This is the talk I gave at SCREENS 2011 in Toronto, ON. SCREENS 2011 is a conference put on by FITC: http://www.fitc.ca/events/about/?event=118
After two successful FITC Mobile conferences we have transformed the event into SCREENS, now dedicated to mobile, tablet and set top box development. Jam packed with information and a massive networking opportunity, SCREENS consists of presentations, demonstrations and panel discussions. It is one of the only events in the world designed for developers of all platforms of screen content.
52. Author once.
Deploy anywhere.
The medium is NOT the message.
53. Author once.
Deploy anywhere.
The medium is NOT the message.
Your content is the message.
54. Author once.
Deploy anywhere.
The medium is NOT the message.
Your content is the message.
One tech to rule them all.
Editor's Notes
Thank you everyone. Super excited to be here. Lets get started.Welcome to Unity, One Tech To Rule Them All. When I thought about this conference, I thought it fair to ask a question
Kind of cheeky, but its a fair question when I think of this
5+ years ago, this was the landscape. If you went traveling or even just to the office, this is what you brought. Now what do you bring with you?
1 thing. This was supposed to solve everything. Its a phone/camera/ipod/PDA. Its also a computer. Its everything. Suddenly devices werent fractured anymore. In other words, the promise of the iphone was this:
One device to rule the all. But what problem did this really solve? Lets look at the chain of devices we had 5+ years ago.
You had 3 categories. Small devices, which were fractured.A portable computer, in the laptop. And the desktop beast weve been using since the 80s. Looking at it this context, what did the iPhone do?
It solved that problem.It replaced everything on the left, the small devices.
And then the iPad came along and created another device in the middle.
And now, another device is coming along and making everything look even smaller.
And thats the Smart TV. It runs the full internet and, more importantly, apps.
5 Screens to Rule Them All. Youll hear some people say there four screens, either collapsing the laptop and desktop into one. Or additionally, collapsing the iphone and ipad in one and adding Movie Theaters into the mix. But for today, Im going to talk about these 5.
This was going to be my first question. But we all know how this is. Weve all used these devices. So this is question is kind of trivial. (Next screen.)
The real question is this.
How do the 5 screen interact with each other?
First lets talk about client interactivity,
Playing scrabble on the ipad with your iphones. The iphone acts as a tile rack, and the ipad acts as the board. The big win here is that now you dont have to dig through tiles. You can easily hide your letters from your friends. And best of all, no one has to keep score. The ipad handles it for you.
Heres another example of direct interactivity. This is the remote app on my phone. I can control my itunes from my phone. Super simple and elegant solution. Great for parties by the way. Speaking of remotes, heres another example:
This is a screen shot from my iPad. Its an app called Rowmote (unfortunate name) that controls my laptop.
You can see the device its controlling here.
This is the app Im using.
This is the touchpad. And clearly theres a keyboard.
Theres even application switching. In short, it emulates a full keyboard + touchpad.Why am I talking about all of this? Why would I use this app to control my laptop remotely? Heres why.
Thats my wife.We dont watch much TV, mainly b/c we dont want to pay for cable. We do love Hulu though. And downloading TV shows through iTunes and other less legal download methods. This is how watch them on the 46 TV this way. The laptop feeds into the TV the A/V via a mini-display-HDMI cable, and we sit in bed and control the whole thing wirelessly from the iPad. 3 Screen Client Interactivity! Awesome! So thats client interactivity.
Now lets talk about cloud interactivity. What do I mean by that? Remember the Scrabble example? We had an ipad app interfacing with an iphone app wirelessly. 1 client interfacing with another client. And in the last example with my wife, you had an iPad app, a client, interacting with several different laptop clients wirelessly, and then finally interacting with the client on the TV via a cable. So lets formalize what that looks like:
Lets start with a simple example
Email. Email is one of the oldest web apps. Everything is saved in the cloud on servers. Relating this back to our 5 screens, you can interact with your mail via the Web App on any device, or via a Native App on any device. In fact, because you can interact with it anywhere, the medium through which you interact with email dissolves away. Almost.Whether its the web app, or the native client on my phone, I still interact with mail pretty much the same. I might write shorter emails on my phone, but in the end, the experience duplicated everywhere. The key thing is that the cloud unifies everything here.
