Theatre and Cultural Hub Accidental Theatre Complete Monetising Digital Performance Report

Theatre and cultural hub Accidental Theatre recently completed a report on small arts business best practice during the pandemic and beyond. Addressing pressing concerns for artists and practitioners in a time of isolation and the loss of potential revenue from live events, Accidental Theatre, with Tickle Productions and Aisling Productions with financial support from Future Screens NI sought in their research to find best practice techniques to monetise digital performance. Looking at a range of options including but not limited to streaming live shows, Accidental Theatre and their partners sought methods of engagement with audiences through a broadcast programme of live events, therefore distancing the practice from standard streaming platforms. 

The project sought alternative and more direct audience engagement than the passive viewing experiences of leading streaming platforms. Working with artists, festivals and other partners over a period across 2020/21 the project focused on three main case studies of One-off sales, Memberships, and Donations as potential revenue streams. The report addresses three issues of particular interests to small businesses and sole traders including a lack of monetisation options, streaming market competition and the devaluation of artistic content. The conclusions drawn from the case studies were that a mix of subscription and one-off sales will likely be the most accessible option for companies and sole artists. 

For more information on Accidental Theatre follow the link: https://accidentaltheatre.co.uk

KEY PERSONNEL

Accidental Theatre was founded in 2012 to develop an exciting brand of modern Northern Irish theatre. The group embraces new technologies, conventions, styles and techniques. Their inaugural play in 2014 The Kitchen, the Bedroom and the Grave won the BBC NI Drama Award and have since gained further recognition for their ambitious and greatly varied live productions.

Tickle Productions work in advanced media production work since 2009 and have been Accidental’s main partner in streaming live productions since 2016. Recently, they have been working with Dr Elizabeth Meehan a Service Designer with Accidental Theatre to develop, test and refine virtual interactive design. 

Aisling Productions is an TV and documentary production company based in Belfast. Associated TV producer Declan McGrath has 20-year experience in the field and assisted Accidental Theatre with traditional media distribution models.

The project was funded in-part by Future Screens NI’s Rewriting the Narrative Award.

Indie game developers Out of Tune Games seek to streamline multi-platform real-time audience interaction with new R&D.

Out of Tune Games have begun Research & Development to address a technical challenge faced by game platform Unity concerning streamer viewer interaction in live games across multiple streaming platforms including Twitch and YouTube Live.  The project will look to providing a unified “wrapper” that will draw on shared features between the platforms resulting in more games utilising streaming audience interaction as a key feature. Acknowledging the popularity of streaming games as entertainment and its burgeoning economic platform Out of Tune Games draws out one of the unique features of the new media potential, audience interaction with the gamers. Out of Tune Games seeks to streamline the interactive potential to capitalise and facilitate this unique aspect. By providing developers with a ready-made solution to latency issues for streamer integration Out of Tune Games will deliver a solution to valuable development hours spent addressing integration for game producers thus providing further commercial options within the world of competitive gaming. 

Out Of Tune Games is an Indie game developing company comprising of Matt McCrum and Mal Duffin, two programmers brought together by their love of games and backgrounds as musicians. Matt has independently released 8 games for mobile platforms under the moniker of Chunky Games with his most recent creation, Rugby World Championship 2, breaching the top 25 sports games on the App Store. He plays keys, guitar and some phat brass. Mal has a wealth of experience working on games and VR projects for big guns like Sony, IBM and advertising agencies worldwide and has shipped products ranging from Facebook puzzle games to official tie-in racers for The Lego Movie. He saws a mean fiddle. 

For more information on Out of Tune Games visit https://www.outoftunegames.com

Co-Investigator: Brian Coyle, Senior Lecturer in Game Design, Ulster University

This project is funded by a Future Screens NI Research & Development award.

Games developer BillyGoat Entertainment start R&D of tools to facilitate and create believable, reactive, open world citys in Unity 3D.

Belfast-based BillyGoat Entertainment Ltd have recently received a Research & Development award for a project to facilitate real-time game aspects to streamline ongoing advances in games consoles and realistic depictions. In response to the increasing sophistication and detail fidelity of game creation corresponding to the release of more powerful hardware in the likes of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, BillyGoat Entertainment acknowledge the complexity and demand of new software to compete in the game development market. Focusing on an aspect of game world creation, the project will seek to research and develop a procedural, city network system, drawing on the power of AI to work in real-time to create an interactive road network that develops as the player engages with the programme. The intended result will be a programme with an aim for a largely “plug and play” system enabling very minimal setup required by a developer. This would largely automate what would otherwise be a very time intensive, laborious task. The project’s intended outcome would significantly speed up the development process of game-creation freeing skilled individuals to work on other more demanding tasks. 

BillyGoat Entertainment Ltd is a video game developer based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Established in 2010 ‘The Goat’ specialises in crafting jovial, light-hearted, comedic experiences, currently developing for consoles and PC. Beginning its life as a 3D animation studio, producing a variety of animated TV adverts broadcast in Ireland, in 2011 BillyGoat shifted focus to video game development, producing several mobile games for commercial clients.

