Co-creation protocols - Let's tell stories together

Introduction

Co-creation is the opposite of singular authorship. It is when many individuals contribute to collectively to create something. That creation can be a book, a song, a film, or anything else. Unlike traditional storytelling, co-creation involves multiple participants. There is a central participant who proposes the initial work. This then can be expanded, improved, or modified by community members. This is collective creation, co-creation or decentralized storytelling in a nutshell.

Story Protocol

Story Protocol strives to build “IP infrastructure for the internet era”. There is a lot of content on the Internet, and much is being added every day. Progress in AI will probably will generate far more than we can even imagine. Though content creation became more and more plentiful, intellectual property (IP) infrastructure failed to catch up with this creativity. Legacy IP system isn’t sufficient for the internet era. That is one of the problems Story Protocol aims to fix.

Imagine that you are a famous writer upon whose works fans create their own hypothetical worlds. These secondary works are distributed across the Internet – Reddit, Fanfiction websites, Facebook groups, personal websites of the fans and so on. It is hard to impossible to track the origin of intellectual property in an environment where content is abundant. This is one reason why Story Protocol will matter. It tracks provenance and evolution of IP from its starting point. Now though there can be many remixes and derivatives of your original work, the protocol ensures that content creators’ rights are not violated and they are rewarded for their work.

Story Protocols opens new horizons for creators. Imagine that you are an author with a fictional universe in your mind. You have some ideas on the plot, what the major characters will look like etc. But you a single human being, and your temporal resources (which is just a fancy way to say “time”) and creativity are limited. So, you enter Story Protocol and create your own so-called “world bible” which is a guide to your fictional universe. Here you define main characters, plots, any details you wish to disclose. This is a foundation for your future collaborators who want to build upon your work. Now anyone wishing to expand your universe can start to do so. Someone can create another work tied to one of your characters. Another individual can suggest an alternative line to your plot which you have the right to approve or to decline. Since all of these will be on-chain, your work will be recognized. Even when a fan creates a derivative of your work and owns an IP for that derivative, he will still have to abide by your licensing terms. For example, you can specify in the predefined smart contract parameters that 10% of royalty fees, if there are any, of derivative works and remixes will to the original author, i.e., you.

StoryCo

StoryCo is a collaborative storytelling platform where creators can publish their stories and contribute to others’ works. Even if you don’t want to write, no worries, StoryCo as a multimedia platform can be beneficial to all kinds of creators. Here you can contribute to creating of theme song for a movie, or to drawing a villain character in a comics series. If you think if you have a great voice, you can contribute to the category “Performance” by becoming a voice actor.

The flow of co-creation process on StoryCo is as follows. First, an interested user (creator) submits an original work considering co-creation submission guidelines. The creative team will select the winning creator who will work with the team to complete his work. Once revisions are made and feedback is incorporated into the submission, the work is finalized after which it is integrated into the main story.

StoryCo allows creators to profit from financial success of the works created on the platform through “Profit Points” initiative. If a movie or TV series is made based on a story launched on StoryCo any creator who earned Profit points in that work will get rewarded. Put simply, Profit points are akin to royalty fees paid to creators – they are generated by the story’s intellectual property and distributed to co-creators for their contributions. StoryCo leverages blockchain technology to design a transparent and open revenue-sharing system.

If you are a creative person and want to try your luck, $100K Story Accelerator Program is for you. The program is designed to convert your work into a “multimedia phenomenon”, and deliver it to the global audience.

Shibuya

Shibuya is a Web3 storytelling platform focused on long form video content. Users can fund and decide the outcome of a movie. The first movie launched on Shibuya is “White Rabbit” which suggests several endings to users. Users wishing to want on a particular outcome stake on that ending. To do this they have to mine “Producer Passes” which are ERC 1155 tokens. Each episode has its own Producer Pass. A user minting and staking his Producer Pass is called a Producer and his vote influences the outcome of that episode. Not only a particular episode but the film itself is also decided by users. Once a certain number of Producer Passes are minted, the next episode is considered Green Lit.

There is also ERC20 token called $WRAB associated with the movie “White Rabbit”. All users staking their Producer Passes for voting receive $WRAB tokens. $WRAB holders are granted full control and rights to the film which as an NFT is stored at a decentralized storage solution.

Conclusion

Storytelling is human. It’s how we have evolved to connect to each other. Co-creation is a relatively new phenomenon in storytelling. It refers to the process of creating stories in which multiple collaborators (co-creators) contribute to the underlying work. Traditionally, storytelling was based on single authorship where an author was telling a narrative which then was consumed by their audiences.

Web3 will change this. It takes down the role of factors not directly related to skill of storytellers, such as geographical barriers (e.g., proximity to Hollywood). Different creators from all over the world can contribute to an underlying story and can profit from financial success of their works. Apart from monetary rewards, co-creation enables a more active engagement with the author and allows ordinary users to be involved in an immersive storytelling with strangers who share the same interest with them. I truly believe that we are not far from the day when a new Hollywood blockbuster or an award-winning Netflix movie will be created by the platforms mentioned in this article or by similar DAOs.