NYCC 2010: Warren Spector and John Vignocchi on Disney’s New Gaming Strategy

Originally posted in November 2010 on thebigpixels.com, which unfortunately has died.

Plus hands-on time with TRON: Evolution and Epic Mickey.

Hanging out at Disney Interactive’s Comic-Con booth over the weekend, I got the distinct sense that the company’s going to be focusing more than ever on video games, starting with the new TRON games and Epic Mickey. The former are part of Disney’s “first big transmedia” strategy, according to TRON: Evolution Development Director John Vignocchi, while Epic Mickey’s developers have been given huge amounts of freedom to explore Disney history. Both represent Disney’s increased interest in making games an integral part of the company’s brands, and with Warren Spector on board, there’s hardly any way the strategy can fail.

TRON‘s “transmedia” strategy means that the games and films (both the 1982 version and upcoming 2010 sequel) fit together like the pieces of a narrative puzzle; the original movie leads into the DS game, TRON: Evolution DS, and the Wii, PSP, and Xbox 360/PS3/PC versions follow chronologically in the fiction, culminating in the new movie.

In other words, Evolution (the game for 360, PS3 and PC) isn’t a side story or a continuation of the film’s plot. In fact, the film will feature multiple flashbacks to the game’s events, which lead directly to the state of unrest seen in the film’s world. Moviegoers don’t need to play the game first to understand it, but those who do will have a much more robust understanding of the film’s characters and plot.

I watched Vignocchi play the game for upwards of a half hour before taking control myself for the much anticipated light cycle race, which played like a version of Wipeout where the track is disintegrating as you jet across it. While I watched, Vignocchi played through an entire portion of the game set in Arjia City. Home to a rare breed of programs, it’s an important location in TRON‘s computerized world, but Vignocchi skipped every single cut scene, according to him, at the behest of the filmmakers. Apparently too many of the film’s crucial plot points are explored in the level, and they didn’t want the movie spoiled for observant Comic-Con attendees.

The on-foot gameplay came across as a mixture of Assassin’s Creed-like free running and combat somewhat reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Players are free to run up any wall and jump to any surface they can reach, all while battling multiple enemies with an arsenal of disc-based attacks and using the environmental to their advantage. The demo also included a tank, which controls “like Halo‘s Scorpion” (straight from Vignocchi’s mouth) and lays waste to troops both on foot and in their airborne transport vehicles.

Overall, it seemed like a healthy mix of gameplay styles, with a slew of RPG elements thrown in. Plus, experience and upgrades earned in multiplayer (which players can jump in and out of at any of the plentiful upgrade stations littered throughout the campaign) transfer directly to the single player game.

Vignocchi said the team of self proclaimed geeks is thrilled to be working in the TRON universe. During his lengthy employ at Midway, in fact, Vignocchi worked directly under the creator of the original TRON Arcade.

“As geeks ourselves, we have this opportunity to work on this amazing property,” he said. “Everything is canon.” That may be the most important part for Disney’s current strategy.

Of course, the other side of that lies with Epic Mickey. Spector and the team at Junction Point have been given absolutely unprecedented access to Disney’s archives, and they’re taking full advantage by revisiting countless obscure, rejected and forgotten characters and locales, Creative Director and industry legend Warren Spector told me.

I played through the game’s tutorial level, which takes place just after Mickey Mouse is pulled into a dangerous dimension by a mysterious (and almost certainly evil) ink blot. Lucky for him, he comes into possession of a magic brush that can create or destroy portions of the environment at players’ discretion. Its most basic implementations involve spraying paint to create platforms, or paint thinner to remove obstructions. But Chase Jones, the game’s Lead Desgigner, told me the brush’s applications are too numerous to grasp from such a short demo.

When I asked Spector what his favorite part of working on the game has been so far, he couldn’t think of a single answer. “I’m really happy that people are finding their own play style. You watch five people play, and they’re all doing things differently,” he began. “That’s when games get really special.”

“At the end of the day, the game feels unique. It doesn’t feel like any other game, doesn’t play like any other game. Its pacing is different from every other game, and so I’m really happy about that,” he continued. “I’ve watched dads and sons playing together, you know? I’ve got one picture of literally a five-year-old boy with a controller in his hands and his dad leaning around and helping him out.

“And all of a sudden, you know – games can really be like Pixar movies. They don’t all have to be adrenalized shooting,” he continued. “It’s really reflecting what I hoped it would be.”

