Hi frens, I’m back from a small summer hiatus. It’s always refreshing to step away, relax but also allow space for new ideas and perspectives to form. I hope you have found time this summer to do the same.

TL;DR:

• Social media and gaming allow users to shift from passive consumption to active participation.

• Passionate fans contribute creative energy that enhances the ecosystem of entertainment formats.

• Hollywood lacks the structure to funnel fan energy back into IP, unlike platforms like Roblox.

• Future successful entertainment IPs will engage fans by allowing them to create and own parts of the story universe.

• New blockchain technologies will enable franchises to harness fan participation professionally and rapidly.

Two of the most valuable current entertainment formats – social media and gaming – have two key things in common: 1) they are internet-native, 2) they allow consumers and fans to transition from passive consumption to active participation.

Most social media users are still consumers. Most Roblox players engage in gameplay rather than building worlds. However, some do create because they want to. These passionate fans and their creative energy contributes to a powerful flywheel when entertainment formats capture and direct this energy back into the ecosystem.

For Roblox, for instance, it creates and ever-changing landscape of new experiences to keep players continually engaged.

(From “The Spectrum of Entertainment Participation”)

Let’s contrast this with Hollywood. Some of the strongest intellectual properties (IP) from the past decades were solidified on big screens (theaters) and smaller screens (TV series), accruing massive, global, passionate fan bases.

The same dynamic is at play here. There are fans so passionate that they want to transition from consuming to creating. However, the average Hollywood IP lacks a structure that funnels this energy back into the IP itself. Instead, this energy manifests in other places, disconnected.

For example, Archive of Our Own, a repository of fan fiction, boasts more than 13 million stories. All these stories, millions of hours of work, to no real benefit for the IP holder nor its fans broadly.

Hollywood is organized in ivory towers, the fastest-growing entertainment platforms are organized as co-working spaces.

Jon Rogers, a great thinker at the intersection of emerging tech and entertainment, posted the above a while back. His post perfectly frames how fan energy can be funnelled back into the world of an IP asset.

Imagine a story universe playing out in a world like the one below. You would want the main story crafted by professional storytellers. But what if fans could pick their “distant mountain,” venture to it, and craft the stories of the characters living there? This could be infused with community/fan ownership via NFT assets, bringing fans all across the spectrum from consuming to ownership.

(Source)

Why Is It Important?

The world is already overflowing with content, and this is before we’ve seen the full impact of generative AI on both professional and casual content production pipelines. In this sea of content, the winners will be the creators of stories that engage and retain the attention of loyal fans over time.

Reusable IP works well in entertainment because it avoids the massive costs of cold-starting attention in the marketplace every time new content is released. This happens in an environment where consumers are increasingly conditioned to also be creators of their experiences, for instance through user-generated content (UGC) game worlds like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. Story universes that build loyal fanbases by allowing fans to traverse the spectrum of participation will win the retention game and build the strongest IP in the future.

When done successfully, this inflow of creative fan energy on the other side of “distant mountains” doesn’t just keep the creator-fans engaged. It also creates a continuous flow of new content to be experienced and consumed by others.

Seizing the Opportunity

Inviting fans to create requires a leap for studios and franchises accustomed to tightly controlling and governing their content, characters, and stories. While some may jump, it’s more likely we’ll see the next era of entertainment franchises emerge from deep pockets of community online. These franchises will be built with participation as a natural extension of the franchise itself.

New blockchain enablers like Story Protocol, building a programmable IP layer for the internet, will allow these new franchises to orchestrate efforts at the same level of professionalism as traditional studios, but at warp speed.

In its optimal state, entertainment IP with “dynamic distant mountains” will balance the power of passionate storytelling with the intense UGC flywheel of platforms like Roblox to produce a completely new type of entertainment brand.

And I’m all here for it.