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300 Game Mechanics

In the spirit of The 400 Project (which is a growing listing of 400 game design patterns), Sean Howard has started a site that will list 300 mechanics: Every day for three hundred days, I will post a gameplay mechanic that has (hopefully) never been seen in a commercial video game. Three hundred mechanics. No more. … Read more300 Game Mechanics

Cinema Games: MSNBC's NewsBreaker

newsbreaker

Theatre-goers have been having fun playing ‘crowd gaming’ at the cinema, courtesy of MSNBC.com. The official press release explains:

Msnbc.com liberates movie audiences from the out-of-date trivia, static billboards and the impatience of waiting for the summer blockbusters to begin with NewsBreaker Live, the first in-theater, audience participatory video game. Modeled after classic video games, NewsBreaker Live combines live msnbc.com RSS newsfeeds, the movement of the audience as a human joystick, and the big screen as a game board to bust audiences out of their pre-movie doldrums with an interactive game that delivers real-time news headlines to kick start the moviegoing experience.

Here is a video of the game in action:

Read moreCinema Games: MSNBC's NewsBreaker

Kzero on Metabrands

Excellent virtual world consultancy Kzero have a site with some interesting content. They are the people behind the Second Life Brand Map: They’ve got some interesting case-studies and population demographics of Second Life that seem pretty accurate, though I don’t know how they determined that information. (Most female avatars are actually real life males!) I sent them … Read moreKzero on Metabrands

Some new blogs

Here are some new sites or sites that now have blogs that readers of this site may find interesting: Ian Bogost’s blog Well known serious game designer at Persuasive Games, co-editor of serious game site Water Cooler Games and ludologist Ian Bogost has started his own personal blog. Indeed, it is part of a full-blown personal site aggregating his … Read moreSome new blogs

Creating TV & Serious Games for Xbox

 The New York Television Festival and Xbox are running an “Xbox LIVE Originals Contest”: The “Xbox LIVE Originals” contest will invite a wide range of artists and Xbox users to create a 5 to 15-minute pilot episode introducing an original television series.  The pilots may be live-action, animated or both.  All entries must be submitted before … Read moreCreating TV & Serious Games for Xbox

Literary ARG!: Raw Shark Texts

A couple of weeks ago I toddled along to the Sydney Writers Festival to see a UK author speak. I wanted to ask Steven Hall about his RawSharkTexts website, which seems a great extension of the storyworld of his novel Raw Shark Texts. The novel — ‘a science fiction, romance, thriller, adventure and mystery’ — is described as follows: [A] 20-something … Read moreLiterary ARG!: Raw Shark Texts

Cross-Media in Belgium: TV-Web Children's Show

It is rare to see a project that actually has a flow of content moving from one platform to another. Usually, when people think cross-media or multi-platform they think in terms of distributing the same content to different platforms. Well, I stumbled on this great project a while ago and am impressed. KetnetKick is created by Larian Studios … Read moreCross-Media in Belgium: TV-Web Children's Show

Writer Blogs

Colin Brush, Senior Copywriter ot Penguin UK has posted about some writer blogs he likes. Among a couple others he cites Neil Gaimon’s blog: Gaiman has been blogging since 2001, when his publisher set up a blog to promote his American Gods book tour. The tour finished, but the blog rolls on and he now … Read moreWriter Blogs