Influential pioneer who defined the alternate reality entertainment genre worldwide. Sean Stewart is an award-winning science fiction novelist, a groundbreaking figure in transmedia storytelling, and the most experienced and influential writer of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) in the world. A graduate of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and currently based in California, Sean has founded four genre defining companies including 42 Entertainment and Fourth Wall Studios, behind ARG campaigns including The Beast, I Love Bees, Year Zero, and Vanishing Point (Microsoft). In publishing, he has continued to push the envelope of the traditional novel with the transmedia Cathys Book, a New York Times and international bestseller currently published in twenty countries and a dozen languages around the world. For more information about this TEDxTalk or TEDxEdmonton, visit http://www.tedxedmonton.com.
Updates from May, 2010
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TEDxTalks "Bard 5.0: The Evolution of Storytelling"
Niekname
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Power to the pixel!
SanderElastique
“Pixel – A pixel art documentary” is a documentary by Simon Cottee, about the power of the pixel in modern day culture, music and art.
Via BoingBoing
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Bright Falls: The Prequel to Alan Wake
Niekname
A promotional live-action short movie entitled Bright Falls was officially released on 27 April 2010 and serves as a prequel to the game Alan Wake. It is divided into six episodes and can be watched online at brightfalls.com.
I really like the idea to begin a game with several short movies to promotional use or just to start with the immersion, before you can actually play the game.
Transmedia Rules!
Watch it on
brightfalls.com (they really did a nice Philips ambilight out of the box thing! Yeah… just watch!)
or watch it on
Youtube (new stupid interface)
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Swordquest, a transmedial experience, 1982 style
SanderElastique
The Angry Video Game NerdW discusses this time the game SwordquestW from AtariW, a transmedial experience with a lot of mystery…
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WebGL? Anyone?
Arri
i’m asking myself where i’ve been, because before last week i had never heard of it.
going through the WebKit sources, i noticed several filenames containing OpenGL-terminology.
names like DOMWebGLTexture.h, JSWebGLShader.cpp, JSWebGLRenderingContext.h etc..some googling brought me to the khronos site, where a draft specification can be found.
WebGL – OpenGL ES 2.0 for the Web. WebGL is a royalty-free, cross-platform API that brings OpenGL ES 2.0 to the web as a 3D drawing context within HTML, exposed as low-level Document Object Model interfaces. It uses the OpenGL shading language, GLSL ES, and can be cleanly combined with other web content that is layered on top or underneath the 3D content. It is ideally suited for dynamic 3D web applications in the JavaScript programming language, and will be fully integrated in leading web browsers.
It’s already (partly) functional in WebKit (Safari,Chrome) and Mozilla nightly builds.
Checkout this screen recording. (failed to embed the video??)
OpenGL and shaders with javascript •_+ yeahUpdate:
looking at the specification i realise that the first draft was only published last December, so i’m not really the moron i thought..
it’s also interesting to note that the editor is “Chris Marrin (Apple Inc.)”. -
Bytejacker at Blip Festival
SanderElastique
The new Revision 3W show about independent games, Bytejacker, was at the Blip FestivalW 2009. So if you like ChiptuneW music and interviews with independent game developers like Adam Saltsman, the maker of Canabalt, check out the vids below.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Via Revision 3
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OnLive - The future of gaming
SanderElastique
Below is a video presentation of OnLiveW by Steve PerlmanW. OnLive is gaming platform which uses cloud computing by running games on dedicated servers on which you connect with you own computer or with an OnLive box. The smart thing is that you don’t need a powerhouse at home to play games like CrysisW, it all runs on the servers of OnLive which are equipped with state of the art graphic cards. The possibilities seem endless! Again it is a long one (48 minutes), but again it is all worth it.
Via 9to5Mac
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Producing Transmedia Experiences
SanderElastique
MITW is at it again with their Futures of Entertainment 4 Conference. They had a real interesting panel discussing Producing Transmedia Experiences: Stories in a Cross-Platform World. If you are the slightest interested in storytelling in it’s broadest form, this a must see!
The duration of the whole discussion is about 2 hours, but worth every minute of it.
As the production of transmedia experiences becomes more commonplace, this panel seeks to pick apart some of the tensions emerging around transmedia as creative practice. As a narrative form, what is transmedia anyway? How can we keep it from being more than a shorthand excuse for multi- or cross-platform narratives? Is it anything more than that? Need it be?
Focussing around a series of case-studies, this panel digs into questions around genre, interactivity, and franchising? Are there certain genre constraints to transmedia narratives, particular genres — science fiction, drama — better suited to become transmedia properties than others? What might a transmedia event built around a romantic comedy look like? What role does interactivity play in transmedia narratives? Can transmedia narratives be satisfying simply by distributing their narrative in lots of forms, or does an “effective” transmedia narrative require opportunities for the audience to “participate” in a more active way than simply interpreting and discussing amongst themselves? Does transmedia require room for the audience to take a narrative in their own directions?
Moderator: Jason Mittell – Middlebury College
Panelists: Brian Clark – Partner and CEO, GMD Studios; Michael Monello – Co-Founder & Creative Director,Campfire; Derek Johnson – University of North Texas; Victoria Jaye – Acting Head of Fiction & Entertainment Multiplatform Commissioning, BBC; Patricia Handschiegel – Serial Entrepeneur, Founder of Stylediary.netVia Campfire
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Heavy Rain preview
SanderElastique
Heavy RainW will come out in 2010 and we at Willekeurigheid are all really excited about the game/experience. Below are 5 video’s of 1 scene you can play in different ways. Enjoy!
BTW check out the fancy loading screen in the form of a close-up to a very realistic render of the main character of the scene.
Via Gamekings
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Interesting new gaming concept
SanderElastique
We see interesting interactive narrative possibilities
Via Engadget
