Project Matilda Update

#transmedia #research #velvet #curtain #cyberside It’s been an interesting week with lots of talks on the subjects, and the 25th of May cannot be felt sooner for the announcement of “Project Matilda”, which will send the initiative into an active experimental phase. 

It will be tackling many things at the same time, but the most important ones are: 

- IP structure and segmented licensing approach, divides proprietorship, scale and adoption versus revenue, etc. 

“One world—multiple products” in a new, exciting way (well, to me at least). The current IP approach underutilises design integration possibilities, and frankly, I don’t understand the meaning of IP and design engineering. Otherwise, it would give creators more control over this process. 

- I will try to solve the segmentation of expertise in various entertainment media types. 

- Syndication of marketing efforts against fragmentation of audience. 

- A few networking effects I have been playing around with at the time of UE Contests for developers in Epic Games, and now have adopted for this gig. Unreal Engine is kind of a part of this as well, such as UEFN, I want to poke with a stick a bit to check how it can create added marketing value for small IP’s, same goes for modding. 

I have already produced a few outcomes I’m fairly sure about, including: 

- The necessity of large entertainment companies adopting IP management companies (kind of what HipGnosis Media does in music) over a one-product-based expertise, first-hand 360 ownership. 

- A few how-tos on how to restructure IP anatomy and why it’s more beneficial to go bottom-up than otherwise with market adoption. 

- And as many hypothesis research goes, rather accidentally, why specifically Netflix is the exit gain owner of upcoming results in the next 3-5 years of changes, and most probably will become the next 1-trillion company very quickly. TLDR: a business model that incentivises user retention is capable of producing the necessary network effect to gain enough benefit for distributed, equitable models of segmentation, a new frame of IP requires. Ironically, their flat reward and no upside in movies and TV focus creates a huge counterbalance opportunity for equitable relationships in the left part of the transmedia product equation :) 

So, yeah, in the next 6 months, we will come through a journey of merging books, comics, boardgames with videogames, music and film, at one simple example, attempt to scale, retrace and postmortem, and share to the creative community all of the observed methodologies, and it’s gonna be fun :) 

And, well, few updates are coming up to Cyberside.co.uk as well, and I’m internally embracing understanding I’ll need to do quite some more work in web launching full velvet-curtain.com at Q4, such as all of the sub-product pages and new universe stuff :) 

About a year ago, I was trying to retire, but now, between my favourite day job at GSC and transmedia research and products with Velvet, 2025 is the busiest year in my career. But - it feels great :)