Yet it’s impossible to grasp the true importance of Epic Mickey without hearing it in Spector’s own words. “There’s a whole new feeling about video games at Disney right now,” he told me. “The fact that they’re using a game to reintroduce Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to the world speaks to how important video games are to the company.”

Oswald was introduced in the late 1920s, and the character’s close resemblance to Mickey is proof enough of his importance in Disney history. He plays a central role in Epic Mickey, and he’s accompanied by countless other similarly obscure and outdated characters.

“The idea that Disney the corporation would give the team that kind of access and that kind of freedom, that kind of creative freedom, more than anything else, has been surprising, and really special,” Spector said. “I think it really is that video games have kind of come of age.”

He added, “It’s about time.”

TRON: Evolution comes out for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, and Epic Mickey hits shelves exclusively on the Wii.

Kill Screen and the Future of the Gaming Press

Note: This article was published on Kombo.com, where I work as a News Editor, on April 27, 2010. The article and video belong to them, but I’ve been given permission to post it here as well for the noble purpose of education.

This is a bad time for print.

Let’s begin with some statistics: according to Magazine Death Pool, by December 14 of last year, 367 print magazines had kicked the bucket in 2009 alone. The blog, which records the plights of “magazines which have outlived their purpose,” alleges that’s a victory for print, as the number is down from the 573 magazines closed in 2007. Newspaper Death Watch is a similar blog that chronicles “the decline of newspapers and the rebirth of journalism.” At least there’s a glimmer of hope in their mission statement.

Kill Screen on sale at the 2 Player Productions booth at PAX East (Click for Flickr slideshow)

Newspapers and magazines have been struggling to find their place in a world characterized by instant gratification and an information free-for-all. The popularity of e-readers like the Kindle and, more recently, the iPad, have made the future of print media uncertain. Even the New York Times, regarded by many as the backbone of American journalism, has struggled to develop a Web model that’s both attractive to readers and profitable. How can the video game magazines so many gamers know and love possibly have a future in such an unsympathetic climate?

Cue “The Death of Print,” a panel discussion at Boston’s PAX East gaming convention in March. Despite the panel’s macabre title, the discussion veered more toward the future of print than its demise. Panelist John Davison, the editor of GamePro and the catalyst behind its recent stylistic overhaul, said that to save GamePro the team had to “reinvent the brand, not just the magazine.” So far they’ve been successful, as many gamers are beginning to see GamePro in a new light; its future remains up in the air, however.

Chris Dahlen at The Death of Print

Davison was joined on the panel by freelancer Julian Murdoch, Electronic Arts’ Jeff Green, The Escapist’s editor in chief, Russ Pitts, and Chris Dahlen, the editorial director and one of the visionaries behind the experimental new gaming magazine Kill Screen. Dahlen and I spoke at length over the phone, and he had a lot to say about the future of print and the ideas behind Kill Screen.

Dahlen and several of his compatriots had been chewing over the idea of starting a new gaming magazine in 2009. “All of us were interested in the idea of writing about games as a form of pop culture, like movies or music, to be more thoughtful, and to write for a more mature audience,” he said. He described an environment in which gamers are shying away from the traditional, “immature gaming enthusiast press” in favor of “smart gaming blogs” like Michael Abbott’s The Brainy Gamer and The Borderhouse, “a blog that celebrates diversity in gaming from a wide variety of cultural angles.”

Kill Screen’s high-quality pages are filled with introspective essays, fascinating interviews, philosophical rhetoric and original art. Reviews, news and industry coverage are conspicuously absent. Dahlen and company have a noble vision for the gaming press; Jamin Brophy-Warren, another of Kill Screen’s founders, said to Gamasutra, “If we continue to buy into the delusion that games are merely software and should be evaluated solely on their graphical fidelity and feature set, then we cannot expect the medium to go forward.” On the phone, Dahlen elaborated on how exactly games should be evaluated.

“I don’t think enough people evaluate the theme of a game. They don’t spend enough time critiquing the representation of people as valid characters. That’s what I would like to see more of,” he said. “There are games like Portal that excel at both, where the theme is beautifully married to the mechanics, and they work together.

