in the entire article that I agree with. I don't know how the author can hold this truth in their head while blasting them for spending money like water trying to generate such a franchise through massive spends on content. If the author's thesis is that Netflix is doomed to fail, then Netflix should just shut down streaming operations right now.
[edit5]
Isn't Roku already a bit of what the author wants? You can search across multiple streaming services and have them all in one place. Sure you have to actually pay for those services, but most of them can be signed up for in the Roku app, and nobody's giving their content away for free...
At home we have Netflix, Disney, and Prime.
Honestly, of all the services we've used Netflix is the one giving us more ROI and the one I'd never cancel.
We don't use Prime Video because there's barely any interesting content. We only have it because it comes included in Prime, but I'd never pay for it.
Disney is great in terms of tech, but I'm seriously considering canceling it because the ROI is so low.
Netflix keeps us interested. There's tons of Atmos 4K HDR content and their app/tech is great. At least once a month or so we binge a show at home. My wife also watches Netflix every day while exercising or when eating alone. I watch true crime documentaries, Nordic noir stuff, and even some Netflix movies from time to time.
We've also tried HBOMax but the app/streaming tech was just terrible. The streaming quality jumped constantly between 720p to 4K. Also, it's quite ridiculous they don't stream content in Atmos 4K HDR that is available in that format like Game of Thrones.
We also had Apple+ for a few months. The app/tech is great but ended up cancelling it because we didn't enjoy any of the stuff there.
I have also thought about this. We use to have limited tv channels and limited radio stations. On any given day, there was a greater possibility that you shared an experience with your work colleague, your neighbor, or even a stranger. We shared more common culture.
Not that I'm pining for "the good ol' days". The internet has facilitated access to a flood of content. I have found great music that would never have been played on the radio. I also realize that no one else in my physical vicinity has or will listen to my favored musicians. Same for tv shows. I think the last common culture most people shared was Game of Thrones.
I do think this makes us more isolated from each other.
That misses the point of what I was saying. I was replying to a claim "X character is so strong they should be threatening, and it's CGI's fault that they aren't" with a counter claim "they aren't threatening because so many characters are so strong and their strength is written to be meaningless and inconsequential, bad writing not CGI is why X character is unthreatening". Powerful characters are not what I objected to, as evidenced by my comment mentioning Dr Manhatten. Poorly written characters where their strength is incredible but also uninteresting are what I object to.
In Game of Thrones, The Hound outpowers all normal people and can take damage no ordinary human can, and is still threatening. He has his own demons and is outpowered by The Mountain. He is taken down by poison and becomes Cersei's slave, she uses him to demonstrate that strength isn't power, "power is power". The Hound sacrifices himself to kill The Mountain. What would be bad - and more like some of the stories I cherry pick from - is if The Hound had been blessed by the Lord of Light followers and was now borderline invincible, had taken out The Mountain in a 2 minute flashy punch up, then one-man-army'd his way through Ramsay Bolton's army, then Daenerys flies in and inexplicably Hound is now immune to dragon fire and punches a dragon to death, then goes to the thousand foot high magically reinforced Ice Wall and pushes it over, and then is inexplicably immune to the zombies and...
In one of Christian Bale's Batman films, there is a setup of two passenger ferries full of civilians who are stranded and rigged with explosives. Each boat has the detonator to the other boat. The civilians are put into a Prisoner's Dilemma situation by The Joker. The options are: do nothing, Joker kills everyone. Blow up the other boat, Joker lets your boat live. Both groups rush to do that, everyone dies. We don't know these people, neither Joker nor Batman is enormously strong, but the scene is good. Now Affleck's Batman fights and guns down a stream of generic villains like any scene from The Matrix or John Wick or a Jason Statham movie, and then fights Superman, and the scenes aren't good. It's not his increased strength which makes them bad. Dr Strange is hugely powerful, I've only seen one movie with him in it but it was decent - he was struggling against his demons of losing his great surgeon skills, humbling himself, rising to the challenge, etc. etc. and he defeats Dormammu in a way that is more clever than forceful (yet requires a high power level to even try it).
Speaking of The Matrix, Morpheus vs Agent Smith, Neo vs Agent Smith, were good scenes with inhumanly powerful characters and CGI. Later on, a zillion CGI Neos fighting a zillion CGI Agent Smiths were dreadful scenes with boringly powerful characters where nothing felt tense, nothing mattered, and CGI.*
That's most things, though. There's so much crap out there, most people keep moving to the next hot thing rather than keep consuming the same thing. How many people are still watching the Avengers Endgame movie today? Or season 8 of Game of Thrones? Probably roughly the same amount (proportionately) that are still playing Animal Crossing or Among Us today.
Animal Crossing did just get a major update that was well-received and tied to a premium Nintendo Online subscription a few months ago, btw. Still popular enough for that. Definitely nowhere as huge as it was two years ago though.
Animal Crossing was the perfect thing to be released when everyone was stuck in their homes at the start of the pandemic, though, as it offered an escape and even had a 'travel to an island' theme to it. My wife and a bunch of my friends put several hundred hours into it, and I put 55 hours into it, which is about three times as much as an Animal Crossing game usually gets out of me.
Among Us still has its fans. I join a group every once in a while that sets up monthly game nights for it. That one has dropped quite a bit though. Eventually the game was unofficially made into a game mode in Fortnite, from what I hear, and I think that game mode gets played more within Fortnite now than the Among Us game does, but I'm not really sure.
It's also not too far removed and most likely inspired by social deduction board games that have existed and have been popular since the Werewolf/Mafia game from 1986, which Among Us is basically an action Werewolf with minigames and cute, marketable characters.
Tiktok is larger than ever, that seems like a bad one to include. Sourdough was legit flash in the pan, I think.
> How would you explain the fact that people paid for cable and premium cable channels (e.g. HBO) in the past when free network TV has always been an option?
The issue you're failing to separate out is that you're talking about entertainment with television. Websites are largely not comparable in entertainment value, and most are not entertaining at all. People will pay a lot for entertainment. That's why blogs are worth $... today and Netflix is worth $226 billion. If people would pay so much for eg blogs (or, again, any other comparable content), there'd be a $100 billion company extracting that monthly payment for producing volumes of written content on websites. Some blog network would have actually succeeded and become a global content juggernaut.
Most of the content online is not of high quality and people will not pay for it, or they'll pay so little for it as to be a sad joke.
Which website compares to the joy and value people extracted from Friends, Seinfeld, MASH, Fresh Prince, I Love Lucy, and dozens of other prominent TV shows from the past ~50 years. Much less the even higher production shows like Sopranos or Game of Thrones. There may be a select few and they're billion dollar services like Reddit with huge volumes of low value content. Do millions of people still talk lovingly about some websites from 2006 like they do decades later about I Love Lucy? Hell no they don't, only a tiny niche group of people does that.
People go back and watch movies over and over again for decades. They listen to the same songs/bands/albums regularly for decades.
Does the average person go back and dig up long dead websites and go through them start to finish on Archive.org, like they do old TV shows they enjoyed (Quantum Leap, ALF, Golden Girls, whatever). Hell no they don't, again, only a very very tiny group of people would do such a thing.
Most online text content is not very entertaining, even in the best case scenarios, that's the difference between the concepts.
Is there lots of funny, amusing, entertaining text content on eg Reddit? You bet. And people will pay pennies for it - if at all - because it's of low value compared to high quality, higher production value entertainment. They'll pay what it's worth, a pittance.
Even without the subtitles, it's a stylistic choice in the way comic panels with dialog are screen-written / storyboarded / directed / performed by voice actors.
"Screen-original" films and TV series are written in more a "top-down" style, with scenes being planned for their pacing, and the dialog in a scene liable to get cut down or rewritten to keep said pacing.
"Adapted from a non-visual source medium" films and TV series also almost always get their scenes cut down, just by necessity (a novel won't fit in 1.5hrs.) Though only "almost", because sometimes a director sets out to adapt a work into a really long treatment that can fit all the source material and then some — like the Lord of the Rings movies, or Game of Thrones. But even then, the director is still someone who is immersed in the top-down, "we get to knit it together how we want" zeitgeist of regular Hollywood film&TV production.
"Adapted from a visual source medium" films and TV series, though, are — if not heavily budgeted for adaptation polish — written mostly "bottom-up", starting with a treatment and storyboard that keep every line and shot from the source, and then letting pacing slip to keep in all the stuff that existing fans of the source material expect to see (and because the producer wants as many episodes as possible, so why not stretch one chapter out into five episodes if you can?)
This can lead to some extremely long shots, where there was dialog in a comic-book panel that was clearly not originally written with the intent of having it performed while holding/panning on the exact panel shown; but where a lazy "reading" of the source by the cinematographer leads to exactly that.
You can also call this the "make a radio play / audio drama out of the book; lock it down; and then add visuals to it" adaptation strategy.
(This is also common, as it happens, to specific genres that started out in the radio era. True crime, whether it be on TV or on YouTube, mostly consists of podcasts with the visuals almost being an afterthought. This is why so many people put it on in the background: the way it's done, you don't have to look at it to follow what's going on.)
I would like to offer a more nuanced spin - there's a large quantity of great, original content out there, but the era of the sitcom is over. We're in peak prestige tv - every new show requires you to have watched the whole season and requires a big time commitment and emotional investment (game of thrones being the quintessential example of this).
...yet the last few years have been quite hard! All of us are navigating a COVID environment where working remotely, educating kids, and entertaining ourselves have all blended together. There's a bifurcation of eyeballs - I simply don't have the time or emotional bandwidth to watch "prestige tv", but it's very easy for me to put on friends, or the office, or seinfeld, and carry on with my day!
I think Stranger Things season 1 had a big buzz to it, but it feels like culturally, it completely dropped off after season 1. I’m sure the fans still like it, but I just don’t hear broad swaths of people talk about it anymore after that.
Game of Thrones had far more consistent cultural impact across all seasons (although they managed to nuke its legacy completely with the horrible last season).
House of Cards was certainly a big thing at the time--for the first few seasons anyway. Queen's Gambit. GLOW and Russian Doll were quite good. I'm not a huge fan of The Crown but it's well done.
Honestly, Game of Thrones notwithstanding, I'm not sure that there's a lot on HBO I consider must see level content either although some is quite good.
I'd probably consider them about a wash for content.
I can't speak for others but I generally turn to piracy when legal options are unavailable or unviable.
For example it's basically impossible to legally watch anime with English subtitles in my region, so I have no alternative to piracy.
It's the same story for more mainstream content. There was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones in English when it was being aired. There's no way legal way to stream Star Trek Discovery as it's being aired. Were I in the US, the only legal options, as far as I know, are to pay ~$10/month each for streaming subscriptions that would only be used for these shows.
EU-commissioned studies like [0] show that I'm not unique.
So the solution here, in my opinion, isn't to try to outlaw piracy (it's actually legal in my country) but to make the legal options more reasonable. Eliminate regional restrictions entirely. Eliminate content silos (require studios to license on the same terms to all streaming platforms).
Plus, at least one study has shown that piracy doesn't actually hurt sales [1], save for movies still in cinemas.
[0]: https://torrentfreak.com/eu-study-more-people-consume-legally-but-stubborn-pirates-remain-201125/
[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html
That won't change. The movie studios are currently not capable of good writing.
Even when they follows some book, the moment the movie abandons books quality of writing takes nosedive. (See Game of Thrones, Witcher for prominent examples).
The studios just don't know how to write.
As an example, I recently wanted to watch The West Wing. I pay for Netflix and Hulu already, but the show is only on HBO Max. OK, fine, I guess I'll pay for a month of HBO like I've done before to watch Game of Thrones.
Ok, uh, what's it called now? HBO Go? HBO Now? Oh, HBO Max, ok. I live in Japan now, so I'm region-blocked, great. Time to open the VPN. HBO already seems to know that server #1243 is a VPN, but server #849 works OK for now.
Ok, time to create an account. "Account with that email already exists"? Ok, so let's log in using my old HBO Go credentials. Looks like there's some kind of account migration problem and the account is stuck in the "account verification" phase but I can't get it to send me a new verification email. There's a little pop-up chat window for the support team, let's try it. Three separate support agents and thirty minutes later, I have a working verification email. But my payment information is out of date. OK, let's update it. HTTP 505 error. Wonderful.
Ok, that's enough: Type "West Wing season 1 episode 1" into Google. Thirty seconds later I'm watching in full HD and there's popcorn in the microwave.
This reminded me of pirating a Game of Thrones episode when I was a customer of HBO. My wife and I signed up for HBO max to watch the final season as it was airing. The quality turned out to be pathetically poor. During the Battle of Winterfell episode, the pixelation was serious enough to make the action difficult to make out.
I went ahead and torrented the episode the next day to rewatch it in all of its intended glory. Then a few days later, I got a letter from my ISP telling me that HBO was very upset with me and threatening to cut off my service. I felt compelled to send them a reply, explaining the situation and telling them to eat it.
Was it? I thought HBO was a cable channel, which of course is streamed and compressed, but TV has always been streamed and compressed (even in analog days - 422 is compression standard as it throws away a ton of chroma, interlacing is compression as it throws away half the data, both rely on the brain to recover), so I assume you're talking about unicast streaming.
I'm sure it would have looked fine if it was streaming at 20mbit.
In the UK, the DPP sets contribution bitrates for close-to-tx programs* HD are 45mbit h264 or 60mbit mpeg2 for live contribution, if you have to compress it (clearly 1.5gbit is preferred), and for UHD I think it's 90Mbit h265. Those bitrates are set to assume another compression layer, but I suspect if that episode had gone out on say BBC One HD it would have been running at 15mbit+ for the entire time.
* Game of Thrones I suspect would be classed as a close-to-tx delviery to reduce chances of leaks - certainly I know a broadcaster in Austrialia was receiving it on an NTT decoder over an MPLS from their LA office rather than as a file)
I think that one reason is often that a film is way longer than a single TV series episode, so it requires a bigger "commitment". I can potentially watch 3 episodes of different TV series in a single evening or either 3 episodes of the same series, while I can only watch a single movie due to its length. Also, often TV series have more time to properly introduce and develop storylines, while films have to either simplify the plot or be unbearably long in order for the format to be feasible. This makes them often harder to follow or less interesting, for instance Game of Thrones would have been probably turned into utter rubbish if it was made into a film instead of (lots of) episodes - not that it ended that well anyway, though.
The article quoted a sound designer who was oblivious to your take:
> ... when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that's a big action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-impactful mix ...
Yes, I want it somewhat squashed up! Please do that! I understand the artistry and desire for dynamic range, but when the character is whispering some critical plot detail, you can zoom in for a feeling of intimacy/privacy and have the actor stage whisper so everyone knows what was said. It shouldn't actually be a whisper that people a few feet away can't hear. When you follow it up with an explosion, sure, make it a little louder, but not real-life loud! That would you blow out your speakers and wake the baby.
And yes, darkness on-screen is another problem. Not everyone has plasma or OLED displays (though the latter are becoming more available), nor watches in pitch black. And when downconverted from 10 bits to 8 bits, streamed through compression algorithms, and displayed on average TN displays...no, you can't see what's going on. Tom Scott did an excellent video on this subject a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. Game of Thrones in particular was unwatchable for me because of this.
I think the onus is on the movie+software to display right on my hardware, not on me to buy special hardware so I can see what's going on. This kind of hubris (most famously seen in the battle scenes from the last season of Game of Thrones) is really incredible.
> and so popularity is often a negative indicator
And that's what bothers me so much about those types of people, disliking because something is popular and then thinking that's better than liking something because it's popular. They're just doing the same thing, but they're following a different crowd. A more negative, gate keeping crowd at that.
I've never liked Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones was popular. Those things are separate facts and I will never go on the internet to tell people that Game of Thrones was bad because there's some obscure book or movie that might have some resemblance to the story line. I just didn't like it, I ignore it and enjoy the things I do like. It's really that simple.
> Is there some difference between streaming companies and classic movie studios that makes this the case?
Yes. Movie studios and streamers have different business models. Movie studios also deal with more "legacy" actor contract negotiations and the like (see disney v scarlet). Theater released movies make most of their money upfront, and make money out on a per-view basis. So they need as many viewers as early as possible.
With streamers, they can lose the subscription any month, and only gain it back if they lure you - so they're incentivized to give you "anchors" that keep you there. Think game of thrones keeping people subscribed to HBO month over month or Squid Games that gets lots of attention. Once you're there, they just have to have "something" for those days you don't really know what to watch. That "something" is different for everyone, so they have to make lots of low budget generic stuff that appeals, collectively, to a wide audience. Each show/movie can have few viewers, because its going for niche targeting en mass - think themed cable channels but one company has to make something for each theme. Once a streamer makes a show, its "free" to them to share it with as many people as possible, but also doesn't cost them anything to not show it.
Ben Thompson (stratechery) has talked about this a lot, check him out!
> George R.R. Martin is still underrated, even given his success. He wrote for television for a long time and structured his novels more like seasons of TV, with each chapter serving as an episode.
It was never intended for film or TV. It was almost intentionally unfilmable.
“I had worked in Hollywood myself for about 10 years, from the late ’80s to the ’90s. I’d been on the staff of The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. All of my first drafts tended to be too big or too expensive. I always hated the process of having to cut.” When he took up novel-writing afterward, he recalls: “I said, ‘I’m sick of this, I’m going to write something that’s as big as I want it to be, and it’s going to have a cast of characters that go into the thousands, and I’m going to have huge castles, and battles, and dragons.”
https://ew.com/article/2011/04/04/game-of-thrones-hbo-george-r-r-martin/
>> The show was absolutely amazing when it could follow the books. The definitive show everyone talked about. The moment the books ran out it started to go downhill. And when they couldn't easily extrapolate from the books the show fell apart completely. The showrunners and writes for the show weren't good enough to make Game of Thrones on their own. No offence, but that takes a lot of skill and luck. They were good enough to adapt it though.
George R.R. Martin is still underrated, even given his success. He wrote for television for a long time and structured his novels more like seasons of TV, with each chapter serving as an episode. This is part of the reason for their popularity. Martin is also a once-in-a-generation genius of character, structure, and plot - a self-evident truth that is rarely spoken aloud because genre fiction is "not literature."
The creators of the GOT show really never even realized that they were adapting something carefully, painstakingly honed by a genius craftsman. They really figured they could just keep throwing in dramatic, violent twists and we wouldn't know the difference. In that light, it's shocking that they even made the first seasons as competently as they did.
`No one learned anything from Game of Thrones.`
I actually find GoT later and dumber episodes most re-watchable. I imagine it is hard as hell to film shows that are both smart and cinematic. Nolan seems to be the only one who can consistently accomplish this
That's like starting Game of Thrones at Season 7.
It's not just "starting in the middle of a series", it's starting almost at the end...after the best part of the story is well in the rear-view mirror.
IIRC, Foundation and Earth not only benefits from reading all of the Foundation books that came prior, but also all of Asimov's Robot books.
It depends on what aspect of it you're looking for.
If you're looking for Scifi that maybe resembles it I'd say possibly Battlestar Galactica. It's a bit higher production level, although does have slow stretches during some seasons (I think middle third of S2 was one of them), and falls apart a bit when trying to put together it's ending. Writing is about the same, maybe a bit better - and has a similarish feel although not grounded on earth. Covers some interesting topics of society.
If you're looking more of the in depth discussion of the state of society (specifically American). The Wire is really spectacular. But it's not "junkfood" watching, it takes paying attention and a lot of points are subtle. It also takes about 6-7 episodes of very slow ramp up to get good, but one of the best shows of the past two decades - and plenty have said one of the most complete TV shows ever made.
If you're looking for just the easy to consume action and political intrigue, the first half of Game of Thrones fits that bill, but is now notorious for how poorly it ended. High production, lots of characters / back story.
Maybe 24 or Homeland would match if you're looking for more of a straightforward "stop the terrorists" themed show.
It all depends on what aspect of Colony you're looking for / enjoyed.
> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear.
How many people watched game of thrones? How many people read all of the published books in a song of ice and fire? The book might be better but movies and TV are a lot more popular.
> I'm just hoping it doesn't get Hobbit-ed by making shit up to pad the time and introduce characters not in the original material.
Well, its being made into two movies instead of The Hobbit’s three, and the source material is about twice as long as The Hobbit, so I think the risk of that is a lot lower.
3-4 hours film per 100K words is probably reasonable [0], the cureent Dune is still very squeezed where The Hobbit trilogy was...very much not.
[0] E.g., the first season of Game of Thrones, roughly covering the plot of the book A Game of Thrones, and which hewed pretty close to the source but still cut a fair amount, was 9.5 hours for ~300K words of source material.
> That's the root cause of our disagreement. I simply call that a good story. On the other hand, to me a book gives "interesting answers" to something if it has something meaningful to say about reality, not just the fictional universe.
But that's guaranteed to be the case when it comes to aliens, since we don't yet know of any. Even if someone uses a more plausible resolution to the Fermi Paradox in their story, it will still be based on speculation, instead of telling us something about reality, since we simply don't know.
So in the context of ascension and aliens, it's all fictional and down to whether the writer can deliver a creative enough explanation. To use a fantasy example, that didn't work out so well for the Game of Thrones tv show, and might be a reason why GRR Martin is taking so long to finish the books.
I have to believe that this has been rigorously tested, and that a lot of viewers are lost when they see black bars on their television.
I remember back in 4:3 when it was far harder to find letterboxed VHS tapes, and when filmmakers often would make sure their scope movies also worked in 4:3 by filming in 4:3 and cropping to scope (with the exception of a few hundred accidentally revealed boom mics.) I have to believe that people would just get angry if they got home and realized that their tape wasn't going to utilize their entire television, so that's how the market shook out. The funny thing about movies from that period mentioned is that really both versions of a film were incomplete.
I also remember my grandparents watching DirectTV streams that were clearly stretched out horizontally on the screen, and how they didn't notice at all. They'd notice black bars.
Now that TVs are somewhere midway between 4:3 and scope, the problem has reversed itself. I've seen it solved by zoom, I've seen it solved by horizontal stretch, I've seen it solved by half-zoom and half-stretch, I've seen it solved by either half-zoom or half-stretch combined with half-black bars, even. Just showing it in 4:3 with black bars on both sides isn't significantly more popular than any of these options. And I have to believe that there's research, because, as this story shows, zooming can be expensive. You can do it automatically, and lose everyone's feet and the tops of their heads (or their whole heads in the right shots), or go over everything manually, moving individual shots that turn out badly up and down in a way that might depend on story. Also reducing the number of vertical scanlines makes old tv look like shit, so you might have to spend effort doing something about that. For that last, you can be saved if the series was shot on film and you have access to original materials...
All of this is good, because it is an impossible problem for industry to solve, therefore it will encourage piracy by purists, and piracy for things that aren't Seinfeld episodes will get a free userbase and attendant infrastructure. Also good for piracy are geoblocking and delayed broadcast times between countries. Here's hoping that the next Game of Thrones-type blockbuster series airs a day later in the UK:)
The funniest thing about 4:3 on 16:9 is that everyone's tv is the size of a bus now, and a black-barred 4:3 picture is certainly going to be a lot larger on those than the LP-sized screens families would have been watching the original broadcasts on.
A Few Observations :
I initially searched for marvel shows presently in limelight. Loki -> Not available What If -> Not available The Falcon and the Winter Soldier -> Not available Wandavision -> Available
Marvel Shows are more discussed in marvel subreddits like /r/marvelstudios than individual subreddits like /r/wandavision
After sorting out by No of comments only i found out, author of the website has actually grouped them together under Marvel. So Wanda vision Discussions are shown under two places but not linked to each other.
Another one aspect the website fails to capture is the discussions going on in multiple subreddits created for the same TV Show.
For example game of Thrones had individual subreddits for each houses in the show, out of which /r/freefolk was very famous (1M+ Subscribers) and had in depth discussions going on when each episode aired.
A service like Netflix should really have age groups. There is such a huge gap between kids and open access. Something like under 8, under 10, under 13, under 16 would be about it.
Just because I don't mind if I let my 12 year old watch PG-13 movies doesn't mean I want them to start watching softcore porn in Game of Thrones.
Being old-enough to remember the live-action SpiderMan, and The Hulk TV shows; I was happy to see SUPERheros in multiple forms and mediums. One could argue that CGI is finally good enough to match with the imagination of the directors. And that's a very good thing.
I do however wish that other things were being produced. Heavy Sequel'ization of movies just leaves me bored.
The same can be said of the Star Trek franchises, and quite frankly anything more then "2" has grown tiring.
Game of Thrones* has shown hollywood that there is an appetite for epic storytelling, and that people are willing to sit through 7 season of shows to be entertained by an engaging story. (In my heart Babylon5 pioneered grand-story telling.)
There are thousands of great books that would do well adapted to TV/Movies, I'd like to see some of these instead of another superhero flick.
Properly blending it in is a form of art, and a surprise in itself. For example, [spoilers] the rock hammer in The Shawshank Redemption, or more literally, the rifle on the wall in Shaun Of The Dead. A good gun makes you go "oooooh!"
On the other hand, building up readers' expectations with details that turn out to be irrelevant is just deception. See the last season of Game of Thrones, for instance. All those characters that were carefully built over the last seasons get discarded without any explanation.
There's sometimes stuff like that in Tarantino movie, like the outlaw lady in Django.
> charming mistakes
One character being played by three different actors (either that, or three characters being so similar I confused them as the same character despite being three different actors) is hardly charming IMO.
Longer form stories, such as Game of Thrones (where Azor Ahai, and other such plotlines are literally killed off) are probably more entertaining. It sucks to see a fan theory turn out to not matter at all, but not everything ends up being relevant to the conclusion.
I don't think a 2 or 3 hour movie has any room to dwell on unimportant details. Anime and miniseries do have that time. We can watch Goku mess around with Princess Snake or Krillen get his Namekian power up (which doesn't matter for any fight, but is good development for the character in isolation).
That's probably the charm of Cowboy Bebop. There's so much detail and none of it really matters. The interesting story happened like 10 years ago (in universe time). That's be my pick for a show / story with very little Chekhov gun going on.
-----
Chekhov gun is probably contrasted with Red Herring, which is explicitly a detail that not only doesn't matter, but purely exists to mislead the audience. Any Chekhov gun heavy plot needs red herrings to balance things out, otherwise it's too predictable.
> One subscription for access to ALL the content is the way to beat piracy. Anything else is anti-consumer at this point.
So what do you do when an Amazon Prime membership is required to access most contemporary books?
Or when you have to get several different all-you-can-read memberships to access all the authors you like. Eg. first there was just Netflix, now there is Hulu, Disney+ and Paramount+ as well if you want to see The Handmaid's Tale, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, Star Trek: whatever, The Expanse, Star Wars & Avengers movies (to name just a few of the most popular and culturally relevant shows and movie franchises).
Whether there is a monopoly or oligopoly doesn't make much difference to consumers, though it does make some difference to content creators.
To make a system like you describe palatable over the long term, you would have to add in structural separation (content owners can't also be distributors) and strictly limit the kind of exclusive licensing deals that are allowed (eg. require statutory licensing of some sort) so new publishers and distributors can't be prevented from entering the market.
Well the key word here would be threatens and rampant. Which is sort of the absolute of extreme end of the augment.
For example Adobe and Microsoft has turned a blind eye on piracy for years. I believe it was Steve Jobs who had the gut to point out the obvious, Student on campus just pirate their Photoshop.
For content, you could derive additional revenue from non-content product like merchandise or other form of cross-industry IP sharing. You cant have these sort of deals without getting significant mindshare of the public. And for some piracy is part of it. Think Game of Thrones. The most pirated TV shows on the planet. And is the same with Music. Most artist dont earn much with licensing, streaming or disc sales any more. It is about live performance tours and merchandise. Streaming Music isn't doing as well as most media would like you to believe, such as back to to the peaks of 90s without accounting for inflation and population difference.
That is why I sort of think in the future some content could end up going the freemium model. Just like how mobile games are doing.
I think this has become a modern trend especially in long-form art (television, book series), where it's been noticed that mystery plots are a good way of attracting and maintaining an audience with much less effort than crafting a satisfying narrative takes. That's how we get things like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, or the Game of Thrones TV show (perhaps the ASOIAF books as well, but time will tell), as two prime examples of captivating the audience without a clear plan.
> I don’t want to watch movies or read books where people are just awful to other people, I can open the newspaper on any given day to find that.
I am 1000% with you on this. The success of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones are mystifying to me. I get enough misery and awfulness from the news.
Just a random thought you inspired. If any "collective consciousness" ideas are grounded at all in reality does missing the shared episode experience negatively change it?
I remember that the Game of Thrones red wedding event still seemed to happen at the same time even though it was re-watchable on demand.
In my Fortune 500 employer, we have pan-regional task forces/committees people can join for collaboration like this. I'm on the Engineering Training Taskforce in my region. We meet an hour a month to plan various events, including "Tech movie nights". Pre-COVID we'd get upper management to approve a small budget for popcorn during movie showings, etc. We also have a few (infrequent) long-running series of invited talks on a theme.
Follow-up discussion from earlier in a series is good, but you need it to not interfere with people being able to selectively attend events. Presumably, you'd want to budget some time after the video screening to discuss the just watched movie, followed by some budgeted time for discussing the previous video. If you start out with discussion of the previous video, you're going to scare off newcomers. Or, you have a Slack channel (or similar) for the series and have drawn out asynchronous discussion.
At least until you have critical mass, you need your series to be like an easy-watching low-context series with relatively self-contained episodes. Think The Simpsons instead of something that really requires investment to keep up with the context, like Game of Thrones.
Being on a taskforce/committee does take extra time and effort, but does show initiative and can get one valuable exposure/mindshare from upper management. At least in our organization, cross-team collaboration looks good at annual review time.
You ask a good question, and to be honest: I don't have a good answer to it yet. I'm still trying to work out a consistent position on the whole topic. Therefore I'm going to give you a rather tentative view.
I currently feel there's a spectrum of cultural importance on media. On the one end, you have your sonnet, that few people even know exists. On the other end, you have Game of Thrones.
At some point a piece of media becomes so widespread that it becomes a part of shared culture. It could meaningfully affect everyone[0], like Harry Potter or even Game of Thrones (I'd expect everyone to be at least aware of its existence). Or a subculture, like Star Trek or Star Wars for people with even passing interest in science fiction (or STEM), or StarCraft for people into PC video games. These works weave themselves into the fabric of society - people lift phrases from them, make metaphors referencing them. Hogwarts is the modern Troy. Being unable to access these works - especially at the same time everyone else around you is perusing them and talking about them - becomes cultural isolation.
With books, we have it solved, thanks to libraries. Almost anyone can get legal access to almost any written work - where they don't have the money, they can substitute it with effort, to get to a library (and possibly convince the library to buy the work, or fetch it through inter-library loan, etc.).
With music and movies, we had it solved in the past too. You could be exposed to popular works through radio and TV, both private and public. This worked better pre-Internet, because while media distribution was regional, the culture was also regional. Not so today - with the spread of the Internet, the culture became international almost overnight. With Internet, enough of us in Poland can enjoy Game of Thrones simultaneously with the rest of the world that it becomes expected of everyone to enjoy it in lockstep with the whole planet.
Videogames gained mainstream popularity around the same time Internet did, so there was never an equivalent of a library, or public broadcasting, for games. You either buy one or pirate it. If a game suddenly gains worldwide popularity[1] and every one of your friends is playing it, you'll either buy it or pirate it, just so you can feel included in their conversation.
And that's ultimately the main justifying factor I'm currently exploring: entertainment media are social objects. One of their most important roles is to glue communities together, by giving people shared experiences to talk about. Once a work becomes popular enough, I can't really blame people who pirate it because they too want to be a part of the conversation.
The sonnet from your example? It isn't popular at all, it isn't part of culture, so I'd consider pirating it as an act of malice. My view would change if I suddenly started seeing it mentioned on the news.
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[0] - Not everyone everyone, as there are plenty of people with little to no access to Western media. It's much less than 50% of the planet, but much more than "the West", so I don't feel writing the latter would be right either - so where I say "everyone" in this thread, it is to mean "everyone within the broadly understood sphere of influence of the Western culture".
[1] - Which doesn't happen by accident; a lot of money and effort goes into marketing, in order to make this happen. And piracy was historically a part of it, too: few people actually bought originals of Diablo or StarCraft or Red Alert in Central and Eastern Europe, and yet they were hugely influential there, all thanks to folks with CD burners in their trucks.
Trying to shoehorn a meaningful story into 1.5 hours is not great for storytelling. The production costs for 8 hours of streaming television isn't that much different from 2 hours of movie filming when filming for the same genre in the same manner.
Try to get 1.5 hours of meaningful story out of the recent Netflix production of Shadow and Bone, or any of the Game of Thrones books, without sacrificing major parts of the story (that weren't already being sacrificed in their expanded versions).
I don't share the opinion that it's "foced down the throat", but at least for young adults, many conversations are about the currently popular TV show or movie. So while it's not "forced down your throat", I think many people watch them to fit in. From what I saw it started with Breaking Bad, then Game of Thrones, and then it started getting faster and faster.
Interesting to read someone else's insights and to find so many of them resonate.
One point that I don't think has been touched on is manipulating the plot for non-storytelling grounds, which usually happens as they are nearing the end of a season and/or they're leaving it open for a sequel (season or film).
This creates a real lack of resolution now. In the era of serious films, they could occasionally leave unresolved turns at the end of a film on purpose ("life isn't neat") but it was usually done with the eloquence of an accomplished director.
Now it's so mercenary that it is really starting to detract. Add to this that many series use guest directors who seem to wander off on a personal mission, and it's a recipe for the sort of mess we've seen in so many big budgets series.
Whilst I liked aspects of the final season, Game of Thrones didn't tie up even a fraction of the main plots let alone the sub plots. In the UK there were similar split opinions on Line of Duty. You can only take so much of your audiences time and squander it before people lose trust. A clear ending shouldn't be that hard to write.
>Bittorrent lacks convenience and a nice UX which seems to be required for mass adoption.
I thought it did have mass adoption.
My sister uses it, my Grandpa uses it, and pretty much every single person who watched Game of Thrones back in the day used it too.
(There was no way for Australians to watch Game of Thrones legally, the same day it came out in the US, until maybe season 3. Even then it was linked to a $90/month cable TV plan in a country with low cable adoption rates. Hence everybody torrented it and/or shared it with their workmates on USB sticks.)
Digital matte painting is just about every single new film, tv show, game. Game of Thrones, marvel films, etc.
This is typically done by individual artists, and is time intensive.
See existing workflow here: https://youtu.be/V0qX7qmtMVw
https://conceptartempire.com/matte-painting/
Ha ha, in fact I am waiting to get in to gaming when I am too old to do anything else.
Same with all the TV shows people talk about — too busy, I'll catch up on Game of Thrones when I am wheelchair-bound.
>In Russian culture the smile is identified with laughter. Russians do not smile unless something funny happens and provides a reason for laughter. This fundamental difference in perception produces many unfortunate misunderstandings.
I think I've read this a few times before and I can hardly agree.
While smile to laughter to fun association is strong and rather obvious I think the main reason you see russian smile less often is that genuine smile is the clear sign of good mood and relative well being and we tend to keep those things for our close friends, family and simply a good company we feel click with.
And we are too straightforward for a forced\fake smile. If a russian thinks 'go f*ck yourself' about you - it will be on their face. But most likely you will hear it out loud.
UPD:
I also believe we are less emotional in general. At least when it comes to things like movies, shows etc. I was amazed when I witnessed americans reacting to Game of Thrones...
> I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
Ultimately that's one show though. Amazon have spent BIG on some of their series. The Grand Tour had an enormous, enormous budget compared to Top Gear. They are spending Game of Thrones money on Wheel of Time.
Game of Thrones did not have a budget problem for the last season; it had a writing problem. While other seasons used the novels for the build-up and for the story to make sense, the last season did not. And while the author does know where he wants to land, he hasn't worked out, or hasn't shared, how to get there completely yet. The tv show went there with no proper buildup, which is what makes that season poor. To me, the final situation, or who wins/dies, is not the problem, nor are the effects.
As for The Expanse, it's season not seasons; the next season will be the final season. I cannot see the tv series ending in the same end point as the final novel, that is I cannot see them cramming four novels with one huge time gap in between into one season. But I do believe it will come to a satisfactory conclusion at some alternative end point.
But you can’t possibly make a work like “Gravity’s Rainbow” or “infinite Jest” into a movie. Hell, most adaptions of Hemingway are awful (original “Old Man and the Sea” not withstanding) because literature is not easily adapted to other mediums. It can only exist as writing because it is writing that challenges what reading is.
Lots of non-literary fiction, like “Game of Thrones” translates well and having read the books and watched the show I’d probably agree with your assessment here - optimize for time. But real literature is only good as literature.
I did mention Alexandre Dumas as a case study in a previous article. Here's a snippet:
"But there used to be another way. When Alexandre Dumas debuted The Count of Monte Cristo it was published as a feuilleton—a portion of the weekly newspaper devoted to fiction. From August 1844 to January 1846 his chapters were published in 18 installments for The Journal des Débats, a newspaper that went out to 9,000 to 10,000 paying subscribers in France—and readers were rapt by it.
In the forward to a 2004 translation of the book, the writer Luc Sante wrote: “The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled… is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.”
It was basically “Game of Thrones.” Readers could not wait to get their hands on the next chapter and that bode very well for the writer who was not only paid by the newspaper in real-time for his work (by the word), but also grew the popularity of his work over the entirety of the time it was being published.
“The ‘Presse’ pays nearly 300 francs per day for feuilletons to Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, De Balzac, Frederic Soulé, Theophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau,” Littell’s Little Age, Volume 10 wrote in 1846. “But what will the result be in 1848? That each of these personnages will have made from 32,000 to 64,000 francs per annum for two or three years for writing profitable trash of the color of the foulest mud in Paris?”
That “profitable trash” earned those writers an annual salary of between $202,107 to $404,213 in today’s dollars—and the obvious disdain of that Littell writer who, even then preferred the merits of a bound and published book. The same volume goes on to say that Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment when he was poached from The Presse by The Constitutionnel in 1845."
https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth
Yeah, I agree the MVC model in Rails is too simplistic. I never liked how everything is stuffed in models; back in Rails 3 (or 2?) it was even worse. I actually wrote a library to solve part of this, which inserted a "form" layer between the controllers and models. It worked quite well.[1]
Actually, Ruby on Rails in general is often "Rails + these 20 gems that everyone uses". I remember someone likening getting started with practical real-world Rails development as starting in Game of Thrones in the middle of season 5, which sounds about right to me.
[1]: https://github.com/bluerail/form_this
> Viewing of the video and the conversations about it took place as Garner was 10 feet away in a cell, according to Schielke. [0]
It's inhumane behavior, like one would see Roman soldiers in a movie or soldiers in game of thrones.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/us/loveland-police-officers-karen-garner-use-of-force/index.html
Video games are just a younger medium than books and movies. Even TV needed more time to be seen at a similar level to movies in terms of art.
We're getting there though. The past 15 years have given us many masterpieces of gaming that can absolutely be considered art, and they're becoming more and more common. As this happens more and more, the medium is taken more and more seriously.
Many games still suffer from feature-creep by way of trying to please users demanding "content". This incidentally make them feel like the primary goal is to waste time rather than to experience a high quality story. In other words, there are still too many "Big Bang Theory" and not enough "Breaking Bad" so that is why it still feels less valuable.
Because I told you I just binged The Queen's Gambit, you wouldn't look at me like I wasted my time, you'd ask me about the story. If I told you I just binged TBBT, you'd just think I'm nuts. (No offense if you like TBBT, it was a decent sitcom for a couple seasons, but … hey, you do you).
For example, I just finished Control. A wonderful, high quality game. Great storytelling, great mechanics, and … a crapton of completely useless busywork that is just there because it's expected to be there. A talent tree, repeat random side-missions, a crafting system, etc. None of this is useful to the core game. It's a shame because I believe if it had done less in terms of busywork mechanics and maybe focused a tiny bit more on puzzles, that game could have been a masterpiece of the same caliber as Portal and Portal 2. (Can you imagine if Portal 2 had a talent tree and a crafting system?)
Instead, it's a Season 7 of Game of Thrones. Great production value, but so hit and miss in terms of final quality because of avoidable mistakes. Could have been so good, you know?
I'd recommend trying to watch a bit more of Steins;Gate and Attack on Titan. They both get very rewarding as they go on. (For the latter, it's a bit more hit-and-miss, but the hits don't ever stop. Unlike the Game of Thrones kind, where there's a sheer drop-off starting Season 5 that only gets worse and never better.) And, as another commenter wrote, there's something much deeper and more nuanced about the main character's over-the-top personality in Steins;Gate than initially appears.
Serial Experiments Lain is everything wonderful about anime. It is violent, dark, scary. In summary: ADULT.
Anime tells stories in a visual format that for years and years you simply could not get anywhere else. Adult genre fiction was not well represented in American media. Even today, adult American cartoons are almost entirely "sitcom" format. They don't want to ever end, and they do not want to tell a story, they want to make more episodes.
Today, people are spoiled with their options for genre fiction. Cowboy Bebop blew my mind as a kid. Berserk was also one of my favorites. I did not think anything could be cooler than Vampire Hunter D. This was before Game of Thrones or The Expanse or any number of other amazing science-fiction or fantasy media we have today. Coming from a small town, it felt like a secret that nobody else knew about and I loved immersing myself in this grim, beautiful, foreign worlds[0].
A lot of anime has a lot of gross "fan service" that objectifies their female protagonists, and that is something I was never a fan of. It was something you tolerated because there wasn't anywhere else to go.
Lain is a great example of all of this. Where else are you going to get a gorgeously rendered cyberpunk-horror series?
0: Probably at a younger age than I should have been allowed to. Though honestly I don't see myself censoring everything from my kids. Part of the draw was the adult nature and feeling like I was getting away with something.
Prestige TV series cost way more money than average movies. Game of Thrones' last episodes cost $15 million each. https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/tv-series-budgets-costs-rising-peak-tv-1202570158/ I guess it was only a matter of time before they started rivaling prestige movie budgets too. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559417/most-expensive-tv-shows-ever-made-game-of-thrones-the-crown
Exactly this.
More companies are spending more money and making more shows than ever.
So much could be done, so many more innovation to be made. And here we are. Apple and Amazon. Sigh.
One of the very good thing about these media is that they consume "the" fundamental unit we cant earn; Time. Which means we can only watch as much as we have time for.
Edit: I mean if we could spend $2B making this, surely it isn't too much to ask for a re- film the last 2/3 season of Game of Thrones once the books is finished. Or even the last season would be good enough for me.
Yeah, I would argue "long term relationship" is a sign of commitment.
I'm more talking about shows and movies that make it seem like non-committal hookups and switching sexual partners rapidly for any reason is cool and totally normal:
- How I Met Your Mother (Barney)
- The Office (everyone has slept with everyone by the end)
- Game of Thrones
You could argue the "good" characters like Tyrion typically showed more commitment in their sexual activities than "bad" characters like Theon who just knocked up random women for fun. But even then you have instances where the "heroes" like Arya have one night stands with no consequences (because HBO wanted to be edgy).
- Friends
Absolutely. Hell, how many people self taught themselves the real life influences of Game of Thrones, Vikings, the Last Kingdom, Master and Commander, etc? Sure, not everyone, but I bet theres a bigger history enthusiast demographic because of certain shows, movies and books. I dont think a bigger demographic of history enthusiasts is bad for a society.
There are a few foreign-language shows interesting enough for me to watch but it doesn't stop it from being a major downside. Subbed is an inconvenience but dubbing makes me feel like there's something wrong with my eyes or like I'm watching a desynced video file from 2005. I can't do it.
A couple things like Kingdom eventually get watched but I can't imagine getting really excited for a new episode like I was with Game of Thrones or Chernobyl. It's simply not immersive enough for me.
One also wonders which is happening faster, streaming services making Europeans more like each other or making Europeans more like Americans.
Hell yes they did, the Drogo sex scene would be hilariously uncomfortably outrageous if they even hinted at her being underage.
Game of Thrones was lauded for it's gritty shocking approach to sex and death, at least in the first couple seasons, but I don't think a TV show could ever touch the harshness of the world as described in books.
I wonder if the answer isn't more mundane, money. Parents today seem to have no problem with their children seeing a movie where people are eviscerated on screen but won't let their kids see movies with sex in them. I found it funny that "Bridgerton", and "Game of Thrones" both produced with more sex, have been quite popular.
That's.... actually movies in general (IMHO).
To me the last 20 years has been the true Golden Age of Television because streaming has enabled the rise of serialized TV as the best medium to adapt long form written content.
Movies are for comics, short stories and literary works (because they tend to be incredibly short). TV is for novels.
Like Game of Thrones would never have worked as a movie (or even a series of movies). It's just such a shame it mysteriously ended after season 6.
Back in 2006 I actually had a conversation with someone after seeing Deadwood (fantastic show BTW) where I literally said that the GRRM books should be a TV show and it would probably take the likes of HBO to do it. IIRC HBO optioned the books in 2007.
I haven't read WWZ but yeah, the movie... was not great. Like 3 things happened.
Yes, discoverability of "good" subreddits is not there. But on the other hand I think Reddit get too much criticism. I find most subreddits besides the big catch-all ones like /r/pics good.
Basically all the TV shows have fun post-episode discussions and going through Game of Thrones, Black Sails or The Expanse wouldn't have been the same without Reddit for me. It becomes the group of buddies I can vent or be in awe with, when they don't share my TV show preferences at home.
Formula1 is a must for an F1 fan. Wow, I've learnt so much and the community is now part of watching F1. Pre-race chats, post-race, pre-qualification, post-qualification, haha... The behind the scenes racing drama...
MechanicalKeyboards can look over the top and elitist at first sight, until you realize they have self-distance and generally pretty relaxed (and it's very inspiring, dangerously so for my pocket...)
I live in London. We have entered our third lockdown and I struggle with my memory. The last funny one was "Game of Thrones". I just could not recall the name of the TV show. I found this article very helpful to understand potential explanations of this phenomena: memory loss x lockdown.
I read Game of Thrones for the first time. I was surprised to find out how different it is from the TV series, and that it's still being written. This was after completing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, which was a favorite in high school but never finished.
This was really just nostalgia. But I figured why not, it's 2020.
They're not so good though, I think the series will be better with both books.
The wire absolutely blew my mind and raised the bar on how great television can be. I have trouble getting past the first few episodes of Game of Thrones, how does it stack up to The Wire in terms of sucking you into the storyline and committing, looking forward to each new episode and pondering over episodes during your day to day like I experienced with The Wire?
It's really incredible just how well Endgame stuck the landing, but the whole MCU is impressive. Even the worst films of the MCU are still totally watchable, just forgettable. And comic movies are really easy to get wrong, that same decade of MCU movies overlapped with both Andrew Garfield Spiderman movies, and a smattering of forgettable or outright bad DC comics movies.
That Rise of Skywalker and the final season of Game of Thrones came out in the same year helps to contrast how much most things don't stick the landing.
It isn't really a true finale in the same way as those two examples, but I would throw out Infinity War and End Game as a joint example. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was able to successfully put a capstone on a cinematic project on the scale that had never even been attempted before. It was impressive enough to end a single story like Harry Potter in a satisfying way. The MCU was able to do the same for a wide variety of stories, dozens of characters, and over twenty movies.
Also it doesn't hurt the MCU's legacy that there is the obvious comparison with Game of Thrones that magnificently failed a very similar task the exact weekend that End Game came out.
It really was incredible, especially after watching Game of Thrones and seeing how that ending turned out. Episode 8 of season 4 was briefly at the top of IMDb, and it was an amazing revelatory episode.
Game of Thrones^^
Friends raved about it, but I just am not into fantasy genre so ignored it for a few years. When I finally caved, after a few episodes I fell hook-line-and-sinker into what is an incredibly well crafted story about the human condition: greed, lust, loyalty, ambition, betrayal... you name it, it has it all.
What it has in common with other amazing writing (e.g. Breaking Bad) is realistic (i.e. human) responses to incredible situations.
Edit: ^^ excluding the last season and the horrid finale!!
Martin's books are exquisitly well written and the early seasons were a credit to them - not so much once they diverted.
Two finales:
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When the seventh book came out in 2007 there was this fear among the fandom that JK Rowling couldn't deliver a great ending. I think most people agreed she did very well (even more than expected, considering the complexity of the story in the prior six books).
- Breaking Bad last season / last episode: there aren't many tv shows that can end in a high note (check Game of Thrones, for example). I think Breaking Bad - and in general, what separates the best tv shows from great tv shows - is that they are able to have a good ending.
I have seen that first hand. Some scenes of season 7 of Game of Thrones were recorded in my city. I can clearly remember the scene after Euron captures Ellaria and Tyene and takes them to King's Landing, and a couple of episodes later when Samwell leaves the Citadel. In GoT's world both places are supposed to be hundred of km away, in reality they are 200 m away.
Also some massive towers in the background that don't exist in real life.
You're not understanding the market though. You're talking about it like it's a tool. Instead, it's entertainment and hype - a combination people emotionally invest in.
They're not upset the tool can't do the job; they're upset that their emotions are left hanging. It's a movie without a climax. It's Game of Thrones. A refund doesn't touch on the core of why people are upset with Cyberpunk in the same way that a refund wouldn't matter for the people upset with the last season of Game of Thrones.
Marketing for Hype is a dangerous game. CDPR is experiencing the result of emotion based sales when combined with under delivering.
It reminds me of the excerpt in Bullshit Jobs (by David Graeber, rest in peace...)
"In a sense, those critics who claim we are not working a fifteen-hour week because we have chosen consumerism over leisure are not entirely off the mark. They just got the mechanisms wrong. We’re not working harder because we’re spending all our time manufacturing PlayStations and serving one another sushi. Industry is being increasingly robotized, and the real service sector remains flat at roughly 20 percent of overall employment. Instead, it is because we have invented a bizarre sadomasochistic dialectic whereby we feel that pain in the workplace is the only possible justification for our furtive consumer pleasures, and, at the same time, the fact that our jobs thus come to eat up more and more of our waking existence means that we do not have the luxury of—as Kathi Weeks has so concisely put it—“a life,” and that, in turn, means that furtive consumer pleasures are the only ones we have time to afford. Sitting around in cafés all day arguing about politics or gossiping about our friends’ complex polyamorous love affairstakes time (all day, in fact); in contrast pumping iron or attending a yoga class at the local gym, ordering out for Deliveroo, watching an episode of Game of Thrones, or shopping for hand creams or consumer electronics can all be placed in the kind of self-contained predictable timeslots one is likely to have left over between spates of work, or else while recovering from it. All these are examples of what I like to call “compensatory consumerism.” They are the sorts of things you can do to make up for the fact that you don’t have a life, or not very much of one."
What you're talking about is already happening, but we still call them "tv shows." A great recent example is The Queen's Gambit. It's adapted from a novel, which "normally" would become a movie. But instead it became a 7 episode miniseries, which allowed for much more character development than a 2-hour movie. Game of Thrones is the obvious example of something that also could have instead been several movies.
I think what we're discovering is that movies, as a medium, are for narratives that can be told in under 3 hours. If your narrative requires longer, or you just want to be able to have more time to develop characters or worlds, it's better to create a show.
> I do think there is a kernel of truth to what you're saying, but I don't think it's right to dismiss entirely the fact that representation IS important.
This idea is insidious.
Firstly people have to remember fiction is fiction. The reason why the first few seasons of Game of Thrones was compelling was because the world they lived in didn't have any modern sensibilities in it. The more they threw in modern sensibilities the worse the show got (thought the action scenes for the most part got better).
There was some show recently where Black slaves in the USA had taken power over the whites and a white KKK member from another dimension somehow got transported there. Some decried the show and wanted it banned. I thought it sounded excellent, because it was soooo divorced from reality. Same with the "Man from the High Castle". The setting in which the enemy won WWII was compelling.
Secondly just randomly pushing people into roles for the sake of representation ends up cheapening any genuine effort. The Wire was brilliant because the huge number of black people being in the show made sense. At the time I didn't actually notice that most of the cast was black.
You know what the end result is. It made me notice skin colour when I didn't used to and made me start to resent any effort (no matter how genuine) because I know there is probably some quota involved somewhere to pander to a demographic.
> Historically, "rich white people" have been in control of the media, so it's great to see this group becoming more self aware.
It isn't self awareness though. They are projecting their prejudices onto the rest of us. This includes places where it just isn't relevant and makes almost no sense.
How dare they project their prejudices onto me in an effort to absolve themselves of guilt, then have the gall to tell me that I am the one with the problem when I object to it. Fuck them!
I clearly remember when I decided I wouldn't watch anymore broadcast television (this was about 8 years ago now).
There was a show hosted by Scottish Comedian Frankie Boyle that was infamous for his offensive comedy. On that show there was a rich Canadian woman on the TV telling people in the audience that all men had done through the centuries was raping and beating women.
Then there was a black musician called "Akala" telling me the British Empire institutions were guilty of perpetuating racism. He seemed to be obilvious to the fact that he was on a British Institution being broadcasted to every home in the country.
Other the gross oversimplification of history. I had nothing to do with it (nor did my family as they were all very poor). It would be like blaming today's Germans for what Hitler did. It is absolutely disgusting.
You know what the end result of this is? It made me hugely suspicious of any claim of sexual misconduct or racism. It is the classic story of the boy that cried wolf.
> We should let people with compelling stories tell their stories! Now that streaming is the norm, there's room for everyone, now that we're not limited to only the stories which are marketable for primetime.
Maybe I am getting old but I remember a lot of this already happening. I am not saying it was perfect and I don't disagree with it in principle.
Recently "Black Panther" was released. "The first black super hero" they said. People seemed to forget Wesley Snipes played Blade for 3 movies (starting in 1997) and they were the first Marvel Movies and made the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe viable as it showed that a comic book property could be successful.
Before that we had the "There are no female action heroes" they said. Forgetting all thrillers in the past with heroines, a whole movie franchise called Aliens, Cherry 2000, Nikita, Tank Girl, Buffy and a bunch of other movies I have probably forgotten about where the woman had taken charge of the situation and won the day.
People increasingly think that the world before they were born didn't exist.
Yes, I've seen that episode of Game of Thrones too :)
First, consider the requirements to set such a trap. The authors of the document need to be actively concerned about a leaker, and to be OK with the document itself being leaked as long as they catch the culprit - at the same time, they need the document to be juicy enough that it will be leaked. They need to share the document in such a way that no two of the suspects will be able to compare notes, otherwise the jig is up. So no putting the file on a common internal resource (unless the server can stealthily serve different versions based on the user's login data); no attachments, else a reply all / forward would reveal the trap; no collaboration; no physical office where two suspects may see each other's copy.
Is that still possible? Yes. But a _lot_ of times it won't be possible, and the would-be leaker will know it's not possible. It's much more likely, and makes much more sense, for critical documents to be shared in such a way that the users _know_ they are fingerprinted, and won't leak them. IIRC, major Hollywood studios do that with their film scripts.
Second, what if the _key phrases_ are slightly altered in each version? Or hell, if your bosses want to finger you so bad, what's if they changed a small factual detail in each version? Then even the journalist quotes would reveal the leaker.
Start the series the day before the last episode? I purposefully didn’t watch game of thrones until like the 4th season.
To be fair, game of thrones, the first book in the song of ice and fire series came out in [1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#Overview)
The TV show started in 2011.
Kingkiller Chronicles is only 3 books, hardly epic. It's a trilogy. The first book came out in 2007, second in 2011, and nothing has been seen of the third, and presumably, final book.
Brandon Sanderson treats writing books as a job, thus he writes every day. Now you could argue that his books aren't as entertaining to you (subjective) or that his prose isn't as good (a bit less subjective), but he does treat his job like a job. Whereas Rothfuss and GRRM seem to try to do literally anything but continue writing their books.
Sanderson isn't a bot but he has something a lot of people lack, work ethic.
To be fair, respect for talent . When you can create a tv show the caliber of game of throne 5 years after the 1st book is release catch-up and over take the books. It makes you wonder if there is difficultly to completing epic, wheel of time dragged out, king killer and game of thrones. On the other hand Malazan seems to be fine thou it’s loosely bound, and the book writing AI brandon sanderson works 25 hours a day
> I have a suspicion that the way game of thrones ended may have been an experiment to disrupt consumers attachment to release them onto new objects of desire.
This is a great theory!
I think the creators of HBO's GOT ended the series because they were rushing to work on:
]] Benioff and Weiss inked a five-year, $250 million partnership with Netflix in August to make film and TV projects exclusively for the streaming service. The move was head-scratching at the time, considering the pair had already committed to producing Star Wars movies for Disney—an undertaking that was likely to take many years and leave little room for anything else.
https://qz.com/1737729/gots-benioff-and-weiss-picked-netflix-over-disney-and-star-wars/
This reminds me of a similar idea I came to a few years back. I noticed that 10-13 episode/year shows tended to be better than average, while 22-26 episode/year tended to be worse on average and have large numbers of garbage episodes. The second group is how traditional US shows were done in the days of classic TV, to be shown twice in a 52 week year.
It came to me a few years back after watching the remastered Star Trek TNG, later an early season of Game of Thrones. Even though TNG was given plenty of time to hit its stride and had some incredible episodes, another half were just crap. Meanwhile early GOT season would have ten decent episodes in a row. The difference in average quality was striking.
Of course, GOT had the benefit of being mostly written beforehand, similar to Babylon 5, one of the first series to break episodic containment.
TL;DR: TV show law - A dozen or so episodes per season is the limit of a writing team. Produce any more than that and they are guaranteed to be phoned-in filler.
Consider Game of Thrones. Are seasons 1-3 still worth watching even though 4-6 are mediocre and 7-8 are dumpster fires?
As someone who enjoyed the show for a long time and watched it all the way through, I'm not sure the answer to that is obvious. They wrecked it so badly in the final episodes that I don't currently see myself doing the marathon rewatching thing with it. I'm also not sure I'd recommend it to a friend who hadn't seen it, knowing it was setting them up for such a huge disappointment.
Twin Peaks is (or, was) exactly this: "A 2 season show that was canned on a cliffhanger". The third season went in to production 25 years after the cliffhanger ending. The show was very much still worth watching even before season 3 became reality. A cliffhanger ending is still a kind of resolution and is not inherently bad.
