Category Archives: reTransmit

cool things I’ve learned from others directly or found online which hopefully relate to the core topics of the blog

Thiel On Virtual Money

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Via Jerry Paffendorf’s SL Future Salon blog entry, comes word that IT Conversations has a 2004 talk posted on their site by PayPal co-founder and former CEO Peter Thiel. The topic: Virtual Money.

Since the bridge between design, virtual product, and personal manufacturing will be largely built as a result of some kind of monetary incentive, it’s perhaps appropriate to begin considering the different avenues by which this incentive will arrive. It’s an issue that’s currently near and dear to me. Even though I’m not particularly interested in money, one still has to pay for this stuff, so I’ll be giving it a listen soon.

InterMedia Dating

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HL2 + real world

Last year, in anticipation of Doom3 and Half-Life 2 – and all their machinima potential – I posted a kind of “how-to” page for some indy filmmakers; showing them how a game character might be composited into a low-budget film. Well, it appears a group of Half-Life 2 fans are doing the deed (although their technique seems different) and the Deathfall website has an interview with the 17-year-old behind the project, Australian Nick Bertke. I’m not actually expecting it to be completed (HDRI is a relatively slow rendering process, all things considered), but I certainly hope and believe we’ll see something. Looks like the meet-up between traditional film and machinima is in the dating stage. Having watched some of the Playstation 3 gameplay footage, I’d venture there’s a marriage in their future.

(See also: G4 TV’s coverage – Link)

Spore Creation Just Another Procedure

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Spore screenshot

Last night I caught a blurb over on Blue’s News that the website for Will Wright’s Spore is now up and running (and kinda cute). Above is one of the cool screenshots from the game… and there’s another one on a previous entry of mine here.

Today Wired online has an interview with the Creator himself in which he even mentions Eames’ Powers of Ten. From the interview:

User-created content has two extraordinary benefits. No. 1 is that when somebody makes a piece of content, they are so much more emotionally attached to it. It doesn’t even matter if it’s good or bad. If they made it, it’s really cool, and they’re totally interested in what happens to it. No. 2, players love trading and sharing and spreading this stuff around and having it come to them, and building up their worlds.

This may be the future of online content. Did he say “parametrically”?

Advertising and Videogame Spectators

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Simply put: advertisers are already planning to target their ads at videogame tournament spectators. From Yahoo News/Reuters:

Peter Moore, the Microsoft vice president in charge of advertising for the Xbox business, described a scenario where a virtual race hosted by a corporate sponsor, with thousands of gamers competing for a grand prize while their buddies and competitors watch online.

Read all about it here.