Portal is a game "where the theme is beautifully married to the mechanics," said Dahlen

“Most people only care about the mechanics, and they don’t think about the theme very much. People will just ignore it. I kind of understand that, because the mechanics are where it kind of breaks down. You can ship a game where the theme doesn’t make sense, but if the mechanics don’t make sense, then the game is broken,” Dahlen said. Several of the articles in Kill Screen’s inaugural issue focus heavily on the thematic elements of games like Resident Evil and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

In addition to its editorial distinctions, Kill Screen differs greatly from other gaming magazines in its physical motifs. Its heavy matte pages are overtly free of ads, and screen shots are limited to those for games that are so far removed from mainstream gaming culture that “people would have no idea what they look like,” according to Dahlen.

“The goal there was to make it classier. We like fan art- if it’s good,” he said. “We didn’t want it to look like other gaming magazines, and that was made easier by the fact that we got a guy who hasn’t designed gaming magazines before.” Dahlen credits most of the Kill Screen’s visual sophistication to the discerning sensibilities of the magazine’s creative director, Anthony Smyrski of Smyrski Creative.

Dahlen said that initial reactions to Kill Screen have been positive. “People just believe in the idea of seeing a nice print magazine that takes the gaming industry as seriously as they do,” he said over the phone. Other gaming journalists, professional and amateur alike, have hope for the future of print, as well, though all agree that magazines are going to have to carve out a new niche in the industry.

Kill Screen contains few screen shots

Susan Arendt is the senior editor for The Escapist, a popular online video game magazine with rich feature and editorial content. When I caught up with her outside another panel about game journalism at PAX East, she told me she believes print is “on life support,” though she hopes gamers will find a place in their hearts (and their wallets) for print content in the future.

“I love print so much, I really, really do, it’s just- it’s tough, because I think that the audience, having been raised on online so much, doesn’t have the respect and love for print,” she told me. “I would love nothing more than to see a strong print presence come back, but I do think it’s going to have to change.”

Dustin Burg, formerly of game journalism blog Joystiq, spoke with me during PAX East in front of the booth of his current employers, indie developers Ska Studios. “I think there’s always going to be a need for newspapers, or some sort of print,” he said. “Physically holding stuff, I think, has value in it. But they’re going to have to change some things, their model, so to speak, because, heck, we all go online to get our news. There will be a market. Is it going to shrink and almost shrivel up and die? Probably. but I’m sure there’ll be something around.”

Matthew Hawkins, video game journalist, game designer, and publisher of FORT90ZINE, was manning the 2 Player Productions booth during the convention, where “issue no.0″ of Kill Screen was on sale for the first time. FORT90ZINE has, according to the site’s bio, been called “the publication that helped spark the video game zine renaissance currently in effect.” Hawkins told me he started the zine, which is “a print version of his blog,” to combat the impermanence of the web.

Kill Screen's website will feature more web friendly content in the future

“It’s a way for people to get back control of the information, make it permanent, be able to pass it along,” he said. “It can’t compete with the fast information sharing of the Internet, so what it has to do is concentrate on more niche, more introspective, opinion pieces.”

Chris Davidson, a student at UMass Amherst and frequent contributor to amateur game writing community Bitmob, is already subscribed to the newly reborn Electronic Gaming Monthly, which closed in early 2009 after more than 20 years of operation. While Davidson relishes the physicality of magazines, he thinks print publications should look to websites like Bitmob for ways to interact more with their communities.

“Right now, the way community works in a print magazine, other than their online sites, is they either have letters and e-mails from response to articles, or you can be in a stupid art contest where you draw a stupid Sephiroth with cat ears, and win a copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen. That’s all there is. I think that they can go a lot further in building their communities,” he told me. “I think John Davison bringing articles from Bitmob once per month into GamePro, and publishing them, is a good step forward.”

Dahlen agrees that community is an important part of any publication, and he told me via e-mail that plans for Kill Screen’s community aspects are currently taking shape. “We definitely want to engage our community, and we’re still figuring out the best way to do that,” he wrote. “The magazine was made possible by all of the donors at Kickstarter, and without them, there would be no print product right now – and it’s critical that we keep their engagement and solicit their feedback. Beyond that, as we do more with the website, we will be making more avenues for readers to build a community, but I can’t say yet what shape that’ll take.”

left to right: John Davison, Julian Murdoch, Russ Pitts, Jeff Green, Chris Dahlen

There are other plans for the future of Kill Screen, as well. Dahlen told me on the phone that there will soon be more “Web friendly” content on the website. “We’re still kind of figuring that out right now. If we get, like, a 500 word piece for the magazine, it will stay in the magazine,” he said. “The print magazine will be kind of the flagship product.”