There are 2-season shows with no ending or clearly rushed endings that are still worth watching: check out Party Down.
Does any kind of sloppy ending make an entire show worthless or is there some cutoff screen-time that makes it acceptable? Consider Game of Thrones. Are seasons 1-3 still worth watching even though 4-6 are mediocre and 7-8 are dumpster fires?
Hard disagree.
First of all, most streaming shows are 10 episodes per season, 12 at most.
But as for the number of seasons, what's amazing about television is how deep and intimate your knowledge of the characters becomes. The kind of emotional depth and resonance you get with characters in the 4th and 5th season of a show is simply unparalleled -- we know their life histories, and the smallest of scenes can shake us with the amount of meaning they convey.
If you think of Mad Men or The Sopranos or The Americans or Breaking Bad -- my god, each season is better than the last because it's like they approach infinite richness. The last seasons get to levels none of the first seasons were able to.
Also, it's a huge rarity for shows to make it to 7–9 seasons. The ones that do are because they're hugely popular and people want to watch them. If Game of Thrones had still had books to work off of, I think pretty much everybody would have loved 3 or 4 more seasons.
>Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons?
Not OP, but I share the opinion. For my viewing there are basically two types of shows. The first is relatively mindless entertainment. I enjoy an episode here or there but I'm not invested in the plot. I'm not watching YouTube recaps and "explainers" after the episodes, and I'm not engaged in a community where we discuss the plot and predict where things are going. Barry is a good example of that. Ted Lasso is another good example.
Then there are the shows where I get invested in the plot and story. Shows where I am theorizing with my wife, watching YouTube videos on it, and discussing it online. Shows such as Westworld or Game of Thrones.
There are some shows that straddle the line well, but you usually know ahead of time. Watchmen falls into that category. Single season, compelling drama, had me engaged the whole time, and it was a single season. But I knew it was going to be a single season from the start.
This is the same reason I typically try not to read unfinished trilogies. Patrick Rothfuss and GRRM have ruined me.
I don't know how it plays out in practice, but I agree that it seems as if having the must-have subscription impact of a House of Cards or Game of Thrones when they first came out would trump having a dozen meh middle-of-the-pack mainstream network procedurals or sitcoms.
With regard to Game of Thrones, I don't think the article argues that it necessarily got better in quality season by season but that it took a couple of seasons to find a massive viewership and become a cultural phenomenon. That said, I think the quality did improve between season 1 and 5.
And I vehemently disagree with the notion that "almost all shows get significantly worse". There are definitely many shows that do jump the shark at some point and significantly drop in quality. On the flip side, there are many examples of shows that needed a couple of seasons to find their tone and really hit their stride which they most likely never would have had the chance to do at Netflix. E.g: Parks and Recreation, Community, Justified, even Breaking Bad imho.
> "Game of Thrones" wasn't an overnight phenomenon
Uhm, it pretty much was. Season 1 was hugely popular.
A lot of the shows they've cancelled just weren't that good, even the ones I watched.
They hold up 3 shows as an example, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones and Schitt's Creek. The first two were smash hits after season 1. Schitt's Creek was a really good show from the start but it wasn't well known until later seasons. It didn't "hit it's stride" it built up it's audience over time. The quality was always there.
The shows Netflix is cancelling aren't even close in quality.
This guy doesn't get it. The industry for media is way more complex than this and it involves an interplay between media consumers and creators.
What is defined as "best" is a constantly moving target because audiences are getting more and more sophisticated. Every time the industry breaks new ground with new media or a new concept, the audience learns from the experience and the movie industry can only regurgitate that concept so many times before the concept becomes redundant.
You think something like game of thrones could have been made two decades ago? What drives the sophistication of TV shows up to the point where they kill off the main character in the first season just to keep you interested? Doing outlandish stuff like this was never needed to keep audience engagement in the past... In fact movies made nowadays are waaaay to intense for audiences back in the 60s.
This isn't something I'm just making up. Movie execs are very very aware of this issue, they know that the bar needs to be constantly raised to engage viewers and ironically by every time you raise the bar you train the audience to be even more more sophisticated and you gotta raise the bar again.
I'm only a matter of time before audiences are so sophisticated that they begin realizing this fact as well.
Right now, in general, the audience isn't intelligent enough to recognize this positive feedback loop. To the audience this phenomenon mostly appears as "all modern movies are stupid except for the classics."
What's going on is that the "classic" you love so much was the bar raiser and all the other movies that came after it are filler in attempt to capitalize on the concept and raise the bar further. The cycle continues until one random movie actually successfully changes the game.
How many marvel movies need to come out before the whole franchise becomes boring? I'm enjoying the franchise right now but I know that eventually it won't be as good as the classic original movies that started it all.
First off, thank you for taking my post in good sport despite its... empassioned nature.
> For a show like Game of Thrones, releasing an episode a week is important to enable 'water-cooler conversations' about the show, which many viewers enjoy.
That's a fair point I hadn't considered. One could ask whether that decision is up to the distributor, but that's a quibble.
> These are both annoying, but streaming services don't have a monopoly on recommendations and reviews. Personally I put very little stock in their recommendations anyway, so I don't much care when they mess about with them.
Would you agree reliable recommendations would be a value-added service?
>> not allow viewing of shows because subtitles aren't yet available
> Guessing here but that might be done in the name of inclusiveness.
Another excellent point I hadn't considered. How do you feel about, say, English subtitles not being available in a country that doesn't have it as a national language, with the series having been released in the Anglo world already on the same service?
> If you want to buy a la carte, you already have that option too. I don't see any problem here.
By your own admittance, à la carte isn't always an option - you'd mentioned the Simpsons in the UK.
> I agree engagement-driven ecosystems can be very troublesome, but [...] not so much with paid subscription services
I agree YouTube is worse at actively trying to limit what you see based on what they think you should watch, but I see elements on Netflix, too, with it moving around UI elements to try and get me to engage with what they've curated, pop-ups telling me "what I've missed" and so on.
> What do you mean by walled garden in this context?
I suppose what I meant to point out is that in my opinion, these services aren't actually competing, since their content offering is mutually exclusive. Seldom are two shows simultaneously available on two different streaming services. Perhaps this is a local expression of streaming providers, I'm not sure.
This diminishes the need for said service to distinguish itself on customer service, convenience and UX, since there's no one else offering the same content. That makes me question the added value of the middle man for the consumer, but I suppose content producers see Netflix and co as the consumer, not you or me.
They're competing like broadband providers are competing in the US, based on exclusive territory. The same could be said for gaming consoles, but to a lesser degree since there are way more multi-platform games.
I'm aware this is a judgement based on my own preferences, since they can be said to compete in terms of what their bundle contains. I'm personally not interested in bundles. I'm interested in good quality shows and movies. I'm interested in having a say in which shows get prolonged for another season and at which price point I'm still willing to endorse them.
Like you've indicated, this will probably never completely be the case, since that would make it cost prohibitive for content producers to try anything new, but some modicum of democratisation wouldn't hurt. It's happened for some areas of retail and for the music business, why not for video content? I'm imaging a blend of kickstarter mechanics and content aggregation systems. Perhaps with a mandatory "Innovation" subscription to fund new IP and a corresponding pilots/preview channel.
Netflix seems to have the best tech, at least from a user perspective in Mexico.
On my LG tv their app is the best, by far. I wish all the other services just served their content through Netflix. All new content has 4K HDR with Dolby vision/atmos and streaming is quite fast on my 200 Mbps fiber connection.
HBO Go is pure garbage. The app is clunky and has way worse UX than Netflix. The streaming quality is absolute crap. There's banding everywhere and the image seems to pause for a frame or two every second or so. This is extremely annoying when the camera pans. Game of Thrones doesn't even have 5.1 sound. No English subs (for those shows where sound is not so great). Last time I checked there was no 4K HDR.
The Amazon Prime app has better UX than HBO Go and has much better streaming quality, but the experience is still quite mediocre. The whole UI seems from 10 years ago. When you're binging a show they always insert ads in between episodes and the app forces you to skip recaps and the show intro every time. The quality of the streaming degrades quite often for a couple of seconds. Also, no English subs. They also have an HBO channel but it suffers from the same quality issues as HBO Go.
I haven't tried Apple+ and Disney is not available yet.
> your post boils down to "we should be glad it isn't as bad as it used to be".
It doesn't. I responded to the complaint that there are now many competing subscription services.
> That doesn't at all imply that the current state is desirable.
I don't see any problem with there being multiple competing subscriptions, and you've not pointed any out. Your other complaints are valid but are on different topics.
> Depending on where you are globally, it might not even be possible to gain access if you subscribe to every available streaming service.
I wasn't commenting on this, but I agree it's long overdue to fix these region peculiarities. It's a market failure of a sort. An example from here in the UK: there's no way to buy episodes of The Simpsons on any streaming service.
> The license holder gets to choose whether I'm fed the "one episode a week" bullshit or whether I can watch episodes at my own leisure
That's not necessarily anti-consumer. For a show like Game of Thrones, releasing an episode a week is important to enable 'water-cooler conversations' about the show, which many viewers enjoy.
> whether to limit streaming to a limited time period or a limited subset of a series' seasons
Those limitations may be due to licensing/syndication agreements. The streaming provider might only have paid for a limited time window in which they're authorised to stream certain content. I don't think Netflix ever remove content that they own outright.
> obscuring quality ratings, limiting discoverability
These are both annoying, but streaming services don't have a monopoly on recommendations and reviews. Personally I put very little stock in their recommendations anyway, so I don't much care when they mess about with them.
> not allow viewing of shows because subtitles aren't yet available
Guessing here but that might be done in the name of inclusiveness. Adding subtitles improves disabled accessibility of the service. A strong policy of all shows must have subtitles might be a good thing; deaf users can then use the service in the knowledge that all available shows are accessible to them.
> We have the payment infrastructure to allow target audiences to access your content and pay a variable price based on what they watch.
The point of the subscription model is that you pay the same monthly rate no matter how much you watch. If you want to buy a la carte, you already have that option too. I don't see any problem here. If you mean to say you think the prices are too high, that's a different matter.
> rent-seeking, "engagement"-driven, anti-consumer walled gardens of crap.
It's not rent-seeking. Shows are costly to produce. (I happen to support radically reducing copyright durations, but that's not the same topic.)
I agree engagement-driven ecosystems can be very troublesome, but it's more an issue on YouTube (pushing people to watch politically toxic garbage), not so much with paid subscription services.
What do you mean by walled garden in this context?
The scripts aren't good because they're not designed to be good. TV and movies are fleeting bouts of entertainment with little re-use value, cranked out by a system that cares more about quantity than quality. Characters, dialog and plot are the minimum necessary to allow suspension of disbelief. Good storytelling is not important if the option to profit without it exists.
Then there is a segment of the market that specializes in creating higher quality products for demanding consumers, and to command higher paychecks and respect for the actors and production brands involved. Sometimes people who care about fiction manage to sneak in here. But Hollywood has gotten increasingly good at replacing the director-auteur with schmaltzy schlock that still tickles the sensibilities of people who want to believe that hollywood is art.
For example: The problem with Game of Thrones' last few seasons was that they ran out source material from an author who cared about his fiction. TV and film don't know how to tell a story because they're designed not to. Maybe most of the individuals involved do, but the system doesn't. It's so bad that a resource-rich production shit the bed with a head of steam and plot points from a real author. They couldn't even convey "bad person is BAD" without falling back on Nazi imagery. Of course the conclusion was doomed.
Even I feel the narrative is played quite disproportionately (democracies are falling, dystopian world).
Doesn't any engaging TV show (Game of Thrones) does something similar, keep you engaged by twist and turns, experimenting/testing with new characters? A/B testing on users is perceived as experiments on lab rats in the docudrama.
And why is the ad-based business model a bad thing? If the platform target specific customers without any misleading information, it can really help both the customers and the advertisers. Seems like a win-win.
I feel absolutely necessary for these platforms to understand us better, by capturing various data points and then manipulate/filter our feeds. There is so much content published every second, a genuine AI can really come handy. If I feel that my feed is getting polarised and I am in an echo chamber, I can consciously subscribe to alternate and diverse opinions and people. In reality, "You are average of the 5 people you surround yourself with"
On a side note, Netflix itself is a competitor to Facebook (content), Google (Youtube) and also engineering resources. Netflix is too "competing for user's attention" with these tech giants. Netflix too in a way was getting you hooked to the documentary by playing around with tempo and music frequency, that triggers some engaging chemical reaction.
> The thing with games and such creative content (such as also movies and series) is the hype is after release. If you watch Game of Thrones a year later because that is when it is available, you end up with spoilers.
So you get it from whichever store has it early. That's kind of the point. But as long as that store isn't requiring you to buy their particular kind of device or preclude you from using other stores on your device, it's not the same problem.
> I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well.
It's a messaging app. It goes on your phone. And that would still require you to spend hundreds on an Apple device, then hundreds more on an Android device.
> You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage
Which not only requires you to buy both devices, now the Apple device has to be a desktop which you have to leave turned on and burning electricity at all times in order to receive messages on your phone.
It isn't not a problem just because you can work around it by walking up hill both ways in the snow every summer, it's a problem because people aren't actually going to do it that way.
> Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where.
None of that stuff is huge. It doesn't prevent people from doing it in practice.
> An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.
Yes, exactly, which then addresses your concerns with having multiple stores -- but only if you can have multiple stores and use a single interface for all of them.
For example, where is the version of Pidgin which runs on Android and is compatible with iMessage without using some kind of farcical relay system? Who is the party that prevents this from existing?
> Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.
It turns out that if you apply "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" to the legal system, nobody would have standing and perpetrators could never be held to account. Fortunately that's not how it works.
The thing with games and such creative content (such as also movies and series) is the hype is after release. If you watch Game of Thrones a year later because that is when it is available, you end up with spoilers.
> To avoid this I would have to buy two separate phones at a cost of hundreds of dollars, with two separate phone contracts and phone numbers, and then carry them both around.
I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well. You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage [1]. Its true that some Apple software is specific to their platforms though.
Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where. An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.
Just to be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with your disliking of Apple's practices. Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.
[1] https://airmessage.org/
I wonder who produced that paper(i.e who sponsored it). How easy and convenient to link pirating to terrorism, don't you think? What's next? pirating and WMD?
>> A group willing to do this illegally is often willing to do other high-profit risky and illegal activity.
A law abiding citizen is just a docile citizen if he abides by wrong/unjust laws. If you were a jew in Nazi Germany a law abiding citizen would have given you in to the Gestapo while a "pirate" would have taken the risk to give you shelder.
A group willing to torrent Game of Thrones is not often willing to do terrorism, you poor little ....! They just want to watch a fucking movie and decide to torrent it because:
a) they don't have the money to buy it
b) they can't buy it because some stupid executives believe some people should watch it 20 years after it's released in x country.
c) they can't watch it on the device they want/when they want because of the excellent DRM laws that you praise and I assume you abide of(i.g their HDMI cable is not version 2.0a it's just 1.4b
d) they are humans
Before hunting "Game of Thrones" pirates can we please do something about all the big guys such GS [0] that steal billions from poor people, some of them unable to pay for that Game of Thrones movie they pirate? I mean something more than a handshake for returning a part of the money when they get caught.
If you want to stop crime you should invest in education and provide opportunities for a decent life.
Either way, jailing your neightbour for pirating movies will not make him a better neightbour. Most likely will turn him/her into a real criminal vengeful on the system/society.
Btw, good job with Aaron[1]! You've done the "right thing", right? So much justice that makes me sick to my stomach. All this to make the few wealthy and privileged wealthier and the lives of the poors more miserable!
When I read your comment your attitude remembered me of a quote from Cloud Atlas[2]: "There is a natural order to this world, and those who try to upend it do not fare well. "
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53529075
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxumQYpBzr0
That's starting from the assumption you are doing this to engineer your children ands psychology.
Actually I think a lot of people find it awkward to watch graphic sex scenes and extended nudity with their family. As a grown up, the I feel awkward watching parts of game of thrones with my parents.
That's a shame because I would like to watch this show with them. Lately a lot of major TV shows seem to aim to include one nude scene per episode - I guess the money people think that's what sells...
I can understand why some people might find violence equally difficult, but where it features it tends to be much more tied to the plot.
More importantly, if you downloaded some episodes, barring an act of god that destroys your house and the equipment within, you know you will get to enjoy those episodes at the time of your own choosing and with the best quality, no streaming issues or glitches. With HBO, who knows? I still remember they were unable to cope with the load for some of Game of Thrones episodes.
Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show in history. I remember when the first 4 episodes of season 5 were leaked at once. Christmas came early!
An intern once thought it was a good idea to torrent a couple of Game of Thrones episodes using my startup's Digital Ocean box.
We found out after Digital Ocean forwarded us an email from HBO (who presumably tracked Digital Ocean down via the IP) that we were engaging in piracy. We sent an email to everyone with access, saying whoever was doing it to stop. Then we got a second email (a final warning).
Everyone denied doing it, so I had to find the offender via checking the bash history of the box for all users.
Sure enough a couple of mkv files had been downloaded and deleted by an intern :( Making the mistake of downloading it was forgiveable once, since we lived in a culture where piracy was rampant / normal (this was before Netflix et al were available in my country). But repeating the offense, failing to come clean and making us waste our time to locate who did it was not. (This was a small 7 person startup so trust was super important).
As for why the intern needed to ssh into a digital ocean box to run a torrent? The college internet (where he was working from) blocked torrent connections and he wanted to be the first one to download and release the episodes on the college intranet. Smh.
This locks toy companies into a challenging bet. Every year, they have to a) predict trends, b) invent them, and c) commit capital to them. All without knowing how the rest of the year will turn out. Since toy trends exist, but don’t last for very long, they have to invent new products every year—but the technological state of the art doesn’t advance very fast. It has all the volatility of tech, without the progress.
Insightful post. This succinctly explains why most toys are movie-related. It's the easiest trend to predict.
EDIT: This article keeps getting better and better. I had no idea Skyrim was almost set in Game of Thrones. https://www.tor.com/2011/09/16/how-skyrim-was-almost-set-in-westeros/ It left me wanting more.
The author is apparently Byrne Hobart, and they've written a variety of things: https://diff.substack.com/people/112633-byrne-hobart Looks like I'll be spending too much time reading them.
They also write a post ... double checks ... every day?! For a week straight, sometimes? Wow.
Sadly, most of their work appears to be locked behind a $20/mo paywall. It all looks very interesting though: https://diff.substack.com/p/dropbox-information-asymmetry-and
Subsidizing new content and making it easily discoverable are the primary reasons for bundling. When new content comes to you for free with your existing purchase, the only thing stopping you from trying it out and potentially getting hooked is your willingness to commit time to it. If every piece of content had a price associate with it, people would be much less willing to try new things. This same principle applies at both the individual show level and at the channel level. The people selling you this content want you to consume as much as possible so you don't associate your purchase with a single show and end up canceling HBO once Game of Thrones ends.
You can see how this lack of bundling might impact content by looking at movies which are traditionally more a la carte. Movies are produced under the assumption that they all need to be financially self sufficient. The end result is that most content produced is either blockbusters based off big budget IP (which tries to address discoverability) or low cost and easy to produce content that can potentially be hugely profitable if it hits. The mid-budget TV (traditional TV mainstays like sitcoms would generally fall into this bucket) would likely disappear if everything was purchased a la carte.
It is also worth considering that most of the streaming content providers all do the same bundling as the traditional powers like Viacom. The difference is that the Netflixes of the world don't organize their content into channels. However there are definitely different verticals within these companies. Netflix has one for comedy[1] that is the equivalent of Viacom's Comedy Central, they just don't actively separate this content from the rest of their catalog.
[1] - twitter.com/NetflixIsAJoke
I have aphantasia. When reading I also don't "hear" the words (although I am capable, if I choose, of mentally simulating auditory input in a way for which I have no corresponding capability for visual input). I think I read much faster than average and have extremely high reading comprehension and recall for written material.
Funny story: one benefit of not being able to visualize things is that I'm never disappointed by casting choices (at least as far as appearance is concerned) when a novel is made into a movie or TV series. My wife was "upset" that Jaime Lannister in the Game of Thrones show had blue eyes instead of green, because she had such a strong visual image of what he should look like.
That author is all over the place. It's a general rant about the obvious.
At the beginning, he's on to something. Fiction has a plot shortage. "Across TV, movies, and novels it is increasingly difficult to find a compelling story that doesn’t rely on gimmicks." Movies are stuck in the Star [Wars|Trek|Gate] ditch, and the Marvel Overextended Universe. The 25th James Bond movie is supposed to come out this year, if anybody cares.
Some of this is simply the entertainment glut. Everyone has seen all the possible plot twists. Go back in history and read some of the Canterbury Tales from around 1400. Read a story half way through, then ask yourself how it will end. You'll be right. There are no plot twists. Back then, entertainment was so scarce that they weren't needed.
A more serious problem is that there's no shared vision of a better world. Fiction doesn't help us get to a better place. This hit science fiction first. Science fiction of the 1930s to the 1960s was quite upbeat, showing a picture of a marvelous future. It's been downhill since the 1970s. Today SF is mostly space opera. Dystopian visions used to be rare. Now most SF is dystopian. Even much non-SF is dystopian. From The Wire to Game of Thrones, the world sucks.
I had given up on the series since he started publishing prequels like Fire and Blood, but now, I am hopeful that he'll finish the book.
He had been busy with the TV series and other things. With the pandemic raging, I don't think he'll be super busy with Hollywood.
Also, this might be an unpopular opinion, but I am grateful that he did not complete his series. Hear me out first!
When I first read The Game of Thrones, it was an ebook. I immediately bought the paperback set, only to realise a few months later that the series is not complete. (yes, I never google because ages ago, I was reading a Dan Brown book, and I accidentally ruined it for me by reading out what happens in the end).
After finishing the last book, I was stunned. No, I have read LoTR, but ASOIAF was unlike anything I have ever read, including the Mahabharata (which, is much more complex and originally written as Sanskrit verses).
But, that gave me motivation to finally start writing novels. I am not a famous author just yet. I have been writing consistently for the last six years, and I have published only one short story on Kindle a few weeks ago.
I find that GRRM has encouraged a lot of writers to write. The first thing I did when I started to write was to read his advice for new authors and it was great. His #1 advice is 'stop writing in my universe or Star wars universe of JRR's universe. Creating characters and world building is a significant part of story telling and you will not be an author until you do so. otherwise you are just writing fan fiction'
That month, I wrote my first short story. Then my first short film script which won the silver script award in India Film Project 2007.
Since then, I have written four full length novels. I am currently working on my fifth novel.
And all this has been because GoT's next book isn't coming out and I was so frustrated about that, that I started writing my own novels. (I know it does not sound logic, but that's how I felt. Damn it, I'm writing my own novels!)
Google should have written seasons 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones.
I recall the game of thrones episode where this guy is telling a really old and well-known joke, and when he gets to the punchline, basically everybody in the room can't help but blurt it out before he can.
Or if you're in line and the cashier can't ring up your stuff for some technical reason, and you blurt out "well, I guess it must be free, huh?" But they have heard that one ever single day since they started.
Even I, paragon of ...uh... stuff... I once cracked a joke in the TSA line.
I would just imagine that most of this is human nature and I expect graduating to a higher level of power and responsibility has the same sort of well-traveled detours.
Shame mobs, bending the knee... it's like an episode of Game of Thrones.
I can’t help but think of the CDC (hear me out) as the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones. 1) Setup to protect against things that haven’t happened in most people’s lifetimes. 2) Reduced funding/personnel because nobody really believes it can happen (due to #1). 3) When something finally happens, ignored because it conflicts with the desired political narrative.
As the most watched TV show in history, it wouldn’t be difficult to draw an easy parallel between to two in order to illustrate systemic failure to the public.
One significant difference is the sharp decline in value per watch/listen. Your favorite songs in your music library probably have hundreds of listens; how many times have you seen your favorite movie?
No one signs up for Spotify to binge listen for a month and then unsubscribe. In video, that's not uncommon. I heard of people who would wait for Game of Thrones to end the season, then buy a month of HBOGo and watch the whole thing, then unsubscribe. Likewise for movies; if you're okay not being up to date with the latest movies you could just buy a subscription for a month once or twice a year, watch the things you've missed and then unsubscribe.
I think that's a big part of the reason movies don't go in that direction. Most of what you're paying for in a movie is novelty: a novel plot, novel characters, novel setting, etc. Music is effectively the opposite; you find something you like, and you listen to it all the time. Their model works perfectly for a "pay per view" system.
As for the fragmentation, I suspect the amount of money that the rights owner gets to keep is higher on their own system. I.e. Netflix gets a flat $X/month/user, which they have to split among all their publishers. If you're a large enough publisher the math on what Netflix will pay you versus the number of subscribers you can get yourself probably works out.
The only better, yet still tenable, model I can think of would be for Netflix to go to a model similar to cable. I.e. you pay $10 to get access to Netflix's library. If you want to access Disney content on Netflix, you pay $8 for a Disney upgrade. If you also want WB, you pay $6 for a WB upgrade (in addition to the Disney one).
It would likely be cheaper than paying for Netflix and a separate Disney+ (I have to believe the marginal cost for distributing a movie is lower if we centralized on Netflix than it is for them both to have their own CDNs, etc). Publishers still get paid per-user, so they don't have to worry how big their piece of the Netflix pie is. Users get a single interface to stream all of their favorite stuff.
Piracy is always going to be more prevalent for movies for two primary reasons:
1) Movies are ephemeral for most people. You watch it, and you move on. You don't need something like Spotify to manage a massive library of content, you can download stuff and delete it. Keeping it involves a lot of storage
2) Music has a much larger convenience factor. I'm fairly often doing something else (driving, working, exercising) and think "dang, I want to listen to this thing I've never listened to before". Movies are typically something I plan more. I would like to see a particular movie, but not right this second. I can wait a few hours or days for it to download, no biggie. Discovery is the bigger issue with movies, and that's already provided by third party sites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB.
> "Quickly" using the JavaScript tooling is somewhat akin to watching one or two episodes of the 6th Game of Thrones season without watching anything else. You really need to watch season 1-5 to understand what's going on.
I disagree. In both cases, you really only need one or two episodes to know that the story is not going anywhere. It will only get more complicated and convoluted without ever rewarding you, you will realize that no thought was ever put into it, and you will only stay for the ride because of sunk costs.
We actually binge watched game of thrones for the first time while we were both on mat leave. Hadn't seen a single episode before then.
The difficulty there is that I think everyone universally acknowledges (?) GOT just fell apart like a car crash in slow motion in the later seasons. It's hard to separate that from the knowledge that they started to depart from the books and were clearly undergoing irreparable problems/pressures by the end of season 5. Don't think we can blame that solely on tech... And it's hard to think about the cgi specifically when the rest is falling apart...
people that make games n game engines are fucking incredible. with tools like these the future is bright for film-makers on a limited budget. which is beneficial for a diversified high quality movie industry. imagine something like game of thrones, instead of actual humans. just have it all entirely done via unreal 5. you'll still need good writers though.
Video games have won! It's time to emerge from the defensive bunker that they must be "productive" by improving your creativity or problem solving or reflexes or whatever. They're a form of entertainment on par or even beyond movies, shows, etc. Time spent enjoying video games is no more wasted than when enjoying those other forms of media, although it is true some video games demand much greater time investment (the entirety of Game of Thrones is only 63.5 hours in length, for example, which is easily surpassed in length by many popular single-player games).
I do think things like LoL are a huge drain on some people's lives, though, honestly.
Overall, when accounting for all platforms and delayed viewing throughout the week, the final season of Game of Thrones averaged more than 44 million viewers per episode [1]
Game of Thrones’ season 8 premiere was pirated almost 55 million times in the first 24 hours [2].
And this is when people have 100 times more choices every day.
[1] https://observer.com/2019/05/game-of-thrones-finale-ratings-hbo-viewership/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/17/18412159/game-of-thrones-got-season-8-premiere-pirated-55-million-times-first-24-hours-hbo
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/media/game-of-thrones-season-8-record/index.html
> Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones" notched a series record of 17.8 million viewers, according to HBO. "The Long Night" broke the record set by the season premiere just two weeks ago when 17.4 million viewers tuned in.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/28/106-million-people-watched-mash-finale-35-years-ago-no-scripted-show-has-come-close-since/
> 106 million people watched ‘M.A.S.H.’ finale 35 years ago. No scripted show since has come close.
Note that these are raw numbers, not percentage of population. There are more people now than there were when "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" aired, but the broadcast TV episode still got more human beings to watch it.
Maybe almost 100 million watched Game of Thrones illegally.
Arguably Game of Thrones could be the last series to ever capture the attention of the entire world at the same time. Everyone I know watched it, all ages, and all different genre fans. Bars used to play the episodes to a packed crowd. It was truly epic.
I don’t think these other series you listed are anywhere close to the level GoT captured. They win awards and have big budgets and fans spread the word, but still nowhere near.
> If you heard about Game of Thrones or Westworld or Stranger Things, or most recently, Tiger King, you'd realize this is very much still a thing for a large population.
This isn't the same thing.
In the 1990s, everybody watched The Simpsons. Even the people who hated it still watched it so they could complain about it. It was on broadcast TV so everybody had access to it. And Friends, and Cheers, and so on.
Game of Thrones is on HBO. If you have Netflix and not HBO, it's not there. Stranger Things is on Netflix. If you have HBO and not Netflix, it's not there. A lot more people watched Friends than Game of Thrones, because Game of Thrones was less available and had much more competition.
You can find a website full of fandom about Game of Thrones, but you can find a website full of fandom about Battlestar Galactica. Passion and popularity are not the same.
Popularity is what matters to the zeitgeist. It's not a matter of being able to find a place where all the Game of Thrones fans hang out and whinge about the last season, it's about being able to go into a room full of normies and make a reference to last night's episode and expect nearly everybody to get it. Which isn't really a thing anymore.
I mean, don't get me wrong, what you describe as the good in Trek is something I also appreciate. The trouble is that, TOS aside, I don't see it where you do.
The reason I called out TNG S1 earlier was because it lacked absolutely nothing in terms of space-opera absurdity by comparison with Discovery, and so it's odd to me that you should abhor the one and disregard the other. But I'd also mention it in this connection because the Roddenberry-driven performances of its characters don't read as "members of a healthy family", as you describe, but rather mostly as just flat and lifeless in affect. The interpersonal stuff just reads off, like a stage play put on by disinterested actors not directed very well. As we see later in the same series, that's certainly not the fault of any lack on the part of the main cast, whose relationships become more believable, rather than less, as the show goes on. The major change is the one you cite: Roddenberry no longer exercising creative control. I think it's reasonable to consider that that change lay behind the improvement of character and relationship portrayals that I describe - especially considering that, as you also note, many of the people who made the show have said exactly the same.
Consider, too, that while the idea for TOS was his and a lot of the development was as well, he did not exercise anything like the same degree of absolute authority over that show as he did over S1 of TNG. I agree with you that TOS's characters were lively and that their friendships were obviously close, deep, and warm, and I think it's interesting that they were so in an environment much more similar to TNG's later seasons than to its early ones.
(As a side note, if you haven't read Diane Duane's The Wounded Sky, from the Pocket Books TOS novel series, I can strongly recommend it. Of all the portrayals I've seen of the relationships among the TOS main characters, in and out of canon, this is the only one I find myself always coming back to specifically for the sake of that portrayal. I'm told that "Where No Man has Gone Before" from TNG S1 was meant to be an adaptation, but God alone knows how; they're nothing alike, especially in that that episode's characters are exceptionally flat even in comparison with the standard set by that season.)
With regard to your comments on the supposed superficiality of Discovery, I feel it necessary to note that this is a judgment you've formed, and which you apparently hold quite firmly, on the basis of about four minutes of what I gather to be trailers and promos, and not on the basis of any true engagement, however adversarial, with the show itself. I find it difficult to understand how any judgment so formed could be anything other than superficial in its own right, considering that you have by your own account barely scratched the surface. It may be worth considering whether a more sustained investigation is worth your while. If nothing else, it can only enable you to better substantiate your arguments for why the show is bad!
And, sure, I wouldn't let my kids watch Game of Thrones, either, if I had any. But that doesn't make it a bad show. To be sure, there's a vast sufficiency of traits which do make it a bad show! But it being inappropriate for children is not among them.
> So...you're upset to see space opera played straight in your space opera?
No, I like space opera too. I'm upset that ST has become Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Space. (Don't get the wrong idea, I like Buffy too.)
> Have you forgotten entirely about S1 of TNG, or just chosen to ignore it?
You'll have to clue me in to what specifically you're referring to, I re-watched it last year but I don't want to guess at what you mean.
> DS9 is "not Roddenberry"
I agree. DS9 was, in part, created specifically to explore "not Roddenberry" directions in the ST universe.
There's a book, I can't find it at the moment, and I don't remember the title, but it's all excerpts from interviews with cast and crew. That's it. It's amazing.
Anyhow, I bring it up because, reading it, it became clear what, for me anyway, is the crucial defining aspect of ST that differentiates it from other sci-fi franchises: In ST, people in the future have gotten over their bullshit. They are emotionally mature, guided by reason and rationality and their higher values. That's the key difference (from say, Star Wars or Farscape or Firefly...) People in the future pretty much have their shit together.
Now this is something that some of the writers don't get. You find them complaining in their own words that Gene won't let them write an episode involving interpersonal drama between bridge crew. (Apparently this is really hard for some writers. No judgement intended.) It wasn't until after he died that Berman/Braga started to relax that.
Now to me, this is wrong (for ST) for two reasons:
First, it makes sense to me that these folks who fly around the galaxy in machines that can destroy worlds would have to be level-headed to use them w/o destroying themselves.
Second, and more importantly, that's a huge part of what made ST so endearing and appealing in the first place: the deep and abiding love that Kirk/Spock/McCoy (most obviously) and the rest of the crew (less obviously) feel for each other.
I mean, when Spock tells McCoy that he would also wish him to be present at his Pon farr, oh man, my eyes well up with tears.
When it comes down to it, the characters in the "real" ST (if I may) treat each other like members of a healthy family do, and that's wonderful to see (in any context, not just space operatic sci-fi.)
That's also the source of the "moral" superiority of Star Fleet: they actually are good guys. (And Vulcans don't lie.) You erode that and you've got Spaceballs.
> To be honest, I don't get the mockery angle at all. I mean, you're talking about a show whose first season not only has antimilitarism as a major through-line in the way Lorca's story plays out, but concludes with a war being ended by a couple of people having a conversation about why more fighting sucks for everyone, and implementing a clever technobabble-driven plan to bring about peace. There's a lot I don't love about Discovery - most of its second season, for a start - but come on, what could possibly be more Star Trek than that?
I've only seen ~4 minutes so I can't speak to the good things about the show, feeling mocked was my subjective response (I don't think the ST:D folks sat down and twirled their mustaches while contemplating how much they despise ST fans, hey?)
It was things like how the Klingons are space orcs; the Romulan guy looks like space Legolas the elf. The people wearing hoodies (why does everyone in space wear hoodies these days?) The gay guys are the only ones married? Why does the female lead have a masculine name? It seems like they're trying to tick the diversity boxes without actually rattling anybody's cages (and I say that as a SJW, pro-diversity.) The rolling spaceship is ridiculous, the flash illuminating the nebula was just idiotic. The whole thing feels superficial and lazy despite obviously being the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of skilled, talented people. Maybe they're just pandering to the tastes of a younger audience (with whom I am out of touch.)
Let me see if I can sum it up... Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones seem similar, yeah? But LotR is about Good vs. Evil whereas GoT is about aristocrats being really really shitty to each other. They are both entertaining, but I wouldn't let my kids watch the latter.
Cheers!
> I was very disappointed that Game of Thrones veered into just another zombie show.
It wasn't a veer. The show was always about the seven kingdoms bickering among themselves instead of facing the actual threat that they could have unified against.
(Or at least it was until the last few seasons were written by someone other than the original author, said author having not even come close to finishing the book series.)
Just look at the first episode. It doesn't start in Winterfell or King's Landing. It starts north of the wall.
It was the central thesis of season three of Game of Thrones.
> How many TV shows feature dwarfs or people with who are abnormal?
Oh I don't know...Game of Thrones (Tyrion), Stranger Things (Dustin), Breaking Bad (Walt Jr.) etc.
Where authors make money from their books they make it within a few years of publication. Where they make money from an adaption of their book it can be decades later. For example, Philip K Dick wrote Minority Report in 1956 but the film wasn't made until 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick). Lord of the Rings was written in 1937 and made in to the major films in 2001. More recently Game Of Thrones took 15 years or so before being adapted for TV.
Those authors deserve a decent price for the film rights to their work. 30 year copyrights would significantly change that.
> It wouldn't just be all of Hollywood, but even if it were, who are you to make that decision for the millions of people who enjoy the creative work Hollywood produces?
Decisions such as that are made either by a substantial portion of the citizens by vote or by voting for elected reps who directly enact them. You knew that of course. We are speaking of what we respectively think OUGHT to be with no power to implement ourselves.
> The rest of your argument is a straw man. It is illegal for me to drive my car at 100mph past a school, but my car doesn't have any physical means of stopping me. As a society we have agreed that this is a reasonable rule and codified it in law so everyone knows the consensus, and almost everyone complied voluntarily, and those who break the rule are penalised for it.
Piracy is incredibly trivial by virtue of happening directly between distributing computer and receiving computer with indirection and encryption of communications trivially implementable. The present status quo is so lazy just because so little work is required to get around current levels of restrictions. Pay for a vpn which comes with a cute GUI app with a button that says "secure your connection" use a search engine to find things you would like to watch or read. The current balance of value and convenience is in fact directly related to the knowledge that if you make it too inconvenient or expensive people will literally just turn around and download it.
You propose enforcement to remedy this.
> Meanwhile, a police officer can and will arrest a 15-year-old who walks into a corner shop and gets caught stealing a chocolate bar.
Actually you could probably meet your caloric needs for the next month off stolen chocolate bars and have very little chance of being apprehended and literally zero chance of being prosecuted. In theory if a cop happened by during a theft they might arrest someone stealing hundreds to thousands of dollars in goods after which the courts would be extremely apt to drop the ball. In most cases people stealing goods in a non violent fashion is too low a priority to allocate resources to even when the thieves are stealing thousands in public and prosecution and incarceration would be straightforward if not cheap.
Compare the ease of catching a shoplifter acting illicitly in a controlled space to catching people downloading movies and books on their computers! With half a whit of effort inspired by actual enforcement it would be incredibly trivial to make catching downloading as hard as catching terrorists except for the minor matter than 230 billion acts of terrorism aren't happening annually. Worse great sophistication isn't required by all users just the tiny number that produce tools to allow others to benefit. This can be bundled into an easy to install piece of software to run on your own machine or on a cheap 25 dollar single board computer.
What other poster gets that you do not is that without access to people's computers that supersedes their own you can't with any reasonable or affordable degree of effort keep them from downloading numbers you think you own. It's an arms race you literally can't possibly win. Even communist China can't 100% control the media their people view and they can disappear citizens in the night. This is the end game of drm and trusted computing to develop a controllable platform which can be made to serve the interests of government and industry. This is now many devices in fact already work now. The cure is most assuredly worse than the disease.
> That anomaly in turn then leads to attempts to make enforcement of small infringements on a wide scale more viable, which gets you far from ideal solutions like the DMCA and its counterparts around the world.
It's not anomalous that something that has never been a criminal act isn't treated as such. It's not shocking that the state wont take up an impossible burden in behalf of a small number of private benefactors to the detriment of society. Making it slightly harder to pirate and very easy to stream is a smart compromise that has been mostly working to generate billions of dollars.
It's politically impossible to implement 1984 to maximize the revenue of game of thrones and lesser measures are doomed to failure. In fact if you start pulling that thread and throwing Suzy homemaker in jail because little Tommy downloaded movies or stealing her grocery money to pay fines as you become increasingly effective you are apt to become increasingly likely to push for copyright reform that is likely to harm future revenue in a way that little Tommy can't possibly do.
If I was the copyright industry I would enjoy what I have.
> People are working weeks, months, years, often under extreme conditions to create a work of art, like, say an episode of Game of Thrones. Not just one person, but hundreds of them. Getting such large teams to work on a project would not be possible if people could just donate for that work or something,
Many people work on projects like the Linux kernel and git without any compensation.
People are working weeks, months, years, often under extreme conditions to create a work of art, like, say an episode of Game of Thrones. Not just one person, but hundreds of them. Getting such large teams to work on a project would not be possible if people could just donate for that work or something, because you'd get much much less money from it. Sure there are issues with copyright, for one terms are decades too long, but your extreme view of it is as wrong as the extreme view of Sonny Bono.
6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution:
3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian, The Witcher...).
In summary: The top 7.2% of Wikipedia pages earn 87% of all the monthly views.
Yesterday I posted a deeper analysis on how these pages get their daily views:
- https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-the-top-2019-wikipedia-pages-d3b96335b6ae
Apparently the most popular pages are all related to movies (Avengers, Joker, ...), series (Ted Bundy, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones), and deaths.
Past me thanks you, kindly. "Now" me says "Screw past me, and you for being a sympathizer. I know I said I'd go to bed on time but I need to watch 10 episodes of Game of Thrones right now!"
The ego is a tricky thing to navigate...
Brian Herberts books, the Game of Thrones final and from what I've heard the last Star Wars movie all have their detractors but personally I'm thankful for at least giving closure to the overall story arc. It might not be good but at least it's over.
I also liked some of Brian Herberts books, particularly the prelude series. Legends was horrible and I think the series could have ended fine without the backstory.
> One of the things that Game of Thrones got right is to realize that a novel corresponds to a dozen hours of screen time, not three.
But if LoTR hadn't accomplished what it did in its three hours, I don't think GoT would have GOTTEN its dozen hours. I think people underestimate how massively speculative fiction movies (especially fantasy and comic book adaptations) have improved in the last 20 years.
If you compare Jackson's LoTR to Ralph Bakshi's 1978 adaptation, they simply don't play in the same league at all.
One of the things that Game of Thrones got right is to realize that a novel corresponds to a dozen hours of screen time, not three. The Lord of the Rings trilogy misses a lot of the epic scope of the book, focusing a lot more heavily on battles and missing out on the sheer weight of time.
I don't know if any film could really capture that, especially to Christoper's satisfaction. But the movies are action-adventure blockbusters, and the books really aren't. It's notable that the Battle of the Hornburg was only about a page of text, but close to an hour of screen time. That kind of shift of focus recurs throughout the adaptation. Tolkien was creating an alien world; Jackson gave us a familiar Sort Of Middle Ages Or Something.
The films did manage to capture the age of the world better than anybody could possibly have imagined. Jackson hired the best artists, famed for producing images that were better than Tolkien's own, and capturing a lot of what Christopher would treasure in the book. As a series of still images, Christopher should have found a lot to admire in the films. But the dialogue doesn't achieve the same.
The only reason why I had my HBO subscription was for Game of Thrones. Now that is over, I'm keeping it around for WestWorld season 3, but may axe it completely if it sucks.
I have AppleTV+ (worst name ever, it is so utterly confusing) from my phone and there is nothing I want to watch. Nothing. The shows may be okay, but from my initial viewing, they are nowhere near as good as Game of Thrones. Unless they pick up the quality very soon, it's going to be a complete failure.
The only one worth keeping is Netflix and only because my kids watch some TV shows, and there are a lot of good standup comics on Netflix that I can watch.
But mostly these days I will BT movies or buy them on iTunes, which is by far the most convenient way to watch movies. I have bought about 100 movies on iTunes so far. If they sold their movies for $5 each, I would buy them constantly.
I've a small bag of thoughts on this:
- Whether it's books, videos, short-form articles, long-form articles, academic papers or podcasts, it's about searching for good information and positive stimulation. Both of these criteria are subjective.
- How you search and filter is also highly personal. It might be that your needs are such that the content you find in those mediums you listed are ideal for you.
- For me, people who write books and people who do videos/articles/podcasts are often not the same people, and I tend to be more interested in what the book writing people have to say.
- Videos/articles/podcasts present first-hand ideas far less often. The opposite is true: authors of interesting and original ideas often elect to convey them through books. Again, subjective.
- If an idea is novel enough, short-form mediums like those you listed are not enough to convey it. A book (or rather its length compared to e.g. article) allows the author to explore and swim around in his ideas. You need that for innovative ideas. Noam Chomsky said that at the time (1960s or 70s) how much time you got to present your idea on TV -- 5 minutes -- was not enough to change a person's opinion, so the medium itself framed the discourse. Same applies to all mediums. It pays to be mindful of that.
- A good book is much better than a good series or film. HBO's Game of Thrones versus GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose versus the recent series. Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series versus Netflix's Altered Carbon. Same goes for non-fiction.
- I'm a lover of film, but I turned to books because there's only so many good movies, but there's orders of magnitude more good books. Same goes for fiction and non-fiction.
- If you're looking for stimulation, rather than technical information, a book lasts much longer. I've stretched out reading some book series for years and it was awesome.
- If you don't enjoy a book, don't read it. Don't hope that it will get better or that it will have been worth it. Odds are stacked against it. I regret that when I started getting into books way back when I forced myself to read even those I didn't immediately like; I now know to give a book a serious 30-60 minutes and if my gut says no that's that. Reading takes time so spend it enjoying yourself. This applies to technical reading too.
> Out of 330 Game of Thrones characters, 186 die by the end of season 7, with survival ranging from 11 seconds to 57 hours and 15 minutes. This study of their characteristics reveals great potential for preventing violent deaths in the Game of Thrones world.
Looking forward to a follow-up study which will hopefully include season 8..
Movies and TV shows are the most affected because they are often secured for a specific distribution scale especially for the initial broadcast and VOD.
It's pretty common these days to have movies release sometimes at the same time as cinemas on certain premium VOD services and nearly always at least a few months before the wide scale home video release these deals not only cost a big premium but also negotiated exclusively for a specific country.
Movies are in english anyhow, even with dubbing the original language is always available subtitles are often available in multiple languages too not everyone in France speaks french, and many European countries are multilingual.
So I don't know what content is licenses by language but it sure as hell not TV and movies, for example HBO is broadcast exclusively in the UK through Sky whilst in France by OCS (Orange) and in Belgium by Proximus (BeTV) so the French dubbed version of Game of Thrones would be available for streaming exclusively during its broadcast period on (at least) two different services which cannot cross borders, Switzerland has probably it's own service I would guess that Luxembourg might be piggybacking on Belgium since BeTV is available there but I can't be arsed to check.
And if you care for the english language then it's available in nearly every EU country for it's initial broadcast run through different distributors which all have an exclusive right for the show in their own country.
Does watching Netflix, HBO, or Hulu count as watching TV? That's how I usually watch television shows and none has commercials.
If I watch broadcast TV it's through my DVR and I skip commercials.
Pretty much the only live TV I watch is sports and there's a lot of advertising there.
I'd argue that TV isn't trash though. There's an unbelievable amount of stuff being made and it isn't hard to find something great to watch. My to-watch list still has Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mr Robot, Westworld S2, Game of Thrones, and about 20 other series on it.
Lossy = I don't need all the data. I can look away for most of a baseball game and still enjoy it. But if it's some intense drama like Game of Thrones then I need to see it all. You miss a scene and you're confused for episodes to come.
in recent years I have seen more and more people using phones during content they actively sought out including their favourite tv shows. I have seen Game of Thrones fans staring at their phone while the newest episode was running, only to ask everyone else in the room what just happened five seconds later.
This is definitely not just boredom or background noise TV. It seems that more and more frequently people are unable to maintain singular uninterrupted focus or attention on something without staring at phones or laptops.
I actually started to pay attention to this because it started to get on my nerves when people in cinemas were doing it, and it even seems to happen more and more in actual in-person conversations. The next time you go to a coffee shop or a bar pay attention to how often people in discussions with each other go for their phone and interrupt each other. It's pretty sobering.
Personally I had an epiphany about this years ago when I started checking mail and Reddit when I was sitting down to read fiction and I was so embarrassed because I was less able to read than my teenage self when I could sit down and read for a whole day, and I just felt like the fat people in Wall-E.
I watch new/good things like I'm watching a movie. Dark, silent, uninterrupted. I spend maybe 2-4 hours every week watching shows like this. Things like Game of Thrones or Rick and Morty come to mind.
Then there's background watching, which usually means re-watching something I've already watched. I'm almost always using a second screen during this time. This is probably more like 15-25 hours every week, maybe even more when I work from home. I get a significant amount of my work/chores/tasks done during this time.
From the article:
> What I love about this show is that it's “realistic” science fiction
Exactly what I like in the show, however the very next sentence
> There's no faster-than-light travel, no crazy artificial gravity or dopey aliens. It's just people like us, in an actually possible world.
I disagree with - there are clearly fantastical elements in the story and although I like them as fantasy, I'm disappointed they're there in the first place.
I guess I'm sort of echoing the complaints of Game of Thrones (TV series) fans that liked the intrigue and disliked the actual fantasy. I disagreed with them (Ice and Fire is a "fantasy series after all) and understand some people will think I'm complaining too much, but I'm still looking for actual "hard" sci fi on the level of quality and production value of The Expanse
Regardless the state of algorithms, it does seem interesting that 2019 was the coincidental end time for a significant chapter of the Marvel movies, the Star Wars (first) sequel trilogy, and Game of Thrones. Let's hope that means we'll at least get some different types of adaptations come 2020.
One thing that might have happened to me earlier this year is I had a use case come up where I could not access my paid subscription service in the environment where I needed/wanted it most.
The (this is imaginary and made up for legal reasons) use case was I was in a limited network environment, trying to watch game of thrones when I paid for an HBO subscription. The HBO subscription offered my access through the app on my phone, but only streaming it, and with a horribly designed buffering system. It would only buffer a small portion after the current part of the video, so basically, and I could not download it to my phone through their app, so it was impossible to watch game of thrones when I wanted on release date and risk possibly running into spoilers the next day.
I would have had to resort to downloading it illegally over torrent because the subscription systems "say they solve your problems" and offer a completely legal way to watch your episodes, but miss the use cases for the small few of people who want to watch in limited internet situations. I am not a common user, I am power user, and I have not just had this type of situation happen once.
So my question now is, why even pay for the subscription service when it doesn't work when I need it most?
> maybe people think the prices are too high
Absurdly high. Game of Thrones costs $167 on Amazon, which is more than binge-watching it eleven times using one-month HBO subscriptions.
There's only 1 .org TLD - and it's meaning cannot be replicated with another TLD.
It's the same as a TV series - there are great many TV series , but only 1 Game of Thrones on HBO, and it's not substitutable. Therefore, HBO has a monopoly on Game of Thrones.
I did not said the message is anti-violence. For that matter, Hollywood is not anti-violence either. These old stories portrait of violence is less glorifying then what Hollywood or superhero does. The tragedy of events is actually shown, unlike in superhero movie.
I said "nuanced" and "better at making you think" which is something completely different. One big reason why it is better at making you think is that it is not having simplistic singular message I am supposed to learn so that I feel like the movie had proper message.
If anything, I would compare it to Westworld or game of thrones, neither of which is Hollywood and neither of which is super simple message of "violence is bad".
Sorry - forgot to mention I pay for subs like hbo, netflix, all that. If i ever see a movie in a theater, i torrent it later.
I've torrented all of game of thrones, yet, always pay my monthly for the service
I like the Game of Thrones intro with the elaborate mechanical world. They should have filmed and episode in that world :-)
> Which would no longer be protected from others obtaining copies of the film and showing it.
We already live in a world where piracy is rampant, and yet rarely if ever are theater-quality copies of movies available. People have to record the movie with a camera to get it out there before the home video release.
Studios manage this by using proprietary formats and blacklisting theaters who fail to control their copies correctly. And theaters have a vested interest in those copies not getting out as well because that would cut into their revenue.
It does not at all depend on copyright protections for theater exclusive showings to exist.
> Which then can be legally streamed by anyone else immediately.
Yes but that relies on a competitor taking the time to rip their copy and upload it across all of their servers. That takes time so for live broadcasts like where an episode of Game of Thrones goes live and everyone wants to see it, they'll be behind the ball.
We already live in a world where you need merely search for and download the torrent to achieve the same thing you're saying will run rampant without copyright. This is already the way it works, but people still use streaming services because they're convenient and offer exclusive things they can't get elsewhere.
> Yes, and anyone else can take this role of curation. Curation is cheap compared to creation.
Wow you mean consumers won't have to buy ten different services to view what they want? That would be amazing!
> Yah, so once someone breaches contract everyone downstream can have the content.
Yes, just like our current world. Any contract with end users would be impossible to enforce just like copyright is now.
> This is a good thing.
What you're saying is that the fact that someone who has had no interaction with the creator, agreed to nothing with them, and caused them zero harm can be liable to the creator and even criminally liable is a good thing. Incredible.
I'm happy to pay for everything insofar that my rights are respected and the prices are fair. Which is what I do now. I pay for Spotify - the family plan - for my entire family. It's extremely well priced and I'm happy to pay for it indefinitely. My Netflix account is shared with a friend in a different state. It costs twice as much as what it was five years ago and the library is a lot worse. But it's acceptable... as it stands.
The reason why we accepted Netflix' DRM model is because they started off with "we encourage you to share your account!" which everyone jumped on. Now that we have all the b/s associated with digital content, they're pulling back. Which is okay... because we can pull back too.
A good example is when HBO decided to partner-up in an exclusive deal with a horrible price-gouging cable media provider, many Australians decided to pirate Game of Thrones instead. I don't know of a single person who paid for it. I know of professional suit-wearing offices that hosted watch parties for episodes that were pirated. And everyone knew... and nobody cared. I think the final numbers were that about 8% of the entire Australian population pirated the show. If only HBO had decided to not screw over an entire country then perhaps they would have made a lot more money.
The issue is that they will never have their fill. They will always be hungry, and if Netflix could charge you 10% of your annual income and get away with it, then they will. And a great example of this is with college textbooks.
I don't think I'm entitled to media, but I don't think the creators are entitled to my dollars either for digital content. I just don't care about content creators in this regard. This might come across as terrible, but I couldn't care less if it leads to their bankruptcy. If they want to produce something at a reasonable price, then great. If they won't, then it won't be paid for. That's the playing field they're choosing to enter. If they don't like it, they are free to exit.
There's no morality in it either way -- paying for content doesn't make a person any more or less immoral than someone who doesn't.
Adblocking is in a similar boat, insofar that if you think that stripping me of any privacy without my consent is okay, then you're going to be quickly disappointed with how well my pi-hole setup works.
I'd encourage you to take a step back and look at it as if you're dealing with software patents, cause that's all copyright law for digital media really is. And choosing to have a patent called "PROVIDING AN INTERNET THIRD PARTY DATA CHANNEL"[0] doesn't mean people are immoral if they don't pay. It also doesn't mean they're moral if they do.
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloudflare-stood-up-to-a-patent-troll-and-won/
Nah, entertainment is a necessity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that any given choice of entertainment is a cost-effective choice of entertainment.
Just focusing on TV, for starters there's free TV over the air. There's YouTube and Amazon Prime Video and Netflix and CuriosityStream and Hulu and whatever your local state-supported TV network is putting online for free, there's DVDs from your public library, etc. etc. No, these options won't let you catch the latest Game of Thrones episode as soon as it airs, but they'll keep you entertained.
If you really want to get nitty-gritty about it, there is at least an interesting thought experiment you can run where someone who's both living paycheck to paycheck and paying for a sizable cable TV package has, intentionally or not, chosen, say, ESPN over financial solvency. Because that cable TV bill could be converted into a steadily growing rainy day fund.
This cracks me up, I've been on that exact Game of Thrones tour with Theo; he's almost exactly as described in the article, which is really fun by the way.
We did the whole Golden Circle thing. We knew from that start that we were obviously been ferried around the same routes as everyone else. I was OK with that for a first trip to any country.
I didn't find the crowds over powering. Everything is either new to you or you've seen it in TV/films but you get a kick out of seeing it for real.
When we next go to Iceland I think we'll probably stay in the north and make our own way around. That'll be a different kind of holiday but still equally good.
...also I'm pretty sure that Theo said he wasn't originally from Reykjavik no matter what those lying journalist say. :P
The Marvel TV shows, obviously... ;)
More seriously I liked the big bang theory, the expanse, firefly, and dark matter. I haven't watched game of thrones yet.
> Oh come on. Are you really claiming that if you can talk with your friends about Stranger Things, but not Game of Thrones because you don't have HBO, then you face some kind of serious impediment to participating in society? That strikes me as completely ridiculous.
Perhaps not serious, but an impediment, yes. Stranger Things is not for everyone, but Game of Thrones actually was the #1 topic in the office at previous workplace for almost the entire time I've been there. But I have an even better example: Chernobyl. My wife and I were to Chernobyl, so we didn't feel in a particular hurry to watch the TV portrayal. But once everyone on our Facebook feeds - and I mean everyone, including people who can't spell "nuclear" half the time - started talking about the show, and started bringing it up in meatspace meetings, we kind of felt left out, so we sat down and just watched it.
That's how the popular culture rolls. You can't be in sync with it all the time, but you have to stay in sync with hit some of the time, if you want to participate in group conversations.
> Customers don't like a big monolithic bundle because the single bill is too expensive.
> Customers also don't like a la carte content (...) because each individual bill is too expensive.
You've just identified the problem with these two options :). Remember that video is one of few cases when people are just being nice by offering to subscribe to these streaming services. They always have the option of getting that content for free, or at a fraction of the price.
> So what's your proposal? It's not like the market isn't trying to cater to customers here.
I believe it isn't. The market is trying to gouge customers, and currently is in the state of balkanizing.
> Do you propose we pass laws that restrict companies from creating exclusive content?
That would be a start. But the emphasis is on "exclusive", not "creating" - an equivalent way of putting is would be a law restricting companies from exclusively licensing the content. So for starters, streaming services should get unbundled from the shows they carry and compete on the actual value they provide - UI and curation (i.e. categorization, sorting order; though honestly, that should be a separate, orthogonal service).
(You'll note I'm only talking about exclusivity here, not IP ownership. The money for streaming, say, GoT would still go to HBO regardless of where they were streamed, but HBO shouldn't be able to refuse to license other platforms to steal it.)
