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Television

Will Wright To Make Fan-Participation TV Show 69

Posted by Soulskill from the just-keep-them-away-from-cameras-for-god's-sake dept.
SmarterThanMe writes "Will Wright, creator of several famous computer games beginning with 'Sim,' is involved in the production of a new TV show called 'Bar Karma.' Viewers will be heavily involved in putting forward their own storyboards that the show will then play out. Viewers also vote on the storyboards that they most like for the next episode. In effect, the viewing public collaborates with each other to create the show."
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Will Wright To Make Fan-Participation TV Show More

Will Wright To Make Fan-Participation TV Show

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  • And griefers all around the world rejoiced (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @04:11AM (#34098908)

    In our next episode: did little Lisa survive her heart surgery?
    4chan: Nope.

  • Brilliant (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How long until someone abuses a flaw in the voting system or simply uses a billion proxies to vote up a storyboard consisting of an elaborate episode-long orgy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by lennier1 ( 264730 )

      Too late. 4chan has already been mentioned in the first post.

    • Why? (Score:3, Funny)

      by denzacar ( 181829 )

      a storyboard consisting of an elaborate episode-long orgy?

      Why do you say that like that is a bad thing?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Combatso ( 1793216 )
      you mean a rip-off of Two and half men?
    • Don't worry - there's a little piece of hardware you have to buy, that you hook up to your DVR... so that helps, right?

    • How long until someone abuses a flaw in the voting system or simply uses a billion proxies to vote up a storyboard consisting of an elaborate episode-long orgy?

      More likely an elaborate episode long advert, if it's successful.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sorak ( 246725 )

      This is a show where people vote for what they want to see. Why do you think they would need hackers to get porn voted up?

    • Remember when that awful singer Sanjaya lasted about three weeks too long on American Idol?

      I don't either. Because I never watched that show. Ever. Ahem.

  • I don't think its going to be a winner. People have different tastes, and people with similar tastes tend to watch the same program.

    So one day you're watching a soppy romantic comedy - because the majority 'vote' at the point in time likes those - and in the next episode you're going to watch the estranged lover murder a few children and throw kittens off roof tops.

    So basically either a particular niche takes over the storyboard (which kinda defeats the purpose) - or the flavour/genre of this will be so err

    • On the other hand, people LOVE to feel like they're part of something. But I do agree with you, it depends a lot on how it's executed.

      I personally think this is the kind of show that'll be fairly successful for a season of six episodes, but not subsequent seasons once the novelty value has worn off.

      • I personally think this is the kind of show that'll be fairly successful for a season of six episodes, but not subsequent seasons once the novelty value has worn off.

        You mean like Firefly?




        Bazinga!

        • No, Firefly was a show that was fairly unsuccessful for a season of 12 or whatever episodes, but then was cancelled once it became popular.

          • I was only kidding, hence the "bazinga". It was 12 episodes and the movie IIRC. And maybe some comics but I haven't seen them if that's the case.

            • I only commented because it's so commentworthy. The cancelling of Firefly AFTER it gained popularity will go down in history as one of the great WTF moments of Science Fiction.

  • Maybe Drew Carey or Clive Anderson can guest-animate.

  • Maybe 4chan can wield their social sword for good and teach execs that we don't need 10 minutes of show and 22 minutes of laugh track in every episode.

    • Considering the proposed judges, I'm guessing we would be more likely to see an episode (or season even) consisting of nothing but laugh track, drowning out every other sound.
      With Pedobear as the *Special*Guest*Star*.

      That and boobies, naturally.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Xserv ( 909355 )

      Maybe 4chan can wield their social sword for good and teach execs that we don't need 10 minutes of show and 22 minutes of laugh track in every episode.

      Oh, wow, well the math is a little off. You forgot the best part! Commercials!

      More like this:
      8 minutes of commercials
      5 minutes of show
      17 minutes of laughtrax

      Awww yea. That's how we roll.

      Xserv

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by yotto ( 590067 )

        My math isn't to blame. It's my typing. I meant "10 minutes of show, 12 minutes of laugh track" for a total of 22 minutes.

        I fail at joke.

  • We already do it for news, now TV shows? What's next, paying $10 to sit in front of a movie I had to help write?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Xserv ( 909355 )

      We already do it for news, now TV shows? What's next, paying $10 to sit in front of a movie I had to help write?

      You just gave some craptacular money-grubbing movie exec an idea... We know they couldn't figure that out on their own since it requires creativity. #FAIL

      Xserv

  • Been done before (Score:5, Informative)

    by dastardlydavros ( 1896724 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @06:03AM (#34099246)
    This isn't a new idea - Let the Blood Run Free did this back in the 90s. You could phone in at the end of the show and choose which direction the storyline would take. Dorothy Conniving-Bitch was my favourite character mwahahahaha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_The_Blood_Run_Free [wikipedia.org]
  • There use to be a Dutch mystery show, like a sketch show way back when I was a child, people could call up and vote how it would end. It grabbed my attention back then, and it'll be interesting to see how someone like Will Wright could add a twist to it. Especially these days with texting or twitter.
  • Considering all the, ahem, unique....,designs in Spore I think the title of the first show will pretty much be "The Cocksons"
  • "Will Wheaton To Make Fan-Participation TV Show"

    I am far less excited for the actual story.

  • Fan Fiction (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tekrat ( 242117 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @07:50AM (#34099692) Homepage Journal

    There's a *REASON* 99.9% of fan fiction doesn't get turned into the next episode. How many Lt. Mary Sue's do we really need? I think there was one rare instance where some Xena fan-fic got published as a book... that was about it.

    Women writers tend to make a Han-Solo/Luke or Kirk/Spock love fest, while men tend to write stories where the hero lands on an alien planet inhabited by sex-starved babes in bikinis.

    Basically it's trash writing and most of the time, it shows that most people should never even get near a keyboard.

  • Seth Green is currently doing the same time (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Seth Green is part of a new ControlTV experiment where viewers vote on what the star of the show (Tristan) must do next.

  • Will, we're still waiting for simcity 5 with hulking complexity and more stuff.
    • How about a sim city without the awful EA-THE SIMS UI treatment?

    • I don't want more Simcites, I just want a patch for Spore where you can assign a damn lieutenant or someone that can take care of your collections/simple alien attacks. I didn't want my dreams of exploring the center of the galaxy to be dashed simply because I didn't know how to hire someone.

  • This reminds me of a scene in Fahrenheit 451 where the Guy Montag's wife is is super-excited because she has been mailed the script of her favorite soap so that she can have a trivial line that she reads when the people in the "wall" ask her questions. "What do you think Mildred?" "It's swell!" Do you think it's a good idea, Mildred?" "Absolutely!" (I may have gotten the name and the dialog wrong -- but you get the idea).

  • Welcome back to the mid 90's! Do you think this series will be available at Blockbuster, or will I have to pirate it on AOL?

  • Doesn't have a great history.
  • oh wait. I forgot how boring that was. Pretty much why I stopped playing. Besides, (given that this is a gimmicky premise and will most likely not include great acting) half of the fun is not knowing what will happen in the next episode. It's a little hard to play up the suspense when people have been voting on the possible story-lines.

  • Depending upon the director, I could actually see this working out pretty well. The key is to get a TON of storyboards, and select the ones you probably would have done anyway to vote on.

    Andrew Hussie has raised this technique to an artform.

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