Bebo launches interactive drama
July 18, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Online | Gaming | Add a commentKate Modern, a new interactive drama from the makers of lonelygirl15, launched on Bebo today and Bristol-based Hazel Grian, Producer of MeiGeist and owner of Licorice Film, is part of the writing team.
Set to be just as popular (the lonelygirl15 channel remains the most subscribed channel of all time on YouTube), Kate Modern will offer the 31 million members of social networking site Bebo characters they can send messages to, help solve puzzles, and generally participate in the story.
Virtually Anywhere
June 14, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Events | Gaming | Add a commentHazel Grian and John Williams of Licorice Film, and Darius Pocha of Enable interactive joined Dan Glaiser of the Wellcome Trust last week at the Cheltenham Festival of Science for a discussion on virtual worlds.
Hazel gave an overview of her game MeiGeist (commissioned by Watershed, Arts Council England and HP Labs), noting the personal relationships that had been key to its success. John talked about the future of gaming, showing HP Labs' brilliant Roku's Reward Video and pointing towards the power of collaboration and the combination of ARG with more physically located gaming as the development potential he is most excited about.
Dan closed the talk with a reference to Dunbar's number, which refers to the theoretical maximum number of 150 individuals with whom a set of people can maintain a quality social
relationship. Does this hold true for virtual worlds too?
Artist placement report published
June 6, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Watershed | Innovation | Technology | Gaming | Evaluation | Mobile | Add a comment“Bringing together the arts, technology and social sciences has given us an opportunity to explore how emerging and online and mobile communication technologies can be used to create engaging new experiences outside their original purpose. The work has been inspirational and thought provoking for us and its influence will extend further than the current project.”
Kenton O’Hara, HP Labs, Artist Placement Host, 2007
In 2006, Hazel Grian spent six months in HP Labs in Bristol in the Mobile and Media Systems Lab. With an open brief to collaborate with Labs researchers around video on mobile devices, Hazel focussed on Alternative Reality Games, which use interactive narrative across many different platforms to tell a story.
Ere be Dragons
June 1, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Technology | Gaming | Mobile | Add a comment
I met with Active Ingredient and Polar Produce today to discuss hosting AI's Ere Be Dragons at Watershed during the Offload Festival. I saw AI present the game at a conference at HP Labs last year and am particularly excited, not only because it fits with iShed's plans for commissions arounnd pervasive computing, but also because the idea for the game was originally conceived for a funding call for Mobile Bristol, and this will be the first time it is shown here.
Using HP Labs, Bristol's Mscapers technology, Ere Be Dragons takes the form of a multi-player game controlled by the participant’s heart rate. The focus of ’Ere be Dragons is the relationship between art, technology and health.
It playfully recasts players’ relationship both with the space they inhabit and with the unseen space within their bodies. The player’s own body becomes an engaging new companion, a soft machine whose physical response to their exertions they can sense and understand as they walk along.
They will hopefully be in Watershed between 13 - 14 September 2007 where the public and schools groups will get a chance to play.
Day of the Figurines
May 30, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Technology | Gaming | Mobile | 1 comment so far
05:49pm, 4 soldiers walk in, calmly ushering a handful of police through to the cells at gunpoint. There is a GUITAR here.
I visited Blast Theory's Day of The Figurines in Wolverhampton last week, and this is a sample of one of the messages I have received on my phone since. So far Heidi Burton, (my bikini clad in-game avatar/character) has rescued a sick dog, tried to solve a murder (unsuccessfully) eaten a saveloy and met some of the locals. And there is still a couple of weeks of game play to go.
Day Of The Figurines is part board game, part secret society. The game is set in a fictional town that is littered, dark and underpinned with steady decay. It lasts for 24 days and each day represents an hour in the life of a small English town that shifts from the mundane to the cataclysmic.
Each of the 1,000 players is represented by a small plastic figurine which is moved by hand every hour for the duration of the game. To play, players are invited to create a figurine to enter the town: to name it and answer questions about its past. Thereafter participation in the game is via SMS on your mobile phone.
The town created by Blast Theory is beautifully produced and the SMS messages are intriguing if not unrelenting. However, the interactivity afforded via a text-based game is limited, so I will wait and see how players may or may not collaborate when the darker days I hear rumoured arrive.