As the Internet has become increasingly elegant over the last several years, much of its content has grown more streamlined. “When I started writing online with Pitchfork in 2002, we would push content once a day, and most of the content was around 800 words long. It was almost like being at a newspaper,” Dahlen said. “Now you look at all the Gawker blogs, and that’s, like, 200-word posts, and they’re being updated every hour.”

A 24-hour information overload has taken shape around blogging and Twitter, but gamers are beginning to pine for the days when good pacing needed to apply to what we read as well as what we played. “Maybe I’m just old fashioned,” Dahlen told me. Far from it, though, he’s embracing the Internet as the valuable tool it is. “We’re a print journal that’s being made with the conveniences of the Internet,” he said. “If we were doing this fifty years ago, we would probably be selling it in one neighborhood in Brooklyn.”

Here’s a video in which I speak with writers, both professional and amateur, at Boston’s PAX East gaming convention in March about the future of the gaming press:

Should news sites allow anonymous comments?

This is a very complex issue, and there is honestly no correct answer.

On one hand, everything on the internet is anonymous. I can say I’m whoever the hell I want to be, and in many cases it’s very hard to prove otherwise. Most sites, even when that require registration, allow users to invent whatever fancy user name comes to mind (like Rogue Cheddar, for example). Many people create an online identity completely separate from their real life ones, and why shouldn’t they, when it’s within their rights and they’re not harming anybody?

Using your daughter as a scapegoat is real classy, by the way.

On the other hand, when someone like that nutter Judge Strickland-Saffold starts posting ridiculous things on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s articles using a variety of pseudonyms, the public has a right to know. Why? Because Strickland-Saffold is a public figure, whose role it is to serve public needs, not comment inappropriately, on cases she had presided over, on the site of a respectable news organization.

So should news sites ban comments altogether, require real names, or deal with these instances on a case-by-case basis? Banning comments altogether is probably the most realistic answer, as it’s not like the internet is currently experiencing a dearth of other outlets through which to express oneself. Requiring real names would be nice, but tricky to enforce. The more visitors a site has, the harder it would be to vet all the commenters, and the more crazies would slip through the cracks.

Twitter is for winners

A lot of people get down on Twitter, because they “don’t care what people ate for lunch,” or “already have a Facebook,” or any other number of excuses. Everybody who knows what’s up, though, knows that Twitter is a great tool for making contacts, following trends in your industry, and finding out about breaking news before all the non-tweeters.

Advertise yourself on Twitter to get hits on your blog or website, and link it to your Facebook so they share updates to save you time

If there’s a popular news site or blog you love to read but don’t always have the time, chances are they have a Twitter that you can follow to receive all the best updates in micro form. I follow GamePro, Joystiq, Destructoid, Kotaku, GamePolitics, and X-Play for my gaming news.

Take that a step further and you can follow your favorite journalists and editors, like Blake Patterson of touchArcade, Brian Crecente and Stephen Totilo of Kotaku, Thierry Nguyen of 1Up, Rey Gutierrez of Destructoid, and Ryan O’Donnell of Area 5.

Developers are tweeting too, and making Twitters for specific games, like Lionhead Studios, Casey Malone from Harmonix, and EA Redwood Shores’s Dead Space 2.

Twitter is a great place to find out about deals and sales, too. Cheap Ass Gamer, GamerHotLine, and GamerDeals.net all tweet daily about the latest and best gaming steals.

Of course, Twitter is also good for pure humor or entertainment. Overheard Newsroom and Fake AP Stylebook will tickle any journalists. Author Arjun Basu, inventor of the “Twister”, a 140-character short story, tweets several new ones a day. They’re often funny, touching or sad, and best of all, they’re short.

Finally, members of Team Coco had better be following the Golden Giant’s Twitter. Despite creating his account less than a month ago, Conan has almost 700,000 followers. True fans (like myself) can also follow his beard, squirrel, monkey, Ford Taurus, sharpie, liquor filled beach, and his one and only “Twitter pal“.

Now follow me!

Guest Speaker: Steve Garfield

One of the first hot nuggets of wisdom Steve Garfield (of SteveGarfield.com) served the students of my Reinventing the News class involved the importance of our names.

Dan Kennedy (seated) with Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com

“Own your name!” He proclaimed, suggesting we use our names on all our sites and even secure our own personal URLs. That should be easy enough for us, as most of us only have one site. Garfield, however, has 33.