> Or should we pass laws that restrict content from costing more than a specific amount?
Nah, competition - actual competition - between streaming platforms would do the rest. Movies and TV shows are non-substitutable goods, so exclusive deals prevent competition from happening.
> Why? Just because customers insatiably want and want and want?
So the industry spends billions on brainwashing[0] people into wanting more and more, plays off the FOMO, and you're surprised "customers insatiably want and want and want"? Maybe they should stop hooking them on hard drugs. With companies telling people to consume more and more, giving them more and more stuff to consume, and with politicians and economists saying this is good, because our economy needs to grow exponentially - I find it funny... no, disingenuous, to see customers being blamed.
--
[0] - I'm past calling marketing and advertising anything less than that.
At the core, every sentient being loves being alive, and every mind wishes to be immortal, and not be lonely.
All the icky crap comes from knowing that can't be.
The subconscious dread of death is also a form of the Fear of Missing Out. How much cool tech and new discoveries will there be after us? I for one cannot cope with the possibility that I may never get to see a proper ending to Game of Thrones or a good Dungeons & Dragons movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
That argument is inconsistent. You say that that humans don't have capacity for 200 books, yet have capacity for the equivalent of social media?
I read on average a little short of 200 books a year. I don't feel rushed. It works out a bit more than a book every other day. And you can fit more than that over the weekend.
I don't understand the hostility here. I read books because I enjoy it. Nothing beats a book for information density. Do you watch TV series? You can read Song of Ice and Fire faster than you can watch a season of Game of thrones.
>and literally nothing else
Why is this a need? The minimum unit you can purchase is a month of service. You are free to subscribe and unsubscribe as many times as you want. I'm not aware of a single service that costs more than either a single movie theater ticket or a single newly released Blu-ray/DVD. So you are free to subscribe to HBO watch Game of Thrones, cancel HBO, subscribe to Netflix, watch BoJack Horseman, cancel Netflix, subscribe to Amazon, watch Marvelous Mrs Maisel, cancel Amazon, and so on. That is much more control and choice than cable subscribers had a decade ago. We don't need to make perfect the enemy of the good.
I mean, people do discuss the latest episode of game of thrones ... this is not much different. At this point the market has gone well beyond its utility as a tool. The overinflation with fleeing capital makes it seem more like a spectacle.
I think "torrents are more convenient" is also about people who would have bought the product.
Example: lots of people I know torrented Game of Thrones because paid services were actually worse. Things like HBO Go stuttered depending on internet connection -- and in one of the season premieres, the service was unavailable -- while torrents offered Full HD quality with no surprises.
Another consideration is when you're paying for Netflix but it doesn't have all the seasons of a series yet. So people torrent the episodes even when they are already paying for a streaming service: torrents are more convenient. They get all the content when they want it, and with high quality too.
I think the article doesn't tackle it from the correct perspective.
There aren't _many_ choices at all, because we don't hire the service for the service itself, instead, for the content, and content here is exclusive.
For instance, you have competition on the PC market: you can buy Dell, you can buy Lenovo, and while the outside may differ, inside, you have the same thing. You also have choices of Burger joints, because although we may prefer one to the other, whenever we want a burger, we can choose from anyplace.
This kind of content, TV shows and movies, however, is different. There's more uniqueness to each piece than a burger or a PC have. You can't interchange Game Of Thrones with Vikings and be really satisfied, worse, you'll probably want both.
So, right now, what we have is little choice - recent shows and movies are on a single platform, and just a few are on two or three different ones. So to have all content you want, you might need to subscribe to many different platforms.
> You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is.
Compare these experiences:
1. Search Netflix. Discover it's not there.
2. Search Amazon. Discover they have it, but it's not available for free as part of your subscription.
3. Search Hulu. Leave Hulu, because it's not there.
4. Finally go back to Amazon and rent the movie, not sure why you're paying for Prime if you still have to pay on top of that for half the stuff you watch.
5. Watch your content, with network interruptions if you're new popular releases (i.e. recent Game of Thrones).
6. Pay three monthly bills every month, a large percentage of which gets you overlapping content, but only pays to the content creators for the service you watch it on.
Versus:
1. Search a torrent site.
2. Select a save location in your torrent client.
3. Go make popcorn.
4. Watch your content uninterrupted by network issues or ads, for free, even if you're not connected to the internet.
Which is the janky experience?
And this is if you remove regions and internet connection reliability from the equation.
I'm not arguing you should torrent, incidentally. My preferred experience is to purchase content directly from the content creators when possible.
[1] https://help.hulu.com/s/article/how-much-does-hulu-cost?language=en_US
EDIT: Okay, sure, there are some use paths where streaming services are easier. But my point here isn't to say that streaming is worse, it's to say that torrenting is absolutely comparable and not some highly technical, difficult thing to do.
For me, I've realized that 80% of media is not worth my time. Unless it's something that is 'can't miss' like Martin Scorsese's movie that is debuting on Netflix or Planet Earth II, I can skip it. I use my family's Netflix account, I don't have my own.
I've tried to keep up with the Marvel universe but it's next to impossible at this point. All my favorite shows (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Game of Thrones) are completed now too. I go to the movies once or twice a year now, at most.
Technology has advanced, but the product has changed little. I don't want to pay a monthly subscription and pay for all of the content on 300 channels, 280+ I will never ever watch. Despite paying $200 a month, I still don't even have the option to watch Spaceballs (substitute any particular movie here) on demand any time I want even if I am willing to pay for that privilege.
We have the technology to make the content of those 300+ channels available to me in a piecemeal a la carte fashion, but cable companies say if I want to watch ESPN I have to pay for 100 other channels. If I only want to watch Game of Thrones, I have to pay a bit under $20 a month to get a whole bunch of other stuff from HBO I will never watch.
I want to pay for only what I watch, but the cable and streaming services want me to pay for whats available to me. That is the big disconnect IMHO. There is no technical reason we can't have one service (like netflix) that has the world's digital content on it, and I can search and pick what I want to watch on it and pay for it and have the content owners get a cut of it. Netflix was kinda close for awhile, but then due to their licensing deals started pushing and pulling titles at random, and then different studios are now trying to put up Chinese walls to ensure that they have exclusive rights to content. I feel everyone loses here, and I myself can't imagine ever paying for a separate service just to watch star wars or Disney movies. There seems to be a real network effect here of just making everything available.
I end up doing this organically with HBO. When Westworld/Silicon Valley/Game of Thrones comes out I'll subscribe. But after that, there's usually only 1 new movie on there that I'm interested in so I cancel it.
Considering the actual compression quality of HBO is much worse than Netflix or Amazon and the app sucks to use, it seems like they don't have the resources at HBO to actually do streaming well.
Overall, it doesn't really seem like an efficient way to buy content for either them or me. It's like if a studio made their own DVD player.
Germans/Europeans might feel with me: I had the pleasure of using Sky to watch Game of Thrones and a few movies and it was the most abysmal experience I have ever had.
Your account is an email combined with a 4-digit NUMERIC-ONLY (!) "password" and once you are hyper-securely logged in the amount of usability pain a single piece of software can cause will immediately become apparent.
How can anything paid by a big corporation be anywhere near as bad as the Sky apps is completely beyond me.
Their iOS app is somewhat usable and I was happy I could just cast GoT using my Google Chrome until I noticed that casting can only be done in German. The English original version wasn't available for casting but perfectly accessible on PS4 app, Mac app and web app.
Longer form than EFaP, but Lindsay Ellis has some great film/TV analysis videos. She's usually more focused on writing than anything else, though. Here's a postmortem she did on the Hobbit films, which was recently nominated for a Hugo award:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs
Other solid works by her include a postmortem on the last season of Game of Thrones and an analysis of themes in Michael Bay's Transformers. (I know that last one sounds weird, but it's really well done.)
It's not mass media who's paying for it, it's investors who are expecting a return on their monetary investment. Or, put another way, the people paying to have these movies and books made today have zero interest in the books and movies themselves, only the money to be made from their sale.
A patron, in comparison, is a single entity who is interested in the book, and who is capable of shelling out the $50,000 (a nice round number representing the salary for a good, but not great, writer and editor for the duration of getting the book produced) to have that book made. I'm not capable of doing that; I am guessing most people are not.
> it bears consideration whether the corporations who make things for profit are as good at creating such works
That's up to each person to decide. Is GRRM's Game of Thrones such a work? The Dark Tower series? Avengers Infinity War and Endgame?
Honestly, I think that yes, in many ways they are on par with or superior to books such as the Illiad and the Odyssey. They are absolutely better than Moby Dick.
I was in France in May for the next to the last episode of Game of Thrones. Even though I pay for an HBO subscription, they still wouldn't let me watch it until I VPN'd into my nyc based server.
Agree with you, on Windows. But when you go into Linux and Mac territory, there really isn't any OS Vendor specific security solution that does what many people need.
AV is still super important to have for people who don't understand that downloading a fake flash player to watch the newest game of thrones episode isn't the best idea. And there's a lot of those people out there.
not sure game of thrones is a good illustration of your point. once it became a juggernaut, they were locked into overshooting the runway that george rr martin had meticulously contructed over decades (but didn't finish) and disappoint fans.
if they had ended in season 5 with the material already written, none of the storylines would have been resolved. therefore, some amount of additional story had to be developed, so if you're doomed to disappoint fans, why not write 3 more seasons and make a bunch of money in the process? in a deadline-driven environment, no army of writers was going to produce a satisfyingly detailed and consistent ending to match martin's prior work (it seems even martin himself is having trouble with regard to the book series).
> It’s false motion
I agree if we’re talking about motion interpolation. I’m personally sensitive to artifacts from the 24->60 conversion, and I sometimes turn off frame rate up-sampling, unless the show has a lot of panning, and then I prefer the frame rate up-sampling despite the artifacts it causes sometimes. Like Game of Thrones for example has so much panning that I kept turning on the motion smoothing. But then the artifacts were so bad I kept turning it off. There isn’t a good option, so I wish it was filmed at a higher frame rate, and then displayed lower for people who prefer that.
Above I was really only referring to high frame rates in general and deconstructing the argument that 24 is inherently better for artistic reasons. While many filmmakers and viewers like 24fps, most filmmakers aren’t choosing 24fps nor are they doing anything specific with 24fps. 24 is just a standard that almost everyone is stuck with, most people wouldn’t even consider it a choice today, save the few directors with big enough budgets and studio backing that they can distribute films in a non-standard frame rate.
And what would that difference be when you are just describing different methods for affecting dopaminergic reward pathways?
If you scan the brain with an fMRI, the reward pathway lights up and suggest over time you will have reinforced that pleasurable activity and have created a strong affinity towards repeated activations, further strengthening those pathways.
Have there been any studies to show withdrawals from inhibiting consuming pleasurable visual media?
I mean if you were watching a series on Netflix that really resonates with you and you make a strong connection with the characters and feel as if you are a part of the scenes taking place (game of thrones etc), with characters faces activating your fusiform gyrus and dramatic scenes activating your amygdala making you emotional etc, how is autoplay facilitating the pleasurable dopamine response from imagining/anticipating/looking forward to how great the next episode will be, not as compelling of an issue as consuming exogenous substances that activate similar dopamine release?
I feel like I might be in the minority opinion on this, but I don't enjoy any of the Netflix originals they keep pumping out. At least not enough to spend time on them. I don't like the Marvel shows, Stranger Things was okay I guess maybe, but I don't enjoy them enough like for example Game of Thrones or The Fabulous Miss Maisel or some of the others from HBO, Showtime or surprisingly Amazon. Most if not all the Netflix original content is B quality to me at best. Low production, not interesting, bad dialogue, bad stories, etc...
I have limited time. I try to spend it wisely. I'd rather use my wasted time on something far more enjoyable, like playing my NES or reading a book or movie, or even watch something of higher quality and production value (HBO is pretty reliable for that or a movie on my backlog). Or even just get out and go somewhere to see and meet people.
Right now my only subscription service is Funimation ($5/month). I like watching dubbed anime late at night too chill out before bed. Currently (re)watching Black Lagoon (it's so great!) and the Mix Simuldub. With a side of computer science books on my backlog with some related videos or courses as well as a good book which right now is Snow Crash (embarrassingly I have not read this yet).
Honestly, what's wrong with being well rounded in your entertainment? So frequently there are articles plasters about how you must "give up" things like television.
I'm listening to an episode of How I Built This at work, will read some Game of Thrones on the way home, will watch Love Island with dinner and probably throw on a record as I get ready for bed. It's not an all or nothing game here, you can just enjoy life.
Prime has the things I want to watch much more often than Netflix, and it's how I watched things like Game of Thrones or Ash vs. Evil Dead without needing cable which was nice.
I also find their `x-ray` feature to be very valuable. It's not on every movie, and some movies utilize it better than others.
But it's really nice when I see an actor and go "Wait a minute, I've seen them before, who is that?" Like Laurence Fishburne in Ant-Man 2, who I knew I recognized but couldn't place because he looks so different now.
I also like seeing the trivia and production errors, I assume they're just sourced from IMDB but they're synched up to the current timestamp so they're usually relevant when you see them.
Isn't that much about how Hollywood works to produce "entertainment"? "Art movies" are different, more inspiring. For them the "scaffolding" might be there and made even more obvious it is scaffolding like in theater you sure know you are not looking at a real-life Swan Lake etc.
There was a curious incident recently where Game of Thrones episode had a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts coffee mug visible in some scene. It broke the "magic", revealed the scaffolding for most people.
But if you believe in fire-breathing giant dragons then why not also believe in multi-verse where things from Starbucks universe can occasionally mingle with Game of Thrones. It's magic!
Adults don't need to watch TV, either. I think society at large undervalues appropriate use of TV for kids. Kids crave structure, repetition, and music. With proper restrictions, TV offers all of that without requiring adults to put on the same dog and pony show every day. While studies show it doesn't help with speech, it can help reinforce concepts they are learning in other mediums; animals, objects, movement, emotions. As an adult, there's so much collective culture from TV and movies I consumed as a teenager that come up when interacting with other people.
I already mentioned I would much prefer to purchase outright, but kids tend to get into very specific things and a lot of things available for streaming aren't sold on DVDs; discoverability and availability. Another problem with DVDs is that they're fragile and difficult for young kids to operate themselves--not to mention I don't have a DVD player. I've heard a lot of parents get very angry that expensive Disney DVDs got scratched or broken, whereas VHS was a lot more durable and straightforward for kids to operate themselves.
Kids, young adults, or even having more than a few people in a house it's hard to say, "You can't watch Sesame Street like you did yesterday because Game of Thrones is over."
Two seasons seems a little short; maybe 3 would be better?
Just look at The Expanse; that one I thought did well with keeping me engaged, but they ended it (by design) after 3 seasons, and it seemed to be just the right length for the overall story arc they were going for.
Whereas Game of Thrones stayed interesting for a long time (6 seasons to be exact), but after that started faltering and in season 8 really became disappointing, mainly because the books they were basing it on had run out and they were now making things up as they went along.
Originality? Hah! Even remaking Frankenstein every 20 years or so brought a new take to it, whether Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Robert de Nero, they all brought something new.
More than any point I can remember before Hollywood now turn every movie and remake into the exact same movie. There was always some degree of fashion, but there's no contrast any more - it's all highlight, so it drags and drags by being boring and samey (but loud). Highlight is now just the dull background. The loudness wars, movie edition.
Doesn't matter what it is, a current film (or Netflix high budget, Game of Thrones etc) will have:
+ An absurdly overblown inspirational speech inspiring the troops (or children, or escapees, or office colleagues)! This will take 5-10 ear-bleeding, cringing minutes. If unlucky, you'll get two or three of these in one show!
+ An absurdly artificial, but highly 3D friendly chase scene with no production value other than hype. This will take 5-15 minutes. It stopped being interesting after Blues Brothers' piss take of chase scenes!
+ Ditto, ditto fight scene. Super slow motion. I always think of Adam West's TV Batman, complete with music - Zap! Pow! OWWW! Biff! 300 enemies die, town levelled, 342,000 rounds of ammunition spent, hero hasn't broken sweat. Just about the only recent exceptions I can think of are Deadpool and Sin City. Damn, the sequels were disappointing.
+ Ditto, ditto villain's death or capture.
I wait for them to land on Netflix, then go make tea, tidy the kitchen or watch some paint dry in all those "highlights". Independents with next to no budget can still do original though.
It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important.
1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful.
So lets take some case studies:
* Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a shockingly violent film (the effects look awful now, but they were quite convincing back in the mid-90s still) that completely missed the point of the original movie.
* Ghostbusters (2016) was another movie that not only looked completely awful in the trailer, it completely again misunderstood the original movie, added nothing much new and they outright attacked the fandom after they said to the studio "What the hell are you doing". The original Ghostbusters movie wasn't really a comedy movie, it was a Action Horror with some Jokes. The new movie was just a comedy movie, which looked like a Spoof along the lines of "Scary Movie". I have no idea who they were marketing it towards.
Lets take sequels:
* They have also totally squandered two solid Sci-fi Action Movie franchises (Alien and Predator) to the point where the previous low points of the franchises look good (Alien vs Predator and Alien 3 & Alien 4: Resurrection).
* Star Wars has been completely ruined from a fan's perspective. The prequels (in the 2000s) has some terrible acting, iffy CGI now but I can at least appreciate what they were attempting to do and it was an honest attempt by Lucas to flesh out Star Wars universe. However the new Sequels go from "This is Okay, but it is the 1977 movie retold essentially" to terrible (The Last Jedi).
The Last Jedi doesn't make any sense on quite a number of levels. It also ruins one of beloved characters on screen and it was probably intentionally written to not only upset the fans but also kill the franchise i.e. there is at least one scene where Kylo Ren says to audience pretty much "Let the past die, kill if you have to", which is the director pretty much sticking his middle finger up to the fans. Yes in the scene he was speaking to whoever the main character is that doesn't seem to have a personality, but it was really a message from the director to the fans.
They also attacked the fan base (not a good move) because they didn't like a terrible movie. While the movies made money, they have tarnished the brand in the long term.
Disney bought Lucas Film because of Star Wars and monetising the fan base. Lucas Film under Kathleen Kennedy have tried driving away their a dedicated fan base. This strategy is madness.
2) The Hollywood Elite (and they are Elite) have forgotten they are actors and actively show distain for the audience. I don't really want to get into a political commentary, but they literally had The Avengers do an online piece of activism where they told the Electoral college to defy the 2016 Presidential Election result. This doesn't go unnoticed by the average movie goer. Just under half of the Country voted for the current president and then they do an advert where they are pretty much putting a middle finger up at the people who voted for Trump. A lot of those people took their kids to see those movies or saw went to see them themselves.
Audiences will forgive actors for quite a lot of things, but if they continually keep on pushing this audiences will associate them with their politics and not what roles they played.
They are actors. I want them to pretend to be Black Widow, not lecture me about Politics. I will go and listen to a political commentator if I wanted that.
3) Bollywood and the rest of Asia are making their own movies which kick ass. Take "The Raid 2". It has plenty of brutal fight scenes, but it also has a top quality plot about gangs, undercover cops etc. It is amazing to watch. A lot of guys are looking at overseas cinema because Hollywood isn't catering to them.
4) User generated content. I think the only movie I've watched recently was John Wick 1, 2 and 3. I recently listened to a recorded lecture series of the History of Islam on Youtube made by some guy who lives in Azerbaijan. I can listen for effectively nothing 1000s of hours of interviews of Joe Rogan and a Guest just talking for 3 hours about sometimes absolute nonsense or talking about say Leaving a Cult (Megan Phelps interview). I recently watched a series of lectures about the database as a filesystem from some Linux conference. There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s.
5) Longer stories. Game of Thrones, The Wire and other shows that have very long running stories, lots of characters and complicated plots with lots of Lore have proven that audiences want more complicated stories. There is a guy called Alt-Shift-X on Youtube and he has huge number of people watching him and he just explains the Game of Thrones Lore of the Book vs the TV-series. Most Hollywood movies are pretty simple affairs in comparison.
Very few shows are good after the first couple of seasons. Breaking Bad is probably the only TV show I know longer than 2-3 seasons that maintains its quality from beginning to end. The Americans is also pretty good.
Even Game of Thrones went downhill on its last seasons.
Stranger Things has also gone down the hill. I watched the first 3 episodes of the new season and I'm done with it. It has gone from a sci-fi show to a teenager drama.
Game of thrones was such a good example of how out of date DRM can get.
It was quite literally getting released months after it's release in the US in the early seasons, and only on pay TV.
With the way everyone is connected online, it was ludicrous to think people were going to wait months to watch each episode and not get it spoiled for them and/or not be able to discuss it on worldwide forums.
> I find that people who love to hate on DRM (nothing personal towards you), never seem to be willing to take a hit when it comes to living without popular content that doesn't exist on non-DRM channels/platforms.
I pay for DRM-free versions of anything if it's available -- even if it's more expensive (I've downloaded many hundreds of dollars of DRM-free audiobooks). I eben refuse to buy physical books from authors like JK Rowling (who tried to force book-owners to return copies of the Half-Blood Prince that were accidentally sold early).
Here in Australia you sometimes can't even buy the DRM-up-the-wazoo version. Game of Thrones wasn't available through any legal channels for years. And that's ignoring the Australia Tax we get for not being from the US or Europe (the shipping costs of bytes is very high it seems).
Then again, I also don't watch too many films or shows these days. Mainly because I can't get many DRM-free versions.
There's a distinction between the physical pages of the book and the text contained within the book. You own the physical pages of the book; you can use it as a paperweight, coaster, toilet paper, fireplace fuel, whatever.
You do not own the copyright on the words of the book, and in many of the cases you list, the publisher does have a say in that. If you want to put on a school play based on the book, you need to get permission from the author. (My high school put on an in-house adaptation of Out of the Dust, and we had to write Karen Hesse and get her okay to do so.) If you put the entirety of the book on your website so that readers of your negative review can refer back to it, the publisher can come after you with a cease & desist or, if you ignore it, a lawsuit. If you write fanfiction based on the characters in the book, the publisher can come after you with a C&D. If you want to make a movie based on that book, you need to buy the film rights. (There's currently an interesting situation with Game of Thrones where HBO owns the film rights to the world of Westeros, but the film rights to the characters & story of Dunk & Egg are still owned by GRRM, so if the film rights to the earlier Dunk & Egg stories were ever bought by a studio other than HBO, they would have to be scrubbed of mentions of Targaryens, the Iron Throne, King's Landing, etc.)
In the pre-Internet days, the chance of enforcement was next to nil for many of these cases, because the big studios and publishers all got licenses for any IP, while class discussions, high school plays, and hobbyists never got a wide audience for their work and so the original publisher would probably never know (unless you did something really stupid like send it to them). The Internet's blurred a lot of these boundaries.
The internet wins for "consume when you want" but TV is always going to win for "live" whenever a large audience is involved. Just from a sheer efficiency standpoint, the bandwidth involved for millions of TCP connections for a single broadcast is staggering.
That's why this model can work fine for niche live events that few people want but not so much for mass market live broadcasts. It's this reason that you've got to caveat "TV Shows" vs "Live TV" when you make that statement.
"Shows" can be easily cached on CDNs much closer to each consumer. "Live" can't.
If anything, I'd see the major broadcast networks and ESPN continuing to get stronger, while everything else on TV gets weaker.
The only TV shows that people have to watch "live" are shows with a community built around them, ready to react and discuss it as it's happening (Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc). This is where movie audiences are similar because that opening weekend crowd for an anticipated movie tends to share the experience.
I honestly wish they'd bring back midnight showings instead of 7pm Thursday showings, because that midnight crowd energy is impossible to replicate.
Shows that run multiple seasons are among the most popular. I mean shows like Westworld, Game of Thrones etc - and they have way more complex emotions and stories then typical theater movie.
Theater movies have usually simple story.
> You could also imagine why it might be hard for Netflix, Spotify and Prime movies to compete in India
Till a certain extent. Netflix, Prime Videos, Hotstar etc have much more variety and higher quality and some are VERY AFFORDABLE. Prime videos and Hotstar (HBO, Game of thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley like shows) can be had for $14 USD per year EACH. So upwardly mobile Indians can subscribe to multiple OTT streaming services (I do Netflix, Hostart, Primve Video + Apple Music). For the price of one Spotify sub in US, you can subscribe to 5-7 music streaming services in India.
For the rest, Indian creators on YouTube have pretty much surpassed every big name streaming company. TVF, Timeliners etc have created content which resonates with 18-35 year olds on an emotional level. Netflix et al. will never have that emotional connect so easily.
> I also curmudgeonly think that Game of Thrones lost its appeal when it stopped being about political intrigue and became yet another silly magical zombie movie.
So the very first scene of both the books and tv show?
Yup. Turns out, the organs in the body have a purpose, and without them the body can't work :-)
I.e. zombies are magical creatures, even less plausible than godzilla.
I also curmudgeonly think that Game of Thrones lost its appeal when it stopped being about political intrigue and became yet another silly magical zombie movie.
The problem with serialized TV is that sooner or later you realize that it's all about making you think that there's something cool that's going to happen in the next episode. Nothing cool ever actually happens, but you don't realize this except in retrospect, and, occasionally, when there has been so much hype that the lack of a payoff is impossible to ignore (c.f. Lost, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones...)
The only exception I can think of is Breaking Bad.
Agreed. I really liked Chernobyl but I honestly thought Breaking Bad and the first four seasons of Game of Thrones were superior, in no small part because of the high excellence that’s extremely difficult to maintain beyond a few episodes. It’s also much harder to make character development feel earned in only a few episodes.
That's exactly the thing. I have never paid for a subscription because I'm a good person. I've just always gone the path of least resistance. The $15/month is just cheaper than piracy for me.
Game of Thrones and HBO is a great example. Until this year it was completely impossible to see Game of Thrones legally in Canada without a traditional cable/satellite subscription. And yet they'd send me a Notice and Notice email every single time someone on my IP address pirated an episode telling me about how HBO is now online and it's never been easier to watch legally... except you must have Bell/Rogers/Whatever subscription first.
We're finally seeing the old guard corporate decision makers with their obsolete understanding of their industry being dragged kicking and screaming into this millennium.
> You should throw out all the games.
This resonates a lot. I used to be a huge gamer, but as I moved along my career I had less time and less mental bandwidth to game.
In a pique of nostalgia I tried one last hurrah recently and built a gaming PC (documented here https://www.leonroy.com/blog/2018/10/teeny-tiny-workstation/ ) but even with a machine which 20 something me would’ve drooled over I find I no longer have the patience to play something like the new Assassin’s Creed, Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3. It leaves me a little sad because gaming brought past me a lot of joy but after sinking 80+ hours into a game you question whether that time would have been better spent doing an online course or heck spending an extra hour each evening exercising instead of twiddling thumbs on my controller.
Same goes for TV IMHO - I ask myself what was the last TV show which affected my outlook or moved me in some way and heck The Wire maybe, Battlestar Galactica perhaps? I’ve watched all of Dexter, Chuck, Game of Thrones, Greys Anatomy, Castle, the list goes on and not one of them feels like they had a measurable improvement on my life. I do wonder when we go too far the other way though.
The Amazon 720P version had noticeable banding several times during that episode that was distracting even the day after so it's probably not a bandwidth issue, the Dothraki charge into the dark might have been a cool idea on paper but what a disappointment in execution. I think the director and cinematographer are just ignorant of how stuff gets delivered to consumers.
https://news.avclub.com/was-game-of-thrones-the-long-night-too-dark-to-see-t-1834416256
I think the second idea is the correct one, there are many counterpoints to the first one: you can see the same thing in any culture with the right ingredients, such as Germany in Nazi era (the movie "Downfall" captures the psychological difficulty very well), American prisoners during riots that all lie on the floor because there are consequences for not doing so, or "bending the knee" in Game of Thrones. Any situation where you risk harm to yourself or people that you care about by failing to be obedient, you will do so unless you are willing to suffer whatever the known consequences will be for failing to do so.
> As a westerner, I find it truly amazing that these systems survive at all.
It shouldn't be amazing, as a Westener, considering slavery was legally allowed and enforced in the West for longer than any alternate authoritarian regime in modern times. Just consider slavery in American from 1776-1865... I can't think of any authoritarian regime that lasted that long... North Korean regime (1948-present), Soviet regime (1917-1989), Chinese regime (1949-present), were/are close but still haven't yet achieved the length of authoritarianism exercised over some arbitrary portion of its populace.
I think culture used to be more united. There were significant limitations in the channels for producing and consuming culture.
Used to be, to get people to read your writing, you had to go through either the effort of printing and distribution, or you had to submit to some editorial selection and review. Then the only channel people had to consume it was to get a physical print of it.
Now anyone can write anything and anyone can read it. The channels of culture have exploded to infinity. This has caused culture to be fractured.
Used to be that most people watched what was on tv, read what's in the paper, and listened to what's in the radio. This formed a foundation of shared cultural experience. It's more varied and accessible compared to centuries of only oral tradition and limited printing, but compared to today, pretty much everyone experienced the same culture.
Today it feels like culture has fractured. Even members of the same household might not watch, read, or listen to the same things. The physical proximity no longer guarantees any shared culture.
Now if you want to enjoy culture in a group, you must either find it online, or you must be a cultural advocate for whatever your views or media are and build a community around you.
Game of Thrones has been one of the most popular TV shows at all time, yet almost no one has found it just by flicking through the TV in that time slot. Game of Thrones was advocated for by superfans.
Although there are certainly advantages to access any type of culture we want, it's definitely more complex. I can't just talk to someone about sports, the show last night, or the new hit song. Because even though I might live or work with someone, first I have to figure our the cultural choice they've been making.
There is another option available for that I've moved towards. You can obviously purchase content on a digital library. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Play are my 3 favorite (in no particular order) since a lot of the content syncs with the new-ish Movies Anywhere digital locker. If Movies Anywhere includes your show or movie then it syncs across all your accounts and is available everywhere. So if Google decides to stop selling movies, you can easily just switch over to Amazon, or whatever, without losing your content that you purchased.
Basically, I buy good movies and shows that I actually enjoy rather than subscribing to crappy services that rotate through a dozen or so good movies and a mountain of complete crap. I also don't have to watch commercials, and I can watch my movies on my phone or through a chromecast/fire tv/roku whenever and wherever (as long as I have internet). Also, most of these platforms allow you to download to a mobile/tablet device for streaming on a flight or train or whatever.
This can get expensive, of course, doesn't work for live events and you're still relying on all these systems staying active, but I don't like the societal move away from ownership and towards renting. If I know I love Back to the Future, why do I need to pay Netflix/HBO/cable/etc subscription so that I can hope that they add it to their library on the days that I feel interested in watching it again.
Game of Thrones Season 8 is $27 on Google Play. And if it takes you more than a month to get around to watching it, or if you ever want to watch it again ever, it won't cost you more than that. I think that's pretty nice
I was looking on how to legally watch Game of Thrones here in Belgium. It's pretty complex to figure this all out.
Basically you got to have a set-top box of at least 54 euros/month, and add 12 euro's extra to watch certain extra shows and movies (which includes Game of Thrones).
I found a solution without set-top box, but then you stream it on your mobile phone, and somehow need to remotely show it on your TV. This solution is 100 euros/month since it includes internet, tv, mobile provider, etc.
So yeah... I have Netflix, I have Spotify. I never need to download MP3's since they are all available on Spotify.
For movies and tv.... yeah...
And then people wonder why torrents are still so popular? Because it's the most convenient, not because it's free.
I wonder if past generations felt this too -- this feeling that the as you get older, popular culture seems to twist itself to pander to your tastes and attitudes. I had assumed that I had this feeling because I was in the most sought after advertising demographic. Now that I'm into my 50s though, it seems like it's still happening, and perhaps even faster than before.
As we enter 2019, celebrities are rushing to play Dungeons and Dragons, The Big Bang Theory has better ratings than NFL football, Game of Thrones is the top HBO show, and the most popular movie in America is from a comic book. It's a weird world.
Nowadays I'm a bit saddened that my attitudes have shifted to become more close-minded, like my fathers. Adults playing Dungeons and Dragons are somewhat pathetic, comic books are boring kids stuff, and "fantasy" is for people who have dull lives. I don't subscribe to all of that, but remembering how angry I was at my father for belittling the fantasy escapism that I was so wrapped up in, it's odd to find myself agreeing with some of his sentiments.
The actual outcomes of cheaper distribution have been realized as less equal outcomes: the biggest hits are bigger than ever, the rest are part of an ever-increasing undiscovered long tail.
Even though distribution is cheap, when the product is consumable entertainment, you are competing on the basis of marketing for people's attention, which is a scarce resource. Capital can buy up attention through a variety of means:
* A saturation advertising blitz around release(as was realized with 1989's Batman campaign, and repeated countless times since). Rather than just release the product with a standard press kit, go all out: advertise a pre-event event, like a panel at a fan convention. Make secondary products that serve as loss leaders, each one creating a new advertising hook.
* Bundling and cross-promotional tactics(buy this new graphics card and get a free game!). When you have a large sales organization, you can afford the time and resources to negotiate complex deals of this nature.
* The inflated production values are the product: Avatar was a hit because it was a big, expensive, technically advanced production, and there are only so many of those in the world. Although it is a huge risk, this is the modus operandi of Hollywood blockbusters, AAA games, and many live acts.
* Franchise marketing: Instead of just having a piece of media, build a collection of IP adaptable to many mediums and release products for all of them, building a new hook for the brand with each release. This gives the same kind of effect as a saturation campaign, but is playing a longer game, and aims to make each release solid and more than a tie-in(e.g. why is Avengers: Endgame a record breaking hit? It's because it's the capstone to a decade of Marvel movies that build up to this moment, all using a consistent style and maintaining a similar level of quality).
While it's true that you don't have a definite formula for success, the quality of the result is a thing you can control for in some degree just by hiring people with a track record(another avenue of capital: buy the visible superstars), and then providing them with this marketing infrastructure to work within.
So I don't see an escape from these tactics without a change in the rules of how to capture human attention. Brand building for pop culture is a hugely expensive exercise, and this has made for a market that fights tooth and claw to get a small promotional edge. But like with other lines of business, waves of opportunity come and go that allow new products to get through, and Game of Thrones is one such example of the wave of "prestige TV" that appeared around the end of last decade.
This isn't correct. $90 million TV shows exist because after a studio creates that show, they have the exclusive legal right to sell it to distribute that content. Otherwise, nothing stops Netflix from just taking Game of Thrones for free and putting it on their own platform.
Let's take Game of Thrones, a show that I'm sure many people reading this thread watch. The final season cost $90m to make. Would this investment have been made if not for intellectual property rights that give HBO exclusive license to distribute the content? If Amazon, Google and Netflix could just take the work and distribute it for free, then would HBO have been willing to fund this?
The same goes for many things that are costly to produce, such as movies or investigative journalism. Yes, there are people who are willing to work for free, but it's nonsense to argue that "there is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works". Once upon a time, you had wealthy patrons who were the principle supporters of the arts. The system worked to some extent, but even Jeff Bezos can't afford to foot the bill for every movie made today.
EDIT: yes, game of thrones is heavily pirated, but as the article linked to below points out, the only reason this benefits HBO is that it leads to more subscriptions. In a world without copyright, Netflix could take GOT episodes the second they are created and put them up on its own platform, completely legally. I wonder how many people would pay HBO in that scenario. Right now, the benefit to subscribing to HBO is that you get to watch Game of Thrones legally, with a better viewing experience and you save the hassle of going through seedy torrent sites trying to find a high quality copy. The people who feel a moral obligation to pay for what they consume probably were already subscribers anyway.
The way I see it is that our systems became so complex that we lost sight of what's good for us, as individual and as a group.
Most people are too busy to even acknowledge these issues. When you're barely able to financially take care of your family or when you're too deep in the consumerism game you don't have time for these high level questions.
People are more outraged about the latest episode of Game of Thrones than they will ever be about the current state of humanity and its impact on Nature, the erosion of privacy and freedom, &c.
When I was looking at a Game of Thrones subreddit after the episode last night, I realized I was getting more emotionally from the memes (which aren’t exactly the sort of memes Dawkins was thinking of) than long-winded analysis of what was good/bad about the episode. Those reddit memes are a way to encapsulate quite a bit of thought and feeling with only a few words and an image or two. Aside: those memes have been building up on each other for years, so quite a few images, words and online interactions are involved in their existence from a historical perspective. Not to say there is anything profound about this memeified manner of communication, or that it is all that much different from other types of human language and the appreciation of art or a photograph, but I still found it interesting (futuristic?) that I was thinking that way.
I've never been in combat and have had very little exposure to physical violence, but I stopped being able to watch war movies and even many action moves without feeling terrible at some point in college[1]. Most violent war/action movies and shows do their best to dehumanize the anonymous men that the "good guys" slaughter, but for whatever reason it stopped working on me, and I can't/don't want to turn back on the part of me that, when I was younger, was so casually capable of such dehumanization. (I'm aware that the characters are often fictional, but unless you think you'd be a fan of watching someone depict a torture or rape, it doesn't much affect the logic I'm using).
(There are also plenty of exceptions, where the violence isn't trivialized and the horror is central to the point; Watching a movie like _The Act of Killing_ is far from escapism)
> I do not understand how people watch that stuff.
Frankly, most people have a grossly stunted sense of empathy, with exceptions only for those things that they have firsthand life experience with. An instructive contrast is media depictions of sexual violence against women: for a couple of decades, there has been a concerted effort to decry media depictions of violence against women (sexual or otherwise) that are perceived as unnecessary or trivializing. The success of these campaigns is to be lauded, but what they reveal about how empathy-bankrupt monsters most people are is sort of chilling: people en masse can be taught to play-act empathy by rote if it's drilled into their head that a particular case is no longer socially acceptable, but they don't seem to be capable (en masse) of practicing the skill of empathy itself.
For anyone who watches Game of Thrones: Compare the huge outcry against the depiction of Sansa's marital rape to _an entire season_ of infinitely more gruesome torture porn by the same perpetrator against a male victim, which included genital mutilation. Despite being a far more egregious and lengthy display of gratuitous and stomach-turning violence, the latter caused no backlash whatsoever, and is in fact still fodder for jokes about Game of Thrones-themed foods ("Theon's Flayed Sausage"), including from publications like Huffington Post which were some of the loudest complainants about how unforgivable the former scene was.
TL;DR: It's not a particularly popular opinion, but most people are far more depraved and far less capable of basic human empathy than even their own ostensible moral standards would imply. Like you, I can't _relate_ to how people watch that stuff, but I can definitely _understand_ it.
You could extend this criticism to all small talk. It’s the same with the dinner table (or card game or water cooler) conversations about the latest Sportsball game and which team sportsed really good last night and which athlete’s stats are getting better and so on. Or how great the latest Game Of Thrones was or how awesome the Avengers movie was. Zero value besides the shared interest/connection.
I clicked looking forward to a strong analysis of this, as is bound to happen in the coming days since there are tons of invested people ready to analyze the way the show has (at least ostensibly) failed to live up to even its own lore. But this opinion is kind of a mess and needs some copy editing at minimum.
For a better time via short questionnaire-style takes from members of The Ringer staff, try: https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/4/29/18522411/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-3-exit-survey
I think not being able to purchase it should resolve moral/ethical issues.
But a lot of pirates like to complain they cannot purchase it according to their specific demands.
People used to complain that they had to buy cable to watch game of thrones. They wanted a solo steaming service. Go look at old reddit posts, pirates would proclaim that they would subscribe to that instead of pirate.
HBO made exactly that. And now the complaint is that it costs too much. Or they don’t want to pay for Barry or Veep episodes they don’t want. But they’ll stop pirating if they could just buy GoT!
I think the vast majority of piracy is just because they can get it for free.
Additionally, if the content is just not available in your country yet, then at best, you would be morally/ethically justified in pirating now and then paying later when it’s allowed.
I wish Netflix/HBO would start to tier their subscriptions. E.g. I just watch the odd documentary and none of the new big series on Netflix/HBO and it feels like I'm paying a lot of my subscription money into Game of Thrones...
> 99.99% of traditional media and social media are just fillers with no substance or value.
I absolutely and completely disagree with you here. 99.99% media is filler? Just look over the things you read through out the day and tell me it doesn't have more substance than a picture of a girl in an obscure outfit captioned "it's cold outside today".
Today I read about game of thrones theories about newest episode, read news about a terrorist being stopped in France, upcoming events in my town, checking what people selling on facebook market and what's the current employment state in crypto world etc. etc. I can actually explain substance and value in all of these posts. Can you explain value in the instagram post? Other than some questionable social-well-being-acceptance pseudo-science?
To claim that 99.99% of all media and social media is like the absolutely absurd instagram influencer posts is just completely and utterly silly.
Yes, but FOMO [1] is a common thing. Let's use Game of Thrones as an example. If you are a fan of the series, you keep up on all the latest discussion. Right now Reddit is chatting about S8E3, which aired 12 hours ago.
If someone is forced to wait another week, or in the case of films, another few months, the movie could very well be spoiled by reading some online discussion. Fan-based communities move very fast. While they do try to censor spoilers immediately after a new release, the censoring dwindles down rather quickly.
By the time a new film is available in your region, you may have already stumbled across some very severe spoilers which would inhibit your experience.
The better solution, IMO, is to make content available globally at the same time - eliminate regional distribution for online content.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
This is such an English-speaking-centric view it's incredible. There are great works of art - movies, books, music, games that exist outside of the anglosphere, they never appear outside of their respective countries and are never translated, yet I don't see people complaining that the lack of their translations is " is to deny the right to participate in cultural exchange and communication". You just....can't consume them. It's not the end of the world, no one is being done some great injustice, that creative work is just not available to you right now. How is that different? Perhaps only in that it's much better? If I want to watch a Russian TV show and there is no translation, either I have to wait for the translation or....learn Russian. If I can't legally buy Game of Thrones in my country I can always pay for a copy in a country where it is available and have it sent to me. It's not as convenient, but it is possible. To say that there is some harm being done by not making it available and the only solution is piracy sounds like self justification.
> the fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming service.
Don't forget to mention how awful many of them are in terms of quality, usability and choice. 4OD here in the UK leads with multiple minutes of HD ads, and when it switched to the actual content, the player regularly crashes, forcing you to reload and watch the ads. They also only release content for 30-ish days after airing, and then it disappears until the content appears on DVD.
Now TV (the only afaik supported way to access Game of Thrones in the UK other than subscribing for 18 months) caps their streams at 720p and doesn't support an Android TV app.
There's also the hell of discovering where and when things are available. I don't know where watch Brooklyn 99 in the UK and in willing to pay for it - as I understand it it's available on Netflix US but the latest episodes aren't on Netflix UK.
It's a complete mess.
At last modern fabrics don't require ironing anymore. You can put away a dryer's worth of clothes in less time than it takes to watch a quarter of an episode of Game of Thrones. It's really not that hard (for a human)
Industrial scale though ... but can AI really be cheaper than a skilled minimum wage professional? You know someone who has folded thousands of t-shirts and really gotten it down to an impressive speed.
Like this guy for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzivmWS6qak He folds a button-down shirt in 30 seconds. That's 120 shirts an hour ...
The danger about making these lists is that you may end up thinking that you have to get a high number of reasons to make your claim seem valid. I would not be surprised if the author started stating five to ten reasons and then thought that 23 was a good number for the reference, therefore proceeding to fill up the article with whatever nonsense. That's the only process I can think of that nets you "they sell your DNA to other companies", "scientists can make gifs with your DNA" and "companies buy ads" to be arguments in the same hierarchical level.
Some of them are pretty serious consequences of using their services: some of them involving the company's practices, and others involving the dangers of developing this industry. Both should be considered in separate to get a clearer picture of the issue. This article is treating it as BuzzFeed treats a new game of thrones episode, therefore depriving it of any legitimacy.
I'd like to see more elaborated on three points particularly: the privacy implications of having your DNA shared, the accuracy and precision of the purported results and the possible dangers of applications of this industry.
Can you read 20 articles while driving a car or walking to the store or cleaning your house? I find they're a great way to double-up with activities where I'd otherwise be bored out of my mind, and I can take the opportunity to learn about something, or at the very least not be bored.
TV might be more entertaining, but I've never heard anyone argue "Why would you sit down and watch the new Game of Thrones episode, you should listen to a podcast instead!" Being an audio-only medium makes them a lot more amenable to consuming while you do something else. They're only competing with music and audiobooks in that respect.
It's not like I get home from work and think "You know what I want to do this evening? Sit in a chair and listen to podcasts for an hour."
It's a little sinister to let the former DDCI cameo in a television show, is it not? Definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. I can imagine Americans might appreciate HBO pandering to them, but Game of Thrones is a pretty global show.
I'd argue that it was true of them when they were in the 24-35 demographic.
My in-laws have been here 35 years. They are old-school now: they own a home, they oppose further development or upzoning, they worked as a mechanical engineer in defense and a biologist in biotech. Nevertheless, when they were in their late 20s, they were recent immigrants from another country.
Their neighbor is close to 90. She's even more removed from today's gold rush: she was a secretary & later HR manager at one of the early electronics companies. IIRC, she came here as a child in the 30s, one of the dust bowl & depression migrants.
I'm reminded of a line from last week's Game of Thrones episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwOOeJxrhL4#t=95
Planet Earth is an example of the medium used well I think - amazing footage of reality that would be very expensive, time consuming and difficult to observe first hand, presented with fairly light editorializing.
I personally haven't got the same value from TV fiction. Mad Men is good example - I watched it because it was widely praised and I got somewhat caught up in wanting to know what happened next but in retrospect I really don't feel I got anything much out of it and I would like those hours of my life back. I feel the same about almost everything I watched while I had a Netflix subscription.
I've got nothing against pure entertainment. I've found Game of Thrones entertaining and will likely watch the final season with my fiancé. I continue to watch the occasional popcorn movie at the cinema. There's very little TV and only a few movies that feel they rise beyond entertainment to something like literature however.
If you get value out of TV and movies I've got no problem with that. As someone who used to watch a lot of both and now feels that was largely a waste of my time though I just no longer see much value there.
> I'm surprised its not higher.
Likewise. There are many titles available through Netflix DVD that are not available through Netflix streaming. Just off the top of my head you have Game of Thrones (seasons 1-7), The Wire, True Detective, Fargo and The Expanse.
> For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much.
I think you underestimate how many people prefer to watch the latest episode as it airs.
> not due to the time required for pirates to break the DRM
Even if the DRM is already broken, you can't just ignore the initial time spent to break it.
> until it reaches the public trackers that I use
Let's say you stopped 100 random people on a busy street and asked them what a "public torrent tracker" is. How many do you think would know what that even means? And of those who do, how many do you think would actually be able to download a movie through a public tracker?
This is why Popcorn Time was such a huge hit: it provided effortless access to movie torrents for the masses. Obviously, this also explains the rapid response by content publishers to crush the project.
My point was that, for movies and TV shows at least, this simply doesn't work. The delay is small enough that it's usually negligible (a few hours in my experience). For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much.
Furthermore I assume that most of that latency is not due to the time required for pirates to break the DRM but rather the time for the original riper to encode the file and share it through the pirate food chain until it reaches the public trackers that I use. You'd still have to wait a little while to get your pirate file if you don't have a subscription to the official streaming service.
People can believe that copyright law is too strict while also believing that copying other people work is not moral. Adultery should not be illegal but also should be look at as morally wrong.
Also, the actual harm from downloading one additional episode of game of thrones is nearly non existent. The harm of stealing the photos from individual photographers is surely greater.
Agreed, harmless pranks are what April Fools' is about. On my part I'm planning to prank my relatives on Plex with a fake Game of Thrones season 8 episode, with the intro followed by an hour of Rickrolling.
> does anyone know of any TV series that had a firm, 5 (or multi-year) arc planned out in detail years before any filming began?
Game of Thrones, though adaptations where the source material is spread out over multiple seasons are probably cheating a bit.
Of course they can. Not only can you just fire your CEO if he says something racist, sexist, or generally embarrassing, but there are non-disclosure agreements (you promise not to tell anyone what happens in the last episode of Game of Thrones), non-disparagement agreements, codes of conduct that entail things you can say. Conan O'Brien had to agree not to appear on television, and not to say anything negative about NBC as part of his leaving the Tonight Show. Nike can tell its employees they're not allowed to wear Puma clothing.
I see what he's getting at.
Last night I watched an episode of True Detectives. Tonight I'll look for a hockey game on TV. Tomorrow I might watch some Game of Thrones. I also have a couple episodes of Better Call Saul on my DVR. I watch (and read) the thing that appeals to me at the time I want it.
I can’t tell if everyone here is serious when they say they haven’t looked back.
Google knowledge graph is years ahead of DDG. Average person does not want to click through results, s/he just wants the answer. Compare these queries in Google vs. ddg:
- nba scores - 2018 super bowl - lakers roster - movies in theatres - game of thrones cast - $aapl - where is my phone - 2019 thanksgiving
etc
You would be amazed to know how piracy became consumer grade in the past few years; I heard about streaming sites from non-technical people that were watching their favorite shows there because there was no official way to do it otherwise. Outside top 2-3 markets, most online streaming services have a serious delay that is no longer accepted by consumers, so they turn to piracy. Why wait 1-2 years to see the last episode of Game of Thrones on official channels when you can see it next week on pirate sites?
I agree with your comment in general but just wanted to be nitpicky over this part (this is HN after all)
> probably more than 2x all of who have ever seen game of thrones (16 million is their highest rating ever)
I don't think that's an accurate measure for GoT as it's probably the most pirated TV show ever, that 16 million figure you quoted is people watching on HBO only. Those of us outside of the US either watch it on a different network (e.g. Sky in the UK) or just pirate it.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
> "...if Netflix wants to make any of their original content one of the most-watched media events of the year, they can do it, regardless of the quality of the content itself."
birdbox isn't the first promoted original content. it certainly drives success, but ultimately to get 45 million views, probably more than 2x all of who have ever seen game of thrones (16 million is their highest rating ever), is big.
I did think the movie was kinda derivative, a mix of the happening and vanishing on 7th street, but its still a must watch if you are into horror.
every game in town is 2nd guessing their models, because they are extremely outdated. Comcast's (NBC etc) entire model is based around market share - broadcast television. Hollywood is around big box office high spending action movies to make global sales. These is fine in some senses, but it means there are types of content we havent seen much, and while Netflix could satisfy niche customers, it was generally thought that it couldn't compete with large budget content producers. Now maybe it can, and that requires content providers to re-think.
>"The idea is that Netflix was able to coerce more than half of its subscribers to watch this film. That's crazy. The result, as we see in the article, is a tidal-wave of Bird Box achieving near-meme status. How does that feel to someone who does not have a Netflix subscription? What big joke/story are they missing out on? For only $14.99 a month, they can win social acceptance by being "in the know" of the current big thing."
for the longest time, ironically this has been hbo, especially with game of thrones. i feel like they must be paying reporters lots of money to go on about it so much, because its not really watched by that many people - compared to how much its talked about.
If it weren't because the article came out in 2017, I'd have thought that this Relotius fellow played too much "Far Cry V" and thought it was a documentary.
Also, TIL that many germans haven't watched "Game of Thrones", apparently.
With traditional network TV, the vast bulk of the money is in how many people watch the show when it first airs. Syndication revenue, DVDs, etc. are relatively trivial. Obviously the whole model is shifting to a more fragmented and on-demand market with fewer, but often more valuable, eyeballs per show. Seinfeld peaked at over 30 million average views for first-run episodes. Game of Thrones is about 10 million for a comparison on cable today.
I agree that apples-to-apples is hard but the bottom line is that very few people make a real living from YouTube views.
Picking a random example: https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCbx1TZgxfIauUZyPuBzEwZg
100k daily views, £17 - £250 estimated daily earnings.
Game of thrones has an estimated 10 million viewers per episode. So, scaling up youtube earnings: £1,700 - £25,000 per episode. The actual per episode budget was around £4 million per episode.
See the gap here?
How is that different from uploading half a pirated episode of Game of Thrones and replacing the other half with your newest vlog? People could try it, but I think they'd notice that lots of views can be a bad thing if most viewers react negatively.
If it happens anyway, view counts could be disaggregated into "total" and "since last update".
They're saying you could upload a pirated episode of Game of Thrones, get 100k views, switch the content and title to "My Newest Vlog!", and keep the views.
>Why did they watch it? They could probably say the same about Towering Inferno, or an episode of Game of Thrones or myriad other things. It's all getting ridiculous.
...really?????
It was all over the news. We have the BBC on one screen at work constantly. I saw the footage a few times the day after it happened completely inadvertendly. Not to mention it being all over social media and pretty much unavoidable.
"Just don't watch it" is an idiotic response.
Someone else posted about a very poor taste joke about Grenfell leading to an arrest and people being put in custody, for real.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/05/police-appeal-video-mock-up-grenfell-tower-burned
That's mad. People who commit ABH, hit-and-runs, deal class A drugs and such don't always get taken in to custody -- we regularly have reports (in our local news) of people convicted who commit further crimes because they're out on warrant/bail or only got a warning/fine -- making a bad joke that doesn't physically harm anyone isn't an offense that should lead to imprisonment. You tell them how insensitive it is, then you ignore them and leave them to wallow in their own excrement.
>A spokesperson for the campaign group Justice4Grenfell said the video had “caused great alarm and distress” //
Why did they watch it? They could probably say the same about Towering Inferno, or an episode of Game of Thrones or myriad other things. It's all getting ridiculous.
> Diablo is just a goddamn video game.
The Super Bowl is "just a goddamn game" too. The Harry Potter series is "just a goddamn book" and Game of Thrones is "just a goddamn TV show". I'm sure whatever leisure activities you enjoy can easily be given a sneering dismissal as well.
Are we not allowed to have passion for our hobbies?
Before the movies I had a hard time convincing people to get past the first 150 pages. And then you have the whole thing about the LOTR taking a different turn when Tolkien made it a larger story and not just a hobbit adventure.
I like LOTR because I like backstories and the whole book is about hearing what's happening behind the mountains. I could never get into Game of Thrones and my girlfriend never made it through LOTR. To each its own.
He wants to make it into a movie though. I hope he is considering a high-level TV series a la Game of Thrones. I feel like there are a lot of nuances that would get lost if made as a movie or series of movies.
The obvious TV series that went on far too long was Lost but even stuff like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad is/was stretched out too far.
Netflix has created some of the best TV shows I have watched in the past few years.
Strangers things, Maniac, The End of the F*ing World, Narcos, On my block, Master of none, El Chapo, Ozark, Glow, Disenchanted, Black mirror, Dare Devil, 13 reasons why, Jessica Jones, The Punisher, A series of unfortunate events, The OA, Orange is the new black
Those are just some of the ones I can recall at the moment.
Only other shows that I use popcorn time to watch are Game of thrones and Homeland.
It's interesting that Apple does already sell music with explicit lyrics and R rated movies as well as television content like Game of Thrones and video games with violent content (all labeled with appropriate ratings so parents can use the provided parental controls to exclude them on children's devices).
One wonders why it wouldn't be good enough to give explicit apps an accurate rating and go on about your business, given what they already sell.
My guess is that this case was more about being wary of what sort of content they produce in house than what they sell.
> Now they are gluing the screen to your eyeballs so that it's pretty much impossible to look away and not pay attention
You could wire a video signal straight into my optic nerves and I'l still tune out if it wasn't minimally engaging. I daydream about things random things, such as a programming puzzle I'm trying to solve, while I'm watching TV shows I love (looking at you Game of Thrones). Does anyone else experience this? Maybe it's an ADHD thing, which I have.
Adding onto this, Apple is just one more production company in a competitive field. Either their original movies and shows will stand up on their own and find an audience, or they won't, and choosing not to produce adult-oriented shows/movies won't really affect the calculus too much.
Maybe they don't produce the next Game of Thrones, but maybe they make their own in-house Pixar, or maybe they could try to do either or both and still fail as a production company.
Honestly, I think the worries about AI taking jobs are overblown. Will AI get better? Yes. Will some jobs be doable by AI? Yes. May that eventually end up being all jobs? Guess so.
But that doesn't mean people won't be able to find work or make money. I mean, you don't have to be the 'best' at something to get rich off of it, nor to even simply earn a living at it. I mean, think about it. Objectively the majority of products, services and businesses out there now are worse than at least one competitor. If people were always rational about what they were buying, said businesses/products/services would go broke.
But they're not rational. People buy things and use products because of many things, whether that's convenience, location, price, name recognition/branding, marketing, word of mouth type marketing, social proof, quality of service/employees/whatever, pure luck or heck, without even thinking at all.
So even if every market in existence gets AI involved in, it still won't necessarily mean old fashioned human run businesses can't compete and win customers.
There's also the additional effect of branding that people never really think about here too. People don't just watch 'a' TV show or film or what not, they watch Star Wars or Game of Thrones or what not. Same with music, games, books, art, internet media and basically anything celebrity related in general. Eventually, the greats sell on their name alone, and that's one barrier that even the best use of AI may not compete with. Just look at a popular book for example, in some cases the author's name is literally more than double the size of the title!
So that may also be another area where robots won't eventually come for jobs/take all the jobs. Perhaps we'll end up in a world where the 'Patreon' style model is the norm and the standards for success are how well you market your own brand rather than the exact quality of what you do...
:).
But the truth is, that makes Harry Potter and Game of Thrones much more of a "classic" than Shakespeare.
Shared cultural context is something I believe we're losing anyway, or at least it's not scaling well with population size and civilization - these days they're just so many books being published, along with movies and TV series, that it's increasingly difficult to find things you've both read/watched with random people. Schools in a given country are forcing the same set of literature on people partly in order to ensure a shared cultural context, but as we all know (and as is discussed elsewhere in this comment thread), this only makes people know the titles but not read the books themselves.
Babylon 5 was a whole new ballpark when it came out in the early 90's. Good television is now everywhere, but when B5 came out, it was completely unconventional to have a continuous plot over five seasons. At the time "one plot per episode" was the accepted standard, and while the dramatic arcs of for example Star Trek, the Next Generation (ST:TNG) eventually became longer as the script writers got more confident, the arcs of B5 were supposed to last through the seasons from the beginning.
The writing is occassionally weak, and thus it pales in comparison to more younger fantasy productions like Battlestar Galactica reboot, or Game of Thrones. But at it's time it was groundbreaking.