Lets look at a gaming example, since thats why Im here today. \\This is My Empire, an Facebook title published by EA/Playfish a couple of years ago. Its played in browser, in Flash, which as you know, you cant really play on a tablet or your phone. But, they did something quite revolutionary back in the day.
They did this. They released a companion iphone app that allowed you to interact with the game mobile.It wasnt the full experience, but you could do actions in the game and the server would reflect those changes on your web client when you logged back in. Other people are doing this too.
Heres another game. This title is actually being developed in Unity, and theyre going to release the game where the core experience will be online.But there will be mobile companion apps, lighter versions of the game that allow you to play certain parts of the game while youre on the go. Meanwhile, the servers in the cloud save everything for you. So, these are nice, but what about a true client-agnostic experience for games? Like email? i.e. Can you have the full experience no matter what device youre using? (Thats the salient point of this entire presentation.)
Yes. Zyngas got it. One thing to note here is that Zynga bought the mobile company that built WWF, and then built a Facebook client app to create this Cloud Interactivity. 2 clients, probably vastly different code. What if you author only once, and deploy anywhere? And link it all via a server? Well you can.
Heres one very simple example. Built in Unity, this game was deployed to iOS and Facebook nearly simultaneously. And more to the point, it was linked via a server on the back end. You can start a game on Facebook, pick it up on your iphone as you take the train home, and then pick it up where you left off again at home. And thats the promise of Unity. (slow down and hammer this home)
Unity
Author once.
Deploy anywhere.
One tech to rule the all.
Well, almost anywhere. Unity has native deployment for PC, Mac, Web, iOS, Android, PS3, xBox, Wii.What about the other platforms?
Thats where Union comes in. Union is a quasi publishing division of Unity that ports our tech to other platforms, and partners with carriers and devices and platforms to put your content on these other devices.
Like the Blackberry Playbook
Or the Roku, which is a set top box the size of my fist that streams content.
Were also looking at other platforms as well. Ping me afterward and we can talk. So thats Unity, and Union. Author once, deploy almost anywhere. If Unity cant get you there, Union can. Remember than seamless experience I described with Words With Friends, and Rinth Island? I want to come back to that, by way of
Marshall McLuhanSeriously, Marshall McLuhan really is pertinent here. MM is famous for 2 things. Funny enough, hes probably most famous for a scene in Annie Hall. So lets watch that real quick.
But hes also extremely famous for something else. He said this:
What does this mean in the context of games? More importantly, what does mean in the context of Screens?The first 2 games that really hit it big i.e. HUGE on iOS were these two games:
Angry Birds
And Fruit NinjaWhy? Probably a couple of reasons. But one of the most important? The touch screen. These games were built for the touch screen. Fruit Ninja you cut fruit by swiping your finger. In Angry Birds, you very gently use your finger to aim the catapult. If youve ever tried to play a catapult game with a mouse, you know that its just not satisfying. The touch screen makes the game. Back to Mashall McLuhan
He would have said, and I agree with him, that the success of Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja is due to the medium. i.e. The Touch Screen, i.e. The Medium Is The Message. I guarantee you, that Angry Birds wouldnt make a great PC game. Or for your Smart TV. Its a Touch Screen game, pure and simple. One of the promises of Unity, however, is that you can author an incredible game, and the platform, i.e The Medium, is irrelevant. All that matters is YOUR CONTENT.
Again, with Unity, the medium is NOT the message. Your content is.
Unity
Author Once
Deploy anywhere.
The medium is NOT the message.
YOUR CONTENT is the message.
One tech to rule the all. Thank you very much.Q&A