After working as a morning radio show producer and in the marketing department of a computer distributor for a number of years, Garfield started what he claims was the first video blog in 2004- months before the launch of Youtube in 2005.

Now he does speaking engagements, and his first book, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets To Building Your Business, has just been released. He stopped by Professor Kennedy’s classroom to talk to us about vlogging our personal brands of journalism.

He showed us an example of live video blogging, using his phone and qik.com to broadcast a video of the class instantly to his blog. It was actually extremely cool, and also rather startling.

He also showed us a few examples of his own video journalism, including a live video of the presidential vote in Jamaica Plain and an interview that was rudely interrupted by a disturbed and/or drunk woman, who proved surprisingly insightful.

When asked how we can make vlogging into a career, Garfield replied that we should use these tools more to extend our reach in the world of web journalism.

“Get a job that pays you money,” he said. “This is your passion, that you should pursue in addition to that thing.”

iPad as a gaming device: massive fail or will prevail?

By now, we are pretty much all aware that the heavily hyped iPad is nothing more than a super-sized iPod Touch. Whether you’re disappointed, overjoyed, or couldn’t care less, the fact remains that with the veil removed, people are at last talking in tangible terms about the device’s potential.

the future of computing?

Blake Paterson writes on his blog Byte Cellar that he “guarantees” that the iPad “is the future of computing.”

I will go out on a limb right now — and I don’t think I’m going all that far out there on this one — and say that in five years, the “computer user” who calls Apple their brand of choice will be using an evolution of the iPad and not a Macintosh.

While I’m not as starry-eyed as Paterson, I think he raises a few goods points, and he may even be right. The iPad will have the benefit of running all existing iPhone/iPod Touch apps at their native sizes or in an enhanced “double pixel” view, which, according to Kotaku, looks “surprisingly sharp”.

iPhone Developers ranging from Pocket God‘s (which just became the first app to surpass 2 million downloads) creator Dave Castelnuovo to Andrew Stein, the director of mobile business development at Popcap (a studio that already develops games for a variety of platforms) told Joystiq what they thought about the possibilities for pad gaming.

Dave Castelnuovo says iPad "Pocket God" will need "more characters on the screen and bigger environments"

Some developers are planning to build versions of their games specially tailored to the iPad’s larger screen, increased resolution and revved up processing power. Others are remaining cautious, waiting to see whether the device becomes a must have, a niche gadget or an all-out flop.

Jason Franzen, creator of iPhone game Kern, speculated to Joystiq that the iPad will be used in different places and at different times than the iPhone, and therefore will provide a different gaming experience.

It is important to distinguish the use paradigm of each. When traveling, I will still carry an iPhone AND the iPad – to read and access the web. I may have an iPad at home, but not at work. I will be able to reach my iPhone while driving, but not my iPad. These dynamics paint very clear use distinctions that developers should cater to. For us, the plan will be to build experiences specifically tailored to each device. Beyond the obvious differences in screen sizes, the depth of engagement is also quite unique between the situations that the iPhone is appropriate for (say, a quick taxi ride or on-the-go breakfast) and the iPad will be. Sitting at home on the couch or waiting at the airport lounge, a user can be more immersed and the gaming experience should be tailored as such.

"I Dig It:" check out that control stick

So maybe developers will finally be able to make a virtual joystick that doesn’t feel like it’s caked in drying peanut butter. The best iPhone games yet, in my opinion, have been the ones that favor simpler controls while featuring strong artistic elements like stylistic graphics and unique premises.

I Dig It (and, to a lesser extent, its sequel) scratch my itch for exploration, item collecting and goal achieving, while relegating all the controls to a single finely tuned virtual joystick (a notable exception to the rule that says these suck). Beat It! is a drum beat mimicry game set over a busy and colorful backdrop, making it a rhythm game unlike any other. Hook Champ‘s retro inspired graphics, addictive gameplay, constant updates, and easy to use, but difficult to master single-tap controls have made it my favorite iPhone game yet.

In other words, I’m not interested in the latest game that’s pushing the poor device to its limits with cutting edge high resolution textures or dozens of enemies on screen at once. If I wanted those, I would whip out my PSP or even my DS. Yes, I’m a gamer, and not a casual one. As such, I’ve pretty much seen ‘em all, and what I’m looking for on a unique platform like the iPhone/iPad is creativity and ingenuity. Would any of the games I mentioned be better on a larger screen, or with more detailed graphics? Maybe. But I probably wouldn’t play them as often; if I’m sitting on my couch anyway why wouldn’t I just play a console game?