The moments of epic were really good since they were preplanned and they could be foreshadowed much in advance. Hence moments like (spoiler alert...)
... Earth falling into totalitarian state, bombing of one of the alien homeworld, the Shadows overwhelming Centauri prime, etc, were nearly unheard of narrative high points due to the buildup to them over the series.
There were lot of not-so-high quality filler episodes and so on, which make the series more of a cult classic rather than ... an obvious classic.
And yes, I categorized space opera as fantasy :)
> our nineteen-century three-volume encyclopedic novels
Many of which were originally serials published in newspapers ... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuilleton - Herman Hesse, for one, griped about the "age of the feuilleton".
Gore Vidal, who for a while earned his living writing for TV and movies, used to argue that the post-1960 emphasis on film directors was misplaced, and that writers actually were the essential factor. But he also remarked that pretty soon speaking of a famous writer would be like speaking of a famous ceramicist.
Curiously, some of the recente movie/TV series are putting directors back in the hired-hand category that Vidal said was their place, and emphasizing producers-writers, e.g. Game of Thrones.
(People like tales, like continued tales with familiar characters, like having some sort of tag to identify what they're picking - an author name is best, and sometimes it is fake, as in "house names" used by publishers as a brand for stories actually produced by a stable of multiple writers. Which is not new either ...)
I don't think House of Cards comes close really, especially now that Spacey is out. Game of Thrones is a movement: cosplay, crazy fan forums, ultra wide appeal, the filming location of King's Landing in Croatia is constantly flooded by tourists because of GoT. House of Cards is a solid show, especially season 1, but I'd say GoT is the biggest show in the world culturally right now.
Good point regarding HBO's brand and their "good" shows; and I think it helps to illustrate my point: Netflix has a lot of good shows, maybe even some great ones, what I think they need, and what I think the other streaming providers will need is really big generational hits that come out every five years or so.
Netflix definitely found greenfield with their business model, however the next few years will be decided by who can create the best original content. Netflix has spent billions on content: signing popular writers / show runners to long term contracts and picking up movies in the indie scene for distribution. However I still don't think they've had a massive hit, nothing Netflix has made can touch Game of Thrones or the Sopranos for cultural impact, and critically even Amazon Studios has had an Oscar nominee (although I think Beasts of No Nation was robbed for not getting a best actor nom).
Disney is rolling out their own streaming service and I'd bet that eventually they will roll ESPN+ into the deal and maybe even ESPN entirely itself. I think once sports gets into the mix the entire streaming domain will radically change.
B5 was definitely in the first larger group I was thinking about, because it had a single writer with a vision. I agree that there's an awful lot of filler in there. Imagine what B5 would have been like without the stifling fixed-length episodes and need for filler B-plot and C-plot?
One show I was also thinking about was of course Game of Thrones. It has varying length episodes though, but they're all still pretty close at the one-hour mark.
It's interesting that no other show on Netflix or HBO, that wouldn't need to be bound by fixed-length, still isn't. There should be room to experiment more there.
> The web was intended to be
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. You cannot say what the web was intended to be because you had no hand in inventing it. You do not know the mind of Tim Berners-Lee.
In fact, I argue the opposite - he had a vision of a global hyperlinked information system. While he wanted the protocol itself to be free (a move away from gopher), the information itself had no such protections. And that is precisely what we have today; it doesn't cost anything to use the WWW protocol. His vision has been fulfilled.
Now, the information (the content) itself is another matter. IP laws exist for a reason, people want to be paid for the content they create. They have ownership of that content. Whether it's the latest episode of game of thrones, a video game IP, or a book I wrote, the law protects my intellectual property. If I want to charge for access to that content, I'm more than within my legal right. Whether it's accessed over WWW, a cable box, or purchased from a book store, it makes no difference to my legal protections.
See also the articles about the level of detail in the costumes in Game of Thrones.
There is a lot of attention to detail, probably including a fair bit that doesn't make it on camera, in big budget video/film productions. You could probably cut a lot of it and still have a "pretty good" final product. But being obsessive about detail rather than being content with good enough in all sorts of aspects of production, including the acting, is one of the things that separate competent shows from really good ones.
HBO Now is so weird. I subscribed for a couple of months to watch Game of Thrones and Westworld. I figured I might as well check out the rest of the service too. HBO has many decades of original content right? There should be tons of stuff to watch on there, but I could find barely anything. It was just a light crust of the most current shows, whatever movies they were currently licensing, and a few crumbs from the back catalog.
I ended up dropping the subscription because I'd watched everything interesting on the service in no time flat. I could have been watching Tales from the Crypt for months, but it wasn't available at all. Where is the Rey Bradbury theater? Shows I'd heard about growing up but only got to see briefly in a hotel room on a trip. For a service nearly twice as expensive as Netflix they made seemingly no effort to keep me engaged.
HBO also has Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, John Oliver, good documentaries from time to time...
> there are basic cable channels (AMC and FX) that have given HBO a run for its money.
Each has produced a couple series ever of the quality that HBO has a few of at any given time. They aren't playing at the same level.
> Does anyone really believe that HBO is going to outcompete Netflix on original programming over the long run?
Yes.
> They just randomly drop them in the middle of the week, as if they don't have time even to promote them. Have you ever started an episode of Jessica Jones and had to wait 2 minutes for them to promo the next season of Mindhunter?
Netflix promotes more heavily in the app than most other streaming g services do; I actually find this both more intrusive and less effective than pre-roll promotions like HBO does.
> Meanwhile, after Game of Thrones ends, what's HBO got for tentpole series?
Succession, The multiple (IIRC, 5) GoT spinoff series that are already confirmed in the works, potentially with the first airing as soon as 2020, the Watchmen series they are rumored to be picking up...
> But premium cable is over, everything is going to be disintermediated,
The trend seems to be more streaming services offering premium add-ons like HBO, and away from “streaming means the end of the premium cable model” that was more defensible a claim a couple years ago.
Season 2 of Westworld had fewer viewers than Ballers. Ballers. You're right; it's a huge-budget show, and one HBO clearly hopes will be a tentpole. But it's no Game of Thrones.
I don't buy the logic here, and I'm not sure David Sims does either; this strikes me as one of those headlines that was written by an editor, independently of the article.
For as much as anybody here likes HBO, the diagnosis Stankey (and, I think, Sims) has of it seems apt. HBO has a sterling reputation. But so what? Even today, they're no longer distinctively good; in fact, there are basic cable channels (AMC and FX) that have given HBO a run for its money.
Does anyone really believe that HBO is going to outcompete Netflix on original programming over the long run? Netflix introduces new programs like Google introduces new chat programs. It's not even an event for them. They just randomly drop them in the middle of the week, as if they don't have time even to promote them. Have you ever started an episode of Jessica Jones and had to wait 2 minutes for them to promo the next season of Mindhunter?
And that's just Netflix. Amazon will eventually figure TV out. Disney controls Hulu now. Apple is making a move into online video.
Meanwhile, after Game of Thrones ends, what's HBO got for tentpole series? Westworld? Besides the fact that it won't be airing again for 2-3 years, its renewal was not even a certainty.
I think Stankey is right. If HBO is going to be a factor long-term, a thing people pay substantial amounts of money to retain access to, it is going to have to look more like Netflix and less like a thing you pay your cable company extra for. HBO could afford lulls of a year or two taking flyers on just 1-2 new prestige series (Carnivale; Newsroom; Vinyl). But premium cable is over, everything is going to be disintermediated, and HBO will need to justify demanding $15/mo directly from people. I'm not sure it's worth that today.
Netflix takes the shotgun approach, put out as much programming as possible and something will stick. Amazon has yet to provide anything but a bad UI/UX on top of tv or music I can find from a much better competitor.
Silicon Valley, Westworld, Vice, and Game of Thrones are worth it plus a steady stream of new movies. Not to mention their older shows. HBO’s quality is much higher than Netflix and Amazon doesn’t even compare.
There's tons of great TV shows nowadays. Mentioning Grey's anatomy and Glee does a disservice to TV.
Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things, Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.
As I said, I don't care about the legal question and my post was about system security only. Otherwise it would have been completely futile to mention the VM since that does nothing at all for the legal issues.
The illegality-of-streams question is not really relevant unless you are a premium account customer of a portal the authorities might get access to, or any streaming website they might get access to. They have no (legal) way to find streamers if they have no access to the server and/or whoever is hosting it or owns it. They get (non-VPNed) torrent downloaders because it's legally possible to find out which IP addresses download and/or offer a given file.
https://www.chip.de/news/Illegales-Streaming-auf-kinox-to-so-kannst-du-zurueckverfolgt-werden_115186344.html
In the past I did download torrent file videos - only to watch them exactly once or never. I got caught and paid the "Abmahnung" - so what. I stopped because I don't really need it. My need for such video content is very low. Usually I watch 10-30 minutes of movies, even "block busters", and then I'm too bored to ever watch the rest. For example, I still did not watch Game of Thrones past the end of the very first season.
For one, I think people are more selfish these days. I don't mean that as an insult, I'm selfish in the same way and I think it's a luxury we couldn't afford until recently. I don't know if the world made us that way, or we made the world that way, but we're all to blame. Because relative wealth has increased since I was a kid we generally don't need our community the way we used to. When I was a kid, my mom knew all the neighbors really well and nearly every night somebody was borrowing dinner ingredients or something from somebody. Today, my same mom would probably just go to the store and buy what she needs. Nobody needs each other anymore, or at least they don't think they do.
Secondly, there is so much more entertainment now than there used to be. When I was a kid, there was maybe one night/week where something was on TV that I actually wanted to watch. Movies were rented once/week max. So, the rest of the time was mostly spent playing with kids on our block... and our parents would have a beer with the other parents at the same time. It was cheap, fun, and more importantly for our context... there wasn't anything better to do anyway. It was plain simple truthful fun. It was real.
Fucking too. I think people fucked more back then.
Our transition to the mass consumption of entertainment that we have now, including hacker news to some degree, presents an even bigger problem... lies. Plain simple truthful fun is much harder to come by now. The Joneses (or Kardashians) are on your TV all the time on every channel. Mostly unobtainable celebrity lifestyles stream to your pocket in real time. And if nothing good is on in real time then you can consume every night of your next two months streaming 7 seasons of a new show. I know my wife and I definitely have less sex because Game of Thrones and other TV shows are better than most movies. I hate to admit it because it sounds sad, but it's also our choice, we have less sex than we would if TV wasn't so damn good. It's not better than sex, but it's easier to do. You can drink wine while you're doing it. At the end of a long day, you can wind down instead of winding up. It doesn't take any effort, and everything else worthwhile, like talking to your neighbors, is harder than winding down. It is work. You have to think. It shouldn't be that way, but it's just not as relaxing as watching TV or reading hacker news.
Nobody leaves their house anymore. When I was a kid, there were people outside constantly. Nobody in my neighborhood even mows their grass anymore, it's all lawn care services. Nobody does shit that they don't have to do. Kids too. My kids are young, but if I let them start the day watching TV they never want to stop and go outside. I rarely see other kids outside playing anymore. My friends with teenagers say their kids have no desire to get their drivers license, they like being at home, watching youtube, playing video games and texting with friends. Even the number of teens having sex is way down. Even horny teenagers aren't fucking as much anymore!
That's because the entertainment itself is part of the problem. It's good. It's really good. "Binge watching" sounds like an unhealthy disorder because it is an unhealthy disorder. Even "reality tv" isn't real. What? The things they market as real aren't real! Then the lie takes a break to pay the bills through advertising and it's even more lies. Now, don't get me wrong, I've worked in Advertising and there's no grand conspiracy to try and control people, everyone in that industry is just working their ass off to do the best job they can like everyone else in every other industry. If you go to the gym, the girl with the nice boobs -- they might be fake, or that guy with the muscles you want -- he might be doped up. Everything is out of control.
So, it's no wonder people can't find purpose and are killing themselves -- they can't make sense of this world and that is one of the few things they can do that they know is real. They feel out of control and taking their own life is one thing they can do, it's the final and ultimate way to beat this world and prove that they really do have some control.
I used a lot of hyperbole and generalizations but I think this one is true: we need to spend less time with our screens and more time outside with our friends and family. Good luck convincing them.
SyncOnSet Technologies | Full-stack Web Developer | $80k - $120k + equity + benefits | Boston, MA | On-site or Remote
Our customers: TV shows such as Game Of Thrones, Stranger Things, and Westworld, feature films such as Wonder Woman and Justice League, and pretty much every major studio including Netflix, HBO, Fox and Warner Bros. What do we do? SyncOnSet Technologies has revolutionized TV and Film production management. No, seriously, we have a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award to prove it. Our product, SyncOnSet, is an industry leading platform for creative professionals to manage script breakdowns, fitting notes, continuity photos, inventory, and much more. If you are interested in the entertainment industry and building great products, please get in touch!
Prefer developers for our Boston office, but would be open to candidates in other locations with a history of working with a remote team.
Tech stack: Node.js / Angular / React / TypeScript / Postgres / MySQL / PHP
Website: https://www.synconset.com/ More about this job and others: https://angel.co/wymsee/jobs
Contact: rob@synconset.com
No, it’s not always the case. I like more the Lord of the rings movies than the books. And game of thrones is a great adaptation although it’s probably the only case that I know in which the tv serie is ahead of the books.
Great news! I'm absolutely loving the third season, despite not really being a fan of the protomolecule concept. I know the series revolves around it. It's a bit like the white walkers in game of thrones. You go from the super interesting political intrigue about socioeconomic imbalances, oppression, imperialism and geopolitical relations in the solar system / Westeros, to fantasy/magic/sci-fi-bs of glowing supernatural creatures. Absolutely hate that personally, but I like both shows nonetheless and the Expanse has something special. Can't wait for new episodes!
Possibly. But there's also a dynamic on Netflix (and HBO, etc.) of must-see-TV shows (to steal a term from an earlier era) that pull someone over the hump of signing up and then staying. You need the "filler" (which isn't really intended to be disparaging) too. But a large number of shows which are OK/fine doesn't get people to pull the trigger. Game of Thrones, House of Cards (originally), Man in the High Castle, Orange is the New Black, etc. do.
That's incredible! I'm very excited to see how they do with that. It's also amazing that 1 billion dollars can be spent making a TV series today. A quick looks on Google shows that an episode of Game of Thrones (chosen because it seems like a really high budget show) costs ~$10-$15 million, so Amazon's Three Body is roughly equivalent to 6-10 seasons of GoT. Wild!
I may be preaching to the choir here (because this is largely a tech audience) but I don't buy into the stereotype that gamers play videogames (video games?) because of laziness or sloth or some other unfairly negative characteristic misattributed to them.
I saw a post on Reddit where a group of gamers had recreated King's Landing, the main city from Game of Thrones, in Minecraft. The entire project looked like it took years to complete. It was something of an architectural marvel and a sight to behold.
The reason I bring that up specifically was because it was not the work of a lazy and apathetic group of people. I would imagine the entire project took more hours than I spent studying for much of my undergraduate degree. Not to mention the collaboration involved. The entire project was a collective team effort towards a goal that the group deemed meaningful. I have seen multiple projects of this scale on Minecraft. If the people involved were lazy and slothful, where would they muster up the energy to work on such an endeavor? A project like this involves a certain level of planning and discipline to see to completion.
I have felt the same way about competitive games like Starcraft in that I'm amazed at how much effort people put forth to obtain proficiency and competency. There are thousands of hours of YouTube videos online dissecting every aspect of that game, not unlike the way a football quarterback might analyze game film. Again, there is nothing particularly lazy about this. I see it no differently than I would see a chess player studying old chess matches and strategies to improve their skill.
My preliminary thoughts are that video games offer a fair simulation of perfect competition in a world that is otherwise devoid of fairness. Reality is messy. Much of it, maybe most of it, depends on where you started out economically, who your parents were, and what kind of people were around you while you grew up. It's easy to fall into patterns of thought that resemble a "Why Me?" view of the world. I suspect a lot of gamers fall under this umbrella. I'm not making a moral judgement here. Instead, the way I see it is: If the real world has been disappointing to you for whatever reason, why wouldn't you seek out a more "perfect" world in a simulation? Especially when the simulation offers you what you crave in the real world: status, competency, hierarchy, friendship, community, etc. All of those can be found in video games. To me, many of them resemble a sort of perfect and fair world where one lives and dies by their own merits. I see the appeal of disappearing into one of these.
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this. I was thinking about this recently and I am still hashing out my thoughts.
Movie and video game soundtracks.
Can't recommend Ramin Djawadi enough(he wrote soundtracks for Game of Thrones and Westworld). Here's a great example of his music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS-gbqbVd8c&t=0s&list=PLTT-Xb7kSZWXO48LcIeXBIP-hetLW50YG&index=80
Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard are also great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxabLA7UQ9k&list=PLyVPkvhD7G7rcW4o7MLMXus6Kq1cbh2Op&index=1
And I love halo soundtracks, here's my collection:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTT-Xb7kSZWWp4MXXUtnye9kvlqS3JTP3
How does one pay for a "plot point"? I can generally imagine how product placement works, but plot points seem a ever decreasing circle.
For starters the story needs to be set in modern day, and mostly modern western world. Cans of coke look out of place in Game of Thrones.
I can roughly imagine how you can get writers to create an embarrassing episode for Joey and Chandler over a Dunkin Donuts voucher, but the number of ways that can work well must be limited.
The West is over obsessed with over loading their senses.
These kind of descriptions of "experience" you can also see in New York hipster yelp reviews of the 'most amazing' sushi joint or the latest game of thrones episode or whatever bullshit.
Most of the time when you walk on the beach, you don't have an amazing encounter.
There's a long list of television shows I haven't started yet and wish I had. Game of Thrones, Sopranos, The Wire, Mr Robot, and lots of others. It's surprising how often conversations with friends and strangers revolve around our common culture.
I think a lot of people my age credit their love of sci fi while growing up in the 70's and 80's with putting them on their career path.
My advice would be to watch the TV you want to watch, then take your dog out for a walk after. Best of all worlds.
Not a movie, and certainly not for kids, but that's part of the appeal of Game of Thrones.
I see it moving more in the direction of collaboration.
For example, Britannica was done in the way you say, while Wikipedia is a mashup of many edits by many people, and governance is done less by money and more by expertise and consensus of people with reputation.
Who says Game of Thrones needs to be done this way? We can always have capitalist projects. However, they have a totally different flavor. They suck you in, make you watch more and more, just like fb so you can make them money. Who needs these things, anyway? I for example didn’t have TV since grad school. Sure the high budget shows are cool but they aren’t essential to life.
I would even say Copyright can stat but Patents should go. Finding a life saving drug is way more major than producing a blockbuster movie.
Not to mention that a lot of stuff can now be automated, eg music production doesn’t require a 100 person orchestra anymore since you have synthesizers.
In fact, as costs come down we will have a glut of movies people produce in their bedroom. Just notice, there are no longer the “world class” mozarts and einsteins of the world. Now everything is more democratized.
SyFy's not at fault here. They don't produce The Expanse, they only have limited first-run distribution rights in the US and Canada. The producer, Alcon, retains all other rights to the show.
The Expanse is the most expensive TV show that isn't Game of Thrones--estimates are that each episode is approximately 70% of the average cost of GOT, which is currently the most expensive TV show in production. However, ratings-wise, it's not even the most popular show on SyFy, so the advertising revenue isn't that great for the channel. The low revenue, combined with the lack of alternative revenue streams (i.e., digital streaming rights, foreign distribution rights, etc.) means that the show has been a major money loser for SyFy and is one of the reasons that Comcast's cable unit has been underperforming the past 3 years. Alcon also decided to make the distribution rights even more restrictive when they came up for renewal this spring, meaning even less potential revenue for SyFy.
Rather than brand your pitchforks at SyFy for cancelling the show, you should give them credit for keeping it going for 3 seasons in the face of significant revenue losses. And you should blame Alcon for trying to blame hardball when it didn't have the leverage.
[Edit: Rome was actually the most expensive TV show; the average cost per episode was $9m over the course of its run. GOT's season 6 averaged $10m/episode and season 8 will average $15m/episode, but it's earlier seasons were relatively cheap. ]
Animal Kingdom did not made me feel like crime life is good and murder there felt badly. Similar with American Psycho. Westworld made mass murder by the end feel fine, a bit sad at maximum, while Game of Thrones made them feel disgusting. People don't root for sociopaths or even good guys in Game of Thrones as much. So I think a lot of admiration for sociopaths comes from how they are shown on screen, what kind of music is played etc, and not just from what they technically do.
Similarly, I like horror movies a lot. But, it is not nearly the same as video of real person suffering (or realistic portrayal). I don't like those at all. Horrors are made to feel you fake bad and it is similar with most popular movies about sociopaths.
SyncOnSet Technologies | Full-stack Web Developer | $80k - $120k + equity + benefits | Boston, MA | On-site Our customers: TV shows such as Game Of Thrones, Stranger Things, and Westworld, feature films such as Wonder Woman and Justice League, and pretty much every major studio including Netflix, HBO, Fox and Warner Bros. What do we do? SyncOnSet Technologies has revolutionized TV and Film production management. No, seriously, we have a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award to prove it. Our product, SyncOnSet, is an industry leading platform for creative professionals to manage script breakdowns, fitting notes, continuity photos, inventory, and much more. If you are interested in the entertainment industry and building great products, please get in touch!
Tech stack: Node.js / Angular / React / TypeScript / Postgres / MySQL / PHP
Website: https://www.synconset.com/ More about this job and others: https://angel.co/wymsee/jobs
Contact: rob@synconset.com
I don't differentiate long-form shows (like House of Cards or Game of Thrones) from movies because I think they hold the same place in culture. They pull in A-list actors, directors and writers. I don't think they are different markets because of that. For example, most movie studios would not release a fantasy movie (I'm including Star Wars in that) the same weekend the final episode of Game of Thrones airs. People only have so much time and head-space for the things they watch.
> Think about the films people will remember from the last decade: you won't find any Netflix films among them.
Films, maybe not. But House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, Black Mirror and The Crown have just as much cultural significance as Hollywood movies. And if we expand to HBO, then we can call in Game of Thrones, which has had far more cultural impact than La La Land. This is related to a cousin comment of mine: films are no longer the most important cultural medium. Long-form shows with high production values are.
It's also worth noting that Icarus, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, is from Netflix.
Putting the beauty and power of going to the movie theater aside, I think what is most powerful about Netflix, and something they learned from HBO, is how to give the directors/writers/producers more autonomy over their work. This is something TV execs have failed to do again and again. I think the problem is this does not translate to cinema. Films are a much more tight medium where spreading your wings and entertaining a multitude of ideas fudges the thrust of the narrative. With TV, we are willing to entertain long arches of story that wind and weave without a clear endpoint or direction. Let’s take Game of Thrones, for example, it’s rarely quite clear what is going to happen. We do have the specter of the Khaleesi and the white walkers arriving on the shores of Westeros, but throughout you have an overarching theme of uncertainty with any and all of the characters. Cinema would not allow this kind of uncertainty. And that’s exactly one of the reasons why superhero movies do so well. They have a clear and crisp narrative that we go to the cinema to satisfy. Being nuanced in film is much harder because in film you also have to be blunt. In film, you must pay more close attention to the heroes journey. In TV, you can hack and toy with it.
This is why I think Netflix thrives in TV shows but flounders in cinema. Cinema requires tight thinking and TV requires open thinking. Netflix, by its business model and Silicon Valley culture, is inherently an open culture. They are willing to entertain and support the ideas of creators. Now, you might argue, hey look at A24, they allow their creators a lot of space and still pull off great cinema like Ex Machina and Moonlight. I think Netflix hasn’t quite made it there yet but is inching towards it with movies like Annihilation. Annihilation also tries to do too much but it is succinct as compared to Bright. That’s A24’s strength it picks and guides its creators towards succinct storylines that, in the end, are powerful.
I think the best example of the above points is how weak Netflix superhero shows are overall compared to its big hits like Stranger Things and House of Cards. With superhero stories, they are inherently tight: the hero must win. There isn’t much room for subtlety and so these shows tend not to catch on. It doesn’t play to Netflix’s open-ended storytelling strengths (and granted their production value is usually B level). Whereas with Stranger Things, the open-ended nature of the story keeps the viewer entranced.
Unless Netflix hires some people who understand these fundamental issues at its top levels, it will be hard for them to really innovate on cinema. IMHO.
"From a more western perspective, good luck getting Planescape: Torment into a movie format."
A Game of Thrones-style "Sigil: City of Doors" series might work. Don't reuse the Nameless One or the plot of the game. Maybe reuse some characters like Annah. Like the game developers did, use the setting and make up new characters and plots.
Maybe before the show airs, put a series of entertaining shorts up on YouTube that introduce the city, the unusual beings resident there, the factions, and finally the main characters of the series.
The Last Of Us was brilliant in that the game mechanics were just something great around a wonderful storyline. Come to think about it some of the Final Fantasy games were really great stories too but the translation to screen was such a washed down version that it failed at what mattered: making us feel something.
On screen today we have shows like Game of Thrones that really deliver at making us feel things and keeping us surprised. Before there was Game of Thrones though I reckon that the death of Aerith Gainsborough in Final Fantasy 7 was one of those twists that TV shows and movies shied away from until recently.
I think there's two big factors.
One is book vs script length. A film is 100 pages. Novels are 250+. This means big story-arch rewrites. It can really kill plot & character development. This is where series open up a lot of possibility.
That's usually the biggest adaption, but there are lots of other big things that must change. Novels can do character thoughts, exposition and other things well. For example, a strategic battle scene will work in a book. In a film, it's near impossible so they focus on action and drama. Films do visual representation, so action-rich scenes work. They get characters for "free," actors will represent a highly nuanced person in a way you immediately understand.
These add up to a big re-write, that cannot be avoided.
Writers like Asimov are the very best storytellers. They work on their own schedule, write what comes to them, discard bad work... If you handed a good novelist the task of writing a LOTR prequel novel about Frodo's parents, by October... It probably won't be as good as Tolkien's.
You just can't replicate genius on commission.
This is really evident in Game of Thrones. The early seasons capture what's great about the books. A politically driven story that isn't boring, a novel approach to magical realism... Early seasons were loyal to the book. The latest season was mostly "off-script." The politics got stupid. Characters wandered closer to fantasy tropes. The "realism" part of magical realism was gone. Apart from big plot points, it wasn't written by GRRM and it showed. So, it is not good in the ways he's good. It was also written much quicker, on a schedule.
It'll be hard to capture Asimov in a series, harder than GRRM I expect. His stories are just not story driven enough.
His main plot device is not a spaceship or a time machine, it's a fictional theory, psychohistory. How do you capture that on film, line charts?
Good luck to them though. I love sci fi.
DHT isn't magic.. every peer builds a cache of other DHT peers over time, but for a new client it'll have no such cache, so falling back to trackers is still important. (IIRC older DHT clients also fell back to a hardcoded "bootstrap.bittorrent.org" or somesuch DNS name)
You might observe when trimming the tracker list off the URL that sometimes you can't find a peer, that's because you've never used the same client to contact what effectively amounts to a subnetwork that has no overlap with any previous subnetwork you leeched from in the past.
Especially if you're always fetching the same content (e.g. Game of Thrones episodes) it'll probably just work, but you may find it breaks when you suddenly decide to grab e.g. an old copy of OS/2 or similar, representing a set of BitTorrent users with entirely different interests.
> For Netflix, I have a subscription. But guess what I do when I want to watch the latest Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. I want it convenient, preferably legal, but most of all convenient.
What is inconvenient about subscribing to HBO Now? You have to do more work to find/download an episode of GoT compared to streaming via HBO Now. Or you could stream the episodes from Prime. Same with Walking Dead. There are rarely inconvenient streaming options.
For people like me -
The Red Wedding Problem: A huge spike in read / write traffic. Exemplified in the paper as users viewing and editing the Game of Thrones wiki in the hours before, during and after an episode (Also gives realtime sports commentary on reddit as an example)
SyncOnSet Technologies | Full-stack Web Developer | $80k - $120k + equity + benefits | Boston, MA | On-site
Our customers: TV shows such as Game Of Thrones, Stranger Things, and Westworld, feature films such as Wonder Woman and Justice League, and pretty much every major studio including Netflix, HBO, Fox and Warner Bros. What do we do? SyncOnSet Technologies has revolutionized TV and Film production management. No, seriously, we have a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award to prove it. Our product, SyncOnSet, is an industry leading platform for creative professionals to manage script breakdowns, fitting notes, continuity photos, inventory, and much more. If you are interested in the entertainment industry and building great products, please get in touch!
Tech stack: Node.js / Angular / React / TypeScript / Postgres / MySQL / PHP
Website: https://www.synconset.com/ More about this job and others: https://angel.co/wymsee/jobs
Contact: rob@synconset.com
The post seems to make its point by dismissing just about everything. Bright is "just another Will Smith movie" and Stranger Things is "pistache by design." Game of Thrones is probably just another fantasy-book-to-TV translation and The Wire is probably yet another crime drama.
Through that lens, is anything going to impress you?
I think it's important to separate:
* People who just want to watch "something", often while multitasking
* People who like a show / movie, and want to own it for future re-watching
"Watch something" has vastly improved. There are huge collections of content available online, TV/movies from all eras, Youtube's "amateur" video content, Twitch streams, and of course social media as a passive entertaining time-sink.
But the experience for fans, in my opinion, hasn't improved much.
The choices are: buy disks, or pay for multiple subscriptions to content owners (eg HBO Go for Game of Thrones). Otherwise you depend on a subscription that may drop content in the future, or a purchased stream (eg Amazon instant video) with variable performance and online-only availability. I'd argue we regressed - disks and disk players are more expensive, while streams are added costs if you want to buy the disk. It's also getting harder to rip disks for personal archival. I still regularly pirate movies, even after purchasing the movie - stealing is sadly the easiest way to get a non-DRM digital copy.
I actually thought of the Battle of Cannae during the episode of Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards.
> In a Song of Ice and Fire there are no good guys or bad guys.
You say that, but then...
> The only “Evil” characters are sadists, and there are quite a few.
Sounds like bad guys to me.
> People have lamented the Game of Thrones show has gone down hill after passing the books. I argue that is because the narrative has shifted to a war against the White Walkers, a clearly malevolent force.
But it hasn't shifted. The story (in both the books and film) has always (from the first page of the first book and the first scene of the show) been about what people do in the face of that force, as its threat became more manifest.
In the US at least, you could put together a profile with a lot of fairly mindless sitcoms, cooking shows, reality TV, etc. But I agree it's not as easy to just put something on in the background. And the streaming model and perhaps just the current era of TV shows, where a lot of subscribers deliberately select something to watch, probably encourages a focus on more complex--and often serialized--TV.
I just don't watch a lot but I definitely understand your point of view. Shows like Game of Thrones I'll sometimes doze off or get distracted and ten minutes later I have no idea what's going on. A lot of the series on TV today really require paying strict attention.
George R. R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones novel series that the HBO show is based on, probably one of the most well-known fiction writers in the world right now) actually uses WordStar 4.0 for DOS [1].
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin-tells-conan-his-secret-weapon-a-dos-computer-20140514
> This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations and shared context.
That's post hoc reasoning. Individuals don't globally optimize to synchronize everything. In fact, most individuals have good reasons for things to be desynced socially - so that they e.g. don't have to take a day off to visit a doctor or submit paperwork to a bank.
I suspect though that there is a process through which society tends to keep itself in sync. Not sure what it was, though.
> Lots of people like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode at the same time and then talk about it with their coworkers at the office the next day.
Does this still happen, given the rise of the torrents, on-demand streaming, and the way TV shows distribution tend to be spread out over time? (Maybe it does, I'm an antisocial engineer, so I might have missed it.)
Sometimes that's the case but it varies from show to show. IIRC the House of Cards intro goes on for more than 2 minutes. Game of Thrones isn't exactly quick either. Where as some older shows, eg UK sitcom from the 90s, "Spaced", only lasted a couple of seconds (literally).
If there is any correlation I've observed, it's more to do with the genre of show and it's running time.
They are also projections by the unit of how they want to be perceived. They never show the actual realities of daily life. My strongest memory is of sitting around waiting for things. Half of us started carrying game of thrones novels to read during all the down times. I only wish I had pictures of playing cards against humanity in the field while waiting for trucks. Canada also mixes male and female, both recruits and staff. So it is a very different atmosphere than any movie or show I've ever seen.
I think you're really onto something, but I would offer a slight modification. The value of watching something live is knowing it's an experience you are sharing with other people. Have a single live channel, where the purpose of the channel is that it's the live one that people across the country can be watching at the same time.
You could do multiple channels, but I think if you really, really want to capture the "I'm watching this with the rest of the country" feeling, a single live channel would be the safest bet.
It also may have value strategically, because there are some shows that "work" more as a live show, and there are some TV series that have better cultural impact if they are released in a serialized way. For instance I suspect Game Of Thrones has been more successful at permeating culture by releasing one episode a week than it would have been had the whole season been dumped at once.
> Branching lines of thought are very difficult for most people.
I haven't watched it, so this question might not be relevant - but how do you explain the popularity of shows like "Game of Thrones"?
From what I gather, it has several various plot lines woven over and around multiple episodes and seasons.
People also don't seem to have any problems deciphering the various "plot lines" within their own circles of family and friends (in my experience with people who seem to have waaaay too much drama in their lives).
Is there something about "video" that makes it easier to parse in this fashion than text? Does emotional attachment to characters in such dramas (or personal involvement) make it easier to understand intertwined plot lines?
Just musing on things here...hmm.
I did not notice any change since DRM was implemented for movies, piracy was illegal before and piracy is not much harder with DRMed videos, you can watch Game of Thrones immediately as it is released. Maybe you think is harder now but is easy to pirate and easy to find the pirated content with google, then click play and done. If you have time I recommend reading gog.com page on wikipedia and also find the interviews with CD Project Red devs about DRM.
No, not really. You're thinking that every user has to copy a movie from the browser. But only a very tiny percentage of the people wanting to see the latest Game of Thrones episode need to steal it so that everyone else who intended to pirate it can watch it as well.
Whether or not DRM exists for those other 99.99% of the people is completely irrelevant. The show is already on torrents put there by those who could bypass the technical protection of DRM. So now those 99.99% of users can watch it for free, too, without having to know how to bypass DRM themselves.
> This just feels like a very safe "me too Game of Thrones" play.
No more than Game of Thrones was a "me too Lord of the Rings" play. I mean, seriously, Tolkien's work was first in both book and movie/TV form.
In case anyone was curious:
> television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring
So it's not going to tell the main story itself, which is probably wise given the film adaptations aren't even that old.
Maybe it's just me I'm not super-excited by this news. I wish there were more original universes being created with the insane amount of TV money swirling around these days. This just feels like a very safe "me too Game of Thrones" play.
What a fucking terrible idea. They have completely missed the point of what makes Game of Thrones so popular.
GoT is about the victory of the historically downtrodden--women, eunuchs, slaves, "wildlings", bastards, and a dwarf--over the traditionally powerful men. GoT is full of sex and death. And, best of all, was totally unpredictable. (For the first six seasons, anyway)
LotR, on the other hand, is about the victory of a bunch of white males going to war against a multiracial army. Their goal: to help a white man from a "superior" race (the Numenoreans) reclaim his birthright: dominion over almost all of middle earth. The only two women in the books with any substantive role are Galadriel and Eowyn. Galadriel is in a no-win situation; most of her power is destroyed when the One Ring is destroyed. Meanwhile Eowyn, the scrappy shieldmaiden of Rohan, is rewarded for killing the Captain of the Nazgul by getting to assume a gender-normal role as the wife of the Steward of Gondor. (HT to David Brin for pointing a lot of this out first.)
Worst of all for the TV series, in LotR everyone already knows what's going to happen!
I loved those movies, and Peter Jackson did a wonderful job operating within the constraints of the medium.
But many important things were cut from the books to make time. Tom Bombadil comes to mind. The many sorties and battles in the Two Towers were truncated.
And most importantly, as another commenter mentioned, the freeing of the Shire, which is integral to the entire premise of a hero's journey - that the hero must return to his homeland and share the hard won gifts with his community - was cut.
There's plenty in the books to warrant a series. Game of Thrones does ~9 hours per book and still had to cut characters and plot points. <2 hours per novel is pretty much always a huge compromise.
Although LOTR does have similarities to GoT (lots of characters, vast, complicated world, lots of languages, etc), how is this even taken seriously, given the Peter Jackson movies pretty much did justice to the books? (I'm assuming they did from the fan following. I never read the books)
What value would they even really add?
At least with the Game of Thrones, it was the first time it was adapted to television.
In the case of LoTR, there's already been a big budget production that won a ton of Oscars.
This seems very strange to me. Usually these studios want to try new ideas and less conservative. This smacks of a typical Hollywood studio problem, just regurgitating existing franchises into new mediums.
> People are canceling $100/month revenue cable plans and getting $10 Netflix. That's a large loss of revenue.
But we can't pretend that that revenue is still up for grabs. The moment people are aware of the true market value of a copy of one episode of Game of Thrones, the price they're willing to pay for the convenience of watching it anywhere is going to be lower than the cost of cable. The upshot could be that what money they do end up paying is allocated almost directly to what they're actually watching, rather than a thousand channels of garbage they would never be caught dead watching.
The people who are cutting the cable can do one of three things: 1) watch it on-demand, 2) don't watch it, or 3) watch it without licensing it. If you don't have a convenient means of watching it at a price which satisfies consumers, consumers can only really justify doing 2 or 3 (which basically means you'll go out of business). That's what I mean by recovering revenues. If you don't do on-demand and paid downloads right, then you will have no revenue once all the cables are cut.
> It's not clear to me that streaming can actually support the television ecosystem we have now.
It's not clear to me either, though we must keep in mind that a) that revenue is going to dry up no matter what, and b) more direct licensing, and viewership-based licensing will make the entertainment industry more lean, and fewer shows will be basically money laundering schemes.
> I have to force myself to do passive things like watching TV. Even then, I need shows that are 'active', like Rick and Morty or Game of Thrones, where I can reverse engineer characters, think up conspiracy theories, or do something.
I watch Game of Thrones with the fan-made slippy map open on my phone. And documentaries with Google Earth open. :)
I don't know about that. CGI effects are everywhere in modern film and TV, but I rarely hear people talking about them except in the case of action scenes or "obviously CGI" (fantasy/fictional) creatures. Take a look at the VFX highlights reel from season 1 of Game of Thrones [1]. Even 8 years ago they were using CGI throughout the show's environments.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpjdpDx8_l8
Agreed. The Man in the High Castle keeps the main characters going, unlike Game of Thrones, yet each episode leaves me feeling more uncomfortable than GoT's red wedding - which arguably set the modern high water mark for audience distress. Hard to watch.
I have a theory that budget for (SF+Fantasy) at any given studio is limited. And Game of Thrones has gotten other studios to invest heavily in Fantasy, leaving very little for SF. (Might dig into "running count" of shows with genre filters on IMDB datasets for verification)
The only good TV content I've seen recently is Expanse, which is quite well done. As others have mentioned, this is only limited to TV. SF Books/Movies are still popular enough .
That’s just half an hour daily, 5 times a week, there is really no excuse, except you are lazy and/or mentally ill, and anyone saying she or he has no time falls in one of those categories. I heard it all, no time, but playing GTA online on the weekend, no time but constantly posting on Instagram or Facebook and browsing aimlessly. Or bingewatching Game Of Thrones. Or some of the comments here which easily take you half an hour to compose. You have to set priorities, commit to that time and stick with it. I don’t say you can’t have some fun in your life, and believe me, working out is fun too, but AFTER you have done your duty of working out, for gods sake, skip even a meal for making time, it will be even healthier for you. Thats your health in the long run and should be the number one priority for you, for your own sake and for the sake of the people around you, think about the trouble and the worries you create for them living a sedentary life, if you don’t care about your own life, then at least be so decent and care about theirs. What helped me a very long time ago was to commmit to 15 minutes daily, no matter what. I used Jerry Seinfelds don’t brake the chain motivation technique, there are dozzen of apps which can help you with that. I had a streak of over two years before i took my first brake, now i work out 2.5 hours daily on average, and still waste a lot of time, and you guys will tell me that you won’t find that time even in one week? Come on! I hope nobody feels adressed by my posting, but i have the feeling there may be one or two guys, you know who you are;)
Some of the good material that would have been turned into movies in the past gets turned into television/streaming shows now. Game of Thrones occupies the kind of cultural space that something like Star Wars did during the original trilogy.
It's not that that material doesn't exist, it's simply that it no longer is the sole domain of the movie format.
BET is a horror agglomeration of MTV, E! news, and crude commentary so prevalent on the internet today. Show after show features a display infantile and disgraceful behavior, which I am sure that most rational, educated people would not enjoy. I'm black and I'm not even going to pretend that I enjoy the portrayals on TV as a stunted, emotionally-challenged stooge that is ever pervading on cable TV today.
Why marginalize us to an ethnocentric echo chamber free from exchange of values, aspirations, and customs? Content creators can just keep hitting repeat on the same political, depressive drama from the 20th century (which we have not progressed from). What I dream is for popular TV shows to have a black lead, where not every character has to be black, nor words spoken in a "black" vernacular, nor a need for the show to be transmuted into a platform for social justice or black values. We need shows with black leads that rival enterprises like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Simpsons, etc. I want something that everyone can get behind and imagine themselves as being.
As an individual of African descent, I stand against the attitude of viewing the world through a bitter lens of color, where issues are "white" or "black". Their issues are our issues and vice versa. That is that. We all live in the same society, we are all entangled, exposed to the negatives and pressures of prevalent problems. There's no need for anymore juvenile "us vs them" dialogue in this society.
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced. The issue is getting Hollywood to fund such ventures, not demand for them.
> No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.".
Actually, people do say this. It's a completely fictional universe, and even if it wasn't written into the source material, the show creators could have made an effort to ensure that it wasn't so eurocentric, at least by casting. No such luck. The main representations of people of color that I remember—the sand vipers—were hands down the worst part of the entire show so far. You think people don't notice this shit? What kind of bubble do you live in? People care that they see people who look and talk like them on TV. Everyone else in game of thrones speaks with out of place ethnic accents; way to screw over everyone but the danes and the brits.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that diversity increases the strength of TV shows. If you watch Friends, it's like they were living in this tiny bubble that only existed in NYC coffee shops. Their world is nearly unrecognizable to me despite having lived in the same city about the same age. Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
I understand that governements need to make these things illegal.
But my point was that even though it's illegal, they can't stop it. One of the game of thrones episodes was on torrent before it even aired.
A governement can make bitcoin illegal. But stop it? No way.
Good.
Apple is one of my favorite companies. I just absolutely love what they're doing and have done in terms of personal privacy.
I'm really disheartened that they've moved to an open office layout. It's a surefire way to lose huge amounts of productivity from their engineers.
Open office layouts are a travesty. They make literally no fucking sense. As engineers we're expected to maintain abstractions in our minds which can span hundreds if not thousands of lines of code.
So why would you put us in the middle of a fucking zoo?
I can hear sports TV while I try to work. I can hear my friends/coworkers shoot the shit about the new South Park or Game of Thrones episode while I work. I can hear people talk about their weekend plans while I work. I can hear my coworkers planning projects I'm not involved in as I work.
And here I am, expectected, as a full stack engineer, to abstract complex data flows while all of this is going on.
To produce, while all of this is going on.
And do not forget that even if every single person was a deaf mute, their mere presence can knock me out of the zone.
I remember college. I remember working on projects and losing track of time. Because back then I had a room where I could work without distraction. Boy, how wonderful, to be so absorbed as to forget how much time has passed.
I literally have never felt that in an open office layout. It sucks. I love what I do. Why take that pleasure away from us?
It burns me out.
According to Wikipedia[1], in season 6 every episode cost an average of $10 million - lets say they're shooting 2 alternative endings for a cost of $20 million.
For the same $20 million per year they could hire a team of 100-200 security engineers (realistically couldn't even use that many effectively) and still have enough left over for some snake-oil vendor trash products.
Instead they do this. If they get hacked again what's to stop the hacker from leaking all 3 endings?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones#Conception_and_development
I think part of the problem is I'm old now. All the plots are reruns of older plots. They were great when I was young and the plots were new to me.
I've read where television is overtaking movies as the place where you get good stories and character development. Breaking Bad, The Wire and Game of Thrones are better than any movie I've probably ever seen.
I saw Wonder Woman the other day and the only thing I liked about it was the WWI setting, and they managed to botch that too. I mean it was an OK movie, but just like every other super hero movie. Get of my lawn I guess.
> why the hell it so easy to watch six seasons of Game of Thrones in two weeks but I can’t even get myself to write one fucking page of a book
Wow. Literally read this while watching an episode of Game of Thrones, and I just started two weeks ago, and I'm in the middle of the sixth season.
"But I don't see how people can think TV shows were better in the 70s, 80s or even 90s. Since 2000 we live in the golden age of TV shows."
I'm on the same camp. Absolute majority of TV series from pre-Internet times were dull, boring and non distinctive. Sure, there were some amazing exceptions (mostly named throughout this thread), but I personally, find many better TV series in the span of the last 10 years than in previous 30 years or so. What impresses me most that recent series are much more realistic, characters are deep, themes are more muddy not unlike in older series where black&white characters, good vs evil themes, mandatory happy ending etc. was nearly universal. Imagine something like Game of Thrones (not that it's the paramount of our times, but more for its brutality, nudity etc.) being aired on prime time during 70s or 80s..
Complex series with ongoing storylines can be great but they also get a bit exhausting after a while. There is a definite limit to how many Game of Thrones or Lost plotlines and character backstories one can keep in one's head when you just want to sit down and watch some TV.
It's fine that there are TV shows that are basically crafted for uber-fans who want to carefully watch every episode multiple times but these shows often aren't for the casual viewer. And there's nothing wrong with being a casual viewer.
Game of Thrones for example is somewhat popular, but IMO that's mostly because of how bad the average TV show is not how great it is.
It's closest 70's show would probably be Dallas which had 350 million people worldwide watch an episode. That's a well done hook even if they could not show nudes etc.
As to offending people, MAS*H had men in drag show up regularly which really would offend people. Yet, apparently 60% of US households tuned in for the final episode. IMO, this suggests they actually had some freedom.
Remember, Shakespeare was also aiming for a wide audience. It promotes multi layered messaging, which is more complex than just having everyone backstabbing everyone else.
We are more and more nostalgic about everything. But I don't see how people can think TV shows were better in the 70s, 80s or even 90s. Since 2000 we live in the golden age of TV shows. We got The Wire, the Sopranos, Mad Men, the Shield, (Game of thrones?, Westworld?) and a ton of original concepts. I tend to think that nowadays there is more originality and risk taking in TV shows than in the movie industry.
This summer, I watch Twin Peaks The Return, some episodes are the weirdest things I have seen on a mainstream TV channel. I am amazed it was allowed to air at prime time.
>but in my opinion the vast majority of current tv shows/films/music/webcontent is utter undiluted mind numbing banal drivel and there isn't a circle of hell worthy enough to hold those responsible.
Well, for tv shows there was been a marked and well established uptick, if not in storytelling, surely in production values (huge, expensive productions) and acting (a-rate actors from movies).
That's how we got shows like Breaking Bad, House Of Cards, Game of Thrones and the rest -- unthinkable in scope and aspirations in the 80s and 90s.
They don't always hold up well for all seasons (the tend to meander after season 3-4), but generally there are far greater than tv shows in the past.
This would have been a treat for those who had finished episode 2 and were waiting anxiously for the next step in the saga.
Sometimes its simply not possible to do things and fans understand but Valve just shuttered the series and turned their back on fans. It's like Game of Thrones suddenly deciding to close down for no obvious reason and with no explanation to fans.
This reeks more than a little of the arrogance of success and it's in some ways a betrayal of all the gamers who appreciated Half life for what it was and propelled Valve to its initial success.
I read the Game of Thrones subreddit to spoil myself every single episode before I watch it and it's quite pleasant. Guess it really depends and it's not black and white.
Game of Thrones is the TV series, A Song of Ice and Fire is the book series.
They collaborate about the latest episode of Game of Thrones because they can't get any work done.
Me too! It's kind of been done, but not in a great way.
https://www.amctheatres.com/movies/game-of-thrones-the-imax-experience
> Lastly, the economics of movie theaters have created a feedback loop that results in "big tent pole" films like Disney / Transformers / Star Wars dominating the screens. Adults want serious drama like "House of Cards" -- which is available at home.
To be fair, some movies are big screen movies, and dramas don't tend to be. House of Cards wouldn't work nearly as well as a 2 hour movie, nor would I be willing to go somewhere to watch it.
On the other hand, watching movies like Dunkirk, Doctor Strange, or anything in 3D doesn't feel right at home.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like the movies that tend to do well in theaters are the same ones in which the home experience would be lacking, unless you have a theater room. Meanwhile, no matter how much I might personally love a given TV show, 90% of the time, it's just not movie appropriate. Of course, I'd definitely pay to have select episodes of Game of Thrones shown on the big screen... YMMV.
I would pay $10 a month to watch Game of Thrones, House of Cards, or other high production value TV shows on a big screen with other fans each week. I might even pay $20 or $30 a month for just those few months of new episodes for the latest season.
I would even pay $10 a month for a few months to watch an episode of Band of Brothers each week. I really enjoy the movie theater viewing experience. Lately I've only gone to the theatre to see the new Star Wars or Pixar films (only because I am a fan of those two franchises). Nothing else that is being released interests me.
I'm aware that some theatres book corporate trainings or private showings. I don't think it would be unreasonable for them to air new episodes of top television shows on the night of. It would be interesting to see what demand for that would look like.
> You don't have to build special purpose software, though.
> All you got to do is know the block number that it was published on.
> Maybe you could even have the "speciality purpose software" published in the bitcoin blockchain itself.
Okay, and how is your web browser going to access that list? At some point there has to be a path from the "anonymous" blockchain to your browser, and that's who will get sued.
> The purpose is to make enforcement so expensive as to be impractical.
I still think you're trying to solve the wrong problem. Breaking the law doesn't help your cause. You need to challenge people who are abusing laws, because that's how you actually make a change in this arena.
> Bittorrent and torrents in general is a great example of how you can spend billions trying to enforce copyright law, and yet free Game of Thrones episodes are still a click away, for me.
> The copyright lobby has massively failed to achieve its goals.
That's an incredibly optimistic view. The copyright lobby has successfully managed to create the most pervasive DRM systems in existence thanks to the threat of "piracy", including EME. While a large number of people still torrent, the copyright lobby has managed to smear the entire technology. Who distributes their own content via BitTorrent? Almost nobody (distributions are the only example I can think of).
That doesn't sound like success from our side to me. In Australia, ISPs will DNS-block torrenting websites and also null-route any torrent traffic.
You don't have to build special purpose software, though.
All you got to do is know the block number that it was published on.
Maybe you could even have the "speciality purpose software" published in the bitcoin blockchain itself.
It might still be "illegal", but the purpose is not to be 100% bullet proof.
The purpose is to make enforcement so expensive as to be impractical.
I am glad that you brought up bittorrent, though.
Bittorrent and torrents in general is a great example of how you can spend billions trying to enforce copyright law, and yet free Game of Thrones episodes are still a click away, for me.
Technical solutions to fighting DMCA have worked extraordinarily well.
The copyright lobby has massively failed to achieve its goals.
A good case study to look at is probably Game of Thrones - widely reported to be the most pirated TV show. At last report HBO Now (digital on demand only) was at 2mil subscribers.
I'm one of them and converted to paying when I didn't need a full cable package just to watch it.
Speaking as a prolific pirate, I currently pay for Spotify because it's just so convenient. I currently pay for HBO Now because I don't want to wait an extra hour to watch Game of Thrones.
I pay for games on Steam, but I still pirate most major creative software like Adobe, Windows Office, or DAWs and their plugins...I just have absolutely zero incentive to do otherwise.
And before anyone guilt trips me on morality, please stop to carefully think through why you believe sharing digital files is stealing but borrowing a book from a library or buying a used video game or movie is not. None of those things give ANY proceeds to the authors or creators, either, and the authors have no choice in that matter either. Yet society deems that arbitrarily acceptable.
I look forward to new great firsts like this one. 15+ years ago TV and Movies were major status differences. Actors/Directors wouldn't besmirch themselves working on tv. It's been interesting seeing this flipflop. Netflix could be the first one to reach budgets that double, triple or more Game of Thrones or parallel on a per-minute basis Avatar and so on but in lengthier form. I had always imagined them bringing their A-game to a Star Wars TV series (maybe copping FireFly elements), and despite the Disney news which is overblown, I still think this could happen.
That may be true for traditional TV. Game of Thrones is currently airing season 7. Unless you subscribe to HBO you can only get season 6. Season 5 of House of Cards was released in May and still only available through Netflix.
Netflix may have added 600 hours but have you plumbed what Netflix adds? Most of the content is crap. Content is not a numbers game it is a hits game.
"Star Wars is worth more than harry potter and james bond combined."[1]
Just the first 6 episodes of Star Wars is 17 hours of footage. This does not include special features, cartoons and other offshoots in this franchise.
Access to this on a whim, along with immediate access to exclusive preview-type content every year prior to the theatrical release is seriously valuable on its own.
I'd venture many people are HBO Go subscribers simply for Game of Thrones right now. And that more than enough do not bother to unsubscribe in the off season.
I think people on HN underestimate how people value content. They don't realize people pay huge sums for complete garbage cable content plans already. A commercial free experience of Disney content, particularly Star Wars / Marvel powered with exclusives priced the same as HBO or Netflix would probably do great.
[1] http://fortune.com/2015/12/24/star-wars-value-worth/
The site seems to be experiencing the 'hug of death' right now, Internet Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/
Prof. Schmitt gets it right here: gender differences don't have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform any job--even physically strenuous jobs, with the right training. Certainly for information work, bringing up gender differences is just going down the wrong rabbit hole. It's like asking a job candidate if they're American when all you need to know is if they're legally authorised to work in the US.
The other scientists unfortunately go down this rabbit hole. Prof. Miller especially consistently asks the wrong questions throughout his piece. First, he establishes biological sex differences but doesn't ask if they have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform a job. Second, he goes off on a tangent about his pet 'paradox' theory about the American public, arguing that gender equality would make diversity moot from a business advantage perspective.
Let's just clarify why we want diversity in the workplace: it's not because minorities will bring different skills and traits to the table; it's because (a) excluding minorities is inhumane, and (b) because minorities will (hopefully) keep the organisation from making dumb mistakes like leaving out the main protagonist of their new film series from a major marketing campaign ( https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960372/hasbro-star-wars-monopoly-toys-wheresrey-insufficient-interest ), sending Kylie Jenner out with a Pepsi to mend race relations ( http://time.com/4726500/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner/ ), and pushing for a Game of Thrones-style show about a modern-day Confederate America which won the war and kept slavery intact ( https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/no-confederate/535512/ ). These are just three things that come immediately to mind, you can imagine how much shit there is out there that hasn't even reached national level yet.
I don't think it's just an American thing.
It's an easy way to find common ground for casual conversation. Same goes for sport, mention the latest $popular_sport_match and you're bound to find that at least a few people will have seen it, or heard enough about it to make conversation.
For some sports it's even an international thing. I don't really follow rugby, but when I was recently in Fiji, I spent a fair bit of time talking about rugby and the Lions tour that was on at the time, because it was something that I could talk about with most British and South African people. Obviously, you can't go to another country and talk about the Red Sox, but for international sports, it's a great conversation starter.
Same goes for things TV shows like Game of Thrones, everyone watches GoT.
It's the same with the weather, it's an absolutely banal topic, but it's a common ground, we are all experiencing the weather.
I am very much against leaks...unless it's a Game of Thrones episode. Yeah, I guess it might suck for HBO, after all they paid for and took the risk for the series, but who can wait until Sunday?
Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4 that leaked was actually pretty good quality. The audio and video were synced perfectly, the episode was complete from start to finish and it wasn't high def but it was very watchable.
Probably but since CNN isn't the only legal source of new Game of Thrones episodes, I don't think nearly as many people care.
Example idea: Consider an example of a filled tree to show off. For instance, Game of Thrones
Pivot idea: Consider using the chart tool to map out relations of characters in stories, TV shows, legal cases, etc.
Service integration (client): Consider if your tree could fit in as a GSuite add-on: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/
Service integration (host): create REST API's, or language libraries for people to use your tool programatically
Viral idea: Consider offering family trees for free so Wikia pages can link to them
Viral idea: Consider an embeddable app with zooming/panning that media websites and pay a monthly fee to integrate
Viral idea: Consider an import/export JSON schema users can use to share their graphs
I have never successfully found a software engineering podcast that I've liked, so this will be a bit different from most here:
A Cast of Kings -- Game of Thrones episode discussion
My Favorite Murder -- Semi-descriptive title, but they talk about their favorite murders
Not Alone Podcast -- Podcast about things going bump in the night
Startups for the Rest of Us -- A marketing podcast aimed at micropreneurs
Last Podcast on the Left -- Comedy/oddly well researched show about Aliens, Murder, and anything else macabre or strange
The Adventure Zone -- A podcast about 3 brothers and their dad playing DnD
Strange Matters -- Another "things that go bump in the night" sort-of podcast
I have about 30 podcasts that I follow, but some of them I won't listen to if the subject doesn't interest me. These, however, I will listen to every episode (I'm putting off the final episode of "The Adventure Zone...") as soon as they come out.
some people used to record the chart show off Radio 1 and share the cassettes with their friends. It didn't stop me buying music, I couldn't afford to buy music and would have done without it. In fact it turned me into a music fan, and once older I bought a lot more music because of it.
Where the official sources beat the torrents is on convenience. Spotify and Apple whatever are easy to use and busy people will pay.
A similar effect is possible with TV shows and films. I have Amazon prime, and Netflix. Prime costs me £79 a year, Netflix costs me £7.99 a month I think. Now I have a Youview box. I can watch Netflix on it but not Prime. For prime I have to buy another device or use my laptop. I wanted to see what the 'Game of Thrones' fuss was about, neither has it (amazon charges per episode actually). NowTV from Sky does, so I got a trial subscription, but the NowTV app on the Youview box only works for films, not TV shows (!), and the NowTV pc app doesn't work on Linux.
