Capturing Cozy
A loop in a loop in a loop.
Background
According to my wife, she’s always needed a TV on to fall asleep to. The original “white noise machine” I guess. Professionally, she also often works with a show or movie on in the background.
However, it’s important to note: What’s on needs to be something she’s seen before. This way it’s just ambient background. If it’s something new, it’s a distraction because – naturally – she wants to see what’s going on and what happens next.
The side effect of this: She’ll get locked into a series or movie that’s on constant replay somewhere in the house.
For me, it’s maddening – especially since I have an uncanny ability to be passing by or coming to bed when the same part of the same episode or movie is playing - like some kind of streaming “Groundhog Day” effect.
I’ve also noticed while visiting offices, some people have a wide variety of other “second screen” background experiences going – either on their phone, picture-in-picture on their screen, or running on a dedicated second monitor. This includes:
Anime.
Watching Live Twitch or YouTube streamers.
Cozy background experiences like Lofi Girl, virtual landscapes, ASMR-focused scenes, and one time I saw an 8-bit background with video game music and a Zelda-themed fireplace.
Shows or movies via a streaming service.
Overnight Streaming
Now, each streaming service seems to handle long plays differently, most not considering they’ll be on in “background mode”:
Netflix : Most annoying, with the “Are you still watching” interruption every few episodes.
AppleTV : Second most annoying, as it’ll just play the next thing in “Up next” – which are things people probably want to actively watch later. Sometimes I think it just plays what it wants. Not great when the wife gets woken up to things blowing up or a serial arsonist lighting up a house.
Prime Video : Has streaming channels – which should be awesome, but the programming can be iffy and the commercials are so, so bad and way too often. For other shows, automatically going to the "next episode” has been inconsistent in my experience.
Disney+ : Pretty solid. At some point will stop incrementing episodes, but usually will play for a very long time.
HBO Max : Clear winner. Hit play and as long as the show has more episodes, it’ll just keep on going.
A small aside here: Our youngest dog will and does bark when other animals are on screen - which has severely impacted our ability to play most nature documentaries. He flipped out at an onscreen whale once at 3am; woke the whole house. So, there’s now a bit of a fixed rotation of “no animals”, “no explosions”, and “already seen it” shows – mostly on Disney+ and HBO Max.
Cozy Immersive
Onto the craft, the “what I’ve been working on,” and tying this all together part of the story.
Considering all of the above, how many people now have second (and third) screen experiences going on in the background for good chunks of time, and that fans want to stay connected with the story worlds they enjoy, this led to work an original project which internally is called “Loops.” It’s still early in development, so this is part of my effort to build in public with y’all.
Following the philosophy that everything should be part of a story – nothing is just “content,” everything is an “experience”, Loops can be a passive audio/visual scene you can just fire-up and let play while you work, sleep, doom-scroll – whatever. Or, you can interact with the environments and discover mini-narratives, easter eggs, or random events. No complex plots to track, no boss levels, no grinding, no score. Just atmospheric, immersive, and cozy environments in different story universes.
Discovery and interactivity if you want it, background vibes and eye candy if you don’t.
Loops is targeting a place that’s not a content stream like Netflix or HBO Max, nor is it a game like you’d find on Steam or Xbox Live.
We’re also evaluating keeping the experiences synchronized - like a live stream would be. So what you see when you start the experience is what someone else is also seeing, even if their instance has been already running for hours. This will allow people so share and experience discoveries, theories, and interesting moments and events together – if they want.
One thing Loops doesn’t do however, is “loop.” It’s not on a rail that just goes around with the same events and actions occurring at the same predictable intervals. So every moment of every day is unpredictable. A practical use of AI, procedural generation and state machines.
Want to know more or get involved as a contributor, tester, or future fan? Drop me a note. Otherwise, we’ll see you for the next update.
Recently
Screen : “Pluribus” (AppleTV). So far a fantastic series. Apple continues to crush it in hard sci-fi programming. Vince Gilligan can’t seem to miss and I love that Rhea Seehorn is at the center of the show.
Music : “The Luck and Strange Concerts” (David Gilmour). About this time last year, I was at one of only 20ish shows in 4 cities which consisted of this tour. One of the cheers in the background of one of the tracks might just be me.
Purchase : “90-degree USB-C Cables” (Amazon) - I had a cable die due to being bent because it sticks straight out of the battery pack, which is jammed into all manner of pockets when I’m using it. So I got these cables which are bent 90 degrees to sit more flush and not overly bend/pinch the wire. Honestly, I don’t know why these aren’t more standard.