In 2016 The Goat released its first console title, a satirical intergalactic adventure game called Her Majesty’s SPIFFING, tasking players with establishing a new, Galactic British Empire! The game was a recipient of TIGA’s 2017 Creativity and Heritage Award. Recently, they produced Supermarket Shriek, a light-hearted shopping (kart) racer available on Xbox One, PS4, Switch and PC featured by Xbox during their 2019 E3 stage show and was available on Xbox Game Pass until the end of 2020, when it was then released through distributer PQube on other platforms.

TEAM

William Barr, Project Lead

Paul Kelly, Programmer

Mark Skelton, Programmer 

For more information on BillyGoat Entertainment visit: https://billygoat.tv/index.html

This project is funded by Future Screens NI Research & Development Award.

Whitepot Studios Research & Develop solutions to issues with real-time terrain creation in games run on Unity.

Game developers Whitepot Studios have recently run initial R&D to examine the limitations of real-time terrain creation in Unity, a software commonly used in game development, with results that could change the face of modern real-time environment building in games. Through a report drawn from their research on Unity, the team was able to identify elements not updated in the original software and not fixable with existing ‘off-the-shelf’ products and solutions. Although solutions do exist to the issues found, they are expensive and require large amounts of hardware prohibitive to small to mid-size developers. Taking the data derived from their report, Whitepot is seeking to create an outcome that addresses issues traditionally found when using such techniques in real-time e.g. compatibility, framerate drops and project slowdown economically to open up access to programming like projects for small to mid-size companies.

Whitepot Studios is an award-winning team of game development, software, and creative media specialists. Founded in 2016, the Belfast-based studio has been creating games and developing bespoke client work offering game development, software development, and creative media services.

More information on Whitepot Studios here: http://whitepotstudios.com

Project Name 

Hyper-efficient real-time terrain manipulation solution for the Unity game engine, using voxels and DOTS (Data-Oriented Technology Stack). 

Project Team:

Adam Whiteside-- Technical Lead

Vicky Potts-- Biz Dev and Production

Matt McDyre—Creative Lead

Amy Seaman-- Junior Artist

Robbie McKinney-- Junior Programmer

Co-investigator:

Alec Parkin, Lecturer in Computer Animation, Ulster University.

This project was funded by a Future Screens NI Research and Development award.

Project Focus: Smidj completes analysis of The Cultural Economy of Zoom.

Responding to the Future Screens NI Rewriting the Narrative call, Smidj completed a research project investigating how creative professionals were engaging with lockdown restrictions through their use of Zoom Video Conferencing services. The resulting report is titled The Cultural Economy of Zoom: An Analysis of Creative Praxis, Data Rights & Service Contracts - Exploring the Phenomenon of Online Collaboration During Lockdown.

Noting the profound effect of lockdown on the creative sector, Smidj consciously sought small to medium enterprises and free-lance professionals who had adopted Zoom during the period. The researchers then set out to evaluate the impact of the sudden shift to Computer Mediated Communication (CMD) as a result of the global pandemic through a short qualitative research project.

Some key factors noted from the preliminary planning of the research project was the lack of preparedness on the part of communities, government bodies and individuals facing down the societal impact of COVID-19. The research team thus sought to address the pressing issues like fatigue, security and copyright. The results of the trial were a document Practical Advice for Meeting Users and avenues for further research.

Smidj, Ltd is a LegalTech solution addressing business model innovation in the creative industries through attribution data models and data services innovation. They aim to create an efficient and accessible ID registration system for the creators of digital content that supports attribution and payment.

Project Team:

CEO - Paul O’Hagan: A highly skilled researcher who has worked with Peter Jenner on the Music 2025 project as part of a multi-disciplinary team of academics. His background as a technology entrepreneur and as a commercial studio owner and record producer before this make him uniquely placed. Currently studying a PHD at Ulster University, within Contextual Studies in Popular Music & Culture with a thesis titled Attribution: Intellectual Properties & Popular Music.

CFO/COO - Miceál O’Kane: Serial Entrepreneur and business growth consultant. With over 20 years’ experience starting, operating, and exiting business Miceál specialises in business model innovation. Currently studying a master’s degree in social innovation at Cambridge University, Judge Business School with a research focus on The Creative Industry Economy in the Digital Age. 

NED - Peter Jenner: A veteran of the music business, manager of Pink Floyd, Marc Bolan, Ian Dury, The Clash, and Eddie Reader, he is also responsible, with Martin Goldschmidt of Cooking Vinyl Records, for instigating the first label services deal for Billy Bragg. 

Co-investigator: Professor Frank Lyons, Associate Dean of Research and Impact in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Ulster University.

This project was funded by a Future Screen NI Rewriting the Narrative award.