So I pay for three services and still can't watch due to petty rights issues. I could watch them all on Kodi for free of course, but that would be wrong (even though I have paid for them elsewhere).
In summary, if they refuse to get with the 21st Century they will sell less shows. If they allowed easier access to the shows they would beat piracy with convenience. DRM just makes it harder. Don't get me started on HDMI DRM
Personally I've found that the loss of one spatial dimension in the transition from paper to ebook actually makes the book less engaging and more difficult to retain details.
I think (again, my personal experience) that reading while also having a tactile sense of where I am in the book (say ~20% of the way through) makes it easier to remember smaller details; perhaps the physical book helps my brain create a sort of "memory castle" that a little progress bar on an ebook does not.
One example: I read all but the latest Game of Thrones books in paperback (well before the HBO show was even announced). I devoured them and was able to keep track of all the families/storylines without a problem or a second thought. I tried to read the latest one as an ebook and I found I'd have forgotten details of various storylines between reading sessions. I ultimately never finished it and I'm just watching the TV show now :|
Now when I want to read a book, I buy a book - I just can't get into ebooks. Sure, it's not as convenient, but it also doesn't need to be plugged in, ever.
It seems like too many involved with Babylon 5 are dying far too young.
When Richard Biggs died, I was sad, but I thought a revival could still be possible and be enjoyable. When Andreas Katsulas died, I knew any revival would suffer without his presence.
Now at some point with Jerry Doyle, Jeff Conway and now Stephen Furst have passed beyond the veil and I've come to realize that I don't want any more Babylon 5 -- except for a TOS/TNG-like remastering with new CGI -- I'd pay a lot for that.
I feel almost cruel pointing it out because they were limited print runs and you can't really buy them (no digital copies exist as far as I know, and the print copies are costly) but there exists an amazing set of books (http://www.cafepress.com/b5books). Each volume has copies of a few scripts from the show, but the real magic is a series of stories written by JMS for every book and each episode of B5. They go into detail about the production of the show and production of television shows in general and just how ground-breaking Babylon 5 was in general. The show was just as revolutionary behind the scenes as it was on screen. The books go into great detail to explain what happened to season 5 and -- at the risk of a BuzzFeed-style headline -- it's not what you think.
As a consolation prize for those who cannot read those books, I suggest Claudia Christians Memoir (Babylon Confidential https://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Confidential-Memoir-Love-Addiction/dp/1937856062). It's quite good -- even and especially the non-Babylon 5 parts.
Each of these deaths from Babylon 5 leaves me profoundly sad because I highly doubt I will ever see another show that I enjoy as much as I enjoyed Babylon 5. I'm not sure that anyone will make another show with such depth and intricacy, though I will be watching the final two seasons of Game of Thrones with deep anticipation.
I think The Wire was okay, and that Game of Thrones is really bad, so I'm just gonna weigh in and emphatically disagree with your assessment that "they are the two best television shows made".
> I guess depending on how game of thrones ends, it may be a high contender.
I don't think you can really compare the two. The wire was literary and so authentic, Game of Thrones cinematic and epic. They are the two best television shows made - but in different spaces.
Breaking bad was good but sat in the middle and not as good as either.
But usually the literary honest film holds up better over time than the epic special effects one.
Every new iteration of book charts completely mixes up my intuitions on which books are there, how long they stay, and how contemporary they are.
For instance, I thought after Bill Gates tweeted his regard for Pinker's Better Angels book, that would be in the top. I would not have expected "Nudge" to be there, but not (for instance) one of Gladwell's books or Freakonomics.
Fiction wise, I can see the effect that TV and movies exert but, with the exception of Potter, it seems they have to be on the air now. (Q: Will Game of Thrones show up when the show starts?)
If people want to steal your content, it's going to be stolen. You cannot solve that.
Man who say something cannot be done should not interrupt man who is doing it.
We're talking about small producers operating in niche markets here, not the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster, Taylor Swift album or Game of Thrones episode. You can't just go onto YouTube and find our stuff, except on the rare occasions when someone's managed to post a little of it for a short time before we get it taken down.
The downside of this is that I'm writing this from a normal house, not a luxury yacht somewhere nice and sunny.
The upside is that most of our customers don't know how to save/share our stuff, and the few who do stick out like a sore thumb in their access patterns and can rapidly be cut off. The biggest real world threat to us is not acting quickly on those or the redistribution they attempt, meaning we wind up losing other potential customers to rips of our stuff with someone else's branding/advertising slapped all over them.
It's better to spend your time making more content and better content so your paying customers pay more and refer more paying friends.
No, it isn't. The evidence in our case is beyond any doubt. Of course we would much rather be making new content and doing more for our paying customers, but we can't afford to just ignore the small minority of abusers.
In terms of voice/speech, we maybe talking on different points. I'm considering voice as an input mechanism, but the output mechanism certainly has to be dynamic and use the most sensible mechanism in the given context. Ex:
1. Alexa play song --> output on in-built speaker
2. "Alexa turn on Warriors game", "Alexa play latest episode of Game of Thrones" --> output onto nearest TV
3. Alexa get direction to San Francisco --> sends to my phone screen
4. Alexa show me top Sushi restaurants nearby --> send to nearest display ( TV or phone )
... and so on.
So yes, I definitely agree with you, voice as an output quickly becomes untenable. But again, that's what I mean by ubiquitous, you're no longer tied to a device for input/output. Your environment/context will define what your input/output mechanisms are. Outputs can be any displays, speakers, TVs, thermostats, lights, etc. And in most cases, voice is the simplest, most intuitive input mechanism for simple queries that a majority of our daily interactions with our surroundings will require.
Just as touch devices required UI developers to simplify their interface design to accommodate 'touch access' by removing layers of menus, pages, etc. Voice will also precipitate this type of simplification of the interface to where the core elements are accessible with simple queries, with strong, complex NLP and search behind it.
And again, it's more about accessibility than it is about expressiveness through voice input.
People don't mean "watching shows is dead" when they say "TV is dead". They mean TV networks as we know them, with their programming of shows, news, sports, movies, etc.
A few millions watch Game of Thrones on the TV.
A few hundred million watch it on demand, from the internet.
Whether GoT is originally created by a cable network is irrelevant (and mostly the result of a broken business model continuing on).
A good system to monetize those hundred millions would totally obliterate TV networks in the distribution of shows like Game Of Thrones.
Heck, Netflix is going strong with its own shows, and it's far from global or perfect.
In the age when humans were able to produce TV shows like Game of Thrones, you cannot kill TV. The TV has only overtaken the Cinema. It will now be a race to topple the expensive shows in the history.
No offense to technology but this is all about age old entertainment and story-telling enterprises in human history.
I've had a variety of XBMC, Plex, Windows Media Center (hacked to run on Windows 10 and with a variety of mods), various multichannel TV tuners, cable card readers, DLNA devices, dinovo mini keyboards, reprogrammable remotes, etc.
I currently use an Amazon Fire TV, as fighting an endless war with content creators to steal their content is a waste of my time (I also really like the voice search on the Fire devices).
I pay for films, and most TV, but steal Game of Thrones since, bizarrely, it's not available in full HD via Sky's app. In that case, I play it via DLNA.
I appreciate your reply and I find it well thought-of.
The problem is that Science Fiction is, literally, Fantasy without swords (or sorcery, but my position is that the two basically go together).
Or at least that's what it started as, back in the Golden Age. For instance, you'll probably know that in that era the editors of Sci Fi pulps would reject a story if it had magic in it, so writers instead framed magic as "psionics" - because that made their stories sound more scientifically plausible (for their time, always).
So in essence, you could take the exact same story, with the same characters having the same motivations and advancing down the same goal etc, and simply change the external trappings, from sword and sorcery to ray guns and psionics, or vv, and- presto, genre change.
The distinction is entirely artificial, is what I'm saying, and dictated more by the needs of the publishing (or TV, film, etc) industry than what kind of stories a writer wants to write or a reader/viewer enjoy.
That is as true now as it was back then but it's actually a good thing, nowadays, because it means that you can tell the same stories either as Fantasy or as SF and all that matters is really how good the story is. Hero's journey with aliens and spaceships, for Star Wars, gritty realism with swords and dragons for The Game of Thrones. And why not?
The best Fantasy and SF is very often found in the boundary between the two genres. The flimsier the boundary, the easier for the two genres to intermingle to the delight of all of us who enjoy a good story, regardless of the trappings.
Btw, I should say that most of my interest in (and knowledge of) Fantasy and SF comes from novels, rather than TV shows and films. I appreciate that TV shows, in particular, have been able to tell more engaging stories in recent times (eg. I'm totally a BSG fangirl) but still TV prioritises tropes and specialises in providing a quick fix- which though makes my criterion even more relevant. In writing, it's a lot easier to escape the tropes and just tell a story about people doing things, rather than who-fought-whom-with-what.
> Maybe originality now requires a longer format than the one-off film. Consider Game of Thrones.
Not necessarily, see "Black mirror" :)
I just lost interest in virtually all movies in my mid twenties. They're too short, too alike, to predictable and frankly boring most of the time. There are very very occasional exceptions, but for me, movies just stopped being entertaining at some point. I don't know if movies changed, or I did.
A friend of mine and I marathoned two seasons of Game of Thrones; that was by far a better experience than any movie has ever provided. Movies are the abridged books of the audiovisual world, in my opinion, with some notable exceptions. Those exceptions seem (to me at least) to be getting incredibly rare compared to the deafening background noise of cynical money grabs, re-makes, sequels, and highly compressed storytelling bolstered with sfx.
What I'm saying is, if I'm not just some oddity in this (and I don't think that I am) then over time people are just going to mostly outgrow movies. It's not that movies are pro tanto bad, it's just that most movies don't play to the strengths of the medium; they exist as remnants of a time when the options were: Book, Broadcast TV, Movie. Frankly, the writing has been on the wall since 'The Sopranos', DVR brought closer, and Streaming means it's actually here, now.
The proposal: "Premium video rental", at $30 - $50. Right. When VHS first came out, the movie industry thought that a video rental should cost about as much as a theater show for a family of 4, including popcorn. That didn't work, although the reason was the First Sale Doctrine, which allowed video rental without payments to studios and forced prices down. That doesn't apply online, and all the players are now huge near-monopolies. They can push prices up, but can't make people watch.
3D was supposed to save theaters. It didn't. (Incidentally, while "Ghost in the Shell" is reasonably good, don't see it in 3D. The director likes blurry backgrounds. 3D has negative value for blurry backgrounds.)
Lack of originality remains a big problem. "Four of the top 10 highest grossing films last year were based on Marvel or DC Comics characters." In theaters now, the Lego Batman movie. There are currently 69 more comic book movies in the pipeline.[1] Even the duds, such as Ant-Man, are getting sequels. Variety says consumers may be getting tired of comic book movies.
Some original ideas do make big money. Last year, "The Secret Life of Pets" — $875.4 million, "Zootopia" — $1.023 billion, "Finding Dory" — $1.027 billion, were in the top 10. They're all animated. Not one of the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2016 was a live-action non-sequel/remake. Maybe originality now requires a longer format than the one-off film. Consider Game of Thrones.
Meanwhile, I'm watching Korean drama and Japanese anime.
[1] http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/comic-book-adaptations/32829/69-upcoming-comic-book-movies-and-when-to-expect-them
I love Netflix, but they really need to invest in some more depth for the UI.
Let me curate my own lists and my own history per profile, including removing stuff from dynamic lists. I don't want to have to go into my account settings (something only the account owner can do) to remove recently watched items from my account history and then have to wait 24 hours for it to actually happen.
Let me build new lists and manually dump a tv show or movie into them.
Let me search all offerings, sortable and filterable alphabetically and/or by release date.
Let me view my profile's total viewing history if I'm interested. Even for titles that are no longer viewable on Netflix. A neat feature would be to group these by title. So you can show just "The Office" or "Game of Thrones" or "The West Wing", which can be expanded to a list of seasons, each of which can be expanded to a list of episodes, showing which ones I've watched and which ones I haven't.
--- --- ---
As enjoyable and useful as Netflix is, the fact that it still remains essentially a completely non-customizable list of "what's popular" is just incredibly lazy on their part.
I think this can happen to a lot of people, depending on the discussion. Personally, I've taken almost no CS classes; I'm a EE by degree and moved into programming (mainly embedded) on-the-job.
So when people start getting into heavy CS discussions about algorithms or whatever, that can alienate me to an extent too. I've read the basics and all and picked up a lot, but only what I really needed to know for this kind of work. I'm more interested in getting hardware to work and programming near the hardware level than some B-tree or whatever.
Another thing that really alienates me: when men at work talk about sports. I don't give two shits about spectator sports, and I think they're a complete waste of time. I'm a male, of course, but unlike many men I really hate sports and sports fanaticism. I don't see this too much at work (as it seems my attitude toward sports isn't that uncommon among men in tech), but I do see it now and then, especially with older and more outgoing/managerial type men.
So I don't think it's entirely a male vs. female issue: certain groups of people working together will frequently have certain common interests, which will not be shared by other people in that workplace. If I worked with a bunch of women and they all started talking about some current TV show, I'd also be alienated, because I don't own a TV or watch any current TV shows (except Game of Thrones...). Should I insist that women refrain from talking about TV shows? That seems a bit extreme.
I'm at the point where I feel like I can't start watching any new show because I will be able to predict everything that happens before it happens, making the whole thing feel like a waste of time. The storytelling is boring and the foreshadowing is more like foreshouting due to how obvious they make it.
Case in point, I never read the books and I put off watching Game of Thrones for a very long time until my brother finally convinced me to give it a shot a few months ago. When he came to me asking about how shocked I was about what happened at the end of the first season I literally laughed in his face because it was telegraphed from episode 1.
You could say the same thing for just about any show.
Granted maybe you get farther than season 1 (Game of Thrones up to season 3 for me, for example) but TV very much fits with "die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain."
> I can't stand that who can sit still for that long?
You could... space things out yourself, you know? :)
> Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast.
Debatable. There's always been bad TV series. And production quality actually seems to be going up. Game of Thrones, Westworld, House of Cards are some of the most expensive and high quality TV shows ever produced, being not that off from Holywood blockbusters in terms of actors, special effects, sets, etc.
A lot of stories seem to be written taking into account that kind of passage of time... Game of Thrones and Harry Potter is literally and figuratively the story of the characters growing up. Love on the other hand, is set immediately after season 1.
Also, shows that run on a long or continuous schedule don't allow for the kind of care and polish - if you're churning out an episode a week, you can only do sitcom type stuff. No visual effects, no story arcs (too many actors come and go), no locations (can't spend all year outdoors). Doing seasons allows the team to get together, shoot for a few months and wrap, like a 10 hour movie.
I think actors prefer few months of intense work per project a year, so they can do other stuff as well. If it's 3 to 5 days a week all year you're locked in too much.
Here is an episode of Lexicon Valley with an interview with David J. Peterson, the language creator for Game of Thrones. [1] The amount of depth that has been put into the Dothraki language is very impressive.
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/05/lexicon_valley_dothraki_and_valyrian_inventor_david_j_peterson_on_creating.html
I'm glad you didn't take offense to me making reference to the fallacy as I appreciate our conversation and wasn't sure how else to express that thought.
If you haven't done so, check out the source document for the article as Arstechnica didn't include some important details (and the headline "Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal" talks past what is actually happening): https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rawlsopinion.pdf
> ...but what if an ISP reports that files with those hashes have been downloaded by a particular IP address? ... but can't find the files the ISP says should be there.
I think this case is particular due to the lack of breaks in the chain. In your hypothetical, law enforcement and the prosecution have _vastly less information_ than in this actual case.
Law enforcement knew the path from a remote source, to (presumably dhcp lease based) ISP records, to the laptop that accessed the content (known to be the defendant's), to checksums in logs matching a physical drive (also known to be the defendant's). Coupled with other evidence, the defendant frustrating the process by pretending to no longer know the decryption phrase, and partial admissions of guilt by the defendant, this is a vast distance than a hypothetical case of "someone from this IP address downloaded Game of Thrones Season 1 from bittorrent, so hand over anything that can store bytes" (to use a far less disgusting crime to help keep emotion away from the discussion).
> Based on this precedent, I think another judge could find reasonable cause to compel in that scenario.
Luckily, the US justice system is built on nuance; this case wouldn't hold up as a generalizable excuse to compel decryption -- which is why they're invoking the foregone conclusion rule to secure the production of evidence based on the enormity of the other factors.
> In this hypothetical case, though, what if LE found OTHER files of child pornography? Would they be admissable?
I honestly don't know. In this case, the defendant is refusing to provide (multiple pieces of) evidence that is known to exist by checksum and direct file path.
> Alternatively, if they found other material (e.g, bomb-making), could it be used against him in a separate case?
Having information on how to construct a bomb is not illegal, any more than getting a degree in chemistry is illegal, but plotting to kill people with a bomb is legally actionable.
> I'm not sure I trust the government in either one of these situations.
I agree with you, but on a different shade of the argument. I'm suspicious that the ecosystem of justice is built on securing convictions as opposed to seeking objective truths. In this case, I support the government/court based on the information I have.
> As with so many other of the Constitutional protections of the Bill of Rights, they've slowly been chipped away in precisely these kinds of legal "corner cases."
I don't know which other cases to which you're referring, but the argument to be made here is that this isn't a corner case. This is having mathematical certainty that the defendant has evidence and is refusing to hand it over.
> Sue me for being paranoid.
No law against being paranoid :)
> but it's extraordinarily clear that shouldn't be happening in the first place, according The Constitution.
Actual question: where in the constitution is this clearly stated?
If you genuinely think that video games, 'memes', twitter messages, social media posts or vlogs are art at all, let alone art on the level of the fucking literary novel, literally the most artistic medium of all time, then you're part of the problem.
Classical music isn't 'almost dead'. The art of painting has never not been confined to museums and art galleries. Cinema most certainly has not be replaced with blockbusters - there have always been mass market blockbusters and films for the intelligent at the same time.
The TV series you claim have 'replaced what cinema used to be' are a far cry from art, the Breaking Bads are few and far between and rubbish like Game of Thrones (occasionally well-shot but very poor for at least the last three seasons) is not art.
> That was what irritated you most?
I've been engaged in stories with bad endings before. It's not the best but I understand why it happens. It's not going to completely sour my experience with the whole thing.
What I got was like if two final episodes of Game of Thrones were broadcast: one for people who have HBO through a cable bundle, and one for cord-cutting HBO Now users where more fan favorite characters die and the outcome for the realm(s) in general is worse. They don't tell you about these different broadcasts beforehand, so you get what you get and then are free to feel horribly betrayed at your leisure as you discover how your experience of the finale of a story you've been invested in for years is now irrevocably tainted.
Then, they release a Blu-Ray set that has both endings and some deleted scenes, and expect everyone to forgive them? Fuck no.
Try West World, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and Taboo and tell me they don't have feature-film-level production quality.
I really like Netflix originals (the ones I've watched), but it also makes me fear for the future of consolidated streaming. I want to be able to keep up with, and watch good recommended shows.
If I want to watch shows like The Man in the High Castle (Amazon), Game of Thrones (HBO, duh), Difficult People (Hulu), HarmonQuest (Seeso), etc. Is it reasonable to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services?
Don't get me wrong, $9,99 is likely too cheap to get mostly everything like you do with Spotify, but I'm willing to pay double or triple that, as long as I can keep it in one service, and that it's not five or six times as much, which is a bit steep.
Can we expect anything other than a fractured market, where each service has a lot of content, but not even half of what we want to see?
It's more like there was always a lot of pent-up supply of amazing content available. The reason the supply was not finding an outlet was because of the problem that such content doesn't have the mass appeal required to be a hit show on non-premium cable (or, god forbid, a theatrical release movie). So the outlets were limited. HBO was one such premium outlet but it was always limited by the number of primetime hours in the day because of the cable based business model (still is).
Netflix comes along and starts ordering shows where they know the target audience is going to be very limited, say only 10% of all college graduates from big metro areas. That's enough for a show to be Netflix success. Some of them they contract with US production companies (House of Cards, OIT New Black etc.), others they source from non-US TV networks (Sherlock, Black Mirror etc.)
If they have enough of these shows, they can cover most of their target audience and make sure that most people have at least a few original shows keeping them hooked to the $10/month subscription. There's no limit on airtime since Netflix is all on-demand. So now there are dozens (or who knows, even hundreds) of these shows and all they need for you is to get hooked on one or two of those. And a few of them have been legitimate breakout hits like House of Cards, Stranger Things, OITNB etc. Maybe individually none of those shows is as big as Game of Thrones, but combined, they're obviously doing a great job for Netflix.
For HBO to truly compete with Netflix, they'll have to break their "Cable first" model and truly start thinking in terms of unlimited online hours. We'll see when they release their first online only show.
This is not about the government "suppresing part of a film that is considered obscene" or "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable".
This is about you wanting to download movies or series without paying money to the people who made them. Movies or series that are completely legal to watch and sell in Australia, as long as you pay the people who worked to make them.
Too many people masquerade their freeloading as political activism to feel superior. Sticking it to the man, eh?
And once again I respect the right to download or upload whatever you want, but making it look like you're fighting the big brother censorship when you just want to watch game of thrones, a show that is completely legal to watch in Australia, without paying for it is... childish
Well I guess there are different kinds of science fiction - sci-fi that's obviously fiction and doesn't try to pretend to be realistic - Alien, Star Wars, etc. - I'm fine with this - it's just the author taking you in to his own fantasy world - just like Game of Thrones doesn't try to describe how dragons get to be aerodynamic or explain the white walkers superior strength by using dumbed down science.
Then there's Sci-Fi that's actually beleivable - like The Martian - I'm OK with this as well.
But then there's this pseudo-sciency trying to look serious while actually being BS part like Interstellar, The Arrival, etc. The main point of science there is not to be a fictional setting but trying to give a feeling of realism trough sci/techbabble. I don't even mind cheap sci-fi drama movies, for example I liked The Fountain, but when they try to pretend they are realistic that's what breaks the immersion for me completely because I start to critically evaluate the plot and it just falls apart.
I'm in your boat and was pretty disappointed by the initial incarnation of The Ringer.
I heard Bill say on a podcast that he had a different theory about where media had gone. It was faster, mobile and more immediate.
So the initial implementation of The Ringer seemed like short, trite pieces produced quickly. Like you'd get a dumb Game of Thrones piece within 15 minutes of an episode airing.
Thankfully, they seem to have backed off and gone back to long form, loving fan pieces with obscure links and embeds. For example, this Donald Glover piece: https://theringer.com/you-have-to-take-donald-glover-seriously-now-56363bf513d3#.i452f5fho
TLDR; I'm curious what you think of the more recent Ringer stuff. Because to me, it's so much better and is exactly why I loved the old Grantland.
Rushed, cramped, and thin characters are far too common in modern movies. I think it is a sign of the times that people going to movies want more depth and 2 hours isn't enough to tell a deep story.
While it has its flaws, the modern mini series (Game of Thrones, Daredevil) tell much better stories that are more compelling and have depth. (except The Walking Dead, they have some issues)
I would rather see a 6 hour series on Netflix that tells the Rogue One story than a single 2 hour flick with characters that I have no interest in.
I'm unsure it is possible to translate the Netflix-Marvel series' success to non-Earth stories, let alone to Star Wars. To have the deep stories that you enjoyed they need enough screen time to tell the stories. The 4 individual stories + 1 miniseries of the Defenders is supposed to be about $200 million [1]. That comes out to 26 + 13 + 13 + 13 + 7? = 72, which is $2.7 million per episode. This uses mostly existing sets and straightforward special effects. Star Wars in particular is commonly set aboard complex spaceships or vastly different alien worlds in the company of aliens and robots. Therefore the investment required to initiate this seems like it would be significantly higher.
Game of Thrones, for context of a series with both well known actors and amazing sets and effects, is about $10 million per episode. If we assume that a Star Wars series would cost about the same and it would take approximately a similar number of episodes to tell such a story, that would be $720 million. I might be wrong, but I don't think such an investment in film has never been done before.
I think it will depend greatly on both the continued success of the Marvel TV shows + how the remaining Star Wars films perform.
1: [Marvel’s Netflix Bound TV Shows To Cost A Whopping $200 Million](http://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/marvels-netflix-bound-tv-shows-cost-whopping-200-million/)
>TV just isn't a priority because the vast majority of it is pure trash.
>TV had it's heyday
I can tell you don't watch much TV. It's never been better. We're in a golden age of TV, it's just not on ESPN. There have recently been a lot of extremely high quality, hour long dramas, which basically amount to a movie every week. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Wire, arguably Westworld, to name a few.
Exactly. No one liked the Game of Thrones TV show before it existed, because, well, no one had tried it yet. The same is true about a lot of new shows, especially streaming funded.
And conversely, just because the audience likes a previous thing, does not mean they will like a soulless copy of that fed to them for the 6th time, even if available options and marketing kind of worked the first 5 times.
I really hate that school of product development. Thanks for reminding me ;)
We're starting to feel the pain a bit with the online unbundled alternatives, sure.
Right now, I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime (mostly for the shipping but it also has some shows I like), Crunchyroll. And I'm still missing things I want, which would require: Funimation, HBO Now, CBS. At that point, I'd be close to my old cable bill again, and still wouldn't have new content from AMC or Showtime. Would also love to have TV Japan, but if you think ESPN gouges you ... that requires satellite TV, the more expensive dish/receiver, and costs $25 a month for just that one channel!
I would welcome an ala carte system for shows, but only if they were reasonably priced. Definitely not paying $1 for a completely predictable episode of Modern Family or a "why is this still on the air?" Simpsons episode. But Real Time? Sure. Game of Thrones? I'd happily pay double. I may just start waiting until seasons end, sign up, binge watch a whole season in a month, and cancel.
I don't even think music has become reasonably priced yet. Sure it's $1 a song, but you're still paying $15 if you want the album. Even though they no longer have to make a CD, ship it to stores, and give a large markup to the retailer. And the MP3 is way lower quality than the lossless CD. Yet they still want the same price.
> It seems like consolidation was a lesson we learned a few decades ago and are in danger of forgetting.
Despite groans to the contrary, I don't think consolidation is the reason services like Netflix/etc. are so popular and why cable service is starting to become considered gauche.
I posit that it's entirely about:
1) The on-demand content that services like Netflix/etc. provide 2) To a lesser extent, the discoverability of content
I don't want to watch Game of Thrones on Sunday evening. I want to watch it now. I want to re-watch Ocean's Eleven tonight, not Thursday during the day. Netflix (in theory) helps me with that. Cable service doesn't.
I want to watch an action movie, and one that I can actually watch right now. Netflix helps me with that. Cable service doesn't, unless I just put on whatever the "action movie" channel is showing.
Hell, cable service providers try to offer some of this already - it's just that their selection sucks. It's either incredibly old movies, or movies that no one wanted to see the first time around. Or it's just the latest episode of a popular television show, or the first season and we're on season 12 now.
Again, despite what people might say I don't think they really want a la carte programming: They want a Spotify subscription for television and film.
>A service like Netflix that would augment real, current TV with a library of older shows/movies would have been worth a separate bill.
Yeah, for you (and me), as a customer. But what advantage is there for the content creator? You're not going to not watch Game of Thrones because it isn't on Netflix. You'll find a way. The content creators have (and in my opinion, rightfully so) the leverage.
While I'm sure it's not entirely Netflix's fault (media companies realizing their back catalog has a value), it seems to be a common evolution for movie services to move to providing their own content. Look at HBO. In the 1980s, it was all about showing movies (the name even meant "Home Box Office"). Now it is all about Game of Thrones and what not. With things like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, etc., that's what Netflix is doing as well.
Was disappointed to not see a days.to "Game of Thrones Season 7 premiere", so I requested adding it.
Ignoring everything else, Mr. Robot builds a spectacular atmosphere, which is an almost impossible task in television. This show is wonderful. I'd say it competes with Game of Thrones on quality and it's my favorite show right now.
They get the technical details right enough to earn respect. Sometimes you need to give artistic freedom to the writing as long as it doesn't devolve into a graphic of Pacman eating data. Gives you some meaningless pride when you see a protagonist empty a can of Pringles into the trash, knowing exactly what they are doing.
If someone has a problem with the series, my natural reaction at this point is that they're pretentious... it's not fair but imo really that's what all the criticism has boiled down to:
You noticed the heavily telegraphed twist? Good job! Gold star for you!
You're going to criticize a show with such wonderful atmosphere building for having long episodes? Wow, your time must be really important!
He uses the wrong text editor or Linux flavor? You must be a master, could you please fix my iPad?
The characters are flawed or mercurial? Could you please elaborate on the strengths of two-dimensional characters?
1. I find that one fairly easy to explain (easier than qualia, even). When we weigh decisions, we can use an internal model of ourselves to support our thought process. We can imagine ourselves doing X, evaluate the consequences a bit, assess how it feels, then imagine ourselves doing Y, and so on. Considering that our intuitive understanding of "I can do X" corresponds to "I can imagine my self-model doing X, and I don't see any external factors that would stop me," then our ability to evaluate multiple courses of action directly entails an impression of free will.
Now, this "free will" only corresponds to epistemic non-determinism about ourselves: "for all we know", we can do X, and we can also do Y, because if we knew we couldn't, we wouldn't be evaluating these possibilities. So in a sense, it is our self-model that has free will: it is the model that we imagine in various circumstances, but the model isn't the real thing. So our mistake is to assume that this property of the model is also a property of the real thing, i.e. that our epistemic uncertainty translates into some kind of metaphysical non-determinism.
I would expect that any decision system that can construct hypotheticals about itself would have an impression of free will, or a qualia of free will. They may not necessarily be able to express it, or to feel it as vividly as we do, but they would have it.
2. I know the point you are trying to make, but where you see a reductio ad absurdum I just see a lack of imagination. Our usual understanding of consciousness is very, very, very deeply anthropomorphic. Neither the Internet nor the USA are systems that have a human or animal consciousness, that much is clear. "But what about consciousness in general?" Man, I'm sorry to be blunt here, but you wouldn't know it even if it hit you in the face. We're human. We have human consciousness. Our idea of consciousness outside of the exact thing that we have is: fuck. all.
We can start with Leibniz's thought experiment they mention in the article, where a gigantic brain is built out of gears and pipes. Or the similar thought experiment about the "China brain" which emulates a human brain by using one person to emulate each neuron. To me, it is clear that both of these things would, in fact, be conscious. I see no good reason to think otherwise and I am perfectly content biting that bullet. I have zero reservations, even intuitively.
Now, regarding something like an "USA consciousness". Personally, I do not think this is bizarre. It's only bizarre under an anthropomorphic view of consciousness, or to put it in an other way, it's only bizarre if you believe that conscious entities ought to be relatable (an absurd expectation). But if you use the criteria I've given, you can find several things that would correspond to "USA's qualia". For example, 9/11 caused large structural changes that you could interpret as the USA feeling a qualia of fear and/or anger. A new episode of Game of Thrones may also be a qualia of sorts. Makes perfect sense to me.
Perhaps that's not evidence to you, but I don't know what more you'd expect. I think you conflate consciousness with human consciousness, so you only perceive consciousness when it's similar enough to your own. If I may indulge in a silly (but, I think, accurate) comparison, it's a bit like a shoemaker conflating craftsmanship with shoemaking, and then saying there is no evidence that a boatsman is a craftsman, because they've never seen them make shoes.
The "sensible argument" is that ads allow small "content creators" to "monetize" their content.
I think this is mostly a fallacy. I know of many developers, bloggers, musicians, film makers, etc who put their content out into the public domain because that's what they want to do. There are "monetizing" opportunities above and beyond advertising that seem to work well, but the lowest common denominator, and by inference, the lowest form of media, are generally ad-driven.
People argue with "yeah, but what about game of thrones and silicon valley". I reply with "yeah, but what about keeping up with the kardashians, jersey shore and the latest CSI franchise".
The gold / dross ration is 1 / 99. We can easily lose most of the ad driven content in the world without losing entertaining content.
I may be a statistical aberration though. I'm obviously not the "target audience".
Depends on who you view as "the market".
There's zero competition in the distribution/publishing side of things for a movie - i.e a retailer can't choose to buy Star Wars from anyone other than Disney, or the Bourne films from anyone other than Universal.
They have no potential incentive to be more responsive to market demands. Market Segmentation is a great way to ensure the highest revenue per sale, so they sell it into each market for as much as the market will support.
Then there's exclusivity arrangements in the online side of things - so I can't get (say) Game of Thrones on Netflix.
In Australia I have to subscribe to Foxtel and pay a fortune for premium channels, and if I want to watch it online, well, I can get a pretty crummy quality stream in some other painful to use app. Or I can wait 12 months and buy it on DVD/Bluray, which are still only 1080p.
The distributors/publishers are free to fix that, today, if they wanted to - but they don't.
So griping about "regulations, laws and cronyism" doesn't ring true. (Well, maybe the last)
You think as founder you don't have to deal with that? Oh boy, you're in for quite a few surprises. And how do you learn about how to handle this if you work at more established companies?
It's the kind of thing we all already know of because of tv shows like game of thrones. But experiencing and actually handling it is another topic.
Japan has been captivating to Westerners since at least the days of Commodore Perry. But in this era, the "hook" was probably some form of anime, video game, or manga. In the 1980s, most television animation was utter crap, churned out by studios like Hanna-Barbera and intended to sell toys and keep the kiddos busy on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Very little thought was given to story or characterization, and episodes were always self-vontained half hours (if that).
To a kid growing up in this time, Robotech (with its long-form structure, complex characters, and real death of major, beloved characters) was fucking Game of Thrones.
This same generation would grow up with Nintendo and Sega, and all the Japanese-originated games on those platforms. So it's not surprising that as young adults we would becone attached to the culture which produced all this stuff.
I don't own a TV and have never had cable. I have no idea what's currently on television. I don't really care to watch shows as they happen, in the general case; I'm fine watching them at the end of the season (or all at once from the beginning, the way Netflix does their shows). There are very few shows I'd be extra excited to get as they air (Game of Thrones is the only one that comes to mind, and I would pay to watch it in a reasonable way online, but HBO doesn't provide a reasonable way to do so).
Netflix has historically been my favorite of the available options; but their selection, particularly movies but also shows, has gotten pretty weak in recent years, so I always vaguely consider alternatives. But, mostly I just end up renting via Amazon Instant Video when it's something that Netflix and Prime don't have.
> You only have the right to view something if someone who created that wants you to view it.
There are a number of ways I can view something against the wishes of the copyright holder, thus reducing their monetary income. Are all of these wrong?
You already mentioned the case of me describing something to other people. The NFL has a (probably unenforceable) disclaimer for the Super Bowl that says, "any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
Buying used is often quite cheap. The creator doesn't see a dime. There's no guarantee that the seller of the used item won't use that money to buy something else used instead of new. Is that wrong? Is the creator entitled to a large market of new buyers?
Format shifting is convenient for the customer but not the creator. For example, I bought Advance Wars on the Game Boy around 15 years ago. I've since backed up my copy (trivial to make your own backup with a flashcart). Now, Nintendo sells it on the Virtual Console for 8 bucks. If I play my backed up copy on a hacked Wii U, they're out 8 bucks. Is that wrong? Is the creator entitled to have every customer re-buy media for every new platform they want to consume on? The RIAA says that backing up a CD to an iPod is wrong: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/02/riaa-says-ripping-cds-your-ipod-not-fair-use
Buying in other countries is often cheaper. Look at textbooks for a prime example. When I was in college, I paid $20 for a legit copy of my physics textbook from India printed on poor-quality paper with a cheap binding; the content was exactly the same as the American textbook. Was that wrong? Some people even buy books in bulk in cheap countries and sell them in America for profit. Wiley sued a Thai guy for doing this, made it to the Supreme Court, and LOST. Are creators entitled to segment markets in this way? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/how-an-ebay-bookseller-defeated-a-publishing-giant-at-the-supreme-court/
Renting something instead of buying it reduces profit. Did you know that video game rental is illegal in Japan? Should it be illegal in the US too? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3xuy5YALl0
Lots of people watch stuff with a friend. I had a friend with HBO Go, and we had Game of Thrones night where three or four of us would watch it together. Should we have bought individual accounts?
Some media is paid for by ads. I use an adblocker in my browser. My grandma mutes the TV and goes to the fridge during commercials. Is that wrong?
Some works don't get published in foreign markets. Lots of old video games, TV shows, movies, and books are only officially released in one language, and are never translated by the creator for any number of reasons: lack of interest in the market, lack of money for translation, attachment to the "integrity" of the original work, etc. Unofficial translation violates copyright law, at least in the US. Say a work is only available in Japan, and in Japanese. Is it wrong for someone to translate it to English? Is it wrong for someone from the US to pirate the translated work, when that person would never have bought the work in its original translation and is region-locked from buying it anyway?
My Google news feed also spoiled my TV watching. There was a news story about the final episode of Game of Thrones, and the title of the story was enough to spoil something that happened in the episode.
One one hand I agree with you. On the other hand, looking at how far movie/tv FX has come, like http://nerdist.com/amazing-game-of-thrones-battle-of-the-bastards-vfx-reel-features-skeleton-horses/ - I'm not so sure.
10 years ago, the state of the art was something like Nvidia 8800 gtx - it looks like the recently launched 1080 is a handwavy 4-10x in terms of performance[b]. ~10x the RAM, but not bandwidth etc. Having recently(ish) upgraded from early 2000s system to an i7 with an AMD R9 -- I would anecdotally claim that we've come quite a long ways in ~10 years. Even if part of that is "just" making 2k-4k gaming a reality.
I think it is a little bit like optimization of performance. Small changes in aliasing, changes in resolution, refresh rate -- they all add up to move us closer to "the real". And I think one shouldn't ignore the work done on the modelling, skeleton, animation and physics side either. It all helps make artificial worlds feel "more real".
With all that, I don't really see why "realistic" is such an interesting goal. For simulation (be that virtual tourism, or a driving simulator helping people become better real world drivers) - sure. The tourist want beautiful scenery, the driver wants real physics (and neither would mind getting both).
But for gaming -- chess isn't very realistic, go is rather abstract and tabletop roleplaying games have the best graphics engine - shared with literature - the human imagination.
https://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=1701&gid2=879&compare=geforce-gtx-1080-vs-geforce-gtx-785
> Yep. TV's are not great at conveying radio plays. But, that's all people could think of to do with them initially. Turns out they are better for content like Game of Thrones.
I get what you're saying, but I think that's a rather terrible way to contrast radioplays and content made for TV. The experience of watching "Game of Thrones" isn't that different from listening to the BBC radioplay of "Lord of the Rings"[r]. I think "The Wire" or "Generation Kill" might be better examples of things that I think work better on TV, than I can imagine them doing on the radio. Or maybe "The Expanse" or even "Firefly".
Doesn't mean I don't like "Game of Thrones", I love the adaptation - but with its many characters and demanding storyline (even for those of us that have read the books) - I don't know. Somehow, while it is a beautiful production, I think it could've worked with a similar script for radio.
[l] Apparently the original series, in its 13 episode format isn't available to download/buy - if I understand it correctly the following Amazon link is to the remaster: https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Ring-Dramatised/dp/B000VTQAVS/ See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_%281981_radio_series%29#Re-release_in_2002
A search did turn up this: https://soundcloud.com/inkmore/sets/lord-of-the-rings-radio
Which I assume should probably be taken down due to copyright infringement.
In Croatia, you can only get HBO via a select few ISPs (like ~half of them). If you’re at a different ISP, you’re out of luck. I actually bothered a friend who is at a “compatible ISP” to subscribe to the HBO packet and share their HBO GO password with me; I was ready to pay my friend to watch Game of Thrones! (They told my friend that you have to sign a contract for 12/24 months and I didn’t want to put my friend through that whole process, so I went “Fuck it” and started downloading the episodes via torrent.)
I tried HBO, I tried!
>in europe most of the the time if you turn on the tv you _will_ find the same stuff. Holliwood movies, Game of thrones, Kommissar Rex, the borgias, eurovision song contest, european football championships, local versions of "the billionaire" or "big brother" etc.
That list sounds more of a reason to being done with Europe rather than an argument for its shared culture.
in europe most of the the time if you turn on the tv you _will_ find the same stuff.
Holliwood movies, Game of thrones, Kommissar Rex, the borgias, eurovision song contest, european football championships, local versions of "the billionaire" or "big brother" etc.
Did you grow up in southern europe in the '80s? Then you probaly watched the same dubbed animes like "Captain Tsubasa". In eastern europe? Same, but this time it was Krtek. Are you a kid now? Then you are likely watching Masha & The Bear across the whole continent.
That's impressive...I submitted this clip from So You Think You Can Dance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLtSfYX8tJk
The results:
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif/gif.fcgi/gif/TLtSfYX8tJk
...and while it's debatable which of the segments are most interesting (the performance has a lot of highlights), at least all of the extracts are of actual dancing action, and none consist of cheering-crowd-announcer shots.
edit: Just tried it with the Game of Thrones Season 6 trailer:
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif/gif.fcgi/gif/EI0ib1NErqg
The first 2 GIFs have decent action...the other 4 are relative duds in terms of action...but I do like the shot of Tyrion simply holding a torch in the darkness.
" I do believe this is a big part of why they call us millennials the entitled generation. We literally expect everything for free. From our game of thrones TV shows to our favorite blogs, podcasts and websites. They all exist to entertain us and fuck them for wanting to make a dollar off their hard work. How dare they... "
Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth. I wholeheartedly agree.
I remember talking with a non-technical friend of mine about Bandcamp and how he was annoyed that his popular free album had hit the limit of free downloads on the site. He would have to either pay Bandcamp or start charging for the album. Presumably Bandcamp does this because the cost of their infrastructure and work is not free and this is a way to get some revenue. But all my friend could say was "how greedy they are!" as if one spent their life acquiring a hard skill just to do free work for you and your band.
Its a more nuanced entitlement, where we millenials understand that it took hard work to make something, but after all, doesn't Google, Facebook, etc. do it "for free" as far as the end user is concerned?
I really dislike this train of thought and where it leads. Sure, everyone hates ads and would do without them if possible. But people forget; ads subsidize most "free" content. It has been this way for 60+ years, probably more. You know when your grandmother tuned in to watch Howdy Doody? It was always "brought to you by: Palmolive Dish Soap and Ovaltine!". Their ads during commercial breaks paid for that show. Back then there were no dvd sales, no streaming online contracts, advertisers paying for airtime to air entertainment programs was a fairly straightforward affair. Or did you think broadcasting companies created that content, then aired it for free out of altruism?
I do believe this is a big part of why they call us millennials the entitled generation. We literally expect everything for free. From our game of thrones TV shows to our favorite blogs, podcasts and websites. They all exist to entertain us and fuck them for wanting to make a dollar off their hard work. How dare they...
She's just being treated as a bro. Dudes are just immature like that. The touching is different though but I won't address that. Anyway to give my explanation more color, let me tell you about one of my "bro" friends.
We go to college together and we always make fun of each other for our differing tastes in TV shows. He likes pokemon, which I think is for little kids or adults with developmental problems while I like game of thrones, which he thinks is a show only liked by people who enjoy watching penises on television as the show periodically flashes one into your face for no reason. We make fun of each other about this all the time because we're bros, in manspeak this means we're just close friends.
I've had worse pranks played on me by said bro. One day I left my computer unattended and unlocked. He took control of my computer, changed the background to a giant wet penis; Took a screenshot of the page; made that screenshot the background then proceeded to hide all the icons and menu bars on my desktop. The end result was essentially what appeared to be a frozen computer screen with the background replaced by a huge penis. I thought it was some crazy virus as even restarting my computer didn't work. I spent the next ten minutes trying to debug the situation all the while staring at a giant penis. Funniest thing ever, we both got a good laugh out of it.
I mean this prank could be interpreted as inappropriate depending on the situation and person, but the point is neither me nor my friend would be willing to treat each other so "inappropriately" if we didn't feel close.
So in short, both sides have made social errors. Their actions were immature and they failed take into regard your discomfort as a woman, while the OP misinterpreted their intentions as sexist.
The resolution to this situation is easy. Ask him to stop... or join in on the fun. Openly declare their tastes in baseball as stupid and mindless. How could any sport be more boring? Everyone would've definitely got a good laugh if you were the one who pulled off that remote control prank.
You must also keep in mind that you are still in a situation where majority rules and you must honor that situation as you're the only person who wants to watch friends, it would be disproportionately unfair if they catered to your tastes instead of the majority.
Whatever the OP chooses to do I honestly believe that her coworkers actions were not intentionally discriminatory.
I would turn the question the other way: are movie publishers going to give up the distribution over internet / playback on anything connected to the internet?
I very much doubt it. They are never going back to physical discs and require their customers to drive to shop and buy a physical copy. Heck, right now companies like Netflix fight hard in order to be able to be present in the web browser.
On the other hand, I see adapting a so keep your Game of Thrones for yourself attitude somewhat more realistic. There are already people like that.
I'm with you except the very last assertion:
> Again, users don't care about DRM. Because they don't understand it. If they did, they would reject DRM-enabled products.
I understand DRM in great detail (as CTO of a streaming film company), and though I would in principal like to reject it, I have no basis to do so except illegal piracy. Theoretically if all the customers stood up and boycotted DRM we could have an effect, but in practice that would mean not being able to see the latest premium content for some period of time. Are people really going to give up their Game of Thrones to strong arm the industry? I can't foresee any universe where that would happen regardless of the users' understanding and savviness.
edit: it's amazing how this provokes a flurry of replies, none of which address my point at all. I am not making any positive claims about DRM. I am simply asking: how are you going to mobilize customers to boycott DRM?
I did the same thing last night! I fired up the overwatch trailer for my girlfriend and started crying quite a bit. Then I put on the Soldier 76 clip, and cried even more.
How much did you cry during the last episode of Game of Thrones? I was gasping for air between the sobs!
Fascinating dataset. I think ending a long term, long distance relationship (and then finding out he was married all along), probabaly skewed this dataset upwards.
Last time I cried was watching the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. And then watching YouTube reaction videos of that episode, a little less crying with each video. Hodor...
It happens when people use the mod system to vote their position on a topic. I'm guilty of this, and I do think "agile", as a noun in quotation marks, has gone badly wrong.
A lot of us have just gotten really burned. It's immensely fair of people who do stand behind agile methods to object to the mischaracterization of agile as a set of micromanagement techniques. But to a lot of us, that is now our experience with "agile." A daily "standup" where a team lead (who often doesn't write code) asks for a progress report and follows it up questions about whether this means we'll still meet our deadlines, followed perhaps by questions about what we can do to make sure we still meet them. You're welcome to say that this isn't what agile intended, that it is a corruption. I'd agree, completely.
The real disagreement here will be whether "agile" methods are inherently unstable enough to invite this sort of corruption. The notion of daily standup is just so tempting for people who wish to micromanage, deny developers autonomy that can't be measured in daily increments, and apply deadline pressures. In many ways, they may be scratching their heads that the developers themselves proposed this arrangement, but ok, sure!
I just finished watching a game of thrones episode, evidently the plan here is to invite an outside army in, order your own army to stand down, have the outside army to put down a rebellion, ask them to leave, then reassume power? What could possibly go wrong?
Hmm, does it count to use things that are not so much to do with the course?
For example, if a guy is able to answer questions at all times of day, really fast, they're either an AI or Jon Skeet.
Also, real TAs have a life outside of the course. What will an AI say when you ask them whether they enjoyed last night's episode of Game of Thrones?
Hey everyone, look!
We're getting ripped off!
Here's how they're doing it!
We're all in this together!
We have the high ground!
Here's what we have to do!
Look another episode of Game of Thrones is on!!
Who's fucking who?
Its all entertainment. I.e. meaningless bullshit. Its equivalent to the guys who review the latest episode of game of thrones for 3 hrs and have 10 hrs or random analysis lined up for the rest of the week till the next episode appears. When I see the time and effort Americans put into their pop culture its like watching aliens from another planet. And they all have so much to say, with such eloquence and speed about essentially nothing just blows my mind.
If my friends and family literally talk about Game of Thrones or Star Wars every day, do you think I'm just going to voluntarily exclude myself from my own community in order to protect the wealth of some small cabal halfway across the world?
If something is so good that your friends and family literally talk about it every day and you'd feel left out if you didn't participate, is it asking too much to actually buy it and support those who make it? A show like GoT has thousands of people involved in making it, many of them working on it full time for months. Paying for it legitimately is not just paying for "some small cabal halfway across the world".
If recent rumours are to be believed, even the mighty GoT is now facing an abbreviated ending because while it's been successful it's also been extremely expensive to make. This suggests that despite the optimistic spin the show's producers have often put on being so widely pirated, it still isn't getting enough actual financial support to keep going with full 10-episode seasons, which would be a real shame for all the fans who do pay for it.
Let's assume that sitcoms aren't a complete travesty of expressive form to begin with. Just for the sake of argument, just for a minute.
You know, there is the option to just stop watching TV. If, after skipping all the series that you don't find relevant to your life, you find there is nothing left to watch, then just turn it off. Nothing compels you to watch TV.
You want to talk about class struggles, how about the modern depiction of feudal systems as fundamentally good, if not for a few "bad apples"? Disney/Pixar movies are particularly bad for this. I like to think the White Walkers in Game of Thrones are an allegory for democracy and capitalism, that as the aristocracy send more commoners to clash against the inevitable, unstoppable wave, it just creates more corpses and more converts.
There is so much freely available content out there to spend your time on that you don't have to be beholden to the major production firms. Stop watching network television. They have perversely skewed incentives. It's like people who pass a local restaurant they've never heard of to go to McDonald's. Why not take a chance on a burger that will probably be better, rather than go eat a the burger you know, that you know will be shitty?
There is a giant possible Game Of Thrones spoiler from last night's episode in the image of this article. Be warned. I haven't watched the episode yet but now I'm rather annoyed.
From the article: "If a hypothetical 200-pound man added 60 minutes of medium intensity running four days per week while keeping his calorie intake the same, and he did this for 30 days, he'd lose five pounds. 'If this person decided to increase food intake or relax more to recover from the added exercise, then even less weight would be lost,' Hall added. (More on these 'compensatory mechanisms' later.)
So if one is overweight or obese, and presumably trying to lose dozens of pounds, it would take an incredible amount of time, will, and effort to make a real impact through exercise.”
OK. I exercise more than that every month and have for years. It's painless to do because it's the only time I spend watching TV shows like Game Of Thrones--I look forward to my exercise sessions.
So, this article is telling me that (unless I exhibit compensatory mechanisms' such as eating more than I do), and if I started at 200 lbs, I'd lose 5 lbs a month, just doing what I actually want to do (because I enjoy watching entertaining TV shows like GoT). I'd go from 200 lbs to not being overweight in less than a year. The article's take on this is "it would take an incredible amount of time , will, and effort to make a real impact through exercise". That seems like an incredible amount of negative spin the authors are trying to put on it. To me, it sounds like a fantastic deal. And one I've taken advantage of.
My own weight loss path is pretty complicated, but I was at 225 and now my weight stays between 173 and 183, generally up and down depending on life events and whether I have temporarily keep more sodas in the fridge than I normally do.
EDIT: I just want to emphasize that the key for me is that I enjoy my exercise sessions, because I look forward to watching the most entertaining TV produced in the English language. So it takes almost no will power or effort. It's a matter of choosing not to watch that TV when not exercising, which gets to be a habit--similar to not picking up an apple pie every time I go to the grocery store so there's no such pie sitting around the house. If if DID take willpower and effort to do that exercise, I probably wouldn't do it! It helps enormously that I have an elliptical trainer in the house. But that's a small investment compared to the health benefits--not just weight loss and maintenance, but the fact that exercising is great for the brain, and many other benefits as well, including a reduction in cancer risk.
EDIT 2: I don't even know if I'd find that TV all that enjoyable if I wasn't exercising. I can imagining thinking "why am I wasting this time watching this crap when I could be doing something useful??" But when exercising, there are so many benefits that I give myself total permission to watch it, and I do enjoy it!
I also used to be one of them, until I formed the meta-conspiracy-theory.
What if conspiracy theory sites and groups are just part of a conspiracy that exists to monitor, marginalize, and distract conspiracy theorists? What if the only thing that gives the conspiracy any power at all is the weight of the conspiracy theories behind it?
And that's when I spackled over the cracks in my pot, stopped looking for evidence of malicious intent in everything, and washed my hands of all of it.
I still think that there is a massive international conspiracy of rich and powerful individuals, but I also believe that they don't have nearly as much control as anyone thinks they have, including themselves. They have the illusion of control.
For instance, they can propel lobbying efforts to pass trade deals which would "normalize" copyright in 20+ different countries, and then everyone just ignores it and torrents the latest episode of Game of Thrones anyway. They can buy up all the newspapers, and then everyone suddenly stops reading them, so they all have to merge or go bankrupt. They lobby for strict environmental controls, to preserve their huge tracts of land. People subtly cheat or blatantly and overtly break the law whenever the cops aren't watching. Or the vendors cheat on behalf of their customers, just to stay in business. They can manipulate currencies and equities and get even richer, but a hired cook will still piss in their morning coffee or feed them a slice of doodoo pie.
The conspiracy theorists may actually be supporting them, by ascribing to them powers and abilities that they do not actually possess. When the elites gather in Davos, they aren't plotting the future course of the world economy, like everyone thinks. They're patting themselves on the back, getting drunk, doing drugs, and cheating on their spouses in posh hotel rooms, all the while toasting the fact that the proles hadn't erected the guillotines since the last meeting. They remind themselves how important they are, and then return to the world that will briefly roll its eyes at them before getting back to the work it was already doing.
Project had been in hibernation mode since this HN thread, which already has some interesting discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7711961
For examples with some activity, check out House of Cards Season 2 or Game of Thrones Season 4.
First thing that came to mind: Game of Thrones.
I imagine episodes would be 10 minutes long and you'd have no idea what's happening. Not saying they don't go over the top at times, but the brutality of a show like GoT is a very powerful illustration tool, and filtering out bits and pieces because they make you uncomfortable would ruin the entire purpose of the show.
I'm sure some people will find use for this tool, but I will likely forgo.
Hi, Thanks for making this, it looks useful! Just a note to say I think the search function needs to be a little more comprehensive.
For example, if I search 'star wars' it tells me the 2008 movie is available on Netflix (but ignores the others in the series). It picks 'the Simpsons' up as the Simpsons movie but doesn't talk to series and doesn't recognise 'game of thrones' or 'always sunny in Philadelphia' (although maybe they aren't available?) - either way; perhaps including the itunes store would be useful (I know they have GoT about the same as release date, so you can basically stream legally by buying per episode or season)
Otherwise the site looks very functional and clean, well done!
Cry me a river. Honestly, you're not going to share interests with everyone.
I'm a white guy. If I go to lunch with a bunch of manager or sales guys, and they start talking about sports, I'm going to have exact same problem. I don't give two shits about sports, and I think spectator sports are incredibly stupid. So if I find myself in a group of sports fans, then I'm also going to feel that I don't have much in common with these people. Does that mean they're a bunch of racists? Obviously not; we simply don't share the same culture. If the conversation shifts to technology, or sci-fi, or Game of Thrones (a lot of people are into that these days), etc., then I'll be able to join in, but if the sports fans aren't into talking about that stuff over lunch, then I'm out of luck. I'm not going to whine much about it, except maybe for making some snide remarks about how stupid sports fans are, but I'm certainly not going to go on a crusade about it.
Luckily, I usually get along pretty well with coworkers this way, but I guess engineers tend not to be sports fanatics as much as the general population. But I certainly have found myself in situations with groups of people with very different interests than myself. I didn't make a big deal out of it; I know that my interests are a little more narrow and that I eschew many things that regular people like (sports, popular TV shows aside from GoT), so I try to find people I do share interests with.
> Look at TV before Netflix/iTunes/etc. came along.
I think that undermines your point: Netflix and iTunes are paid content channels. TV used to be freely broadcast over the airwaves (still is, but used to be too) and needed to earn money exclusively from advertising.
Netflix and iTunes were not the beginning of that trend. It started when cable TV came along, and began selling subscription access to content like HBO, Showtime, etc. which have no ads. The differentiator with Netflix and iTunes was the ability to stream TV over the Internet, and consequently pay for it without bundling it into cable, and paying for individual shows/movies a la carte.
It's also taken a while for Netflix and Amazon to begin offering their own premium content. HBO has been in operation since the 1970s, though to be fair its critical mass really began in 1999 with The Sopranos. Netflix introduced streaming TV in 2007 and received its first real primetime Emmy nominations for its own content in 2013 (House of Cards)
In 2015, HBO received 126 Primetime Emmy nominations (Game of Thrones), the most of any network, a spot HBO has held for 15 years in a row according to NYT. That year, Netflix received 34 nominations and the nascent Amazon Studios garnered 12 (Transparent).
If this is indeed forced by content creators, I think it is counter productive. They will just give more incentive to Netflix (and Amazon and others) to create they own content, as third part content lose them money.
Perssonal view: the "Original Netflix Content" sign already give me a more value perception. Between a recycled TV show and a new one by Netflix, I always chose the new on by Netflix. So far I watched all of: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Making a Murderer, House of Cards, Narcos, Sense8, Bloodline, Orange is the new black, Master of None, Better Call Saul.
And I'll probably keep watching the next seasons of all of them.
Outside of Netflix, I only follow the very best ones (IMO): Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad (that's over) and Walking Dead.
What this means? I consume only the very best hits that these other content creators produce. For casual, day-to-day entertainment, that covers 90% of the time, I stay with Netflix.
> Since when does one being able to talk about yesterday's Game of Thrones episode become some kind of divine "cultural right"?
More like I want to pay to watch today's Game of Thrones and I don't see why I'm not able to do so.
> It's not entitlement to want to be able to participate in the dominant cultural trends (made dominant by consolidation and advertising).
That sounds pretty entitled to me.
Since when does one being able to talk about yesterday's Game of Thrones episode become some kind of divine "cultural right"?
Countries are an instrument of discrimination. Denying access to culture is one of the milder aspects. People born in the wrong country are locked out of many rights others take for granted, even human rights. The nation state system is inherently immoral because it sets up castes of people by birth with little recourse for moving to a higher caste. That's why i think democratic forces will eventually get rid of the concept of independent sovereign states and lead to a globally harmonized system of human rights and obligations. And maybe then we'll finally all be able to watch the new game of thrones episodes at the same time as americans.
