BusinessWeek online has an article covering Audi’s “Art of the Heist” marketing campaign. An interesting read. Couple of neat moments/quotes from the story: “sucking people into the intake” and “connecting the auto people with the gaming people was a huge bonus”. Someone is gonna get hurt. But it’s okay. They have a full-time lawyer on the ad team.
Tag Archives: #videogames
I Want My… I Want My Source TV.
From Blue’s News today:
Steam News has word on the release of an updated Source client as well as a SourceTV update: “An update for the Steam Client (and the HLDS Update Tool) has been released, along with some improvements to SourceTV. (SourceTV is for broadcasting Source games to large numbers of spectators.)
Just wait til billionaire Mark Cuban broadcasts a large game competition at one of his digital movie theaters. I’ve got to get HL2 soon. All this is too wild.
Parametric People and the Worlds They Inhabit
The CG Channel website has a short piece opening up a discussion on next gen digital humans. I tend to agree with the author: building virtual characters will become increasingly simple. Where I also agree (of course) is that there will be rising demand for designers. Over the past few years I’ve been watching the videogame job market and I’m finally now noticing a big jump in calls for “Environment Artists”. Translation: as game worlds become increasingly immersive, there is a need to fill them with 3D objects; not just copies of real-life products (which raises some sticky IP issues), but newly designed objects. It’s a trend I’ve been expecting for some time and it’s nice to see it finally kick in. The next ten years are going to be a blast.
Virtual Festivus
Wired online is carrying a nice little article on Boston’s Cyberarts Festival. For me, the above image in their online gallery showing creator/artist Feng Mengbo inside Quake 3 is the most interesting, but I suppose that has more to do with my familiarity with the game than with what’s being done (I should give Feng my Squidgun model, the Rocket Launcher is so 90’s – besides being copyright id Software). From his site, it appears this is more documentation than interaction unfortunately. A shame.
For cool interactivity, Imaging Places is probably the highlight as it’s starting to move into new territory. From Wired:
Imaging Place reflects that real-and-virtual connection, by allowing viewers to navigate a map image, projected against a wall in a darkened room. The viewer of the Lowell piece, for example, mouse-clicks on certain parts of a satellite photo of the Lowell area, and zooms in to see videos of oral histories and bits of wisdom as told by local people.
This reminds me of my previous entry regarding augmented reality being used at historical sites. If only Feng was pulling that one off. I’m just waiting for someone to stream 3D data based on GPS position. Maybe then Feng’s visuals will mash-up with the interactivity currently limited to 2D imaging. And then… well, then we can fight over a virtual doll and create our own virtual holiday.
Bits About Bits
Thought I’d just post some links to some interesting and (semi-) related stories.
“Get Your Game Off” (Wired) – gaming and sex.
“Minority Report”-style interfaces (New Scientist) – interaction on steroids.
$1B by 2010 (Yahoo/Reuters) – games and advertising. And since Yahoo story links die quickly, here’s a quote:
Advertising within video games, a hot new field for marketers, will likely surge eightfold to more than $1 billion in the next five years as companies court consumers who have cut back on television viewing, according to industry estimates released on Thursday.