Tech headlines in 2023 have brought a lot of seemingly complex innovations into everyday discussion, with the average consumer now far more aware of concepts like generative AI, machine learning, mixed reality, and the metaverse.
Dinner parties #are buzzing with people swapping stories about experimenting with ChatGPT, discussing who’s still using what social media platforms or thinking about changing their screen time habits, or whether it’s worth getting a VR headset once Apple makes one that more people can afford.
This subtle but important shift gives the mobile entertainment industry plenty to consider, and both companies and consumers are tinkering with ways to make these revolutionary innovations work for them. With this in mind, we sat down with Max Kraynov, CEO of mobile entertainment company FunCorp, to discuss this year’s key mobile and tech trends, and their impact on the future of the industry.
Credit: Unsplash, David Grandmougin
AI and machine learning have been dominating the tech news cycle throughout 2023. What are the implications and potential of this technology in the mobile entertainment industry? Should employees in this sector be concerned about job security?
For developers in particular, the implications are far-reaching, and generally positive. From optimizing backend processes and streamlining repetitive tasks, to improving content moderation in coordination with human input, there’s a lot of day-to-day duties that can be offloaded. This leaves more room to think creatively and innovate because it enables creators and developers to spend more time experimenting, analyzing, and improving software.
Consumers benefit from AI’s ability to learn and understand user interests and past viewing behaviors and enable a richer user experience, as content and channel recommendations are becoming more personalized and accurate than ever. In a content-creation role, relevant to both consumer and company, AI again can take more of an assistive role than a usurping one, creating text, images, and video, providing a useful template or starting point.
As the content generated by AI still lacks the authenticity and relatability that user-generated content (UGC) has, UGC provides greater value for relating to an audience or community.
AI simply upgrades the delivery, targeting, aesthetics and consumption of user-generated content, while the user retains creative control over the process and direction.
UGC and mobile entertainment tend to be heavily associated with social media – how does this relationship factor into an app’s success?
Social media integration has been a cornerstone for the mobile entertainment landscape, and this is unlikely to change, as long as it continues to deliver the experiences users want – and right now, audiences are clamoring for more social, interactive, and engaging experiences.
It’s interesting that metrics and feedback show this desire for connectivity and interaction within communities, and that they form such a large component of the mobile entertainment landscape, given that mobile phone use has been more commonly associated with antisocial, dissociative behavior. This desire for interaction sees mobile entertainment platforms putting a heavier focus on integrating social media functionality, allowing users to build on each other’s jokes and comments around particular content that resonates with them, or create memes or other related content that furthers discussion and interaction.
Having this social functionality embedded into an app or platform enables a community to grow and foster a culture of conversation, which is important to the app’s lifecycle, and the retention of users.
Are there other components or technologies that are impacting the space now?
Most certainly. Although we’ve been hearing about this for some time, the extended reality (XR) family – virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) – is gathering momentum in the creation and delivery of mobile-optimized entertainment.
This is a hugely competitive area for gaming and entertainment-focused companies.
Being able to overlay a real-world environment with imaginatively crafted digital elements, completely transforming how a user sees and interacts with their immediate surroundings, creates a personal experience that many want to share with others.
By incorporating the aforementioned social features into these experiences, users can record, stream, and share their AR experiences, whether it’s something as simple as putting on humorous filters or live chat for broadcast and interaction, words or signage for accessibility, or something more in-depth.
Location-based AR experiences are on the rise as well, where physical places can have digital assets to discover, decipher, or interact with via mobile, enabling people to gather for events or take part in a scavenger hunt across a city – all without physical clues or objects that could be tampered with, or that could have a negative environmental or social impact on where they’re placed.
Ultimately, this increasing prevalence of AR and VR-enabled features again feeds back into consumers’ growing appetite for immersion, personalization, accessibility, and on-demand entertainment, with a more social, interactive element at its core. It’ll be exciting to see how mobile entertainment developers and creators rise to meet this interest as the technology continues to progress.