Mom: "We got Sky now, so many channels and we get the newest Soccer and Movies!"
GF: "Oh nice... so where can I choose the movies?"
Mom: "You select the movie channel at 20:15 and it shows it"
GF: "What? I that's in four hours! Who pays a company to wait? This sounds like Netflix in bad to me..."
Classic cable TV is basically dead.
First Netflix&co had better airing times (on demand, haha) and now they invest in better shows.
Besides Rick and Morty and Game of Thrones, every show I watched last year, was made by Netflix or Amazon.
And this seems to be a good thing. Just look at stuff like orange is the new black. These new producers are far less conservative than the old media companies.
No, it's community service-- just with people that are willing to go a bit further than the archive. There's also an amount of pride associated with being well known for quick releases like ettv or rartv -- or with having the smallest encoding like yify or nezu or something.
Game of Thrones is a good example. Everyone loves GOT, right? Shit some people even read the books. But you can only watch GoT if you have an HBO subscription right? Up until this year I think (?) that meant you had to be a US resident, with a physical cable subscription, and HBO service. What about people in fucking Thailand? Should they not get to watch GoT even though the whole internet is posting memes and whatever all over the place?
Or what about Django Unchained, lots of people in China went to see that film in theatres in China... minus about half an hour of edited footage. These Tarantino fans cannot legally obtain the entire version of the newest movie from their favorite director. Does that seem fair? Pirates to the rescue.
Most groups do accept bitcoin donations, but I have no clue how much that actually nets.
Honestly, it's just like a library, no clue why people get so worked up about free books, movies, music, etc. The only issue I really see is prereleases -- like cams and especially dvd screeners of films still in theatres, those can do some serious profit damages.
I fully plan on downloading this new star wars shit when it comes out. I also fully plan on going to see it in theatres because _that_ is what a movie is -- I spend 30 bucks on new movies wvery month. I download Ozzy music. I also paid fucking 150 pounds to see him in concert.
The war on pirates is just a pointless exercise by do-gooders with superiority complexes that for some reason think that copyright law as it stands is reasonable and are somehow deluded into thinking that the revenue stream of entertainment is working in a reasonable fashion. In reality that 10$ you spend on a DVD is just 10$ going into the hands of a corporation that does not actually produce anything but just runs around frantically trying to justify its own existence -- usually by harassing fans like this.
> Indians also face the choice of torrenting a movie or paying to see a possibly censored version of the same film. Paying to see an uncensored version of say Game of Thrones is not possible.
this. i would rather torrent an uncensored version of a program than pay for censored version of the same thing
Not mentioned is Indians also face the choice of torrenting a movie or paying to see a possibly censored version of the same film. Paying to see an uncensored version of say Game of Thrones is not possible.
Some newspapers talk about upcoming shows that might not even be available on Indian TV as they assume some middle class will torrent: https://twitter.com/b50/status/681673141593227264
The apps are also crappy quality, many just being wrappers for YouTube channels. The reviews are somehow worse than YouTube comments. Even their "top" charts have random crap in it like "FreeFlix Free Movies" or "Free Mp3 Downloader". For a while, MS was extremely uncooperative with trademark issues (Netflix had to get fake Netflix apps removed several times; other ISVs reported MS just wouldn't respond at all, even on well-known and obvious scam apps.)
Even now, searching for "Game of Thrones" leads to a scam $5 paid app that doesn't even have a website.
MS actually paid to help create this scenario. They were offering $100 or $200 per app for shovelware.
There seems to be zero QC or curation or any sense of class in the Windows Store. So they get the downsides of a closed platform, with the downsides of just letting people publish crap. Even Google Play is better.
It really does because it sort of treats each season as a story.
Game of Thrones works sort of the same way.The first several episodes are clearly just setting the plot up, which I find boring. There is no pay off. It's actually pretty terrible to watch week to week.
But shows like Mad Men or the Leftovers really require an episode by episode approach. They each have a story to tell. The seasons and series have arcs, but each episode is also story line.
> In what mesure does a podcast compliment a proper article?
People have been known to enjoy both the Game of Thrones books and the television series.
You could transcribe a Louis C.K. hour long show and read it in 15 minutes, but you would lose a lot.
I've been getting into opera over the last few years - the way I think of it, as my tastes in fiction and television have gone more toward the epic (Game of Thrones, Mad Men, etc) I've hungered for bigger/deeper musical experiences.
A list created in 2001 naturally misses some amazing resources. Robert Greenberg's epic "How to Listen to and Understand Opera" is a wonderful, approachable primer to the subject and is a steal for 1 Audible credit (about $15 on the cheapest plan).
Amazon Prime video has a solid collection of free video - I happily paid $25 for the version of Cosi Fon Tutte they have freely available - and you can practically find the entire operatic repertoire on YouTube. The Met Opera has a well reviewed streaming service - http://www.metopera.org/Season/On-Demand/Learn-More/.
And this is lame, but even the best Blu-Ray performance/recording can't match the experience of live opera yet. I'm actually fascinated to see if VR narrows the gap, but there's currently not anything like feeling the performers' presence, hearing the unique acoustics of a world class hall. And opera crowds, while usually greying, often add a lot to the experience - there's something about sharing the experience, like being at a movie on opening weekend.
Its the fundamental flaw with our broken copyright system. HBO should do fund-raisers for new seasons of Game of Thrones each year, to the sum of whatever amount covers costs + profits they want. Then the finished product can be public domain. If they are worried about year to year revenue they can do a rolling campaign, and episodes are produced when revenue is generated to pay for them.
You can still do investorships in such relationships - an investor can pay for the pilot, and then the studio can charge a surplus on future episodes to reimburse the investor. The risk is in how popular the series will be, and that is the risk the investor assumes - you just need to offer them enough of future episode profits to entice them.
They could still hold a trademark on the series so nobody could impersonate them, but if someone else wanted to take Song of Ice and Fire and make a tv series nothing would stop them as long as they aren't impersonating HBO or George R.R. Martin.
This whole disaster around licensing produced works is hell and a huge burden on society and culture, and this is one spec is a sea of immorality around it.
I live in the UK and I like the film rating system.
I've heard from people in the anime industry that the cost of rating is one of the reasons it's often cheaper to import DVDs from America than to get non-import DVDs.
Getting a certificate for a 650-minute DVD box set costs £4833 - and if you sell 1000 copies you've got middle-of-the-pack sales figures. So £4.83 of the sale price goes on getting it rated. Needless to say, you ain't going to be selling those box sets for the £15 a game of thrones season 1 box set costs!
IMO there is a limited market for mature ideas that is often much smaller than the previous prediction. When startups start meeting this boundary, instead of reigning in expectations and become an efficient tool serving a small market, it's "go big or go bust" with desperate attempts to validate the previous market size predictions.
Sooner or later, you're bumping into the markets of other companies and it's impossible to compete against them b/c you're using your weaknesses against their strengths.
There is only so much money and attention (time) in the world for people to spend on things. The low hanging fruit in developed countries has already been plucked clean so it's quite hard to 'grow' new markets. Your new tv series better be REALLY good if you're competing with game-of-thrones and breaking-bad.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese companies actually have many more features and are often better (for their users) than the american counterparts. The population is more homogenous and has more of a crowd mentality. Network effects are huge. Monopoly-like companies also prevent too much fragmentation meaning technology as a tool becomes standardized. Rather than 20 different things competing for the attention of everyone, there is one big company with apps that do everything that is trusted and reliable and thus the 'best'.
While american companies compete for slices of a certain size of pie, one chinese company owns the entire huge pie. As long as the users have pie, they are happy.
In allocation of limited resources, this usually fails as equal distribution of resources leaves everyone poor which creates huge incentive for corruption and hoarding. For abundant resources that can be duplicated infinitely and have network effects to boot this is perhaps a better strategy.
After all, it's all about everyone having an abundance of pie, not who has more or less pie.
The Nanny was not that bad! Not Game of Thrones, but there's a place for those kind of sitcoms.
Not to mention simply searching for common file names would do the trick, too. It is not too hard to come up with an algorithm that can return a boolean (or float) indicating if a file collection looks like TV series. "Game of Thrones - S??E??" is a good start.
It's just an announcement - it's way too early to tell how the series is going to turn out. That being said, I would be surprised if the reboot becomes a cultural landmark like TOS. I just hope it's at least good, compelling television. At best I hope it captures the genius of good Star Trek: exploring new ideas, concepts, and perspectives, with clever & humane writing, capable acting, and good special effects.
I hope it's not too heavy on the action/drama, like _The Walking Dead_ or _Game of Thrones_. These are both excellent series that are highly entertaining to watch. But they make me _feel_ first and _think_ second.
Good Star Trek episodes are like puzzles. You're thinking "what the heck is going on?", "what strange phenomena is this?", etc. The best ones draw you in and then delight you with the reveal. They almost have a Twilight Zone quality to them.
There is only one obvious issue that could get the masses to fight the anti-privacy bills - the one they usually come bundled with, i.e. copyright. Most people will start to care when you deny them their pirated Game of Thrones or threaten to actually put them to jail for that House of Cards download. Obviously, this is something EFF can't get behind.
Incidentally, what started the huge European movement against SOPA was, AFAIR unrelated, coincidence - the FBI riding Megaupload. Most popular video streaming sites (which were using Megavideo as a video source) suddenly stopped working and the population of Poland went to the streets to fight against SOPA, realizing that the thing is serious. It's amazing how much activism you can get by depriving someone of the next episode of their favourite show.
> It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
I'm with you, up until here. If I buy some content (e-book, movie, TV show, etc.), and then DRM malfunctions or is senselessly restrictive (client doesn't exist for some platform, etc.), I feel it is justifiable to "pirate" the content which I paid for. Particularly in the case of malfunctioning DRM (which is unfortunately common for PC games these days), it is the provider who failed to hold up their end of the bargain (whatever their EULA may say).
But of all the things studios do, deciding where to sell or not sell content is something that they actually have every right to do. We are entitled to content we paid for, but are not entitled to content just because it exists. If HBO doesn't want to release Game of Thrones during the season to Amazon, etc. because they want people to watch it on their network, what right do I have to steal it because I don't want to pay for cable?
> if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
Right, except you don't have the right to do that. You have no carte blanche entitlement to access media or entertainment. If the executives at HBO figure that, financially speaking, it's in their best interest to keep new Game of Thrones episodes accessible to cable customers only, you have the right to not buy it and be frustrated at that and protest it until eventually enough people protest for HBO to budge.
What you don't have the right to do is then to circumvent the legal and technological system set up for you to purchase Game of Thrones and access it for free, which, yes, is fucking theft. I can hear the scoffing through TCP/IP.
And you're not just harming the company, you're not just harming the already rich suits at HBO. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. People figure getting their music for free is a more rational individual choice than paying $16 for a CD. Everyone then makes the decision to get their media for free. Who cares about those stupid record labels, anyways?
Suddenly, smaller markets around the world have their industry gutted by piracy, smaller labels have to shut down, bigger labels have to fire hundreds of less successful artists that they used to be able to support from the money they made on the more successful artists, the more successful artists have to stop relying on royalties from album sales and have to whore themselves out doing nonstop touring year-round for money. Thank God it's physically impossible to "pirate" concert tickets.
I know we're going on a tangent here, but people often falsely conflate open-source access to information and piracy into this one big, happy revolution against the evil gatekeepers and their evil transactions that involve my money. No. Piracy is just fucking theft, period.
The kind of sting you're describing sounds incredibly improbable. You should take what those agents told you seriously.
If you're actually concerned that the whole situation is an elaborate hoax to catch you torrenting episodes of Game of Thrones, then you should talk to a lawyer but still act as if the threat against your life is real because it very well might be.
Your comment is absolutely unrelated to your quote. The fact that Mongol warfare was quite, uh, violent (which is obviously true) has nothing to do with the fact that Martin's books and especially the TV show have "a cultural vision that is inaccurate, distorting, and bears a very specific relationship to the European past" (which is also obviously true).
In fact, I'm even harsher in my opinion, angrily denying all attempts to mark "Game of Thrones" (or even SoIaF) as "historically accurate", because it could be viewed as that only in the most primitive sense, and any somewhat educated audience would be continuously annoyed by the contrary. That is because Martin borrows quite large pieces of historical motives, but unlike Tolkien is unable to elegantly glue them together. And as the devil is in the details the resulting picture makes simply no sense. Calling it grotesque would be even an understatement.
I think that a conventionally-dominant global superpower suddenly becoming drastically less powerful would make for a fascinating novel or TV series. The conflicts that arise as nations rush in to fill the power vacuum and adjust to a dramatically different security situation would, in the hands of a skilled writer/director be far more interesting than Game of Thrones.
I understand your frustration! Everyone wants to believe that what they create has value and that people should pay something to enjoy it.
But we can't escape the reality that the world is being changed dramatically by technology and that the concept of "cost gravity" is unstoppable. Pieter Hintjens has a very good essay on this at http://cultureandempire.com
This is what we're seeing with adblocking - the technology to control which information is allowed to enter our brains is now available to everyone. Your brain is your most valuable organ, and it is highly susceptible to persuasion and influence through positive and negative images, greed, fear and jealousy. All of these can be, and are, manipulated by advertisers for their benefit.
It has always been an arms race. In the "good old days", when everyone watched TV in the evening with their family, advertising was probably necessary to support the content. Then after a few years the ads got louder (the volume was actually increased) so that people would pay attention during the commercial breaks. People discovered that their remote controls had a mute button, and then they had some welcome silence between movie episodes. Commercial breaks started to get longer and people discovered that they could record everything and fast-forward through the commercial breaks, saving much valuable time. A president of the MPAA (Jack Valenti I think) actually said that it should be illegal to skip through the advertising when viewing time-shifted video because that deprived the broadcaster of the revenue to which they were entitled.
Even movie theaters, where the assumption was that you could watch the movie since you paid for admission, started to show advertising at the beginning. At first it was just a couple of quick minutes before the feature, but that soon became many more minutes and now is at about 30 minutes (advertising thinly disguised as games and quizzes).
My simple proposal is that this downward spiral can be stopped, if advertisers accept that people want to control what they see and hear in an increasingly noisy world, and that this is both legitimate and necessary.
Regarding your question about why an advertiser should also pay me to watch an ad in addition to a Game of Thrones episode: Because, if they paid me, I would listen to their pitch. That's much more valuable than blindly displaying ads with the hope that 0.1% or less of the ad recipients would pay any attention.
> None of that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the onslaught of mental pollution that this "industry" produces.
Why should it? They're the ones consuming the free content. They get to view whatever content they're looking at, for free. You watch a funny cat video on youtube, that's your "reward". That's the product you're buying with your time.
I don't know why people feel so entitled to free stuff. They forget that the content they're viewing is subsidized by ads. It's only free because of ads.
Here's a question; Would you sit through a 60 second commercial to watch a completely brand new episode of Game of Thrones that no one has seen yet? If not, then switch Game of Thrones to whatever your favorite TV show is. Is the answer now yes? Ok, good. Now why should the advertiser also pay you to view the ad? Your "payment" is getting to watch game of thrones. The people who created game of thrones should the one's getting paid by the advertiser, not you.
Now I know not all content is "good" and worth your time viewing ads, but that's a matter of subjectivity and not really worth discussing. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to content. What matters is the fact that content is subsidized ads. For whatever reason, this is an extremely hard concept for many people to grasp. As a content creator myself, it's extremely frustrating.
There's some side of me that's unhappy to see stats (even as benign as this) being considered. It's not really the idea that statistics will influence content as much as it is about who and how it will influence it.
I've been reading "A Song of Ice and Fire" (the source books for "Game of Thrones"), like a lot of people, for years. That is, I've been reading a book enjoyably for a couple of months and then waiting 5 years for the next one. It's an incredibly intricate and big story spanning a lot of character and geography. It's very big. The author, is obviously a special talent with incredible story telling ability and character perspectives. The talent for getting into characters' heads makes me think he must be a very emotionally invested artist.
Anyway, among all the characters, story, best seller pressure, TV show, and such writing the books takes a long time. He's got a Ford Prefect like relationship with deadlines.
Now.. in my (naive) mind, that's as it should be. A chaotic, burdensome process that (at the end, sometimes) produces art.
TV shows and films are the art of our times. This is not a statement about quality, just about the reach, influence and such. The people who make films are famous and admired. Everyone gets the references and allusions. Almost everyone indulges in it, grows up with it. A lot of people here probably got my Douglas Adams reference, but probably fewer than would have gotten a reference to "Morpheus," even in this biased crowd.
But, movies and television shows are made by big groups of people, money, risk-capital, adult supervision. I'm OK with statistical information about pace, plot or whatnot eventually permeating through the arts. That probably makes the arts better. I dislike the idea of it being used as a mallet in the proverbial committee designing the thing.
I like sausage. I prefer sausage to be made in a nice way. If you insist on both making it in a way I don't want to see and constantly reminding me that I should not look into how it is made… I'll have some beef stew instead.
I'm curious to what extent this comparison holds true for the content these two systems share. My (under informed) understanding is that piracy mostly traffics in movies, TV shows, video games, anime, adult content ahem, etc. While libraries loan some of those things, they mostly loan books.
If PirateBay was mostly promoting the sharing of fiction and nonfiction, I might be inclined to buy this argument for an educated populace. But I don't think that HBO's Game of Thrones or The Seventh Son really provide the same level of education as many (if not most) books a library would lend.
I have a good connection, so usually downloading a torrent of an HD movie takes 5 minutes (20-30 megabyte/s). On the other hand for some reason netflix often seems to think that I can't watch movies in HD or has small issues with streaming.
So I sometimes actually download a torrent of a movie that I started watching on Netflix. Likewise for Game of Thrones, I have a subscription to a TV channel in my country that has all the latest HBO shows but I download them because the quality is better.
Whenever I rent a movie off iTunes, it will fail 2GB in complaining about data corruption. Then it restarts the download. A younger naive me used to give it a 2nd/3rd chance to complete the download but now I turn to torrents with the justification that I already bought the right to watch it.
Netflix/Hulu/Google/Youtube is very reliable and high quality but their library is lacking. It's a shame they don't seem to have the selection Apple does. Compared to any of their libraries, Amazon Instant is more of a bookshelf so I haven't given its streaming reliability a shot yet.
My roommate's family has HBO, so he has an account to watch HBO. But instead we torrent Game of Thrones every Sunday because the video quality is better and there's no risk of buffering interruptions. It's annoying enough for me but this is becoming a small social event and I would gladly pay $5-10 (or I guess break the law) for a guaranteed quality viewing experience for guests.
There really is no legal equivalent to torrents in terms of selection or quality. If there was I would pay for it, like I do for music.
> "Somebody told me that popcorn time is the Netflix killer and I think that isn't true. I think it's not a piracy problem, it's a service problem. You have to give the users what they want in a fair price."
This is a pretty common sentiment on HN and other places on the internet that's used to justify piracy but I don't think it really applies to most people who say it. The person in the video is from Buenos Aires and really can't get his hands on movies and TV shows short of going to the United States.
But if you're in the United States and want a TV show, between iTunes, Amazon instant, YouTube rentals, Google Play, Microsoft Store and your cable provider the movie is probably a $2-$3 HD rental. $5-$6 if its just released. If you have time to browse HN you're not poor enough to justify pirating over a $6 rental.
Of course the counterargument is "but the DRM formats don't work on my TV/car/fridge", but that doesn't work here because Popcorn Time is designed for desktop viewing and deletes the videos on reboot, not for transferring to other devices. And "the only movies with high pirate rates aren't easily available" doesn't work either because the most pirated shows are the ones most easily available. Game of Thrones is on HBO Go, Walking Dead is on amc.com, Kingsman: The Secret Service and Seventh Son is on every rental service listed above. [0]
[0] https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-050415/ http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/top-10-pirated-tv-shows-of-2014-game-of-thrones-walking-dead-lead-list-1201390863/
Best advice I received: imagine you're going to be on the plane for the rest of your life. Don't watch the clock.
I constantly underestimate the temporary IQ loss from altitude and jet lag. Bring light entertainment. Comedies, tell-all or humor books, documentaries. Do not attempt to read Douglas Hofstadter on a plane. And don't bring Game of Thrones in case the person next to you (a) isn't into it or (b) is trying to avoid spoilers.
Played correctly, I am mildly disappointed when I have to put things away for the landing.
> ‘I can’t commit to another show, and I don’t have the time to emotionally commit to another show.'
I don't have this problem at all. There are shows that are too intense of a commitment for me (e.g., there are only so many Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones that you can watch at a time), but I always find myself at a loss for the lower-key shows. I end up watching reruns of shows that I know I like, but there are only so many of those on Netflix, so either I end up watching the same ones over and over, or I turn to my non-Netflix collection.
> It's as if I finished all the entertaining novels out there have to wait a year for one or two more to trickle out one chapter at a time.
This is why I love Netflix originals. Aside from being consistently high-quality and high production value (comparable to HBO/Showtime), they're perfect for binge-watching. I actually don't binge-watch so much, but I do appreciate being able to choose my own pace, which Netflix is perfectly optimized for.
I agree. I just dropped my cable subscription and switched to Netflix 6 weeks ago. I switched not because there was nothing to watch on cable but because the prices had gotten so far out of whack.
Netflix had enough to watch at a reasonable price to make it a good deal. But, outside of Daredevil, I don't find its own content very compelling. (Too much "Soap Opera In Disguise" for my tastes. I blame "Game of Thrones" for that trend ... but I know I'm in the minority here.)
Now they want to become another channel with the suggestion being subscribe to us and cable to get the shows you want. WTF Netflix!
I want one service where I can stream _any_ show. Not multiple services where I have to decide which have the most shows I like, subscribe to a few and skip the rest. I want streaming Blockbuster/Redbox for and and all shows and movies!
Am I alone in disliking the binge watching trend? I rabidly read recaps of Game of Thrones episodes every Monday morning, talk to my friends about it, etc. etc - by comparison I never talk to anyone about House of Cards because the conversation always starts "what are you up to?" "oh, OK, well I won't spoil anything then!".
There's a social aspect to TV for me (boy was I addicted to reading Lostpedia back in the day), and binge watching diminishes it. Even though it is very convenient.
Two points:
One is that I'm tired of both the congratulatory and the flagellative uses of "Western." Feminism is no more a western tradition than it is an Arab, Chinese or Congolese one. It's a modern cultural movement. Similarly, simple good vs evil plot settings are not western. They exist everywhere. They're often from propaganda, naturally occurring hero worship, morality tales and depictions of a culture's own history. GRRM (mentioned here) is as western as Tolkien and is definitely a modern example western literature.
The complicated moral depictions in Game of Thrones are not new, but they are definitely strong in the current zetgeist. It comes and goes and has often reached the point of cliche. Hercules (and his analogues like Samson and Cuchulainn) are often depicted with character flaws, often involving women and madness in some way. We've been through a period when it was out of fashion. I think hollywood film tradition is very largely to blame, their perfect hero classics. The awesome comedic writer like Adams, Pratchet, Joseph Heller or even Franz Kafka earlier on mock this constantly. Humour is great for this kind of thing, satirising the current literary cliches.
That brings me to my second point. Today's storytelling is taking this stuff to a whole new level. The complex morality tales and decompacting of group decision making dynamics that we see in everything today is really awesome, in my opinion. I think it's great art, or at least to my taste. Playing with moral perspective and depicting the complexity of people acting in groups is an awesome thing to explore. There's a ton of depth there and a ton of artistic flair required to bite into it. In my opinion, it hits the best notes when you have been wrenched so much that your sheltered sense of morality breaks down. It still exists, but its grim rather than fiery. Evil gets demystified, banal and sad. When a bad guy gets a just end you take on the role of a reluctant but dutiful executioner rather than a hot blooded cheerleader at the gallows.
Walter White is awesome because he's complex like a real person. His angst isn't just a flat "he's angsty because X." That's very hard to do. I think the only way to get that stuff across is the moral grey areas and the "shit happens" unfolding of a person. Long format TV series give writers time to do it.
This stuff is really fantastic in modern art. TV shows, books...
This article is pure distillation of everything that's wrong with VR -- not the tech, but the people who are thinking about it and trying to build it. Specifically youngish white male gamer nerds.
I want to write about this more at length -- maybe I'll put something on my blog or on Medium or something -- but I also tried VR, and the most interesting aspect of the experience was just how clueless all of the gamer types at the gaming company office I went to were about what other people out there in the world would want from the experience. Here is what I mean.
The most impressive and important part of the otherwise crappy VR demo I sat through was a crudely rendered virtual media room with a big screen TV, where I was placed on a virtual couch to watch some movie clips. Why did this rock my world?
It rocked my world because I happen to know that it would cost me $40K at least to add a media room on to my house, and if I could buy $5K worth of VR gear for my wife and I and get pretty much the same effect, then that would be a major win for us (and a loss for Austin's contractors and architects).
In other words, gaming is the /least/ interesting thing about VR. VR has the potential to disrupt the architecture and building trades. In the real world, people like to have access to spaces that they can do various non-gaming things in, and they have historically been willing to pay quite a bit of money to have those spaces built. VR will drive the cost of adding those spaces to one's home/office/trailer/pad/etc. down towards zero.
I tried explaining this to the crowd of young white male gamer nerds gathered around the pizza station after the demo, and they sort of chuckled at this boring old guy rambling about building contractors (I'm pretty sure none of them owned a house) and went back to wracking their brains about what, to them, is the single most important thing in the world: how are we going to make a frigging GAME with this?
I know these guys, because prior to my wife + 3 kids + house I was one of them: a young white male gamer nerd. But at this point I've been around the block enough to recognize that the number of people interested in blasting virtual aliens or orcs is a few orders of magnitude lower than the number of people who want to just hang out on the deck of a mega-yacht at sundown, or have coffee once again in an exact replica of a Parisian cafe that they used to frequent in the 60's, or retreat from their kids and life into a virtual media room and watch Game of Thrones on a virtual big-screen TV.
Note that I'm not slamming Jeff Atwood, who for all I know owns a house and who thinks about many things other than leveling up and collecting loot. I'm just saying that he has thoroughly missed the point of VR, and in a super common and troubling way.
I'm not an SJW by any stretch, but VR needs women, and black people, and old people, and in fact it will get them because the market will demand it. That's because VR isn't the next Atari 2600 or Kinect -- it's the next TV, and the next Internet. Are today's Internet addicts hooked on MUDs or MOOs? No, they aren't. And tomorrow's VR junkies won't give a rip about games.
Sorry, I meant that I have already read this article a long time ago, and the title of this post got me excited to read about some new developments.
As for your second point, I think you mentioned a lot of the main reasons. But I disagree that new media is unlikely to be better than everything made in the past. In fact, I would say that it's very likely that a new movie or TV show will be far better than something made in the past, simply because they have much bigger budgets now, better technology, and even a better understanding of filmmaking and storytelling. Especially with recent TV shows such as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, True Detective. The bar has been raised very high.
Netflix is half of all Internet traffic (crazy), and all the content owners are hopping on board. We want to create an ecosystem built on open hardware and software so its easy for anybody to get to this great content, anytime, anywhere, without one of the "big guys" imposing their rules on who gets what, when, or where.
This is plain crazy. Netflix can't offer their service without DRM, Intel can't even release a chip without supporting DRM. How on earth did anyone expect this to be succesful without DRM? In the kickstarter movie they even show clips of Game of Thrones and John Oliver, how did people envision the Matchstick to play that content without DRM support?
And then the craziest part, after working for 11 months with I imagine a team of at least 3 but probably more, they fail which is understandable but then they refund the kickstarter campaign. That means they actually have 470k lying around. Probably from VC funding.
So they used the kickstarter money as leverage in VC negotiations, got funded. Then worked for 11 months on something the kickstarter backers didn't ask for which creates a backlash, then they decide to drop the kickstarter. I wonder what their investors think of it "Oh yeah, the initial 17000 people that believed on our project whom we woo-ed you with? Yeah they're not happy with the direction we're going in so we're dropping them". So now it's just going to be an HDMI TV stick which to my knowledge already exist right?
(BTW the proper way this should've gone is: After 11 months Matchstick admit they got nowhere because of supplier issues (i.e. they couldnt get DRM) have run out of money and give up. The backers sue for reimbursement. Matchstick LLC files for bankruptcy, court finds no wrongdoing, no one gets money. The end and everyone lives happily ever after. Faith in Kickstarter restored)
Can we consider Game of Thrones to be the most popular tv show currently?
From the wiki: >Filmed in a Belfast studio and on location elsewhere in Northern Ireland, Croatia, Iceland, Morocco, Spain, Malta, Scotland, and the United States,
So it does not come from Hollywood. HBO is owned by Time Werner, but operate independently. So neither the physical production place nor the company that made it screams hollywood.
As for the Netflix only stuff, it is owned by Netflix.
Firefly is great, albeit short.
I was forced to watch Buffy, but while the first season makes you cringe, it is pretty good. Not as stellar as people claim, but really good. I think Joss Whedans masterpiece wasn't Buffy, it was Toy Story. But do watch the musical episode "Once More, With Feeling"!
Babylon 5, of course, if you can tolerate the (even for the time) bad CGI.
I've just watched DS9 from beginning to end, something I had wanted to do for 15 years now. Hasn't aged well, and I hadn't seen it in English before. Avery Brooks' overpronunciation is painful, but it is the best Star Trek series by far.
Friends was something I've enjoyed as a teen, and later as an adult. It was a totally different experience as an adult. I think that's worth a lot, to have a depth that appeals differently to you in different stages of your life.
Modern Family was way better than expected.
ALF is a bit painful to watch nowadays, it also hasn't aged well.
Golden Girls are probably still great, The Cosby Show definitely is!
Boston Legal is fun, fun, fun! Hey, why shouldn't Nantucket be allowed to habe its own nuclear weapons? But do watch all the newer Star Trek series before BL, so you can appreciate the ST heavy cast.
Dallas! Oh my. Incredible how old Victoria Principal is today.
ER was great, but I haven't seen much of the last seasons. I also liked Chicago Hope, but it clearly lost.
The 2004 Battlestar Galactica. Probably the most modern TV series of its time, great themes and issues, pretty current, fantastic buildup to the big finale and then... disappointment.
Game of Thrones, if only for the shock value ;-)
And at last, the Tv series I've probably enjoyed most in the last few years: the first two seasons of Veronica Mars. But make sure you can stomach it, the season finales are sickeningly evil (especially season 2).
"We may not like their government but at least they're rational"
Well, a theocracy is almost by definition not rational, in the modern sense. It's based on divine laws, obedience, and absolute faith on an ideology. Not logic, provability, and the scientific method.
Dealing with the iranian regime the same way you would deal with an occidental country is the greatest mistake i think.
Thinking "sure, they apply shariah, and believe islam is the only true religion, and that god leads them, but deep inside they know things aren't that simple" is applying your own logic to them ( and by them, i mean people with guns who are in power, not young iranians looking the web for Game of Thrones episodes).
This was a fun read. Stuff I found interesting:
1. The shift from cheaply produced, low quality content, to higher quality "must see" shows. It is definitely the must see shows that have drawn me to HBO and Netflix. I don't just randomly watch whatever's on HBO--I have it for Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, etc.
My use of Netflix is a little more dual-purpose though; there's certainly Netflix-produced shows that I like a lot, but I often find myself nostalgically surfing Netflix to watch old shows like ST:TNG, or to watch favorite movies again. Even though HBO and the different TV providers offer on-demand viewing, there's something about their offerings that makes me much less likely to browse their libraries and watch random content. The paradox is that Netflix's UI is on average worse than theirs, so my preference of browsing shows on Netflix is not a usability thing, it's an emotional thing.
2. The comments about how Netflix has commoditized time since we no longer have to watch shows at a certain time each week. And how this is borne out by their strategy of releasing all episodes at once for shows they produce. I've found, like the author, that releasing them all at once reduces some of the fun and anticipation of watching a new episode and talking about it with your friends. I've also noticed that I tend to binge watch shows when new seasons drop, and tend to fast forward through less exciting parts of the episodes a lot more than normal, since I feel I have to get through the whole season so I can talk about it with my friends. I get really impatient by the time I'm 80% through the season. But at least this shows how aggressively they are committed to giving people their time back and letting them consume the content on their own schedule.
3. I had no idea HBO was producing so many projects at once. Hollywood Reporter said they are working on over 100 projects right now. I didn't consider that Netflix and Amazon could position themselves not just as alternatives to people who couldn't get a seat with HBO, but could also potentially produce the show and get it online faster (e.g. steal good projects from HBO with the promise of fast results, not just taking their rejects). I still think HBO will on average produce higher quality shows for quite some time since they have so much practice at it, but it sounds like they are spread very thin. I would love to read some analysis on how HBO produces their shows and what their org structure is like there.
Just checked. Sansa Stark is 17 in Game of thrones TV series season 5 fictional history. Did I(and millions of other people) watch child porn?
Sophie Turner is actually 19.
If you're watching game of thrones, you are watching people kill each other. You are committing a crime.
See how that's silly?
There are people who watch animated child porn and they are ruled as criminals even though no actual child was directly harmed.
There are people who watch snuff films, where people actually are killed, and the viewers are not breaking the law in most states.
Perhaps you would argue that snuff film viewing should be illegal, or that watching Game of Thrones should be illegal because it portrays rape, violence, murder, etc.
To me, it's clear that there is a distinct difference between watching that content and in producing it. Sure, if you actively encourage it to be produced you're breaking the law (same as if you try to convince someone to make a snuff film, you're breaking the law).
It's really not that simple and the laws are not consistent here.
It's just me who to blame. I like to leave early to work, so that when I commute it's quiet and I can do work in the train. But the problem is than I like evenings. You just have to have one Game of Thrones episode and sleep rhythm is ruined. ;)
My normal sleep routine would be 23:15 to bed and 06:45 up, so about 7,5 hours. Everything under that I consider sleep deficit.
19th century long form fiction is TV show for the time. Weekly episodes in mainstream newspapers. Hugo, Flaubert, Dumas, Zola used the format for decades. People will find Game of Thrones "too little into a show" soon enough, too.
And I think you are standing close to a clump of trees labeled "internet" and mistaking that grove for the entire forest.
FWIW, I'm about as old as ARPANET. I also have a special interest in information systems of the 1950s and 1960s - the era of the "information explosion" - and have been reading many papers and essays from that era.
What you say about the Gray Lady is true, but only a part of history. I'm also old enough to remember Walter Cronkite's "And that's the way it is" signoff. You might remember that Johnson is said to have said "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America" after Cronkite's "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" editorial.
"The New York Times (primarily) really replaced the Catholic Church as the cultural maypole."
That is nonsense. For one, it's American-centric, as "The Times" of London (and source for Times New Roman) used to be much more important on the world stage than the NYT. The NYT both started later than The Times, and derived its name from the London paper. Remember, it was The Times (of London) which first reported on Krakatoa, which was the first major natural disaster to appear after the world-wide telegraph was put into place. Not the NYT. And London was the world center in telecommunications.
For another, the US was anti-papist long before the NYT started. The Catholic church was not a 'cultural maypole' in the US. (And how delicious to use the pagan maypole to describe the Catholic church! But do you mean 'touchstone'?) We were still wary about Catholicism in 1960, which is why Kennedy declared "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters – and the Church does not speak for me."
Early American anti-papist leanings come from its British cultural heritage. Great Britain was institutionally anti-Catholic since the Act of Supremacy of 1534 and restrictions against Roman Catholics were still in place until full Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
It's easy to prove me wrong. The NYT started in 1851. Can you demonstrate how the Catholic church was an important 'cultural maypole' in the US before then?
> I think we agree TV was a major technological creation and certainly changed society but it did not challenge the newspapers for social power and influence
Yet there are articles like "The Kennedy-Nixon Debates: When TV Changed the Game" describing the growing social power and influence of televion http://time.com/26035/kennedy-nixon-debates-1960-the-tv-landmark-that-changed-the-game/ . And the modern day Hearst is Rupert Murdoch, who started in newspapers (and bought 'The Times' and 'The Wall Street Journal') and also several TV networks, including Fox News, which he uses to help influence US policy.
It's hard to argue that Fox News does not have significant social power in the US.
And the major cultural development, from sports to political debates to "Game of Thrones" to satirical news sources likes "The Daily Show", are still structured as TV shows, even when they are 'broadcast' over the internet.
- Hearing aids - Battery life SUCKS. Someone please make hearing aids that run off body heat (or whose batteries are at least augmented by body heat). Changing batteries is expensive and annoying, especially if it dies while you're far from a spare set of batteries.
- Subtitles / Closed Captioning - some sort of HUD (Google Glass-esque) that shows subtitles only to me, and not to those around me. Especially useful in movies or when watching Game of Thrones with friends that don't like subtitles.
- Better door buzzing - I don't have a landline, and my landlord won't connect the buzzer to my phone. I have to have friends call or text me, and then I have to run down to the front door and open them up. Totally inconvenient during parties. There's gotta be some way to get around my landlord's dumb rules and have the buzzer send a text to my phone, where I can reply with a code and it'll open the door.
- Auditioning -- there's gotta be a better way to find out whether an actor or musician is good enough for a role other than a 60 second monologue. This also applies to job screening in general. If you can cut out the middleman (casting directors, recruiters), you'll make a fortune.
I can probably think of some more later.
Google is in the unusual situation of receiving a lot of blatantly invalid DMCA takedowns. Like, a movie studio (or a company under contract to them) will do a Google search for something broad, like "download game of thrones", and issue a mass takedown for every single link that shows up, often without even looking at the links. So a lot of perfectly legal content (e.g, a news article that says "Game Of Thrones is one of the most commonly downloaded TV shows") gets swept up, and Google is being good enough to spot those and reject them.
(Sometimes the DMCA agents screw up even worse. For instance, there's evidence that some of them forget important keywords sometimes, and end up issuing a takedown on all the top links for searches like "download".)
Interestingly, Cuba has developed an alternative network for the distribution of many types of digital content: people with access to content download it and distribute it using portable hard drives and usb sticks. A friend of mine recently visited Cuba, and according to him, these "paquete shops" are everywhere. There are standard bundles of content (tv shows, movies, viral videos, news, music, etc), and a la carte service. According to him, the content is consistently up-to-date (the latest Game of Thrones episode is available within 2-3 days). The shops themselves have developed brands, part of the value they provide is curatorial, as each bundle is different. Some of them have even branched out into adding their own bundled content, including neighborhood classifieds (craigslist, anyone?).
Information really only travels in one direction, so it is not even close to the real internet, but we could image an enterprising paquete shop bundling in some encryption software and forum software to enable two-way communication.
More here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-internet-weekly-packet-external-hard-drives
I wonder if this being posted here is in any way related to the events which took place on the latest episode of Game of Thrones...
I didn't care for last week's review by Alyssa Rosenberg, but this week's is quite good: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/06/07/game-of-thrones-season-5-episode-9-review-the-dance-of-dragons/
A thought on piracy- don't worry about it. A user is a user and some users can easily afford $1k/yr for their software and others couldn't scrape together $9.99 (think international). You get to count pirates and nonpirates both as users at this early stage in your company, and it's users that make your project worth something (so long as you can accurately count them), not license revenue.
Very few successful app developers will risk the rug being pulled out from under them, which I'm sure you'll retain the power to do. That can either come from breaking their pirated API key and bricking their installed apps or a clean, well-worded time-to-pay-plus-penalties letter from your attorney.
Highly pirated properties from Game of Thrones episodes to Metallica tracks all derive benefits from merchandising and live performances that owe some of their underpinning to popularity through piracy. Since you'll never prevent piracy, might as well anticipate and leverage it into more value for your shareholders.
I actually do. I'm arguing a lot in this thread, but I stopped watching game of thrones around season three. I maybe pirate a movie every 8 or 10 weeks or something? I have young kids and a startup job. :) And I have Netflix (Canadian version, no vpn, so like 1/4 the content as in the US) for when I have some free time. But frankly I do prefer books (again, audible.com is the best)
That said, content distribution is completely broken outside the US, so I'm going to shed exactly one tiny crocodile tear for HBO when I do decide to get back into game of thrones. And I sure as hell won't be paying for it, unless they give me some sane options.
I consider piracy to be a form of protest.
I'm happy to pay, as long as the terms are reasonable. (I have a Rdio account that's been active for years now - I can't remember the last time I pirated music... I can't remember the last time I pirated software, either).
However, in Canada, the only way to watch (for example) Game of Thrones is to
a) get a massive cable subscription which includes 1000 channels you don't want and HBO (which itself has 100 programs you don't want to watch and GoT),
b) wait for the episode to show up on itunes and pay $4.50 per episode (whaat?) (and oh, season 5 isn't available yet),
c) pirate.
Is it a huge surprise that a lot of people choose option C? And can you blame them? At a certain point, non-Americans specifically just get fed up with being told "sorry, no, that content isn't available in your region."
>DRM cannot and will not be the sole factor in determining what is worth buying.
Of course it can, that's at your sole discretion. If it will not be, that's a personal decision, but game of thrones is not oxygen, it's a TV show.
You could always take up hiking, if nothing else.
Like a lot of people have said, modern shows are very much into the everyman male lead. Bryan Cranston's character in Malcolm in the Middle, Ed O'Neill's Al Bundy, Tim Taylor playing, once again, the affable rough-though-bumbling dad.
The thing is these are all prime-time sitcoms and comedies.
There's just as many popular shows where this isn't the case. Dramas rarely have this sort of soft, incorrigible-but-loveable archetype.
I'm not super-current on my media, but Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Mad Men... most everything on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and FX run with strong, deep, emotionally complex male characters who grow and discover themselves, alongside the female characters.
And the male characters in these dramas are, on the whole, much more identifiable and aspirational.
I feel like this is the next episode of game of thrones that I'm waiting on, looking forward to reading it
American Pirate Here. I pirate things for many reasons I suppose. When it comes to video games I actually prefer to buy games on steam rather than pirate them. But if the game is not available on steam (like some of EA's big games that they only release on origin for pc) then I will instead pirate them. If origin had the quality that steam did then I wouldn't mind installing it, but that is not the case. I also pirate game of thrones, which for a long time could only be viewed legally with an HBO subscription. I think it is silly to have to subscribe to something and pay a yearly fee just to watch 10 episodes of a single show once a year. If HBO wasn't so greedy then I would have gladly paid them; but as a service that I feel is overpriced and offers poor quality in return, I refuse to pay them a cent.
>This is where someone chimes in with something snarky related to offline viewing (airplane) or not living in the US and having access to less comments. This is true. It's also largely irrelevant. If you think those are the primary reasons users torrent then I'd challenge you to back it up with statistics.
I don't think it is fair to leave it to the other side to come up with statistics. However, I think torrentfreak has done an excellent job reporting on piracy over the years. Here are some stats you may find interesting:
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-buy-30-more-music-than-non-p2p-peers-121015/ [2] https://torrentfreak.com/find-out-whos-using-the-pirate-bay-and-why-130829/
You raise a point that was already true for DRM - the impediment from the restrictions pushes the law abiding citizen into piracy.
For example, Cinavia might limit the devices you can play your legally purchased movie on. So law abiding citizen end up introducing themselves to TPB so they can play their movie on their projector-connected laptop, and then they realize that the latest episode of Game of Thrones has already downloaded by the time they got round to alt tabbing to their favorite torrent solution...
But your point is excellent and perfectly valid: if you want a fun, "edited" book try and source the first edition of "See you in November" by Peter Stiff which allegedly has been more recently edited by the interested parties. (It does not make for civilised reading, particularly if you are British.) I knew a few more but their titles don't come to mind immediately.
The direct increase of revenue comes from more customers arriving now that you're combining a robust network with unlimited data. Both of those things even in isolation are pretty significant attractions; having both of them is even better.
Barring that, however (as I mentioned elsewhere in this topic), congestion issues are already resolved in the wired broadband realm by selling speed rather than data quantity. There's little reason why the wireless world can't do the same by selling access to 2G/3G/4G separately, then making every plan unlimited (or, at the very least, have way bigger caps for everyone, as is the case currently with some of the not-so-great broadband ISPs).
Basically, you'd have T-Mobile's approach, but with a lot more flexibility. In combination with a no-contract carrier (like T-Mobile) or reseller (like Google Fi), a customer could, say, subscribe to a 2G or 3G plan for normal usage, but then subscribe to the 4G plan for a day or so if he/she wants to binge-watch Game of Thrones or somesuch. This way, the congestion issues are addressed (there's a direct monetary incentive for carriers to build more robust networks, since the faster data subscriptions would cost more and generate more revenue) while not imposing arbitrary caps on the quantity of data "used" by a customer. Win-win.
This could be even further extended by providing the 2G and 3G plans with an optional scheme of "we'll give you $X days of 4G per month" (similar to T-Mobile's "we'll give you $X gigabytes of 4G per month"). That way, our Game of Thrones bingewatcher doesn't have to deal with changing the subscription; he'd instead have a week's worth of 4G per month that he could activate on a per-day basis (for example). An even sweeter deal would be for these unused days of 4G to roll over to the next month up to a year (or some other suitably-reasonable length of time), like what T-Mobile already does for its non-unlimited plans.
There's more than one way to do it :)
I wasn't referring to the format (episodic) but the content. Shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad are not only addictive because they're episodic, but because they're well written and have something to take with after watching. The characters are extremely elaborate. Those shows feature stories that don't rely on exhausted tropes or even deconstruct existing tropes. I think TV shows are better produced and their bigger budget is a plus which makes it more accessible to a broad audience. But when I read how avant-garde and never-seen-before the next hot TV show is, I can probably name an anime that did it before. Lately though, I'd say I probably like TV shows more and it almost seems as if animes are in a generational change, which is for the worse.
I may be a tad harsh about Pixar, but I think they're merely "good" for adults. There are some exceptions to this rule (Wall-E and Up for instance) but overall they are more or less Lion King or Ariel with a different setting e.g.: you know what will happen. Ghibli movies have this sense of mystery and uncertainty that'll keep an adult watcher hooked. I also like that they are a bit more merciless, even though that makes them unsuitable for a very young audience. Pixar movies can be watched 6+ with certainty whereas you'd better check if the Ghibli movie is suitable for your child.
> I would even argue that some anime easily top non-animated > TV shows. It baffles me that so many TV shows are critically > acclaimed for things anime has done a decade ago.
From one fan to another, I'm curious: what things are you specifically thinking of?
For me, one of anime's most engrossing qualities was the multi-episode stories. Back in the 90s there weren't a lot of American TV shows (outside of soap operas) that had the multi-episode story arcs that were common in anime; typically everything was always wrapped up in a single episode.
Today, the American TV shows with the most rabid followings (like Game of Thrones) have latched on to exactly that addictive quality. I'm not entirely sure we can give anime credit for innovating here, though - after all, American soap operas were doing multi-episode stories since literally the dawn of television.
> Ghibli accomplishes what Disney/Pixar seems to have forgotten: > Creating a story that is entertaining (and enlightening) to both adults and children
I'm surprised you named Pixar here. I think their movies have almost all been great for both kids and adults.
HBO is global (to some degree). I live in Sweden and (if I didn't have to go to work) I can enjoy the latest episode of Game of Thrones only hours after it's aired in the US.
Although we don't have HBO Go here -- we have a similar service called HBO Nordic. I'm almost certain that it's a HBO owned company, available only in nothern Europe though.
A good book basically can't work as a TV show, and vice versa. I'd rather the TV people came up with their own stories that will actually work on TV. (Game of Thrones, which I'm sure is the inspiration for this, is an exception because it's basically written as a TV show already.)
Anecdotally, I have three different friend groups I talk to about Game of Thrones. Everyone is always caught up, the line for book spoilers is obvious, and as a result its a common conversation topic anyone can join in on. Conversely, no one talks about House of Cards. We've tried a few times, but after a bunch of "I've watched it all," "I'm on episode 8," "Oh, I'm only on episode 5," etc. we just stopped bringing it up.
At the end of the day, television is just entertainment. And I get a lot more entertainment from being able to discuss drip-rate shows with friends.
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. Ever since Game of Thrones started, I have gathered with various groups of friends nearly every Sunday to watch the episode as it airs. Watching Game of Thrones has become a social event primarily because the release structure forces everyone to always be at the same point (even if some have read the books).
In contrast, after House of Cards s3 was released and we watched a few episodes together, it became a free for all. Having a conversation about the show with anyone is practically impossible unless everyone has seen the entire show.
I don't watch game of thrones. If I was going to start watching it, I would start at the beginning of the series instead of just jumping straight into the leaked episodes. By the time I get to the latest season, they would be formally released.
I think that statement is really rather silly. It's a bit like saying "anyone who is going to drink coke is already drinking coke". There's a ring of truth to it, but it still falls flat.
Edit: a few things: arguments based on the behavior of "the majority" and arguments founded on the principle that 100% of all people who have ever been Game of Thrones viewers are completely and utterly committed to viewing every single season are rather weak. Viewership of shows changes from season to season. More so, not every TV show viewer is the sort of person who must start a series from the beginning. Pulling in folks who are caught up on Game of Thrones but haven't been hooked on the current season and pulling in folks who will begin mid stream (and then maybe go back and watch from the beginning, or not) adds to their viewership. More viewers means more purchases, more purchases means more dollars.
Not to mention the value of retaining their existing viewership base.
These are all the same reasons why coke continues to dump massive amounts of dollars into advertising despite already being well known and having a huge chunk of the soft drink marketshare. In fact, the returns on investment for advertising already popular products tends to be higher than for products just entering the market, because the numbers are so big. There are millions of Game of Thrones fans. If even a few hundred thousand existing fans who might have held off on watching the new season are kept on the hook and if even a few hundred thousand non-watchers gain interest in the show via starting with the new season and if only a small fraction of those folks end up purchasing the discs, or HBO (in whatever form) then that's a considerable amount of money in HBO's pocket that would have been left on the table.
Which isn't saying it wasn't an accident, but business wise this is still a win for HBO.
Anyone who was going to get hooked on Game of Thrones is hooked, and anyone who is still on the fence isn't likely to torrent the leaked episodes. Incompetence is a better explanation, I think.
Yes. The author of the article is barging through an open door: It's very likely that those Game of Thrones episodes had individual hidden watermarking, and that using those they can tell exactly who leaked it.
The author jumped to the conclusion that those don't exist, apparently because they aren't visible (but that's the point!) and that there is a visible watermark which the author apparently assumed was the only one (but it almost certainly isn't).
People seem to be ignoring one obvious solution: don't send out copies of the first four episodes of what is arguably the biggest and most-pirated show in the world. I get it, there are apparently still these "print publications" out there that need time to "print" their reviews. How important is that really, in 2015, for Game of Thrones? I doubt that a few reviews in pop culture magazines are worth more to HBO than preserving the desired experienced of weekly viewing.
Or maybe it's a trial run for HBO to gauge what viewers think of binge watching.
This is quite widely done for anime. The opening credits are actually different episode to episode for Game of Thrones both in people and the animation.
This seems like the most likely scenario. After all, how do the leaks negatively affect HBO? Anyone who was going to pay for HBO to watch the first four episodes had almost certainly already paid HBO by the day of the first episodes' airing. Only four episodes leaked, so no one is going to cancel HBO because they already received their Game of Thrones fix. HBO has no advertising, so the actual ratings for their shows are totally irrelevant. If you were already going to pirate the show, the leak just lets you pirate the show a little earlier. Finally this entire story just serves as extra advertising for the show. Is there any other possible story that would have Game of Thrones as one of the top posts on HN?
A lot of good suggestions. To try to avoid repeating what others have said too much, here are some from a different perspective.
# "JPod" by Douglas Coupland helped me realize that it was corporatism, not me, that was broken.
# Benjamin Franklin's autobiography showed me a history that was made of people, a people no different than me and mine, and that success comes from standing up and going your own way.
# "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein taught me that, while culture is arbitrary and we should be free to try to make it what we wish, that doesn't make it fake or ignorable.
# "Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, re-read as an adult, taught me the importance of formula in consistency and how much a market of fans love predictability.
# "Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin taught me that the movie can be a lot better than the book and that there is a problem with modern generations making an affectation out of book reading.
"I quickly wrote the screenplay for a pilot episode. I think that it came out quite good"
Not trying to be a jerk here, but unless you're a seasoned tv writer (and if you were, you wouldn't be asking this), it's pretty unlikely that something you dashed off quickly turned out that well. Maybe it is good, but to get produced it needs to be great. Have you read the Game of Thrones pilot script? That was pretty good, and without an option or a name writer attached it has to be better than that.
Also, you did this in the wrong order. You get the option first, then you write the pilot, unless it's a pure spec not intended to be produced, e.g. written just as a writing sample to get a staff job.
Almost every writer and showrunner in hollywood has a "passion project" like this that they would love to get made one day. And just as often, they can't do it even with a few shows under their belt and tons of connections.
Not sure why you're asking this on a startup news site. If you want, put on your flame-resistant armour and ask this again at in the forums at donedealpro.com. Post some sample pages there for critique. You'll get a lot of flak, and there's a lot of trolls on there, but you'll also get some good advice from people working in the industry.
All of that said, I hope you prove me wrong. You're right about one thing, it is a great series and would be a perfect fit for TV (well, except for budget, some of those settings would be unfilmable due to expense).
If you want, email me 5-10 pages from your pilot and I'll be happy to give you honest, constructive notes.
What I want entertainment companies to give me is exactly equivalent to the result of downloading episodes from illegal Bittorrent sites plus the ability to actually pay for them.
I want a DRM-less HD video file that I can play on any computer, when I want. I want to be able to download it from anywhere I might be in the world, and my nationality should not have an effect on the availability of the content.
Heck, if HBO had a web-based tip jar, I would just pay something for every Game of Thrones episode and otherwise go straight ahead and torrent it. You know, HBO, don't "offer" me anything, just give me an option to pay you which makes my download quasi-legal, and I'll take care of the rest myself.
To date, there are 2 and a quarter business models for TV. One and a half is ads. half is paid subscription and the remaining quarter is split between DVD sales, PPV, product placement and such. People are just not going to pay enough in large enough number to compete with advertising. The stuff they do pay for is generally better quality, so I don't want to knock it, but it isn't enough to cover the 23.5 hours per day that we consume.
Paid/subscription has the internet going for. Hulu/Netflix/etc. can operate without (much) infrastructure. But there are (IMO) real pathologies in the economy that we are seeing play out. A nice UI is a plus, but not a long term strategic advantage. The long term strategic advantage is exclusive content. That's great in the sense that it competitively promotes high quality shows. But, it also turns services into silos. People subscribed to Netflix, Premier League and BlubbyTV still don't get Game of Thrones' newest season because HBO.TV need an 8 month exclusion period to sell their $7.99 subscription.
Exclusivity is a waste. TV shows are noncompetitive goods. In the age of torrents, it's also a cause of instability.
Back to ads… A lot of what is bad about TV advertising is based on the old FMCG advertising model. Since they're shown to everyone in a region, they can only sell tampons, cereal, cars, bank accounts, washing powder… products that everyone uses. Products most people care about very little. Branding for mature products where all options are near identical is that dull repetition thing. It takes 100s of views per uninterested person to make sure people remember that Coca Cola is THE real coke.
OTOH, ultra-targeted ads while worrying and creepy from the privacy perspective, are much more relevant. Relevant usually means less annoying. More importantly, it doesn't require that much repetition or overall airtime to do the work. With ideal targeting, a 10 second preroll ad (ad plays before the show starts), banners on pause and other minimal ads can achieve more than 4 X 3 minute ad breaks on regular TV.
This ties into the competitive environment that Netflix-like service compete in. Ads suck and people will switch to itunes, DVDs or torrents. That will help keep them honest and minimize the space/time they can have. Internet streaming has more room for competition. Services will compete on user friendliness and that means there will be a lot of pressure not to annoy people with ads. In fact, minimizing obtrusiveness and maximizing revenues will be the main competitive pressure. Too little revenue and the shows will opt out of your service, too much and subscribers will switch to another service. 10X better than the pathological cable market.
On the business model/economics side of things, ad revenue is better than subscription at distributing the loot. Shows can get a portion of ad revenue for their views, hopefully the lion's share. This gives shows an incentive to increase viewership across all platforms. Exclusivity can go away. All content can be available everywhere. just make the best show to win.
Shows won't need to go around trying to cut exclusive deals. It will be in their interest to be on all platforms. For a platform to buy exclusivity, they will need to beat the potential ad revenue earned on all the other platforms, a high bar for any show worth pursuing.
Overall, I think that an ad-based TV economy will have the best effect on the complex as a whole. Ads will reward shows that are successful across all on-demand platforms and that will encourage the types of high quality binge-watchable shows that I think are finally rivaling novels from a story, character and art perspective.
Outliers will still have the option of purchasing shows on itunes and stuff like that. If they are really a decent market, some of the streaming services might offer ad free options at a higher price. But, I think sufficient competition (no reason there shouldn't be) will arrive at a result with more revenue, less overhead and a lot less airtime dedicated to ads.
^The giant mammoth in the living room is privacy. I think it'll be 10 years before we've worked this one out. I haven't gone into it because I don't know what I think.
Speculation ahead! This may all be BS (except for the next paragraph, which Googling will turn up decent support for), but could lead to some interesting discussion.
Girls mature emotionally faster than boys, which may result in them starting to care about, and be able to understand and do something about, group status and group power structures earlier than boys do.
Anecdotally, that fits with what I saw as a kid. Going into the teen years, boys tended to have small social circles compare to girls. A boy sleepover was two or three boys. A girl sleepover was half the girls in a class.
Others I've talked to report similar, and this seems to be a common enough observation that it has become somewhat of a stereotype (hilariously parodied in the South Park episode "The List").
Now let's consider how an interest in a STEM field might develop into a career. I think for a large number of kids there is a critical period where an interest changes from a spectator interest to a participatory interest, and I think that often happens around the late pre-teen, early teen years.
(This is probably just a coincidence, but it is interesting that this is around the age that in olden days boys would start apprenticeships).
Note that the kind of participatory STEM things that you can do (outside of organized school activities) as a young teen tend toward solitary activities. Perhaps, then, boys are more likely to do these things because at that critical early teen phase boys are still oblivious to the importance of group status and power structures, and so a potential boy science nerd will spend Saturday night at home hacking alone on the computer, or building a ham radio, and so on.
