I highly recommend you check out Collette Jackson's blog related to Digital Game Based Learning and our soon to be launched educational site for Aboriginal youth ‘On the Path of the Elders'. Collette recently joined the BlackCherry team as our Content and Marketing Specialist. She provides some fresh insight into the motivations, philosophies and approaches employed to create this unique resource.
You can find the blog here:
Path of the Elders Blog
Path of the Elders will launch March 24th, 2010. The new version of the site will include video archives of Elder interviews, historic audio recordings and photo archives. The centerpiece of the site is a unique educational role playing game (RPG).
The site can be found here:
On the Path of the Elders
Look for an in depth case study on this ground breaking project coming soon.
At the recent GameON Finance event I met Karen Lee Hall of Heroic Interactive. We had a brief but interesting discussion of the work both our companies were engaged in regarding kids and virtual worlds. Karen Lee's company is working in 2D FLASH while BlackCherry's direction is in the area of 3D immersive experiences.
GameON was a great event, if somewhat lacking in investor interest. One thing that did surprise me about the IO event was the general lack of discussion surrounding virtual worlds. Karen Lee tried to fill that gap with a question to one of the discussion panels titled ‘The Future is Now.' Her question was something along the lines of ‘Do you see a future where users will be able to transmit their avatars between different virtual worlds?' After some vague references to OpenID, the question was glossed over by the panel (all respected and active game industry professionals) as somewhat naive and unrealistic. This viewpoint seemed to underline again the general lack of familiarity or interest in current activities and thinking in the virtual world space.
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Microsoft XBox Project Natal:
Using new 3D motion capturing technologies, Microsoft claims it can turn your body into the new style of video game controller. Nevermind those old quickcam games where you just end up flaying your arms around while hoping to hit something. This is TOTAL body immersion. You can now drive a car with an invisible steering wheel, block hundreds of soccerballs with your body and karatekick your way through evil ninjas.
VIDEO DEMO
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It seems the dam that is the flow of information has completely burst and the great global conversation is raging through the neurons of all of us who choose to jack in.
I attended another social media forum yesterday (a good one by the way Zone5ive ) and decided it was time to take another look at Twitter. I looked at it a bit over a year ago and it didn't grab me but now, it seems to be a very different thing. The information seems more relevent and the tweets more thoughtful. Of course, it's me finally being ready for it rather than the other way round.
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Lately I’ve been reading an interesting book, ‘Proust was a Neuroscientist’, by Jonah Lehrer. In the book Lehrer makes the case for artists discovering or outlining scientific concepts well in advance of scientific confirmation of these ideas. It’s a great read and the connections the author points out are really compelling insights. As I think about the premise of the book I realise there are many examples of similar cross-pollinations related to the field of new media. I thought I’d list some examples I’ve found interesting. What I find interesting about all these example is they are people re-thinking creative processes that many would consider fully evolved.
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I came across an interesting company this week Foomojo, they are the makers of Foopets. Foopets are virtual pets that you can embed on your webpage, a kind of web-based Tamagochi.
Here’s mine:
I’ll give a disclaimer right now, I love pets, especially dogs. I have a flesh and blood border collie at home, but I hate these types of service toys/apps (as cute as they may be). By service toys/apps I mean you have to be constantly at their service. If mine appears to be dying or unhealthy please refer to my disclaimer above. I also think I would have found this product much more interesting if I hadn’t given my kids Nintendogs for their DS’s a year or so ago. Foopets seems to be a very similar, although somewhat less developed, version of this popular DS game. There is innovation here though, one that I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t jump on.
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This week, we took the leap into a whole new dimension for BlackCherry and it represents a great milestone for our company. This new direction is Trouble Inc. But what exactly is it? Is it a tv series, a game, toys, a brand? It is, or will be, all of those things and more. Put more simply though, it’s an idea. But not just any idea, it’s an idea we’ve shaped through months of thinking and re-thinking, working and re-working.
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