"Beat It" is a unique rhythm game

That said, entire genres that are passable at best and complete crap most of the time on iPhone and iPod touch, like first person shooters, action, and adventure games, might actually work a lot better on a platform on which the virtual d-pad doesn’t have to take up a quarter of the screen just to be usable. But this also means that many developers will be forced to backpedal from whatever they might be working on and tweak existing games’ UIs for the larger screen. Take Gameloft’s well received iPhone shooter N.O.V.A. Kotaku got a chance to play it, along with several other existing iPhone games, on the iPad at the unveiling event last Wednesday.

N.O.V.A. in particular, did not make the transition in the control department very well. Gameloft was one of the iPad developers on stage that promised a version of its Halo-esque first-person shooter tailored for a larger screen. It was easy to see why. Trying to hold the iPad, tap its screen, control the software d-pad with one’s thumb, and pan across it with one’s fingers just didn’t work very well. It was uncomfortable and awkward, a problem made more apparent by the weight of the iPad versus that of an iPhone.

Will the updates that many games will require take the form of free add-ons, paid DLC, or completely separate apps that will require even those who already own the game for a smaller platform to re-purchase for use on the iPad? It’ll be interesting to see what route developers will take and what’ll eventually become the standard model.

"Hook Champ:" simple, elegant, pure fun

James Brown, creator of popular casual game Ancient Frog, told the iPhone gaming bloggers at Touch Arcade that he plans to release small, incremental upgrades to the game in the short term, improving certain textures and tweaking the screen dimensions to enhance the experience on the iPad. He also plans to release a separate, iPad-only version in the future, one that will presumably take fuller advantage of the system’s strengths.

Kotaku, like the majority of gaming sites, has some serious doubts about the iPad’s potential to overcome the massive wave of apprehension that seems to have washed over the gaming community since its revelation.

Does anyone besides this guy actually want this?

If your consumers still need a computer and a phone, needs which you already can fill, what room in their wallet, their bag and their life is there for a semi-portable, semi-desk-ready tablet computer? For gaming or otherwise?

At this point I have to agree with them, although I’m still hopeful that developers will step up to the plate and deliver something I haven’t thought of yet: a unique, creative experience that can only be possible on the iPad. I don’t know what that is yet, but if I did, I would be a game developer instead of a writer. Judging from the amazing games that have somehow managed to float to the surface of Apple’s bloated, garbage-filled ocean of an app store, someone out there probably already has an idea that will have me sold on this thing in no time.

Apple’s January 27 Event

Apple is holding an event tomorrow, and rumor has it they will be revealing their much discussed new tablet computer. Tons of people are looking forward to the launch of the new gadget, which those in the know are hoping will bolster the e-book business and steamroll portable gaming.

the possibilities..

Not everyone is starry eyed over the prospect of yet another must have Apple contraption. Boston based professor and journalist Dan Kennedy writes in The Guardian that the tablet will become just “another gadget to lug around.”

The problem is that the iSlate, rather than making our technological lives simpler, instead amounts to one more object – one more thing – that we have to lug around. It won’t replace our smartphone. And the virtual keyboard ensures that it won’t replace our laptop, either. Do we really need a third internet device to carry with us wherever we go?

Boston blogger Steve Garfield is excited about the potential the so-called “iSlate” has for e-book reading. Explaining that he spent a year writing his book, Get Seen, and adding links to supplementary videos and web sites, he writes:

I’d love to see a tablet version of Get Seen that allows the reader to watch the videos inline while reading, AND visit the websites I mention in the book.

He then goes on to speculate that the rumored iLife ’10 should include an all new “content creation platform” that would allow people to “easily create and share documents that combine text, audio, video, links and webpages” for use on the tablet.

Garfield isn’t the only one who is looking forward to a boost to the e-book market. The Boston Globe reports that Barnes & Noble shares have gone up due to rumors that the company will have something to do with the new product. “Such a product from Apple could challenge Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle e-reader and give a boost to the publishing industry,” the Globe writes.

If Barnes & Noble gets in on that action, it will surely be a blow to their competitors. Hopefully all will be revealed when the event takes place tomorrow.