By the time boys catch up on emotional maturity, and start spending time dealing with group status and power along with the girls, the boys have already set themselves on the road to STEM careers.
It would be interesting to get data on people who choose a STEM major in college, and on people who graduate with a STEM degree, and on people who go on to a STEM career, and break each of those groups down into two subsets. (1) People who decided that (or a closely related field) was what they wanted to major in while still young teens, and (2) those who discovered their interest in that field in college, such as when they took a course in it to satisfy a breadth requirement and found they liked it enough to major in it.
If my speculation is correct, the first subset (people who chose their path while early teens) will be more tilted toward men than the second subset (people who found their serious interest in the field while in college).
Finally, this suggests an interesting topic for one of those "late night, been drinking or smoking dope a bit, kind of tired, let's discuss something really wild" type discussions: will HBO's "Game of Thrones" have an effect on gender ratios in STEM? (Yes, there is a chain of reasoning to support the "yes" case that is good enough to give one a decent chance of defending that position long enough for everyone to get drunk or high enough, or sleepy enough, that discussion ends).
He/she tries to excuse their piracy (it's not available in my country/can't access tools). This is an excuse lots of people use and seem to think it makes piracy ok. My point it that it doesn't. If you're pirating something just admit that there is no excuse - you can live without that episode of Game Of Thrones.
Media producing companies that have no way of safeguarding their revenue stream would like the technical threshold for copying to be at least a minor deterrent, because otherwise people have no incentive to pay them; many many people are in fact OK with being freeloaders.
I'm so sick of seeing Game of Thrones offered as the standard example. Sure, HBO has more more money than any of us would know what to do with. I, on the other hand, make my living working on films with budgets that only amount to a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, and believe me that does not go very far - the lower cost of digital vs. celluloid film is only one line item in the production process, whereas you still have to pay for locations, costumes, props, housing, transport, food, lighting, and a whole bunch of other things before you even get to handing out any wages.
It's very, very hard to monetize a low-budget film. And there's constant downward pressure on production budgets, because indie films don't usually have fat box-office payoffs, and instead depend on small-scale releases in festivals and the art-house cinema circuit, followed by (you hope) some international box office and (you really hope) a long tail of DVD/streaming sales. And that long tail is highly vulnerable to piracy, and the existence of piracy is a big deterrent to investors.
So when you're saying Big Studio makes enough money with their latest superhero franchise movie, or HBO makes enough money with their huge base of cable subscriptions, and so you don't feel bad about pirating Superhero 4 or Game of Thrones well sure, I understand that - none of the producers are in any danger of losing their shirts, everyone on the cast and crew got paid handsomely at the fairly generous rates their guilds/unions have negotiated over the years, and the shareholders still make plenty of money and get a nice dividend check every quarter.
On the other hand, lots of smaller content providers are getting fucked financially because it's a lot harder to answer the question of 'how will investors make their money back?' than it was a few years ago. So spare me the stereotypes of evil media barons trying to stop the brave plucky technological underdogs. That same technology is also massively disruptive to creative professionals and small businesses that work outside the Big Media tent, and actively hinders their ability to make a living.
I don't want to be a dick, but have you actually had a real sword fight? Have you pierced someone's armor and make him bleed? Of course you haven't.
The Mountain is a fictitious character from the popular TV series Game of Thrones. He uses a huge sword that you wouldn't be able to stop the same way you stop your fake swords brandished by girls. And I only dared to use him as an example because all of this is basically just that: a game, a fantasy.
If I had to pick a guardian, I would choose a newbie sword man from the middle ages over your instructor (who has never had a real fight) any day.
If you think Kendo is real, see what the guys from Iaido have to say about them: When they pick a real sword, they simply can't handle the weight, and the ones that can don't know how to actually cut stuff, because all they have learned is to win points in a game similar to tag.
Well, and they CGI'd the most of the movie's Legolas' "arrows" as well.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/06/game-of-thrones-has-cgi-in-the-weirdest-places/
I always thought that the whole LOTR/Hobbit thing could to well as a modern TV series; like Game of Thrones, House of Cards or Breaking Bad -- movie-like quality but much longer, so there's possibility to tell a much bigger story and zoom in on many details which each can tell a story on their own. I for one liked how the LOTR extensions had more time for some quiet moments, and song. Maybe they'll do a longer TV-Show-like edit.
Although with the Hobbit they stretched it in really tedious and annoying ways, not adding much interesting to the story, just dumb action and and annoying characters. So now people want it to be shorter.
It is a service problem.
Game of Thrones used to available for 30-40 bucks on iTunes in the form of a season pass. It allowed Australians to prepurchase the box set of the series and watch to episodes as they aired (in sync with USA release schedule)
Used to. In Australia we only have one cable company Foxtel which has advertisements, 10-20mins per 1hr of scheduled programming. Foxtel secured exclusive rights to season 2 and 3. Now the only legal way to watch game of thrones is to suscribe under multi year contracts at 24/month, endure the advertising and to make matters worse episodes were delayed broadcast by 24-48 hours.
Delayed broadcast is a horrible, in Australia it basically means "avoid social media" for 48h until Foxtel airs or have the storyline ruined. With GOT whereby every episode was a epic twist piracy won out. Free, Imediate and no ads.
Aussies got REALLY pissed off and just resulted to pirating from piratebay. Foxtel got all uppity in the media, calling Australians a bunch of pirates and then started lobbying government for copyright reform.
The writing on that makes me understand that the author really loves movies. And loves them perhaps a bit too much in the sense that any entertainment medium is, at its heart, a fashion medium, and fashions change.
I agree with him that franchises get boring, but he seems to miss the part where I, the movie-goer, stop going to movies and so the studios notice and stop making them and try to make something else. My daughter and I were noting that all the TV shows seemed to be police procedurals with a police officer and a "quirky side kick" of some sort. That concept got run right into the ground. And now all of them are 'Game of Thrones' clones where their is some nominal "set" and within that set are created no fewer than a dozen inter-twined story lines of competition and intrique. And because they want to have a dozen or more story lines, many of them are just plain silly.
My point is that it sucks when something you love moves on from what you love into something new[1]. But it isn't the end of the world, nor is it necessarily the end of an industry. It is just the new, new thing.
[1] My wife laments my music tastes are stuck in the 70's and 80's :-)
> But more often his presence is seen the form of loving nods as, when, in the “Game of Thrones” television series, someone yells out “Stormbringer” when King Joffrey asks for possible names for his sword.
FWIW, I'm quite sure someone in the crowd also shouts "terminus" which would be a gene wolfe reference, and something else I didn't quite catch.
Jonathan Wild: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild
Thanks for the pointer. The Wikipedia text seems way more of a movie script (daring escape after daring escape (if I had to guess, most of them involving bribes), tickets sold to a hanging, etc) than the very loose adaptation at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065209/, but I guess the movie makers wanted a happy ending.
Maybe the director of Game of Thrones should have a go at this story?
go watch Interstellar. first movie where it was really, really hard to spot the transitions to CGI.
also, you'd be surprised how much CGI now is being used in TV series. the showreels are on vimeo, some amazing work.
example, game of thrones, season 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK73bCuJXc8
Your analogy is wrong.
It’s more like: Going into a bookstore, taking the encyclopedia britannica, reading the article about Elephants and the leaving again, without buying the encyclopedia.
Overall the store lost no sale. You wouldn’t have bought it otherwise anyway (For example as I had the choice between paying 20$/month just for Game of Thrones, or not watching it at all, I decided to just ignore that boring show).
It might even have made a sale, because as you were already there, you might have bought something else (Pirates tend to spend the most money on additional stuff like cinema tickets or merchandise).
And the store didn’t even lose anything, as you didn’t take something from them that they had, you actually didn’t even cost them any money.
A better question: who would pay $3-5 for an episode of Game of Thrones in 1080p that starts playing with a single mouse click and is available as soon as the episode airs in the earliest timezone (at least an hour before it appears online illegally)?
My guess: not everyone, but a lot of people.
>> "Thus, if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it."
I get your point but that's incorrect. Alternatives include:
- paying for the cable + HBO subscription and only watching GoT.
- waiting for the blu ray/dvd/iTunes release
Both those options allow you to watch GoT and nothing else. The problem is that people don't want to wait for an official release or want a cheaper way to get it 'right now' (i.e. a cheaper HBO only subscription). I think GoT is a big torrent is because it's not available on TV in a lot of countries or there is a big delay between the US airing and the local airing. Another reason is that people don't pay for something when they can get it for free. I would like to see how many people who torrent GoT (but say they would pay for it if it was available to them on their terms) would pay $3-5 for an episode via a torrent if there was a button to pay (and get it legally) and a button to get it for free (illegally).
I know lots of people who love Game of Thrones but it's a bit silly to think that there's a deliberate attempt to normalize incest or feudalism. It's just a TV show people happen to live.
> I think that may be conflating cause and effect. I'd argue a manned trip to Mars is a focus of pop culture because it resonates strongly with so many.
Game of Thrones, Star Wars, etc, also resonate with society. Things in those movies aren't necessarily worthy of exploring. Conversely, cancer research isn't represented well in pop culture... but that doesn't mean it doesn't warrant pursuit.
I read KSR's Mars Trilogy after hearing about it repeatedly on /r/spacex and I highly recommend it. In fact, given that it is a 20 year old work at this time, I think it has stood the test of time very well.
I'm glad to hear it's being made into a tv series, but I worry that you really need a high budget to make it come alive (like Game of Thrones)
They aren't adequate for Game of Thrones because the pilot episode alone cost between $5M and $10M, with the entire first season costing $60M. Crowdfunding does a lot of neat things, but it doesn't generate sixty million dollars. And even if it did, you wouldn't have the proper connections to do very much with that money except squander it. A lot of things had to come together to make Game of Thrones a reality, and money is just one part.
Beyond that, it's telling that you set up a strawman belief system and then bashed it without asking whether I actually hold those beliefs.
Game of Thrones season 4 is still not on Amazon in the US. I think that would impact my enjoyment, since part of the enjoyment is being able to talk to people about it. By the time I'd be able to watch it on there, they wouldn't even remember what happened that season.
> As an Australian resident with no real access to current episodes of Game of Thrones without getting cable TV …
That's the same situation as USA.
Australia actually briefly had it better than USA, with the AU iTunes store releasing HBO shows like GoT within a day or two of their USA cable release. But then HBO + Foxtel broke that.
It is about damn time.
Welcome to the present, HBO. I am assuming this move is in part to the massively high piracy rate for Game of Thrones episodes. As an Australian resident with no real access to current episodes of Game of Thrones without getting cable TV, I hope they do come through on delivering the service overseas (especially Australia), because if the price is right, I will gladly pay for HD episodes of Game of Thrones (amongst other great HBO shows like True Detective).
I don't really care about Game of Thrones. I do care about the fact that it's increasingly hard to raise money for smaller film projects that aren't linked to an existing successful franchise.
Unfortunately it's nearly as easy to torrent low-budget indie movies as it is flagship TV shows and blockbuster movies, so guess which projects don't manage to recoup their costs of production or make a profit?
thanks for the clarification. you're right on that.
i've found that my social skills have dramatically improved from trying to learn them _conceptually_, rather than implicitly. I watched a lot of tv shows - walking dead, house of cards, game of thrones, breaking bad - and kept pausing the tv to discuss with my wife _why_ people were acting the ways they did.
doing this really helped me come to understand a lot of things, like the importance of staying calm if you want to be respected. apparently 'dispositional mindfulness' is mindfulness as a default state, as opposed to something practiced intentionally.
going about my day thinking about abstract things constantly seems like the opposite of dispositional mindfulness. i'll haveh to look further.
This is exactly why HBO keeps their Game of Thrones content which costs $6 million / episode exclusive.
If they started selling episodes for $1.99/each in HD the day after they air they'd see their upfront capital they get from their recurring subscriptions evaporate, and the show would also go away.
I'm betting on no new hardware except maybe a 4k Cinema Display. Intel's Broadwell delay may have pushed everything back this year. Hopefully, this doesn't depress me as much as tonight's Game of Thrones.
Putting Amazon Instant on the main shopping website is such a befuddling experience.
I'm on Amazon Instant. I see they have some HBO stuff, so I search for Game of Thrones. The auto-suggest immediately directs me to the books, ignoring my context. So, I skip auto-suggest and search just in HBO, and I'm prompted to buy Season 1 for $40. Huh? Meanwhile I'm always being distracted by recommendations to buy those solar panels I searched for a month ago.
I think it was a bad idea to conflate the contexts of "shopping" and "looking for entertainment" so throughly. I don't think Netflix has anything to worry about.
This is a nice step in the right direction, but I'd be willing to pay $/mo extra to get the latest episodes of Game of Thrones.
I didn't know they did that, I wonder how strong a signal it is. If you search for a review or something of a recent TV show (my favourite is eg game of thrones S4E5) and forget to mention you want reviews, you find lots of sites that must be getting DMCAs. Also Youtube must get a lot of them, probably one of the top served sites at a guess?
> I never cease to be amazed at the creativity of piracy apologists in coming up with new scenarios where piracy is the only solution.
It doesn't need to be the only solution. It simply needs to be the most economically viable solution to the consumer.
Joe Bloggs is an Englishman. He likes high-quality US television imports - Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, True Detective. He wants to obtain them for his viewing pleasure.
His options:
1. Go old school. pay £100-£150 for all the box-sets.
2. Go new school. Pay £7/month for Netflix (BB, HoC). Pay £30+ a month for Sky TV subscription with Sky Atlantic for the others. Plus £x, plus £y for everything else he needs - not even to mention movies, which are very inconsistent across streaming services. (I fear that we Limeys get less out of our Netflix subscriptions than you.)
3. Go illegal. Spend an upfront cost of time, electricity, bandwidth and risk of malware apocalypse/getting caught to get all this stuff on his hard drive.
Forget the morality of the issue. Never mind the legality: if Joe is a driver, it's a statistical near certainty that he speeds; if he doesn't take drugs, it's not because they're illegal. It's simple economics. If three is cheaper - in terms of time plus risk plus money - he will do number three.
As long as The Pirate Bay offers real advantages over legal services - principally, beyond the monetary price, everything you could possibly want is there in one place - then people will choose it. And just as it's unrealistic to expect media conglomerates to share the EFF's view of DRM, so it's unrealistic to expect media consumers to put up with the enormous inconveniences for the sake of some mythical starving artist grubbing away at the bottom of the Hollywood food chain.
George RR Martin uses DOS
DOS still used by George RR Martin
George RR Martin talks about authoring in DOS
DOS to be killed off in the next episode of Game of Thrones
Many of the sites with the most pernicious ads require JS to function, so NoScript isn't really that effective if you're going to, say, stream the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
The closest thing I can relate this to in the UK is the way they handle TV licensing. That's another government sponsored organization seemingly designed to find and harass false-positives with threatening letters. Yes, I own a screen. Yes, there theoretically exists a mechanism to hook it up so that it would receive broadcast television were you to broadcast any television in my area. But no, I'm not going to pay you for a TV License regardless of how many times you threaten to send somebody over to my house.
Similarly, I pay Lovefilm, Orange.fr and the NFL directly for access to paid content. I streamed a Game of Thrones episode to my TV here in France last night, possibly making me the first person in history to watch the show legally.
But when I head back to our house in England in a few months, I might want to watch the next episode so I'll download it. I have paid for access to it, but BT has no way of knowing this so they'll add me to their list of "Bad People".
There's simply no way they can correctly track who paid for what, so it leaves us in a situation where, regardless of whether you have a right to the content you watch, you're still labeled a criminal.
Kinda makes you wonder why bother paying at all if the end result is the same.
They're simply too pig-headed. If you're not in the US, you'll try and watch a snippet of a late night show and routinely get a lame message about the video not being available in your region. It hardly engenders a feeling of loyalty or interest in supporting the creator/marketer.
In the past, people could at least buy Game of Thrones through iTunes per-episode or on some sort of season pass. As of this season, they've changed so the only option is a $50/mo pay-TV subscription. The one person I knew who was paying for GoT in Australia, now doesn't.
How will you deal with users who spoil shows on purpose? Could I watch the first episode of Game of Thrones, sync with the app and post "OMG ----- dies!" right at the start?
I assume if you can watch time shifted comments they're moderated in some way (or perhaps flagged by the community)?
This is just another indication that video media is in need of a new medium. There is a need something like Steam or Spotify, but for TV Shows and movies. Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, etc. are all lacking in terms of the videos they offer and there's nothing to fill the void unless you want to go into the realm of physical media (and let's be honest, you don't). Torrents are easy, but managing a collection and getting good quality videos is still a pain.
I'm in college now and I started torrenting music in the 8th grade - iTunes came and I realized that I would have had to spend thousands of dollars to get the collection I wanted - so I continued to torrent music. I would have missed out on a lot of music if I relied on iTunes (and be out $100k or so) but once I found Spotify and realized that I would no longer have to edit all the ID3 tags, find album work, and deal with poor audio quality for $5 a month, I instantly switched and haven't looked back (except for music they lack like The Beatles, AC/DC, and Def Leppard which I still torrent, oops).
Game of Thrones recently broke a torrent record [1] and the CEO of HBO basically said they appreciate the publicity and thank their fans. IMO money is not as big of an issue for video as it is for music because the networks and actors aren't suffering the way musicians do (this is just my opinion based on observation). Yeah, Spotify has been called out for not compensating artists properly [2] but I think it's a step in the right direction in terms of service.
I like the idea of something like Popcorn Time but I think it's just a wake-up call that there is a need for innovation in the realm of video media. The music and gaming industries have seen a shift in recent years, so maybe movies and tv shows are not far behind...
[1] http://time.com/63331/game-of-thrones-torrent-record/ [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/thom-yorke-explains-why-he-hates-spotify-2013-10
Popcorn Time previously just showed open domain films in the screen shots. The new one has pictures Game of Thrones and company. It looks like they have stopped pretending this is not for piracy.
edit: clarification
My point is that even applying the word "buy" to something like an episode in todays context feels artificial. It's built around rules which state that everyone must pretend that Game of Thrones is being recorded onto video cassettes and you are walking over to the video store to borrow them.
I'm not trying to make a normative or ideological point. Overall, the shows themselves and the system of selling and delivering them to us is way better than 10 years ago. I'm not claiming some unalienable right (though ironically there is an inalienable ability, via pirating) to see anything, anytime at a price of my choosing.
I'm not making suggestions for an alternative economy where Game of Thrones gets produced. I'm just saying that this system is ugly and feels fragile. It's a kludge.
No one is "forcing" you to buy "sequence of bits" of the latest Game of Thrones episode.
Are we really “killing” cable – or even cable TV – when we sign up for a cable internet package which includes cable-only TV channels?
Yes, internet delivered services are killing "cable-only TV" when "cable-only TV" starts becoming something else. If HBO is now letting Comcast subscribers watch HBO-Go episodes of Game of Thrones, then HBO is no longer "cable-only TV!" In fact, I'd say that with piracy, many "cable" content producers are no longer in the business of cable-only TV! They are now in the digital content producing business.
If traditional cable subscribers are declining at the same rate that people are dying of old age, then this suggests that young people are not becoming new cable subscribers and this does spell the end.
What's the point you're trying to make? That you can't buy episodes of shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones separate from cable, they're too expensive, or that Netflix and its kin aren't good enough?
I don't know what to think about TV.
On one hand, there's a lot of progress happening. Streaming, on-demand and pay-per-view/download are really getting bigger and more prominent every year. HDboxes, are getting better too and achieving a lot of the same things (watch anything anytime).
The artform itself is improving. Game of Thrones or Breaking bad are better that any show could be in the stand alone episode paradigm of Star Trek. They are using the 10+ hrs hours of sequential viewing to do some serious plot & character development. Walter White wasn't possible before serials.
On the other hand, it's all such a kludge.The whole thing is built around creating and maintaining an artificial scarcity modeled on the slightly less artificial scarcity of a few years ago. We pretend that we're paying Amazon or Netflix's for a cable or pretending that we're paying Apple for a video cassette. Don't get me started on loaning.
I'm not claiming that copyright could go away and still have Game Of Thrones. This isn't that kind of statement. But… it's just such a kludge. Something this brittle and ugly can't be the right way to do anything.
The selection is terrible - a few BBC series and some weird films. It's really annoying, because Amazon.de has quite a lot of great TV series and films, all dubbed in German, usually quite poorly.
I honestly don't understand how German audiences tolerate it. 90% of the time, it really just sounds like a bunch of actors sitting in a studio, reading lines melodramatically. I seem to remember the LOTR dubs were well done, though. In contrast, I saw the first episode of Game of Thrones at a friend's house and it was godawful. Completely lost the nuance of every performance.
Anyway, other streaming services (Maxdome, Watchever) will give you the original audio track, but their selection is also rather limited.
The latest episodes are not on Amazon or iTunes (or DVD). Just searched for Game of Thrones season 4 on Amazon and iTunes to confirm.
HBO's business model is exclusivity, which in my opinion is anti-consumer.
I can watch any episode of Game of Thrones and stream the new episodes as they broadcast live on TV with Sky Now in the UK. £5.99 a month.
Does the de-duplication aspect of it have any impact on DMCA/copyright issues?
For example, lets say somebody from HBO downloads Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay and then uploads it to Streem. We could assume that many other people on Streem also have that same copy of the episode uploaded. HBO then issues a DMCA takedown (could they?), would Streem delete the file for everybody? And does Streem then have to prevent anybody from re-uploading it?
I think its only the first episode to attract viewers. I was surprised when I noticed they were airing this season's first episode of Game of Thrones on Xbox for free with no registration/app download requirements. Glad to see content publishers "getting" the marketing angle.
A wiki-style spoiler-free website for catching up with TV series/books.
For instance, you've only watched Game of Thrones up to series 2, episode 3. You're about to start watching it again but can't remember what Daenerys was getting up to.
You go to the Game of Thrones page on that website, pick your series and episode, and choose "Daenerys" as a tag filter. It brings up all the major plot points relating to her up to S2E3.
I'm not so sure I agree with that standpoint. Sure, there is a population that doesn't watch any TV; but for a while, it was "Breaking Bad" this, and "Game of Thrones" that. People still like to watch their series, they just like to watch it on their time, be it anime (Crunchy Roll), recent TV (Hulu), movies (Amazon, Netflix, etc), recent televised news and pseudo-news (various news and private websites).
TV as an injestible X amount of time where you're fed pre-recorded or live content isn't going anywhere any time soon. In fact, many services exist to provide even live TV in brand new forms. Twitch.TV and LiveStream come to mind. For modern pre-recorded things, there's YouTube, Vimeo, Vine Videos to some degree, and so on.
TV as defined as radio with pictures (prerecorded, 24-hour, jockeyed video experiences) may be steadily shrinking right now; but TV as a video-based communications platform is far from gone.
Funny enough, I wouldn't be surprised if, if the TV as we know it fades away, new internet tools are brought up which create video playlists that follow your preferences, and play and suggest videos all around that concept so you can watch it in the background, like some TV viewers do. See YouTube playlists and a few other services for examples of this already.
The distribution is a result of the low number of ratings. Look at the number of ratings for each episode. For all those early 7.3-7.4 episodes it's about 600 ratings, the higher rated episodes have more ratings. Then from about season 12 there's a drop in number of ratings to about 300-400 for most episodes.
Compare this to the Game of Thrones ratings[1], where each episode has about 3000 ratings.
[1] http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0944947
The 'Red Wedding' episode of Game of Thrones was the best single show rating I could find - 9.9! http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0944947
The 4th episode of True Detective was 9.8. http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt2356777
Check out this outlier on Dexter's last season lol http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0773262
All of those shows are created in the USA. Like most content it is going to take a while to move to other markets, there is no way around this. I really like watching shows on BBC, I have to wait for them to show up here. This is the way of life, and price discrimination (because it makes business sense).
> Do you see the problem here? If HBO were to shut up and take my money, I'd gladly pay ten bucks per episode to stream it. But that would be soooooo 21st century, wouldn't it?
Unfortunately HBO doesn't want your $7/month on Netflix to watch an entire season of Game of Thrones, then cancel. It costs $6 million/episode. They make more money by not catering to you as a customer even at $10/episode with no locked in money like they currently have via subscription model.
> Most movies / tv shows are already currently available digitally or without DRM (Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Amazon, etc).
NO. NO. NO. Where did you get this information? It might be that the US of A is nearing such a state of affairs, but over here in Europe, these services are either not available or devoid of content.
For instance, I like to follow Continuum, Justified and Game of Thrones. The only one of these that is available online over here is Justified.
"Watchever", the service that carries it, however, is crippled by weird licensing deals where seasons of TV series appear and disappear seemingly at random, because they only get the rights for a limited amount of time. So if I get a Watchever subscription, I _might_ be able to watch Justified _some of the time_.
As for the other two, they are just not available online. The poor sods that can stand to watch it in the dubbed version with commercial breaks will get to see both series on free TV with a delay of more than a year.
There is no reason to assume that watching Game of Thrones with a one year delay is problematic in any way. After all, everybody (in Germany) watches it at the same time, one year later, right?
For GoT there is actually a third option. I can get a subscription with Sky for 35€ per month, where I'll get tons of sports television and one TV series of interest: Game of Thrones.
Oh, and that subscription? First time you can cancel it is after 24 months. So if I want to watch two seasons of GoT, it'll cost me a mere 840€.
Do you see the problem here? If HBO were to shut up and take my money, I'd gladly pay ten bucks per episode to stream it. But that would be soooooo 21st century, wouldn't it?
As an anecdote I have resorted to pirating Rick and Morty. I love the show, it's amazing really. If you haven't go watch it now. You might think that I am selfish a-hole who wants to rob the creators of one of my favourite shows of their income, but that's not the case. I am simply not located in the right part of the world. Not being an American is a huge hassel when it comes to digital content consumption.
I am willing to pay, nay I would love to pay, for Rick and Morty, but from my research I have found no way, short of VPN + US credit card, to buy a season pass. So you have potential customers who have to resort to piracy because the industry has no interest in distributing to their region. Am I going to buy Rick and Morty when it eventually comes out in Sweden? Not very likely as I will already have watched all episodes.
The same holds true for The Walking Dead, thankfully HBO has started releasing episodes of Game of Thrones the same day in Sweden as in the US and I can and am paying for that.
Game of Thrones is available on both iTunes and Amazon Instant Video for $2.99 SD / $3.99 HD per episode. I'm not sure if that counts as "failing to adapt to new media distribution".
There absolutely is a reason why it's expensive. In fact, I could easily make a case that as a society we'd be better off if more money was invested in creating quality content.
Believe it or not, the subscription costs usually only cover the delivery and printing fees. Historically, subscription revenue has never been a real profit center because it's always been the best interest of a publication to build a larger circulation to increase ad rates.
Now, the internet has brought certain efficiencies to what it costs to distribute content. But it hasn't necessarily impacted what it costs to create quality content. With ad rates being lower online than they are in really any other medium, ad revenue isn't supporting the creation of quality content like it used to.
While Game of Thrones exists on a no commercial network, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and many more of your favorite cable television shows rely on both ad revenue and subscription revenue to exist. HBO has a cost north of $15 per month depending on your cable network, whereas AMC (which runs commercials) costs about 27 cents in your bundled cable package which is about 2% of the cost of HBO. That's a colossal difference and yes, advertisers, are subsidizing that dramatic cost differential.
> Could you elaborate on the evidence for people willing to pay for good content? I also don't understand why Game of Thrones supports your argument.
http://bit.ly/1mLgOc3
> I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.
You now know of me. I spend around $50/month downloading content from Amazon, be it music or tv. I would buy Game of Thrones as it came out if I could, but I can't.
Absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence. Especially if you've done no investigation.
>I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.
$5 might be a bit steep for some, $2-3 is just about perfect. But honestly I'd still pay $5 for content created at this level, if not just to encourage the people creating this quality of content to keep doing it.
Your skepticism is powered by your lack of knowledge and research. Do the work, then come back and comment.
I'm trying to learn more about this issue. Could you elaborate on the evidence for people willing to pay for good content? I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.
I also don't understand why Game of Thrones supports your argument. Of course the shows that are pirated the most will be the ones that are (1) popular and (2) expensive or hard to access. And of course if those shows were cheaper they'd be pirated less. But I don't see how that relates to the idea that people are willing to pay for good content. My roommates pirate GoT, but I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.
The link, and indeed the whole blog, is worth reading. However, it doesn't directly answer the question. Bunnie suggests dealing with Chinese brokers who can source availability of 'cut tape', remnants from large production runs of the chip. It doesn't address consistency and reliable supply issues over a longer period of time but does allow for procurement of relatively small quantities of parts.
Bunnie also suggests learning enough Chinese to participate in what he terms the "gongkai" (公开), the quasi-open but legally murky design and production ecosystem producing much of our electronics, where documentation and specs are apparently available about as freely as torrented episodes of Game of Thrones.
Not necessarily. I don't know how HoC is produced, but with similar shows (short-season cable dramas) like Game of Thrones, the series is usually shot and produced before the first episode airs.
An interesting point of view. With that said, my anecdotal experiences indicate that it's possible to discuss media with people even if you're not on the same page, as it were.
Consider Game of Thrones -- I'm perfectly able to discuss Seasons 1 and 2 with my friends who haven't yet seen Season 3, if I'm mindful to avoid spoilers.
Community discussion can be had, it just needs to be conscientious.
It is a mistake to think that people against IP are just a bunch of kids ripping off content for free from [insert favorite bittorrent tracker]. For me personally, I pay for much of the media I consume.
My concerns with IP are more wide reaching, particularly with respect to the medical and agriculture industries. (And more personally, the software industry.) The book I cited, "Information Feudalism," chronicles this to a (horrifying) extent. In broad terms, countries rich in IP use it to extort developing countries.
I recognize the OP of this article sets the context with youthful apathy that can be annoying, but you shouldn't assume that the only criticisms of IP are selfishly trite.
To a secondary point, I don't think civil disobedience is a bad thing. But I agree that claiming civil disobedience while downloading the latest Game of Thrones episode is a bit incredulous.
> It is if you use your belief to say "Well then, I won't pay them what they've asked".
It seemed to me that you were equating "lack of IP" with "content creators aren't rewarded from the fruits of their labor." I was stating that this was a false equivalency. A lack of IP merely means that there is no body of law enforcing the notion of ownership over ideas.
>Perhaps they'll choose to offer a binary for other open source OSs
Even that's a bit hopeful imho - consider how easy it is to imagine an advert declaring "Game of Thrones Season 5: Exclusive to Apple!"... Hell, it could be worse - "Only on Intel"?
Also, availability is a huge issue. For me in Germany it is nigh impossible to legally watch a recent episode of Game of Thrones. And Breaking Bad or Doctor Who has only recently become available via the new service watchever.de. And even there they are published far too late if you want to participate in the online discussion of an episode.
Here in Germany, the entire television system is somewhat different from the US. Most people do not have what we call "pay TV", but consume only free-TV and DVDs/Blurays. There is no usable streaming service (usable in the sense that it has more than two (!) non-ancient TV series on it). No Hulu, no Netflix.
Now with Game of Thrones, what happened is this: The pay-TV group Sky got the rights for it and is showing it with a rather short delay compared to the US date. However, you can't just buy the channel that has GoT, but you have to buy a whole package of channels. That package is rather expensive, since Sky owns several very costly sports transmission licenses. Needless to say, I don't know anybody with a Sky subscription who is not a very devoted sports fan.
So for most GoT fans, it is as if you were paying your whole "cable bill" just for that one series.
If you decide against that (how could you!), you can of course buy the DVD. The DVD for the third season will be available in March 2014.
Yes. One year later.
So essentially, you are locked out of the conversation about GoT that is going on on the internet if you want to remain legal without footing the enormous Sky bill. I wonder if there is a firefox extension out there that filters your on-screen text for GoT mentions, since it is absolutely impossible to be one year behind on GoT and spoiler-free.
Does anybody still wonder, why GoT was the most torrented thing out there for 2013?
> And It's not a basic human right that you get to watch Game of Thrones.
Sure, I get your point. But let's say there's a TV show that costs $8 for season 1 of the DVD, but $16 to stream it in SD and $24 to stream it in HD. Sure, I don't have to watch it, and it isn't my right, but I can't help but feeling like it's a big "fuck you" to me that they do this. So forgive me if I have little sympathy for them when I decide to go pirate it instead. Not to mention that pirating actually gives me more freedom and flexibility to download and store the content as I see fit.
I think I loved that treatment even more than Star Trek's. (The Inquisitor episode was interesting too...) In more recent shows (not that I've seen that many) my favorite treatment of torture is probably Theon's in Game of Thrones. There's no higher purpose to it, it's just sadistic pleasure taken from the torturing. The methods are more brutal too -- it's not some magic machine that just stimulates pain centers of the brain, there's pain plus body parts being lost permanently. I think by engaging the victim's imagination of what will come next the torture may be more effective...
So, no one ever dares to ask this, but I'm going to because I never see mention of it crop up in these sorts of discussions.
Where do you draw the line between an individual's assertion of privacy over confidential information, and contrast it with the premise of intellectual property and the use of encryption to achieve goals traditionally perceived as less noble, such as DRM?
Where does the distinction emerge, that my social security number and HIV status deserve protection, but an episode of Game of Thrones does not?
I'm not asking this question because I don't understand the distinction. I'm asking this question because it's not often discussed.
If information wants to be free, then what is our objective measure, to define the reason why we might choose to confine some, all or none of our information, especially when employing encryption?
Would you rather pay $80 to watch Game of Thrones and Homeland, or $80 a month for a year ($960 total) to watch those episodes plus old rerun movies and syndicate shows? I suppose it's a matter of preference but I choose the former :)
I've never been a user of TPB so I can't tell you who has advertised there, but there are lots of people out there who will drop $600 on a phone and then jailbreak it so they can pirate 99 cent apps. For a lot of folks there is a clear line between digital content easily gotten and other stuff and they'll pay a lot for the other stuff but will pirate digital content when it is convenient to do so.
I'm not saying this is right, but in my experience it is pretty common. I've witnessed multiple instances of people teaching other people how to torrent including once in a jury lounge in a county courthouse and many times at workplaces that produce digital goods (software) and the general idea seemed to be that if they can get whatever digital thing (eg. the latest episode of Game of Thrones) for free, why not? And yet these are people who drive nice cars, wear nice clothes, and buy lots of expensive gadgets, squarely in the demographic of people that advertisers of non-digital goods like to target.
OTOH, I would suspect TPB (like 4chan) has a problem where advertisers of "upscale" goods just don't want to be associated with the "brand" of the site, regardless of the demographic match. But I don't think the fact that the users are people who want things "for free" is a disqualifier.
I use the house names of westeros (game of thrones) for all my hostnames in my home network. Its a lot more fun mounting a drive from winterfell or streaming movies from kingslanding.
If you buy content for personal use, like you buy an episode of Game of Thrones, you aren't allowed to sell it to anyone. But you can copy it between your own devices as you see fit.
Substitute "Turkish Coffee" with "Game of Thrones" on this whole comment thread, and maybe we'll learn a bit about the thought process at HBO.
It'll take some doing to construct a reason why people downloading a single tv episode are analogous to old men hogging a table though...
Although it's more expensive to do a separate pilot, it's not always a waste of time or money. In many cases, ideas that on paper are very good don't translate well. A pilot lets you catch these problems and remedy them. If you go straight to series you may end up only finding out about these issues when it's too late to fix them.
A few good examples of this: the (unaired) pilot for BBC's Sherlock is a not fantastic 60 minutes with significant pacing problems, which was subsequently reshot and turned into a well received 90 minute miniseries. The US version of Life on Mars got completed re-located and re-cast as the pilot was just bad (...most people wouldn't call what ended up as 'good', but it was a vast improvement on the pilot).
Neither approach is without its problems. Take a show like Game of Thrones, which is very expensive to make. On the one hand, HBO could have saved millions of dollars by not ordering a pilot. On the other, it was pretty clear once it came back from post production that the approach the writers had originally taken wasn't going to work, and a number of changes were made to make the show more accessible to people who hadn't read the books.
So HBO did 'waste' several million dollars on a pilot that never aired, but the ability for the creative team to review the pilot before embarking on a full series commitment meant many changes could be made that resulted in a better show. HBO have easily recouped the lost money.
It's interesting that Amazon have taken the opposite approach to Netflix, and ordered a large number of pilots rather than going straight into series commitments.
I bet I could read a script and tell you if it's shit or not. Why do you even need a pilot? And the funny thing is, good shows get watched. There's a huge market for quality television. Just look at what Mad Men, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, etc have done for their networks. Is it really that there aren't enough writers coming out of Harvard who can write a Mad Men script? Do we only have writers who can write shitty sitcoms? I doubt it. Or is Mad Men that expensive to produce? Watch one some time. Most shows take place in two locations and are all dialog. They could almost be plays. But for some reason NBC, CBS, and FOX only buy shows with a laugh track or a panel of judges. I don't get it at all.
Sorry, only those first two sentences are an actual reply. I got carried away...
There are "not relevant to what you do" because most of the people you meet at work probably don't give a crap about anything else than the end of their (short) noses. It's common in people in general.
I actually tend to bring out issues like SOPA or NSA at work regularly, only to find them losing to topics like "what's your opinion on the last Game of Thrones episode".
Even in a situation a company could take a meaningful stand, the issue typically gets dismissed as "it doesn't affect the bottomline". And it sucks to be the only person around who cares, so at some point you just stop bringing issues up.
> allow women (and men) to get through it without having to constantly bite their tongues or else be seen as the problem
Right. Bite my tongue and put on the kid gloves. Wouldn't want to discuss last nights episode of Game of Thrones in the break room, less be seen as a sexist jerk. People do have friends at work, and normal human interactions do take place there.
A series of Downton Abbey costs approx £12MM and reaches 13MM people in the UK alone[1].
The 2hr pilot episode of LOST cost $12MM[2]. Each episode of Game of Thrones has a budget of $6MM[3].
So no, they don't cost a lot of money to make, relatively speaking.
Edit: sources.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8717969/Trench-war-comes-to-Downton-Abbey.html
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1496199/The-man-who-discovered-Lost-and-found-himself-out-of-a-job.html
[3] http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-million-per-episode_1333082
This is just microeconomics: entertainment goods are poor substitutes for each other, and bands like Pink Floyd have monopolies on their own music. When you're in the mood for Pink Floyd, nothing else will do. Similarly, there are many TV shows, but only one Game of Thrones. Many movies, but only one The Godfather.
Bridge engineers and architects are good economic substitutes for each other. You can put out an RFP and get competitive bids back.
Most people aren't "visionaries" or aren't as good at "connecting the dots" as the NSA likes to say. They live their lives in the present - today. Does the NSA spying affect them today? If not, then they aren't concerned about it.
But that's a very wrong way to approach things. You have to connect the dots and see where this is going, before it's too late to do anything to stop it.
Plus, I bet most don't even realize that even if authorities don't come knocking at their door because through their spying they saw they downloaded that last Game of Thrones episode (how long until that happens, anyway?), they could still use the spying to influence judges, politicians, mayors, and so on - which will affect their day to day lives, depending on the decisions those people take through blackmail.
But as I said, most people can't connect the dots like that. Ignorance is a bliss, as they say.
I can't agree that cable tv quality has gone down recently. Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad? This stuff is not only the highest quality TV we've probably ever seen but higher quality than film as well.
Yes. It was priced at 10 million per hour. For movies 20 million per hour is considered a good price.
And I think house of cards is relatively expensive. Even game of thrones cost 6 million per hour. How is this possible? I have no idea.
I don't want them to share my view, dude. I just want them to be aware of what's going on. To be informed. Disagreement is completely fine with me.
But, looking around, people are way, way more obsessed with the latest episode of Game of Thrones, for example, than the fact that they are being watched. And the reason is that they aren't even aware of the latter. They have shut it out.
CNN put up a 4-paragraph softball piece [1]. Edit: CNN added to its reporting.
You're right about NBC. Their current headline:
>Game of spoilers: Did Twitter kill DVRs?
Which is a piece expressing some TV viewers' outrage that tweets spoiled an episode of Game of Thrones for them.
[1] - http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/09/politics/nsa-leak-identity/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
I'm the same. Technology isn't the zero-sum game it's made out to be --- there's a place in the market for both tablets and `traditional' PCs. There's also a not-tiny segment of the market that actively prefers laptops to tablets (I'm one of them).
When it comes to creating professional-quality work, I really think the tablet is a long, long way from being a viable replacement for the full-blown PC. It's almost impossible to imagine Game of Thrones being edited on iPads, for example. Taking it to the lower end of the market, even independent film-makers are likely to use a PC to edit their films, no matter how low-budget they may be. The same applies to music, too.
Exact setup is how I watched the first few episodes of Game of Thrones, and opted to subscribe to HBO because of their sane streaming policy.
HBO should have a Kickstarter campaign for each episode of Game of Thrones. Donate any amount you want, and if the total funds raised is $75 million (or whatever HBO determines is the expected sales figure of the one episode for the next 25 years), HBO releases the DRM-free episode for free to everyone who wants a copy.
If the amount isn't reached, then the episode is never released. Repeat the process for each successive episode in each season.
I just checked. You can't buy Game of Thrones season 3 via iTunes in the USA, but it looks like you could buy it in Australia. I tried buying an episode from the Australian iTunes store, but no luck.
It is fun article with some apt analogies and I am glad that I decided to read it despite the title. To me at least, "Game of Thrones" TV series would be a horrible project management tutorial, as almost all characters in it do not have a slightest idea what they want and/or how to achieve it, changing sides in a conflict on a whim. Obviously it is about a journey, not a destination for Westeros nobles.
Small quibble, but I don't like that you mentioned Game of Thrones along with Netflix and Hulu. Those online services don't have Game of Thrones. The only way to watch any HBO show is to have a cable subscription or buy the episodes directly.
Consumers don't even care about content. They care about convienence. It trumps everything. Video on the web is convenient enough that you will be able to watch the TV show du jour through it, and if there is no DRM support in browsers it won't be DRMed.
Pirates are becoming increasingly professional and Hollywood gets to decide if they will spend their legal advantage on defending incompatibility schemes or making money, unless the browsers help them out with the former.
A DRM free HTML5 spec won't have any effect on you being able to watch Game of Thrones on your open source Linux browser aside from maybe giving you an opportunity to pay HBO for it.
Consumers don't care about implementation, they only care about the content, and until they do, suppliers of content hold all the cards.
In this case, forget consumers. Once in a while, something is more important than appeasing the masses.
A DRM free HTML5 spec is not going to force Hollywood to allow you to play Games of Thrones on your open source Linux browser.
Neither is a DRM-infested spec. Instead, you have uninformed consumers Googling for "how can I watch Game of Thrones Season 2 Episode 3 online for free", getting infested with malware, but still watching the show for free.
Depends on what your definition of "deep" is. Have you watched Game of Thrones? The story is very complicated and I can't imagine a 2 hour movie being made out of it without dropping a lot of story on the floor.
Have you tried their original programming recently? At the turn of the century HBO and Showtime started producing really amazing original shows that easily rival any movie and have become the top tier of TV shows. I would venture to say that most people that get HBO nowadays do it for the original programming and not the movies.
These premiere shows had a much different feel than normal "big 3" network TV shows. They tend to be much more serial, with story arcs that go for whole seasons or even longer. They also tend to have much shorter seasons (generally around 8 to 12 episodes). This serial style really lends itself well to in-depth story telling and the shorter seasons means more attention is spent on each episode (since they don't have to constantly churn out new episodes all year).
An interesting technique that many of the shows use is to base themselves off a book series but make the entire 10 to 12 episode season cover a single book. Dexter, Game of Thrones, and True Blood all seems to do this with reasonable success. It allows them to get much more detailed than a 2 hour movie based on a book could possibly be.
The popularity of Game of Thrones disproves that attention spans have ``shortened and people want condensed action delivered immediately''. It's incredibly complicated, in-depth, and sometimes takes entire seasons for the pay-off to be delivered. Spending the first two episodes (20%!) of the third season laying the table for the remaining eight is pretty much the antithesis of ``condensed action delivered immediately''.
I think that's it's actually the other way round. Popularity of YouTube and shows like Game of Thrones proves that people are tired of long movies. Attention span has shortened and people want condensed action delivered immediately.
As a counter point, I honestly see 'movies' somewhat dying out. Shows like Game of Thrones, House of Cards and several others now have the same production quality as movies and aren't hamstrung by the same limitations. e.g. how do you tell a deep story in 2 hours?
Yeah, House of Cards with Spacey is excellent. I started and liked it so much I finished watching all episodes in 2 days. Its really good to see companies like HBO and Netflix giving the traditional TV media houses a run for their money. BTW, if you liked House of Cards, check out Game of Thrones.
There is a hefty artificial delay during which you cannot get access to newer content that way. I don't see last weekend's episode of Game of Thrones available anywhere other than HBO Go and torrent sites, currently.
I pay for HBO and they would have aired Game of Thrones on Monday evening this week. A day later than in the US, which is fine by me.
But I was on a plane at that time and I have boxing practice when GoT airs anyway. So I shamelessly pirated the episode while at the airport (when did airport hotspots become 3.5MB/s monsters anyway?) intending to watch it on my laptop while flying over the atlantic.
I ended up watching it yesterday morning as I woke up at 6am due to jetlag.
I feel I did nothing wrong.
My experience is mainly with OKCupid. I presume most other dating websites are variations on the same theme.
The problem is that OKCupid is a geek's worldview distilled. Whether a girl is visible to you is largely based upon algorithmic analysis of a questionnaire, which in turn is based on nothing more than pseudoscience.
So you have a questionnaire written by a team of computer programmers acting as gatekeeper to you contacting someone? Do you see the potential problem here? Who says the questionnaire is relevant?
Add to this fact that the quality of women on these sites is low on average, and it doesn't bode well for guys. Lots of guys will of course chime in and say it works for them. My interpretation of this is that given the sheer number of users, there will always be people who "luck out".
Cupid Plc (another online dating company, unrelated to OKCupid) is under heavy suspicion in the UK for faking high quality female profiles. I don't know if OKCupid does this, but the site really has no built-in mechanism to give you much trust in the profiles you see.
Overall, I think the problem with online dating websites is that they are not actually solving any of the difficult problems of dating. Online profiles are useless because they are 90% equivalent. Oh, so you like tall, athletic men? And you enjoy movies and wine, music, art and watching Game of Thrones? You are mainly good, but have a wild side? You are unique?
Given this, why the focus on these profiles? Guys are only interested in the photos (having put the effort into reading through fifty identikit profiles already).
...and then there's the transition to meeting up. This is fraught with difficulty because you have know way of gauging how to approach the issue. For some people "let's meet" will be enough and looked upon positively as decisive and confident. For others it is seen as completely inappropriate. The site gives you, the guy - it will usually be the guy - no way of knowing which strategy to use and so you lose 50% (or more) of the time on the basis of not having enough information to make a good decision. Given already low probability of finding someone who "suits" you on these sites, this is incredibly wasteful and not addressed.
So... good luck to anyone trying to improve things.
Got,
Got Milk?, Displays Got Milk? Advert. Boring
GOThic, Changes terminal font to Gothic?
GoT, Game of Thrones, Decapitates user?, Automatically fires up BitTorrent client and grabs latest episode? Plays ASCII art GoT episode? Cat's all of GRRM's GoT novels into your terminal? (That'll teach you).
A Kickstarter campaign wouldn't come close to covering it.
Your average cable TV drama costs upwards of $2M/episode, with Game of Thrones costing $4-$10 million/episode. Harry Potter has a big following, so it might make $10M all up - enough for a set and a pilot, maybe.
David Petrarca is not "the show's director", he's a director of two episodes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_of_Thrones_episodes
> It's price discrimination by ethics and wealth. If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO to watch Game of Thrones.
It's also discrimination by discrimination. I'm not in the US, even with ethics and wealth I do not have the option of buying HBO to watch Game of Thrones. My "legal" options are to 1. wait a year for the DVD box sets or 2. wait two years for a shitty dub
For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, all of these options not only suck hefty amount of balls but do so even more when the communities I interact with and share an interest in watch the episodes at or around release (also note, TV series communities don't maintain "spoiler alerts" for 2+ years after episode diffusion).
"Piracy Doesn’t Hurt Game of Thrones, Director Says"
Now, what does HBO say? The director presumably didn't put any money to produce it.
Personally I'd pay around $1 an episode but I understand HBO's business model and what they stand to lose if they went this route too
If you grew up in a time when all you needed to do to watch a TV show online was google "watch Game of Thrones online" and go to the first link, you would feel much more relaxed about it than you obviously do.
That takes me to a site that has endless scamware ads, tries to get me to download a hilarious dubious "codec" from a third party site, has various false-starts while it solicits memberships, etc.
That is easy? In contrast if I want to watch GoT on my cable box, it's right there under on-demand (included with premium services).
After having dealt with the fallout when people "easily" watched videos online, I have become suspicious of any notion about the easiness of piracy.
This is exactly my point. If you grew up in a time when all you needed to do to watch a TV show online was google "watch Game of Thrones online" and go to the first link, you would feel much more relaxed about it than you obviously do.
I made the age distinction because many older think piracy means that these people are using filesharing and bittorrent to watch these shows. These technologies are obsolete when it comes to television and movies. You can do it all directly through the browser. It is as easy and convenient as YouTube.
Estimates are that Game of Thrones costs $6 million per episode http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-million-per-episode_1333082 and Netlix's House of Cards is around $4 million per episode. That puts things at the same order of magnitude. Here is a good article about the economics behind it for Netflix and HBO: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/economics-netflixs-100-million-new-show/61692/
I'm hoping the idea of exclusives goes away - as long as the producer gets paid, who cares how the actual video was delivered (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, DVD etc). Unfortunately in the battle for market share it is worth some of those video deliverers to pay more to lock out competitors, but it doesn't benefit the consumers.
I am going to assume that you are an older person who has no real experience with "piracy" because the tone of your comment suggests a misconception about how it works. "Pirates" absolutely will pay. They pay to get the content as soon as it comes out and in high-definition.
There are large and influential companies that have come to recognize the piracy is the result of failures of distribution, not pricing. The prime example would be Valve, which since it made Steam its primary distribution channel, had paid very little attention to piracy (compare to EA). The CEO, Gabe Newell, has discussed this publicly, and you can find him discussing it on YouTube.
His example, which is particular to the gaming industry, but applies also to feature films, is that it is not reasonable to think that individuals who can afford $40/month internet connections and $2000 gaming rigs are pirating games because of money. They pirate games because they cannot get them legally conveniently and readily. This is particularly true in countries where English is not spoken. It takes months for a game to be released in Russia in Russian after the game is released in the United States. If a gamer can get a version in Russian faster via piracy, he's going to do it. The same rule holds for feature films, where again, release dates are not universal.
As to your second point, if you cannot see the common sense in the idea that the millions of American and foreign young people who do subscribe to cable or to HBO but who enjoy Game of Thrones want to be able to watch it online in high def the same way that they watch every other show, I think you're just trying to argue for the sake of it. Even if only 10% of these people paid to watch it on HBO/iTunes/Amazon, that is money that HBO is not getting now. Being able to pay a few bucks to watch the episode the same night that it is released in high-definition is well worth it. To take just one demographic, college students living in dorms do not have cable subscriptions. They all watch the show by streaming from sites that violate copyright or via file-sharing.
Perhaps you do not know this, but it is trivial to watch shows online. You can stream video from dozens of sites, with more of these appearing every month. These sites upload new episodes with hours of their original airing. That being said, Netflix has millions of subscribers, including very many young people who know how to watch shows like this. Young people also spend lots of money renting movies and television shows on iTunes that they could find for free online with a little effort. People pay for a high quality stream without the annoyance of pop-up ads and banners, and they like fast downloads and ease of use.
Here's Gabe talking about piracy, so don't take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk
How is HBO "trying to legal threat everyone into submission"?
I've purchased seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones on Bluray. I don't have cable yet HBO managed to take my money just fine. I bet those seasons are still heavily pirated despite being available for purchase, just as people pirate movies, TV shows, and music that has been available for legal purchase for years or decades. People just want to get shit without paying for it.
The implication is actually that cat videos are more enjoyable per instant than opera. If that were not the case, people would always watch opera. But if there were a high fixed cost, such as a ticket price, or the mental energy required to pay attention, the opera becomes relatively attractive. Imagine driving to a movie theater and paying $10 to watch a 2 minute cat video. It would be absurd.
My point about the middle ages was that at that time, the fixed cost for all media consumption was high, so no one even considered short videos (preformances?). Now, when fixed costs are lower, you see a dramatically different pattern of consumption.
High cost/high benefit media is still around - just think about a long running tv show like Lost or Game of Thrones, where the audience is expected to put a ton of mental effort into the show. So I don't worry about a race to the bottom.
Maybe, maybe not. What's interesting about the HBO/Showtime/etc. model is that it specifically encourages programming diversity, as the original article discusses at least a bit. Many people are willing to pay the surplus on their cable bill just to follow their one or two favorite shows, and few of the audience watches all eight (or however many). What this means is that whereas when a network adds a new show, they're trying to maximize its viewership on its own to maximize ad revenue, HBO only cares about adding new viewers that aren't already a part of their audience -- if a new show is only of interest to people already in the target demographic of an existing show and, therefore, probably already subscribers, nobody new will subscribe and the show won't pay for itself. As an audience member of their content, then, you're not expected to watch all of the shows, but you get the opportunity to watch a few that are probably more-narrowly-tailored to your interests than would be expected of network programming.
So yes, I would like to just be able to buy Game of Thrones, but I'd also, personally, like to be able to just buy Deadwood or (on Showtime) Queer as Folk, and I think if every show had to justify itself to network executives on raw viewership numbers instead of on audience-broadening power, those shows would never get made; their audiences are too niche compared to their production costs. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to see at least some content that's not aimed primarily at 18-35-year-old straight men.
Of course, this is the kind of reasoning that justifies 100-channel cable packages instead of a-la-carte cable channels, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But I think the expectation that a-la-carte show purchasing could really work, economically, is probably not realistic (and this without even getting into the issue that it'd be tough to pay for a $75-million Game of Thrones season at a dollar an episode).
No, I don't think I'm forgetting that. Netflix is talking about doing five original scripted series per year. HBO does... seven or eight, maybe? (Off the top of my head from the last year, Game of Thrones, Girls, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Newsroom, and Treme; that list isn't complete). That content is all not only original but, at least initially, exclusive. Showtime is at about the same level of volume, so this isn't unique.
You're right that in terms of a fraction of hours of content per month, most of what they show is not first-run original content, but I don't watch TV 24 hours a day, so I don't care. Like I said, if I got that amount of original content from four or five different providers (let alone 10), that would be more television than I have time to watch. The fact that they mostly show movie reruns is immaterial.
Only to a limited degree. Yes, there were soaps and other serials that had long-running narrative arcs, but not with the kind of sophistication contemporary writers are using.
Let's call it the 'Post-Buffy' school of thought, where character nuance, motivation, back-story, plot and sub-plot are all delivered with a kind of attention to detail formerly only used by novelists. There may be a few examples from the 60's -- The Prisoner comes to mind -- but even that can't really touch the narrative layers we've seen in the last decade: The Wire, Lost, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones (TV as novel if there ever was one), Six Feet Under, Dexter, Band of Brothers, and so forth. These aren't just books, they're novels.
This I think is partially the result of the ability of viewers to sit down and spend concentrated time with a series when they come out on DVD. The first time my wife and I did this was maybe 10 years ago with Buffy and Angel, and it was the most fun I'd ever had with television. This was a new experience. We'd lose 4 or 5 hours late on a Friday just chaining one after another, like the Battlestar Galactica skit on Portlandia.
What I think Netflix is doing, and probably what it has massive amounts of data to back up (I watched Buffy through Netflix, come to think of it), is that this new type of viewer engagement -- long sessions of series "gorging" -- has completely transformed the way we experience television. I think this is why they released the House of Cards episodes all at once. This is also probably why they're not releasing viewing numbers -- the new experience context of contemporary viewers has very little to do with the old Nielsen ratings arc, and would be a poor measure of the show's success, from Netflix' own point of view.
According a "friend";
Game of thrones gets downloaded by many tens of thousands in the first 24 hours. Episodes appear about 15 minutes after screening.
House of cards didn't make it to the torrents until 2 days after release and the numbers are nothing like game of thrones. Only half the episodes are available at this time.
As an Australian you could wait for it to be on TV, then it might be shown out of order, at all different (non-scheduled)times and episodes missed and cut.
> other swords and sorcery movies aren't fungible with LOTR.
I'd pay for more Legend of the Seeker, or for someone to do a Mistborn series. I'd pay to see Game of Thrones.
Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry if i've hit a nerve with what i said, but, yes, i do think that purchasing things legally is still, in a lot of cases, more difficult than, say, going to The Pirate Bay and downloading a torrent. This comic, for example, illustrates that quite well and it's not from 2002: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
> You think iTunes is "too hard" to use?
On Linux, yes, it's quite hard (compared to native Linux media players).
> You have a problem figuring our Netflix?
It wasn't too long ago that Netflix came to Argentina. If it'd had more content then i would consider using it, but frankly, with the current little content they have, i see no much of a use for it.
> Is Amazon more than your tiny brain can take?
Actually, Amazon is quite good for buying things like tablets or laptops. They end up costing like double or 50% more than what they cost on the US, but that's usually still quite less than what they cost buying them here.
But for "smaller" things, like e-books i wouldn't consider using Amazon, especially if i lose the freedom to copy or share that book thanks to some stupid DRM polices.
> At this point, if you're still having "trouble" paying, it's because you don't have money, not because you can't spend money you have.
Well, that's also quite true. Legitimate movies or videogames for some reason cost quite a lot here.
I remember that not long ago, before Blockbuster Argentina closed, an original PS3 or XBox game was about AR$ 500 (which was like $125 at that time); that's a substantial fraction of the monthly salary for most people (a normal middle-class salary being around 4000 and 8000 AR$). No wonder why Blockbuster broke here; people can but those same games for AR$ 10 on a pirate stand, and they are even easier to install :S
I'll probably won't convince you, but at least i'd like you to consider that the things that are easy for you are not easy for everyone else, and not necessarily because they are stupid or have "tiny brains". In case of replying, i'd appreciate you dropping those unneeded personal attacks.
Credit in this case means attribution. Pirate sites don't say "I made Game of Thrones" or rename it and try to pretend it's their own work. They present it as "This movie, released by whatever-group". People get far more upset about "stealing" attribution than copyright infringement.
Same here! Love the concept of own rewards! For example, your default rewards include 1 episode of Game of Thrones. Suppose I don't watch GoT (I do, but still, you understand the idea)? What then? Also, mit would be great if I could also specify the amount for each reward. I understand sometimes it may defeat the purpose, but still, IMHO that would be cool too
Posts like that are not necessarily a bad idea from our own self-interest, however. If enough people bitch about how stupid all these things are and the conventional wisdom shifts, I would guess that it will be good for those of us that want it to be a stupid idea/don't use TVs. Even without changing an movie exec's mind, if enough people get convinced that they are behind the times using a tv and switch to something "better" then those executives will then have to cope with a larger market share of people without TVs.
Hell, we might be able to get Game of Thrones protected as an inalienable right...
Why are any of them stupid? They hold the ultimate card. They own and produce the content. Universal sold their content to the highest bidder, which was HBO. HBO sells their content (and their own) to the highest bidder, which are cable/satellite companies. Does Netflix, Amazon, Apple, et al. have the current scale and reach to justify outbidding Cable?
There's a tendency for tech geeks to be armchair television/movie execs and it doesn't amount to much other than uninformed fantasy because they lack perspective outside their own self-interest.
And for some this leads to the faulty rationalization that this justifies piracy (as I've already started to see here). But this is little more than entitlement, because watching Game of Thrones isn't a right.
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
This year I decided to dive into the Game of Thrones* series, having discovered it through the TV show. Those were some intense 3 months! These books are the very definition of immersive. While they can get repetitive and slow at times, that is more than compensated by the whole setting, atmosphere and, well, "major events".
* or, for the pedantic out there, A Song of Ice and Fire.
I know there will be a lot of people feeling extremely vindicated in their suspicions that if HBO offered Game of Thrones for legal download they would rake the money in. Let's take a second to work through the counter-argument though.
Instead of asking why they don't cash in on the clear demand, why not ask yourself how HBO & Co would operate if they did sell shows by the episode and direct to consumers. If you're looking for a proxy, the outcome probably wouldn't be a million miles from the networks, where audience levels translate into ad revenue, which means shows live or die very quickly. Look at Fox's 2010 series Lone Star. Despite having the best-rated pilot of any of that season's debuts, it was cancelled after two low-rated episodes.
Have you ever asked yourself why HBO, Showtime and AMC have the track record they do in producing great TV of movie-rivalling production value and movie-topping narrative chops? The simple answer is that they run a subscription model and that gives you a lot of freedom. In the first instance, a significant part of HBO's subscriber base is there for boxing first and foremost: money in the bank for the programming arm. In the second instance, once you're paying for something monthly, you're actually quite unlikely to cancel it even if you don't extract the full value from your subscription (see cinema all-you-can-eat memberships). Above all, it allows you to operate from a stable base of yearly income and that completely flips the consideration of which programs stay and which programs go. It's simply a consideration of opportunity cost; is there a better series that could fill this slot?
The subscription model is precisely the reason that HBO is able to swing for the fences on things like Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, which are both enormously expensive undertakings. It's entirely because the shows are able to prove themselves over seasons, and not episodes, that subscription-driven channels are able to make them. And even then the judgment of whether to continue is usually based on creative satisfaction and not cold, hard audience figures - both the Wire and Treme kept their places on the roster despite comparatively lousy viewing figures.
The problem with a subscription model is that it has to be all or nothing. If you start giving people a way not to subscribe, they won't. They'll just pay to watch episodes as they become available. That's not even to get into the practicalities of carrier relations and all the added considerations that throws into the mix.
tl;dr: Game of Thrones might be a no-brainer for selling legal downloads, but things like Game of Thrones don't get made by companies that use that business model for very good reasons.
I have HBO and I still pirated every episode of Game of Thrones last season. It’s just a lot easier for me. I am not interested in my life revolving around TV schedudles so watching it on linear HBO is not something I’m going to do. I won’t make the commitment to be in front of my TV every Sunday night at exactly the same time. Just not interested. If that was my only choice I probably wouldn’t watch it at all. The DVR I get from my cable company should solve the linear TV problem but it really doesn’t because it’s such a low quality product. Sometimes it fails to record things. The UI is really clunky. It’s not uncommon to see digital distortions and other problems with the way it records. It also has very little space available to do much HD recording. It’s also not a multi-room DVR so if I record Game of Thrones on my living room DVR I can’t watch it in my bedroom unless I physically disconnect and move the box. They do offer multi-room DVRs however the cost is just too high. I won’t pay that much for the privilage to rent such low quality equipment.
> It's about people choosing to spend their money on something else, relying on others to pay for the actual production of entertainment.
This is the free rider problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem. It is exacerbated by the fact that piracy is easier than obtaining content through legitimate channels.
> Currently we as a society choose to enforce IP law. If that changes, then sure, I'll find another job. Good luck waiting for that Game of Thrones season 3 though.
There are other solutions to the free rider problem. Take your pick from the examples on Wikipedia (i.e. assurance contracts, which are remarkably similar to the way Kickstarter works). The information revolution has changed the economics of your job, but I believe as a society we will ultimately find a better way to incentivize your work.
This doesn't really refute my statement at all. I was merely claiming that piracy is often framed as a political statement, when it really isn't at all. It's about people choosing to spend their money on something else, relying on others to pay for the actual production of entertainment.
As for your point about there being no inherent right to protection of IP, I would have said that was obvious. However the legal system doesn't exist to just enshrine and enforce basic rights. It's also used to shape societies in ways we (or our representatives) feel are beneficial.
Currently we as a society choose to enforce IP law. If that changes, then sure, I'll find another job. Good luck waiting for that Game of Thrones season 3 though.
"But doesn't that speak to the exact issue you're responding to? I'd more than happily pay for Game of Thrones season 2 if it were available for me to pay for on its own or with other things I want. The problem is that in order to get it I have to subscribe to cable, which is a hefty tax to pay for a single show."
The only feature I wanted in my washing machine was regular wash cotton. I should've stolen it I suppose.
"That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable."
But doesn't that speak to the exact issue you're responding to? I'd more than happily pay for Game of Thrones season 2 if it were available for me to pay for on its own or with other things I want. The problem is that in order to get it I have to subscribe to cable, which is a hefty tax to pay for a single show.
I'm not begrudging HBO for deciding that's the best way for them to make money. But I gladly reward artists and companies that are thinking outside the box and doing direct-to-consumer or generally breaking away from the middle man.
That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable.
Can I speak as one of the creative people that, you know, actually works to produce the content so many people seem to feel righteously entitled to? If you're going to pirate/copyright infringe, do so, but please stop trying to rebrand it as a freedom of speech issue. It's embarrassing.
As I see it, there are four types of people who generally don't pirate content:
- The technically illiterate.
- People who have made a conscious decision to support the producer of the content.
- People who fear enforcement of copyright law.
- People who have no interest in the content available.
The whole piracy political movement is manifestly obviously just rationalisation, with the goal of striking back at shadowy 'middle men' being particularly ridiculous.
> What about pirating Game of Thrones episodes?
If piracy caused future GoT episodes to not be made, that would be a bad outcome. But it won't happen. A series of GoT costs $50 million to make and they could probably fairly easily crowdfund it, (e.g. $10 * 5 million or some other multiple). I'm sure lots of people would be prepared to pay that amount (or a lot more) to ensure they could watch the next series -- I know I would.
I'm glad things worked out for Vlad -- when I was younger, I pirated a fair amount of software and games, and, like him, I think it enabled me to get inspired to learn more about computers in general and, indeed, now I stare at them all day for work.
But.
I'm not sure what the bigger point is, here. Should we be okay with piracy as long as the pirate is using it for self-betterment? Do games count for that? What about pirating Game of Thrones episodes? (Or, to take a wild leap: Is it cool for a kid to steal a car if he learns how to be a mechanic from it?)
Today, I do feel there are some motions towards providing better access to software and hardware in poorer parts of the world. Which is great. And, to be frank, the quality of both cheap hardware and open source software is insane relative to twenty years ago. So, again, I'm not sure what Vlad's bigger point is.
If the point is to justify piracy, I think he only does it in the very narrowest of ways: Considering the state of technology in the 1990s, piracy enabled people in poorer parts of the world (and kids in wealthier parts of the world) access to the growing information technology industry. I'm not sure that argument exactly holds in the same way today.
Finally, Microsoft can survive a fair amount of piracy. But not every software company can. What happens when this "it's cool because I'm using it to educate myself" stance kills software companies? Or game companies? Or media companies? Is that better for everyone?
---
EDIT: I'm not equating the act of stealing a car with the act of pirating Windows. I am merely wondering about the general nature of morally justifying a crime based on it being done for self-improvement. If we say it's okay in a case of software piracy, are we okay with it in other contexts?
Well, first, it's not my argument; it's both the conventional argument for the bundled pay TV model, and HBO's explicit argument for why they won't sell you an online-only subscription to HBO Go.
Secondly, the issue isn't that HBO is contractually unable to offer direct HBO Go subscriptions or release-window a la carte access to Game Of Thrones episodes. The issue is that it would be financially irrational of them to do so, because their subscribers would defect to the online offering; they would, in effect, be offering a fire-sale on their most valuable offering.
I don't know how much a single episode of Game Of Thrones would cost if you factored all this into it. It obviously wouldn't cost $2.99. I'd tentatively suggest that it would cost so much that people would pirate it and rationalize doing so by saying "HBO can't reasonably expect people to pay so much for a single online episode of Game Of Thrones; if they just used more reasonable prices, people would stop pirating".
You can rant about "entitlement" all you wish, but the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution than the one currently in place.
Steam, iTunes, Netflix, and perhaps one day HBO branching off into their own content publishing business.
A season's worth Game of Thrones Blu-Rays costs what, $50?
To access a year's worth of premium cable content would cost ~$1000 to ~$1500.
"I don't know the statistics but I'd have to guess at least 80% of nerds like us pirate content every single week, and nobody wants to think of themselves as an asshole. Rationalize however you need to."
This is pretty much the antithesis of rationalizing. You're fine with the system in place. Others are dissatisfied with piracy and want to support the creators without the "luxury" of dropping more than a thousand bucks a year for the one or two great shows worth watching on television.
From the article:
"I'm now finding that for some kinds of content, the illegal is clearly outperforming legal," Biddle said. "That blows me away. I pay for premium cable. It's easier to use BitTorrent to watch Game of Thrones. HBO Go is trying very hard to do a good job," he said, but the user experience just isn't as good. Because HBO Go is a streaming service, he said, it's more vulnerable to network congestion than simply downloading the entire episode from the darknet."
Fix this and you 'fix' piracy. Oh, and the fix isn't "shut down the darknet" it is provide a better service.
To add to what jasonwatkinspdx has said already, it seems to me that this follows the typical pattern of disruption. First you'll see the bottom markets being let go by the big studios and you'll start seeing other independent bodies picking up those lower markets. Until finally the big studios only make up the top segments, if anything the polarization seems to indicate just this type of shift.
I think you're also seeing some breakthrough into the middle areas where players such as HBO are able to compete with big block buster movies in terms of mind share. Series like Game of Thrones for example opted to be produced in the "lower echelons" instead of being fit into block buster movies. In a way it seems obvious, the material fits better in a series format, etc... but the fact that it is possible should make it clear that 50-60 million budget can compete and in some cases excel that which is produced by a multiple hundred million dollar blockbuster.
That to me is a significant change, hopefully one of many to come.
I'm not saying a Kickstarter type model wouldn't work, but keep in mind that one episode of a show like Game of Thrones* can cost around five million dollars to produce.
* http://www.westeros.org/GoT/Features/Entry/3988/
Oh, I agree that people were trying to see the movie hurt locker in much the same way that I try to see (and treasure, trust me!) Game of Thrones off the torrents.
I don't have any rationale other than the fact that I don't want to pay the $876 that HBO + Cable will cost me. I also like to have it with me while travelling, and the streaming solutions from HBO, good as they are, just aren't great on an airplane / hotel in some other country.
I'm not "putting middlemen" in their place - I just want cool content in the format that is convenient for me for what I consider to be a reasonable cost to me. I do make it a absolute habit of purchasing the DVDs when they come out, to try and make my conscience a little lighter.
But, I _never_ kid myself that the artists behind GoT wanted to "connect with me directly." They wanted to get paid the same as I do at my job.
while i agree the article is fairly off the mark, i also do not agree with your assumption that a traditional market will emerge.
producing the pilot of Game of Thrones cost $10M, before they knew it would be a hit. you can't make those gambles in an efficient market - ever. in the efficient market scenario, we'll end up with a lot more reality TV and mediocre sitcoms/drama.
the reality check is - the current system ain't so bad, and while I want "independent content" as much as you, I think we have a lot more of it in the current system than you outline... Workaholics? Portlandia? etc.
Why does it have to be a channel? For example, why can't I pay $30 for the next season of Game of Thrones, and get episodes as they come out? Sure, it's different from a monthly subscription, because I'm paying for 10 ~ 12 weeks of content (1 ep/week), but it seems like there's a model there somewhere.
I'm saying you are clearly seeing a generational and tech savvy bias to the rankings. For Avengers to be so high shows it's good movie, and it is. But the fanboyism of the comic-reading, tech savvy audience is skewing the metric way higher than it should be.
The same thing is happening with Game of Thrones. It's excellent but I've seen many, many TV dramas that are just as good if not better.
Comedy is a terrible example to criticize due to it tending to be very cross-generational. MASH, Seinfeld, and I Love Lucy are still shown on TV today. MASH and I Love Lucy on more obscure cable channels, but Seinfeld still is on in reruns for an hour before primetime TV on our CBS affiliate.
" I can't even find the MASH TV show, only the movie. Pretty weird considering that it's considered the 2nd best TV comedy of all time. #74 'Seinfeld' - considered the 3rd best TV comedy of all time."
Are you really criticizing the subjectivity of this list based on the subjective rankings of your generation?
Also game of thrones is brilliant, imo.
The problem with these rankings (assuming they are from IMDB) is that they are more friendly to contemporary, Internet-age movies and TV. Anything older than about 30 years is significantly down further in the list.
As an example, I can't imagine a world where 'The Avengers' is better than 'Schindler's List', 'Godfather, Part 2', or 'Pulp Fiction' (just 3 examples).
A few stupid entries: #1721 'I Love Lucy' - easily considered by critics as the best TV comedy of all time yet barely in the top 20% of all tv and movies? I can't even find the MASH TV show, only the movie. Pretty weird considering that it's considered the 2nd best TV comedy of all time. #74 'Seinfeld' - considered the 3rd best TV comedy of all time. The internet is more friendly to this one. #15 'Game of Thrones (TV)' - fanboys strike again, or they just really like irrelevant nudity[1].
#1636 'The Constant Gardener' - it is an abomination that this is here, it's lower ranked than 'Super Troopers' (#1626), 'Iron Man 2' (#1610), and 'Soul Surfer' (#1599), just to name a few.
[1] http://gawker.com/5902076/snl-explains-the-nudity-in-game-of-thrones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility
In a world where I'd already watched Game of Thrones season 2 via torrent I'd still have consumed some of the other entertainments that I actually did, but less of them.
Two main reasons.
1. When you don't pirate, at the margin you'll give some of your time, attention, publicity, and money to the sort of producers you want to encourage, which would've gone to Big Content, except only for the money.
2. People rationalize. It's what humans do. When you have a reason not to pay, to what extent is it the main reason? You're both setting up a constant temptation to lie to yourself and clouding your motives to others -- they have more trouble telling how seriously to take your stated reason.
(My Big Content disclosure: a netflix subscription and a very occasional DVD or CD purchase -- the last one was Game of Thrones. Haven't been to the cinema in several years and I'm thinking of dropping netflix. Oh, I do still buy plenty of books, though the internet has cut into that. Also, I hypocritically pirate academic books sometimes and do the same for papers with no compunction at all (edit: barring evidence the actual author cares). Maybe that should've gone first, oh well.
As a huge fan of many big-budget TV shows and movies, I am not inclined to gloat about the death of the content industry until there's a viable replacement business model.
It's easy to criticize the content industry for their abusive practices and outdated business model, and point to something like the direct sales approach, which has had encouraging successes in books and music. But it's wholly unproven on the budgetary scale of, say, Game of Thrones, Lost, or The Avengers. And if content is distributed freely (through lending or otherwise), then it may be that the creators cannot recoup their costs, and this content simply won't be made.
It's possible that a Kickstarter-like model will emerge, but that's far from guaranteed, and I observe that Kickstarter projects themselves operate on a "scarcity emulator." For example, projects often provide artificially exclusive digital content at certain funding levels.
It may come down to a conscious choice to accept some limitations on our personal digital property rights in order to enable something we can all enjoy. We make that same tradeoff in the meat world all the time: you cannot block a river, sunlight, a view, a storm drain, etc. even though they're on your property. I would prefer limiting my property rights to that content over that content disappearing altogether.
Lastly, pirates are no allies of personal property rights. Pirates distribute unambiguously stolen content (for example, the X-Men Origins workprint) just as readily as merely copyrighted content.
> This assumes that there's some large group of people using Google (or Bing, or Blekko, etc) to find pirated media
There are. Tens to hundreds of millions of them, probably.
E.g. "Watch Game of Thrones" vs "learn to dance":
http://i.imgur.com/JNyGy.png
Google suggests I check these popular searches too:
* watch game of thrones megavideo
* watch game of thrones episode 1
* watch game of thrones tvduck
* watch game of thrones tv links
* watch game of thrones episode 2
* watch game of thrones episode 3
* watch game of thrones episode 8
* watch game of thrones season 2 episode 1 online free
I don't think they were looking for the link to subscribe to HBO.
Perfectly willing to pay per song, per album, per movie, per game, etc. What matters is the method and timeliness of delivery. If I can pay for this new episode of HIMYM and start streaming it within 3 minutes on my phone, tablet, etc. I'm perfectly happy.
Plenty of people would be willing to pay $10-20 per episode of Game of Thrones to be able to watch it legitimately without Cable+HBO at the same time as cable subscribers. $10-20 seems like a lot, but the series is extremely popular, and the 100-200 per season of GoT still costs the end user less money than cable contract + HBO. Also probably leads to more money in HBO's pockets I'd imagine.
I would pay NBC $60 for a pass to have legitimate access to their Olympic streams and coverage, but instead they require cable login information that I don't have access to because cable and internet are included in my lease.
I watched most of game of thrones on PC (in a VM no less) and it was flawless.
My only peeve with the UI is that there isn't a "next episode" button when watching a series.
It's impossible to speak authoritatively for a large community with widely differing opinions, but it appears to me that for a lot of people, the distinction of whether or not a copyright violation is immoral or not is dependent on whether the instigator is actively profiting from the violation.
If you download Game of Thrones to watch on your laptop, there is a long and circuitous argument we can have about exactly how much you're harming HBO, but it's pretty clear that the only thing you're gaining is the ability to consume the TV show you've pirated. If your business's web site is based on someone else's code without proper licensing, and that design is presumably a factor in customers choosing to patronize you, you now have a tangible financial gain that is owed (at least in part) to a copyright violation.
It's a flawed analogy, but this is less like downloading an episode of Game of Thrones and more like selling bootleg DVDs of the show.
I'm willing to bet that if every person who watched the Game of Thrones Season 2 premiere (6.3m, http://www.wetpaint.com/network/articles/63-million-people-watched-the-game-of-thrones-season-2-premiere) paid $10, that would pay for the entire season.
I'm also willing to bet that there's no way you could get enough people to do that.
I'd have to do some more math since my cable, internet and phone are all on the same bill. I don't recall what the exact break down is. With all the channels I get and the HD and the DVRs (plus the internet and phone) my "cable" bill is like $200/month
Is AppleTV ala cart or buffet? Meaning if I want to watch all season of Game of Thrones (and Shameless and Weeds and whatever) am I paying per episode or is it a monthly fee? (I assume Apple != free content)
Looking at my local cable plans, watching Game of Thrones on TV would cost me something like $1200/year, because I'd need to subscribe to digital cable with a mess of extras. And our TV is the worst screen in the house (even my phone has higher resolution). Tell me again why I would do this?
Personally, I'm going to wait until GoT comes out on DVD, and borrow the first episodes from someone. If I really want to watch the series, I'll buy the box set. But lots of people aren't so patient, and I've heard that piracy is free…
The tight relationship between HBO and the cable companies will remain insanely profitable for years to come. But eventually there will be too many customers like me, and that's going to be a hard day for HBO.
This is why Game of Thrones is the one of the most pirated TV shows of all time: http://torrentfreak.com/whos-pirating-game-of-thrones-and-why-120520/
People are willing to pay, and they're not responding to customer demand.
HBO should never have released a consumer-facing streaming service. They should've simply allowed viewers to access HBO programs through their service provider's streaming service.
These apps just highlight how unnecessary the service provider is for the delivery of HBO content. Sure, the numbers might not make sense for HBO but they're still going to have to spend the next ten years explaining to customers why they need to pay $100/month, subscribing to a full suite of TV channels, just to watch Game of Thrones on their iPad.
Meanwhile, AMC is making TV that's just as good with a business model that embraces cort-cutters. As streaming becomes more mainstream, HBO is going to have to keep explaining why you can watch Mad Men in iTunes the day after it airs but you have to wait almost a year to stream an episode of Game of Thrones (legally). And their reasons aren't going to satisfy anyone except execs at Time Warner and the service providers.
Streaming isn't going away. How long can a content brand stand against its viewers in the age of rampant piracy? I have a feeling we're about to find out.
I'd have more sympathy for this line of argument if I wasn't currently watching season 1 of Game Of Thrones.
When it aired, sure I wanted to see it. People I know were talking about it. But I didn't want to pay what it cost to see it then.
So you know what choice I made? I waited.
And now it's available in a format I want at a price I'm willing to pay. So I paid and I'm enjoying it.
And, in a development that would evidently be quite shocking to some in this thread, I'm finding that I have plenty of people to talk to about it.
Look. I would love it if they made the show available online the next day, like Mad Men does. I think they're mistaken not to do so. I think they'd make more money if they did.
But they don't.
So I wait.
> Similarly, I pirate Game of Thrones, but would happily pay up to $5 per episode if it were an option. I will not buy the DVDs, as I have no desire to see it again. If I could buy the DVDs at the same time as the show airs (without getting off my couch), I would happily do so.
How about when you pirate the episode, you put the $5 aside, and when it's released on DVD, buy the DVDs, regardless of whether you want to watch it again? This has essentially the same result as buying the DVD "at the same time as the show airs".
This is what I have done with shows that are cable-exclusive. And as a perk, I end up with the DVDs.
Season 2 has 10 episodes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones_%28season_2%29
I'm only one data point, but:
I used to pirate (all of my) music. I have bought a grand total of one CD ever. Now I happily consume most of my music through a paid subscription to Rdio.
Similarly, I pay for netflix. I (grudgingly) go to theatres occasionally. I don't own and have no desire to own a dvd player, and pirate movies occasionally when they're not conveniently available.
Similarly, I pirate Game of Thrones, but would happily pay up to $5 per episode if it were an option. I will not buy the DVDs, as I have no desire to see it again. If I could buy the DVDs at the same time as the show airs (without getting off my couch), I would happily do so.
It is quite literally all about convenience for some people.
I actually discovered that I am able to pay HBO for Game of Thrones. HBO decided to air GoT here in Brazil simultaneously with USA. I called my television provider, added HBO for R$ 30,00/mo (around $15.00) and after the end of the season 2 I just called there and removed HBO again. I am planning to do the same for season 3. Is it so hard for people around the world to do the same? (real question, not being sarcastic)
> There are plenty of easy ways to legally buy and
> download movies - certainly a lot easier than
> torrenting.
The Oatmeal disagrees: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
>Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins?
Is it a right to make money off of Game of Thrones? No. Is it their right to charge for content they've created? In my opinion, yes.
I am a huge advocate of open source software. I'm not an advocate of taking other peoples' software and forcing it to be free, against the creators' wishes.
Sharing a book, or facts from a library or notes from a university lecture is one thing. Downloading a copy of a movie, a video game, or software is another.
Let's say you made a startup that, rather than SaaS, actually wrote a thick client. They're cool, so let's make it easy and say it's DRM-free. Let's say it's a cool, new IDE.
You spent the last year of your life working on this IDE, and you see that it's up on The Pirate Bay. Sure, at first you'll probably be flattered. Then you realize, wait a minute, this is getting 1000x the downloads my actual product is getting. Maybe your sales increase as a result of the "free marketing," but that is the best case scenario.
If sales don't increase, you've worked hard and not been compensated. Do I think that most movies (especially in theatres) are overpriced and a rip off? Hell yeah I do, which is why I spend my money on Netflix which seems more sanely priced.
You don't have a right to all the software you want without paying the people who made it; you don't have a right to watch the latest movies and TV shows without paying the people who created them; you don't have a right to listen to that new CD in the store without paying the artists.
I think that big business/media generally rips off consumers. I don't think that pirates are evil; I think that they're desperate and that business needs to adjust to their needs. Have I ever pirated computer games? Sure. But when Valve's Steam became more convenient to use than a badly cracked torrent, that became my number one resource for games.
I used to pirate movies because renting or buying them was such a pain in the ass. With iTunes rentals and Netflix, that problem has been solved too.
If you want to make a stand, maybe against DRM with which you disagree, do so by purchasing from people who are making a stand too; for example, I hope you bought Louis C.K.'s $5 DRM-free show a couple of months ago.
>Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret.
How do you suggest we reinterpret? Should everyone get everything they want for free? Should all the tech startups that we read about on Hacker News and root for have no business model, because charging for software or media is so wrong? We live in a capitalist society, and in order to "reinterpret" science and arts as free-for-all, we'd need to completely reorganize our economic system.
I'm not saying that we've got it down perfectly (in fact, I'd say the opposite), so I'm open to your suggestions and ideas.
I'm honestly pretty bad at pirating. I'd _love_ it if HBO threw up paid streaming for Game of Thrones. If they charged something like $3/episode I think it might actually even be cheaper than the time I spent trying to pirate it (granted, most people are probably better than I am at pirating).
The only shows I really watch anymore are the Daily Show / Colbert report, and some HBO offerings(Game of Thrones / True Blood). I tend to catch them online, anyway. There's always Netflix if I really want to watch a movie. I get all my news from the internet.
I'm reluctant to throw mine away since I won two 23" TVs in raffles(i.e. I put in $5 into a hat). The only other use for it is for my Xbox 360, and I don't play video games nearly as much as I used to in college. Instead of watching a bunch of different shows, I happened to find more interesting hobbies to fill the void such as running and flying airplanes. When the weather is too poor to do either of those and no one's around to hang out, though? I'll put a game or a show on and relax.
To be fair, I'm two episodes behind on Game of Thrones, so two weeks back. I've seen only one spoiler for the most recent episode, but if I hadn't already read Books 1 - 3, it wouldn't have been a spoiler. I only knew what I was looking at because I've read what would happen.
But you're right, it is very difficult.
I think it comes down to: You want to be a part of the culture. Go online and talk when everyone else is excited. Get excited with the fans at the same. It fosters a sense of community that is rewarding, something many watchers love to participate in.
It sucks when you get content a week or a month or six months later, and 90% of the fanbase is WAY past you, not interested in talking, not ranting and raving any more.
For many people, good TV and culture is social, regardless of whether or not the old industries can see it happening in front of their eyes.
"Aussies have to wait an additional week to view episodes of the show. Little surprise then that they turned to BitTorrent in droves..."
I think this says a lot about how the internet has changed society. Waiting one week is not a big deal. There used to big release gaps between countries when movies were released in the cinema. Sure it sucked but life went on. I know that many people don't think piracy constitutes theft (although it sounds like these people would have paid, so it is a lost sale), but having to wait one week should not be justification for pirating content.
A lot of money is put into making a show like Game Of Thrones. The £1.89 iTunes charges per episode would not be enough to cover the budget and I believe that's why this staggered roll out happens (deals with TV companies are more lucrative). If the episodes were priced higher (say £4.99) but released immediately I don't think very many people would pay.
The internet seems to be fostering an attitude of "We want it now, and we want it free or very cheap".
I think it's going to be very hard to ever find that sweet spot where people are happy with what the content company can viably offer, and they won't pirate.
Edit: I think this article explains my first point well. http://ihnatko.com/2012/02/20/heavy-hangs-the-bandwidth-that-torrents-the-crown/
For over 90% of the households in the US, it's not "80+/month", it's $15 – for four episodes a month.
Furthermore, HBO provides all of their Game of Thrones stuff on demand, you only need to get HBO for 1 month to actually watch everything, if you wait until the last month of the series.
HN people (at least in the US) are in a bubble when it comes to cable TV, and the economics thereof.
This comes to mind: http://xkcd.com/793/
I wrote a web app that will automate iTunes movies & shows searches for you. I wrote it to know when Game of Thrones Season 2 is available on iTunes (among other things).
http://upcoming.anticlever.com/
>I mean sure, if people wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones but couldn't because it wasn't available to them (or they were unhappy with the terms) and someone else then said "I have a series like Game of Thrones and it's free!" THAT would be "somebody else" providing what the market want, but it isn't.
Here's what I'm saying: If HBO is offering Game of Thrones on HBO.com to anyone willing to pay $10 (or whatever) for it, and The Pirate Bay is offering it for $0, probably some people are still going to go to The Pirate Bay and get it for $0 instead of paying $10 for it. And that sucks; it would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and make it stop without impacting millions of innocent people, but we can't.
However, if you go to HBO.com and there is no reasonable way for you to insert cash and watch video, far more people are going to end up at The Pirate Bay than would if the show was available on the official website. And that is something we can easily do something about. So isn't it better to adopt the solutions that actually reduce the problem than to sit around complaining how unfair it is while unnecessarily losing a bunch of would-be customers?
Well, Russia watches Game of Thrones and we couldn't if not for pirates.
This makes me un-sad for society as whole. We become richer from piracy than we could be without.
Martin sells much more books in Russia right now than he would without the TV series, and HBO aren't losing money because they don't want our money anyway.
> Complaining that customers are demanding is just sour grapes. Customers are always demanding; welcome to capitalism. You either provide what the market wants, or somebody else does.
That's the entire damn problem with piracy. Nobody else is providing them with "what the market wants", someone else is TAKING another businesses product and then distributing it themselves.
I mean sure, if people wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones but couldn't because it wasn't available to them (or they were unhappy with the terms) and someone else then said "I have a series like Game of Thrones and it's free!" THAT would be "somebody else" providing what the market want, but it isn't.
comparing physical and digital products is never 100% accurate, so forgive me for this, but if a Ferrari dealership charges $100,000 for a car and someone steals one and offers it for free, that isn't "someone else providing what the market wants", it isn't capitalism... it's someone stealing.
Apple must build an iTV. Remember XBox? Microsoft still hasn’t made its investment back, but what it did do was buy them another decade of Windows dominance on the desktop, because gaming consoles could have been the post-PC devices that took over from PCs.
Now it turns out that phones and tablets are the post-PC devices, but thing might be very different if everyone owned a Sony PlayStation that also streamed movies and music into the home.
So what about Apple and their post-PC devices? If someone else figures out how to replace televisions with a connected device, they can also roll sideways into tablets and phones. If you subscribe to game of Thrones on your TV, you are going to want to buy the tablet that integrates wit the TV so you can watch an episode in your bed. You are going to want the phone that integrates with it so you can use your phone as a remote... From anywhere in the world.
Apple cannot allow anyone else to make this happen. Either televisions need to remain dumb terminals connected to coax, or Apple needs to own them. Apple cannot sit on their hands and watch Google (or maybe Amazon) figure this out.
Interestingly, Game of Thrones season 2 is not available on iTunes in US. What's up with that? I wonder if it is relating to cannibalizing the US cable subscriber base as discussed in the article. I would definitely pay for it via itunes if it were available, even with 1-2 week delay.
Why are people bitching about the cost? Just think about it. There is one show I want to watch that I can't get watch on netflix/hulu/OTA, which is Game of Thrones. Can you really justify $80+/month for 4 episodes of a single show? If you really watch a lot of cable tv already, then sure, it is not a lot of money, but paying $10-$20 an episode is ridiculous.
I am sure HBO would love to have people like you who don't have cable as subscribers. I don't have cable because I don't see anything there of value, since I can watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Hulu and get movies on Netflix. A coworker also cut his cable. He couldn't justify almost $80 a month. He said the only thing he watched was HBO and another premium channel.
The CEO's point was it is difficult to target cable cord cutters because they have already have a business model that is profitable. The telephone salesman cannot say "You can take HBO with your $50 cable or you could just buy a $10 internet subscription plan for HBO, please buy cable anyway"
They cannot retool their business to compete with standalone Netflix. I would love for them to offer there shows on Netflix like AMD does, but oh well. I personally have pirated true blood last year, but I am now just going to wait 1 year to see the next season as I waited to see game of thrones when it comes on Netflix DVD. I guess it doesn't put much money in HBO's pocket, but I guess it's better than pirating. But I know people who gotta have their fix.
I appreciate this synopsis of the original article. The Forbes article really was linkbait.
To clarify, the issue isn't so much that it won't work at all, it's that you won't get good vide quality over a slower connection. For instance, I'm traveling for a week, and will have hotel wifi. Game of Thrones will look pixelated on my third-gen iPad. That's not exactly the kind of experience I'm looking for.
In contrast, I purchased the latest episode of Sherlock in 1080p for this trip. It looks amazing on the iPad, and I'll be able to watch it on the plane or anywhere else.
If this thread is still active, I'll report back tonight on how HBO Go works on my hotel's wifi. If HBO Go would just let me cache a few shows this wouldn't be an issue.
And forget about watching any of these episodes on my plane flight.
Maybe I'm asking too much from an app with Go in the name.
It's not really HBO's fault that Game of Thrones is pirated so much
interestingly, Game of Thrones, Season Two, is available on iTunes here in Australia and follows only 10 days after US release. We pay rather more here than in the US, but at $28 for a season pass, it's cheaper than the cost of the DVDs when they come out
As the article says and as a lot of people including me keep repeating: I would pay practically ANY amount for movies & shows I want to see. I live in the EU and you have to struggle to see shows like Game of Thrones legally (basically, fly to the US or wait forever). That's not an option. Worldwide (!) distribution at the same time (!) for an amount they make a profit on would be fine with me and I know many others. It's not about money; it's about that the world has changed; people have instant worldwide communication (via Facebook for instance) about the unfolding of, for instance, this series, yet the viewing is not worldwide. In the olden days, you didn't know about your friends in the US and what they watched, so you didn't mind waiting a year for a series to get on local tv. Hell, you probably didn't even know the series existed until it aired. As long as this is not changed, people will keep downloading as there is no alternative.
> It's not really HBO's fault that Game of Thrones is pirated so much. It's the fault of the entire ecosystem.
It's the fault of the entire ecosystem that a company is targeted by pirates when it chooses to make a small number of high-quality TV shows with excellent production value and put them behind an expensive paywall only available to people with cable TV subscriptions?
I mean, I understand the rationale of HBO in accepting the cost of piracy in order to maintain a lucrative symbiosis with cable affiliates. But I'm sure they recognize that in doing so they cause a significant amount of piracy, and it harms everyone in the TV business, not just HBO.
There's basically two driving forces behind piracy. One is price, but there is a good argument to be made that people who pirate because they couldn't otherwise afford to pay otherwise don't actually affect the bottom line very much. The other is universality. Ten dollars a month to a usenet provider or VPN service will give access to every single major movie, TV show, and album within a few days of release. It comes in multiple DRM-free formats, and can be played basically anywhere.
So long as piracy has a distinct service and price advantage over HBO, they are encouraging piracy. And the worst part for TV producers is that there is a negative network effect: once someone spends the opportunity cost to pirate Game of Thrones, the marginal cost of pirating something else goes way down, and services that do compete favorably with piracy from a service perspective like Netflix and iTunes suffer as well.
Given all the articles about people being pretty unhappy with not being able to watch Game of Thrones on HBO, I don't think content is commoditized. I also don't think a picture on Instagram is equivalent to an episode of GoT.
"From what I've read the only folks making money on there are selling books for $0.99 and selling tens of thousands of copies (or more)"
Not necessarily true. There is a genre fiction writer named Michael Sullivan, who writes fantasy in a similar vein as "A Song of Fire and Ice" (Game of Thrones for fans of the TV show).
His sales from April 2010 to August 2011 was over 70,000 and since then, he's sold over 12,000 a month, never pricing below $4.95 on Amazon, which after their cut, he receives over $40,000 a month.
He recently did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything)[1], where he disparages the 99-cent price and feels writers should have more dignity and respect for their work than that.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/s6375/hello_reddit_im_a_fulltime_author_who_has/
Spot on. Piracy is not because people are not willing to pay, it is because it is the only option to get content without waiting months after it's US release. When is Game of Thrones on Aussie TV? I would pay $5 to download each episode legit, if I could.
Cable provides a lot of entertainment, but it's expensive, especially if you pile on premium channels like HBO. Just as telephone landlines are slowly dying as people decide a cell-phone is enough, cable is dying as people move to strictly on-demand services like Netflix or iTunes. Why pay for 900 channels with nothing to watch when you can get just the shows you want anytime you want them? Even if people spend more on iTunes and netflix per month, the practice still psychologically seems less wasteful.
HBO's latest shows are not available anywhere but over the air on HBO. e.g. Game of Thrones Season 2 cannot be watched on Netflix or purchased on iTunes. Those who run HBO probably think of this as being good, since it forces people to subscribe to HBO. Unfortunately, people who have gotten rid of their cable subscription aren't going to get it back just so they can watch HBO's latest shows as they air. They might intend to wait until those shows become available on iTunes or Bluray, but it's also highly probable that they'll give in to temptation and just download them from pirates.
This is HBO's real problem. There is a big market for their shows that only the pirates are serving.
Exactly, their business model is to drive Cable Channel subscription, which I gather is way more lucrative revenue stream than getting a slice of a bundled internet service like Netflix, or directly selling episodes at the going rate (already comparatively higher price) of iTunes.
Even their DVD sales of Game of Thrones occur until 1 month right before the 2nd tv season begins. All the more to goose interest in the show and channel subscription....
It's fascinating to watch how much opportunity they are throwing out of the door.
According to blog monitoring service blogs.yandex.ru, Game of Thrones is third most discussed TV series in Russian speaking countries right now. Obviously a huge number of people watch it from various of sources: original torrents, translated torrents, streaming... But HBO gets exactly zero from this. They just don't want anybody's money. They do nothing.
If A Game of Thrones were out of copyright, he wouldn't be collecting royalties on the adaptations -- unless he made such an agreement while it was still under copyright.
One side effect of making copyright terms short, as is being discussed, is that studios could freely make movies (video games, etc.) based on all but the most recent works without seeking approval or paying royalties.
And if HBO's adaptation of A Game of Thrones was popular but was relatively inaccessible since most people don't have an HBO subscription, any random person could make their own adaptation of the book and sell it cheaply and widely.
I'm not convinced I understand the full implications of this enough to make a definitive statement about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's definitely something that should be considered carefully.
The current fragmentation of the "smart TV" market is a mess: it's something that a unified environment could easily tear through.
But making the deals with content providers to create that environment is going to be astonishingly difficult. These are companies responsible for messes like http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones , along with the recent removals of films from Netflix by Starz. They love their monopoly on content and would likely be terrified to death by the concept of giving up control to Apple.
Here's why HBO requires you to subscribe to their channel to watch Game of Thrones.
If you watch Game of Thrones, maybe you'll also watch Veep or Girls or Eastbound & Down or Life's Too Short. You might notice that HBO staggers their series so they overlap for roughly half their run. The Sopranos and The Wire never ran in lockstep, The Wire would start roughly halfway through The Sopranos run. They're trying to get you to continuously subscribe, rather than just subscribe for the 13 weeks Game of Thrones is on.
I know, you're too smart to fall for that, you're just gonna PVR Game of Thrones and stop recording exactly when the episode ends. You're never going to see anything except Game of Thrones no matter what HBO does. You, however, are still atypical. Maybe the day will come where HBO's trick doesn't work and their subscribers routinely cancel and resubscribe so it's most advantageous for them, but for now it works well enough that offering Game of Thrones a la carte is a money losing proposition for them. The sales they'll get from MG Siegler and yourself will not offset the subscribers they'll lose who would rather just pay for HBO continuously than go without Game of Thrones.
HBO (and other content producers) may be stubborn and short sighted, but they are not stupid. They've run the numbers. If you want to change their minds, you have to change the numbers and, regrettably, that means you have to boycott them completely. Pirating their content just signals it's valuable and HBO is right to keep availability costly (whether through direct pricing or obnoxious distribution terms).
The single least-attractive attribute of many of the people who download content illegally is their smug sense of entitlement. …
The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not having it.
This isn't any kind of counterargument. No, the world doesn't owe me¹ that, but I'm not forcibly taking it either.People are voluntarily sharing it with me. So what I'm owed is irrelevant. YCombinator doesn't owe me access to HN either, but I'm not a bad person for using it if they're offering it to me.
¹ completely hypothetically and for the sake of argument. For all you know I'm just playing devil's advocate, so let's keep the personal attacks to a minimum, please.
EDIT: fixed typo.
Advertising needs to be turned upside in the DVR/Digital streaming era. Imagine if the show you watched ran ad-free, and instead simply had a 'Sponsored By' section on the shows start page (basically a newly designed 'landing page' for each tv show). Then we viewers would simply choose to watch the ad's when we/if we wanted. And even if we didn't watch an ad, just seeing a Tide logo on that page would cause some to buy their product ('cool they sponsor Family Guy...' for example).
The thing that advertisers don't seem to understand is that we consumers are actually interested in the right ad's. I would choose to watch the new trailer for Game of Thrones - Season Two for example. Or an add for the new Honda Element, if I were shopping or just curious what the new model looked like.
All the sponsored by ads could be google-style customized to the viewer, and the view-rate would likely be higher than it is now where I DVR skip pretty much all ad's since there is no easy way for me to know what is being shown.
On top of all that, advertisers would be able to know exactly how many people were actually watching their ads. They could even add in interactive 'like/dislike' voting to further determine the effectiveness of the ad.
I thought of all this 5-6 years ago when DVR's really got popular. It seemed to me an obvious way to 'evolve' TV, and I'm pretty surprised something like this hasn't already happend. I guess it's expecting too much from an industry that is used to just shoveling ads at us from all angles, the idea of 'choice' is probably pretty scary/imposible for them.
Maybe this is the way Apple intends to crack TV?
Fair point — I was being a bit facetious — but the fact remains that if a critical enough mass of people steal/copy Windows, it’s no longer economically viable. Every user who hasn’t paid for it is being subsidized by those who have.
Windows may not be the best example since it’s so massively profitable, and sells a lot to enterprise customers and OEMs who won’t pirate it. That said, I suspect the business case for producing high-budget, non-mass-market consumer content (say, HBO shows) is starting to tip. How many people pirate Game of Thrones for every one that pays for it?
In the end, we live in a capitalist society — the people making software, movies, music, books, etc. have to get paid for the stuff be made.
Okay, how about this one?
Game of Thrones costs $4.5 million per episode. Would HBO really make them at that cost if every one of their competitors could re-broadcast them the following day, without any kind of payment to HBO? If Target and Best Buy could just sell the DVD and Blu-ray a week later without any kind of payment to HBO?
I doubt it.
I'm not saying we won't have films -- we would -- but they wouldn't be even remotely as costly as what we have today. (Not everything one thinks that's a bad thing.)
> None of us who are waiting for it are going to subscribe to cable in the meantime.
I did, and I just finished watching all 10 season one episodes of Game of Thrones in HD.
And you know what? It was worth it. I love that show. :)
I moved this summer. I still haven't resumed cable service. Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime, and Hulu are more than enough for me.
The only reason I'd resume cable service, incidentally, would be for Game of Thrones season 2. Since I travel so much its likely I would just wait for other options. I don't download torrents.
HBO is a golden goose. Its an exception. They produce exceptionally high quality shows. The things that will work for HBO won't work for the other guys. HBO may be able to sell subscriptions directly to users. Their HBO Go app is exceptional, better than Netflix's to a degree.
When I travel and sit in a hotel room I wonder why any of us ever paid for this garbage. The amount of advertising sandwiched in to amateur level programming is akin to a 1998 porn site full of pop ups. Its not pretty.
Golden geese can become arrogant. If I owned a cable company, any exec who blamed the economy on a drop in subscriptions would be immediately fired.
Home Box Office, Inc is owned by Time Warner. Because of that, I have a feeling the golden goose will ultimately end up going down with the ship it is caged in.
What country are you in? I'm able to purchase all 10 episodes of Game of Thrones on iTunes in Australia.
I recently added cable, first time I have ever had it or satellite (I'm 34 BTW, and this includes growing up). Prior to that, I had Netflix, Blockbuster Online, used RedBox, Hulu, Amazon, etc. and bought DVDs and Blu-rays. On the rare occasion when I needed to watch TV (e.g. for the Olympics), I had an external antenna box.
We now have AT&T U-Verse, and I must say, I'm loving it. Cost wasn't really an issue, so we have the "biggest" plan. I just finished watching the first season of Game of Thrones, and NFL RedZone has made football on Sunday a lot more productive (and removed the commercials). We've DVR'd a bunch of random movies that had been on our Netflix queue for what seems like years, using their handy iOS app (we can even DVR something when we're not at home...)
Bottom line: I'm new to cable and so far, I'm loving it. The cost vs. benefit analysis, at least for me, means I'll be keeping it.
I've worked at studios and networks for a large part of my career. They have hired plenty of people over the years with "skill at managing disruption." They've poached talent from the Microsofts, Googles, Facebooks, hot startups, etc., of the world plenty of times over.
The problem is that they tend to place these folks -- or any of their people ostensibly charged with "innovation" -- in isolated silos. Typically they'll hire a handful of "innovation" people, most of them ex-McKinsey consultants, but a lot of them tech people, and put them in a sort of internal consulting group. This group will have no P&L of its own, and no real authority to change or mandate change. And it will be tasked with influencing the rest of the company to change. As you can imagine, it's a recipe for failure.
And even this is a symptom of a bigger problem: silos, silos, silos. Every department might as well be competing with the next -- because nobody talks to one another, people are constantly politicking against one another, and nobody wants to fund a win that shows up on somebody else's P&L. The whole thing is very reminiscent of "Game of Thrones," actually. Each studio is host to a bevy of competing fiefdoms, and the heads of the fiefdoms are constantly plotting each others' downfalls.
And even the studios are, themselves, fiefdoms within much larger media conglomerates. The head of the Disney movie studio, for instance, still answers to the head of The Walt Disney Corporation, and competes for his favor with the heads of ABC, ESPN, Theme Parks, Licensing, etc. And the head of The Walt Disney Corporation is beholden to Wall Street and quarterly reports. (Big risks and disruptive strategies are extremely hard to implement when you've got quarterlies to answer for).
If you ask me, these companies have grown too big and unwieldy to innovate properly. I'm not saying that in an antitrust-activist sense, but rather, in the sense that it's extremely hard to get everyone within a giant conglomerate on the same agenda when the goal, business, and job description of each P&L leader is so wildly different from the next.
None of this is meant to be an apology for the entertainment conglomerates, but rather, an observation. It's an observation born out of intense personal frustration, of course, at having seen the same patterns over and over again. At the end of the day, "innovation" is a very easy word to preach, but a much more difficult word to implement.
At the same time, I get the sense that a tipping point is very close at hand. Producers, writers, actors, directors, and other talent are themselves getting very tired of the same old studio game. And many of them are seeking out innovative deals with tech firms, brands, and other direct-to-consumer channels. All it takes is a handful of breakout hits -- shows, movies, or what have you -- that occur outside of the established Hollywood distribution system. The second you've got a legitimate hit series only on Netflix, or a direct-to-Amazon smash hit, or a Facebook series drawing in more viewers per week than a network show (very feasible), Hollywood will take notice, and it'll start getting serious about rethinking its approach. It may be too little and too late by then, but that's how these things go.
[Sorry for the tl;dr text wall!]
I hate reading novels in paper form. Each of the books in the Game of Thrones series is 1000 pages long. Holding a super fat book in your hands is not pleasant. You have to break the spine to keep it from closin. You need to physically rotate the book as you move from the left to the right page. It's heavy and cumbersome. Urgh.
Reading on a tablet type device meanwhile is a dream. Thin, lightweight. I hold the device the same for every page at both the start and end of the book. I can comfortably hold it with one hand even.
Being able to look up definitions is wonderfully useful. If you're on an ipad a quick internet search can be incredibly useful. I just read a Clash of Kings (sequel to Game of Thrones). I regularly looked up characters to refresh my memory on what they did or what they looked like (from the TV series).
When it comes to novels I would be quite happy to never hold a dead tree again. I much prefer burning dead dinosaurs.
to me it's simpler - big budget, well-made TV series are flat out better than movies.
id rather spend the same money as two theater tickets a month for HBO / Showtime and watch Homeland, Game of Thrones, 24/7 etc.
Example: Girl with a Dragon tattoo would be an unreal premium TV series. A 2hr 40min movie seems rushed and messy whereas a 12-18 episode TV season could do this and other amazing books justice.
As long as it can help beat the content providers more quickly into their only ultimately tenable position (all content available online, from one service or another), I'm all for it.
To be honest, I don't even care about price that much at this point in history. The fact that there are lots of movies and shows (Game of Thrones, anyone?) that are not digitally available at all is absurd.
Having more competing VOD services negotiating with providers can only make things better.
For me, HBO Go does it right. My parents have cable and I pay for their HBO just for the HBO Go subscription. It comes with their ENTIRE archive of TV shows, every single episode of all their shows. Not to mention, I was able to watch Game of Thrones episodes as they came out the next morning before spoilers could make it to me, not much different than waiting for a show that airs in the east coast to hit prime time west coast.
Fox's problem is that they did this mid-season and they started with a FREE business model and then took it away. You can't give someone something for free and then half way through take it away and make me pay for it. It wouldn't make sense for me to want to pay for it, of course I would resort to something else.
You completely missed the point of the post if all you got from it was "Oooh, look at these special effects!"
Nevertheless if it got to the homepage since yesterday AND got close to 200 upvotes, it might mean that at least a subset of the community is interested in the effects used in the TV series. Special effects are "technology" and as such people like you and me might find ourselves interested in such things. As a fan of the A Song of Fire and Ice books, an entrepreneur, and a programmer and technologist, my interest in the application of special effects in the Game of Thrones TV series is significantly higher than the excess of complaint posts about the patent system (I care about the patent system, just not for all the ranting you see these days...) that you see every day on the homepage. I don't complain though, because I know that since those are getting upvoted, it means people ARE interested in that type of posts.
As of right now I am not willing to pay the monthly fee to get cable and the like, since it airs at a certain time of day and I'd need to get a DVR to then grab all the shows and whatnot I'd want.
If I could pay a monthly fee of around $20 to get all of the TV Shows I want to watch at any point in time (not even perpetuity but that would be nice) I would subscribe. Hulu+ comes close, but still doesn't have a lot of the back catalog I am interested in, or is hog tied by the content producers and can't make certain content available until 30 days after it has aired on TV (USA's show Suits for example).
I'd love to watch Game of Thrones from HBO, but the only way I can get access to HBO's online site is to have a monthly subscription through my cable provider... that makes my choice simple, TPB or don't watch them at all... either way HBO loses money.
I don't understand why the content industry doesn't see that if they help Hulu+ succeed that they too can start seeing more of the money from that. Instead of screwing over the "cord-cutters" cut out the middle-man (the cable company) and let me subscribe directly for a low monthly price.
I disagree. First of all, all the torrents of recent shows are very, very fast. Much faster than any streaming service in fact. Getting well over a meg per second is a common case.
For old episodes you do hold a point, although waiting a few hours or even half a day is generally still more convenient than not getting the episodes at all or waiting through countless FBI warnings.
Now then again, there is Netflix. Its not too bad. Its only available in the US, too.
For example, if i want to follow game of thrones, i can wait a year or two until its available in my country. For some other shows, they'll just never be shown in my country. Or I can pirate it and reduce the wait from a year to 10 minutes.
I'd gladly pay up to $100 a month for quality, ads free streaming to anything recent and I think i would be over paying it. But the offer just isnt even there, free, $1, $100, $1000, $10000 it doesn't matter, there is no true offer available.
What we have here are some streaming content provided by the cable/dsl operators or tv channels which comprises tv shows that are ~5 to 10 years old and movies that are 30 to 5 years old, and a slim catalog of them too, generally the crappiest.
So I pirate the stuff. I feel a little bad about it, but it's that or nothing, and I won't be ok with nothing.
I shall also mention that I would want to be able to stream the stuff on any device/system or optionally save it for offline view, although id settle with streaming only as well.
I'm not convinced. The show is pretty good, the books less so, for reasons I wrote about in detail here: http://jseliger.com/2011/04/17/people-like-a-game-of-thrones-the-novel-i-mean .
I suspect this is a case of The Godfather and other book-to-movie adaptations I can't recall off the top of my head: the adaptation transcends its source material.
Just so everyone knows, Game of Thrones is based off of the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire
So if you like the tv show you'll probably love the books.
Since our son was born, we had to turn down the volume of the TV and rely on the captions. Too bad sometimes even pre-recorded cable movie would not have them (SHO or Starz I think). Or broken captions (It could be our digital box, that's doing the rendering of the captions). I'm missing every 1 out of 10 captions while watching prerecorded Game Of Thrones on HBO.
HBO Go is godsend. I can watch the entire series of any HBO show from the pilot to the series finale and watch new episodes of awesome shows like Game of Thrones on a computer or on my iPad. The second Showtime copies them and offers this direct, subscription based, with clients on the Roku and the like, it'll be over for cable.
The entertainment industry--music, television and movies--is living in the past. Content is distributed through physical media and balkanized distribution deals. Movie and TV studios cannot envision a world without traditional cable distribution.
Pretty much everyone who reads HN knows this.
The gaming industry has largely ditched these old world models. Titles are generally available worldwide within days of initial release. Games are AFAIK not region-protected (they could be on at least console platforms). Digital distribution, at least for PC games, is widespread (ie Steam). What's more that distribution is awesome. Delete a title? Want to re-download it? Not a problem! Not so with iTunes.
Take Game of Thrones, a series produced by HBO with immense worldwide interest. I imagine piracy of this is enormous. Unfortunately, HBO, which seems stuck in the premium cable model, will look at this of evidence that we need more regulation and prosecutions.
What it actually means is there is unsatisfied demand. If people could buy it on iTunes or buy an HBO subscription on their PC on iPad without having to have a cable subscription (which HBO Go requires) then there would be a lot less piracy IMHO. Of course international distribution would also interfere with HBO's traditional distribution deals.
Basically, HBO is just leaving money on the table when I'm sure people would pay $3-5 per episode of GoT as long as they could watch it when they wanted and re-download or re-stream it as desired.
Most, if not all, US networks distribute their content via the Web, either directly or via Hulu (or both). Some place further restrictions like a window in which you can watch the content or a one week delay (as Fox does).
I like this model. I have no TV. I don't want a TV. I don't want a cable subscription (other than for internet).
The problem is that the experience is so awful the choice becomes either pirating it or not watching it. The ads break, they will switch you out of full screen mode, if you have to go back to the content (because it breaks, which it does) you will have to endure a half dozen ads to find the spot you were at and the inventory is repetitive and pointless (1 in 3 online ads are for Geico I swear, and I live in NYC and have no car so why am I being tortured with them?).
Part of the problem there is that advertisers are also stuck in traditional media. I wonder why this is. My best theory is that there are no accurate metrics on audience or conversion with, say, TV advertising so advertisers are basically buying into the lie that networks sell them.
Another theory is that traditional media reach audiences that online media don't.
But why can't I pay for a Hulu with no ads? I would. I have two theories about this too:
1. Hulu likes having a relationship with advertisers; and
2. The people most likely to pay not to see ads are the ones of most value to the advertisers.
So instead Hulu tries pointless differentiators to get me to buy Hulu Plus, like being able to watch it on my iPad. That would actually be nice but if I have to watch it on my laptop instead so be it.
The one company that seems to get online distribution is, of course, Netflix. Watch as much as you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want for a flat fee. They've obviously solved the problem of distributing royalties and so forth to content owners. Why can't anyone else?
That'll probably change today with iCloud. Ironically, the record companies don't like how powerful Apple is but they've created the monster that is iTunes by first insisting on DRM and then shutting out other players. They wanted Amazon and Google to pay for playing music you own when it comes from a hard drive in the cloud rather than one you own. Neither did.
The result seems to be that they've turned to Apple as their saviour, which will probably make Apple even more powerful.
The whole situation--music, movies and TV--is utterly stupid.
Speaking of HBO, I'm really looking forward to Game of Thrones, but as far as I can tell, there's absolutely no legal way for me to watch it in Germany. There's Sky Atlantic in a few other countries, but not here.
I'll buy the DVD, of course, but...why won't you take my money now? It makes no sense. Whatever other broadcast deals you make, you should also be selling episodes or online subscriptions for a fixed price to everyone.
Absolutely not, I'd be perfectly happy to pay a reasonable fee (for music I now have a Spotify subscription and I love it!) or be forced to watch adds or whatnot. I keep waiting for hulu.com and similar sites to eventually (hopefully) open up to Europe, but I'm not holding my breath :\
But until that time I just pirate stuff of the internet. (They haven't even aired anything past season 5 of Scrubs yet here, at this rate I will have to wait until my death if I want watch Game of Thrones...)
+1 for A Game of Thrones.
As a side note HBO picked up the rights to AGOT and is currently filming the series which should be airing sometime in 2011.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/
Martin is an incredible writer and the books have lots of depth. His characters are amazing. I've read them a couple times and continue to find them fantastic.
Martin chooses each detail that he writes about with intent, while not always apparent on your first reading, he has an artful way of layering plot points or connecting characters with subtle details.