Universe Creation 101

From crossmedia communication:

An excellent site, Games and Storytelling, has uploaded lectures from leading academics on…you guessed it…games and storytelling. The program investigates the two, highly contested areas, inviting top researchers to address:

How do game-play and storytelling exactly relate to each other in different game genres and cultures? What are the interactive stances of play and storytelling? How can they be most powerfully applied to game design? Games and Storytelling lecture presentations by top professionals introduce some important industry case histories, while providing the contextual, historical and cultural background necessary for deeper understanding and resulting innovation in game design. GameMaster workshops apply knowledge from case histories and lectures in practice and introduce principles of surprise and suspense in game design and storytelling. The program runs in yearly cycles for three years: September-May 2004-5, 2005-2006, 2006-7.

The lectures, uploaded after the event, so far feature: Jessica Mulligan, Mika Tuomola, Frans Mäyrä, Christa Sommerer, Aki Järvinen, Henry Jenkins and Katie Salen. Wow! The lectures are long and some have accompanying powerpoints and pdfs. This is an excellent resource organised by the Media Lab at the Unversity of Art and Design Helsinki and the Hypermedia Lab, Tampere University with corporate sponsorship from Nokia and the Finnish national lottery company. I have no problem with the thankyous to the financiers every lecture — well worth it.

So far I’ve only listened to Henry Jenkins’ talk, War on Effect and Meaning, on violence and games after his appearance in court over the Colombine shooting where the judge decreed that ‘videogames do not express ideas’. Jenkins provides some level-headed insights around references to America’s Army and the educational games company he’s involved in: Education Arcade. I can’t wait for the next one.

The 3rd ceremony (I didn’t know there was 1) for the International iTV Awards is happening in Cannes on April 13, 2005. ‘The Awards competition has grown to incorporate all new formats of global television interactivity, through remote control, fixed and mobile phone.’ I hope they have snippets of the works on the site after the ceremony. But definately check out their links page for some excellent interactive television resources.

While on April 5 the 2nd annual [itvt] Awards for Leadership in Interactive Television will take place in San Francisco. The site has an excellent gallery of details and pics and the chance to nominate leaders. The site is also home to whitepapers, a helpful glossary and a pretty good list of books.

Even sooner is the IPTV Forum held in London on March 8th and 9th. IPTV is pitched as:

Telecom companies are increasingly exploring ways to earn revenue and IPTV can be seen as a new way of doing this. Internet Protocol is more and more used to deliver not only voice (telephone), and data (internet) but video as well, this forms the ‘Triple Play’ which has the increasing benefits of customer retention, loyalty, and ultimately reduced churn.

On the exhibiton page are links to some interesting content creators.

Yep, that is right, there is actually a newsletter with yummy tidbits of papers, conferences, articles and so on. The newsletter is dedicated to ‘convergence’ — which is known traditionally as an environmental factor affecting cross-media storytelling. However, convergence is described in a manner that is close to our hearts:

At its most basic—and most useful—definition, convergence means integration; it is about news organizations working together to create a story across multiple platforms. News organizations participating in true convergence find a way to integrate print, broadcast and online components to tell a story. The purpose of convergence is to think about which medium or media work best and then create the story. Convergence puts the story before the media platform. A truly converged newsroom will be producing stories for at least three media platforms—this is the test of a convergence operation.

The Convergence Newsletter is published by the Center for Mass Communications Research at the University of South Carolina and is directed to journalists and media managers but is inclusive of all fellow convergence/cross-media storytelling researchers.

A half-day executive workshop has my researcher and practitioner mouth dribbling. In Dallas, Texas on March 22 is Media Opportunities and Strategies for the Multiple Media Enterprise:

The event, sponsored by the American Press Institute, focuses on how to create and sell innovative content and information services for connected, multiple-media audiences.

Among the topics are ’state-of-the-art print-broadcast-online media convergence’; mobile audiences, participant audiences, new story forms… I’m craving attending an event like this, since I missed the IST one and the last one held in my home town held only moments of insight.

But we can all at least keep updated on The Media Center blog: Morph. Their lovely description is:

Morph, The Media Center blog, is a forum for new ideas and events related to digital media, convergence, and how society informs itself, tells its story and creates the narrative from which we extract context and meaning about our world, our neighbours and ourselves…

Kylie Robertson, the creator behind Jupiter Green, an “interactive drama” that I have posted and written about (refereed paper coming out soon) is in pre-production on a “mobile interactive drama series”:

Glued to your mobile phone? SMS crazy? Got no time for TV but love a good drama? Girl Friday (GF) is here and it’s sure to be as addictive as your phone and that soapie that you can’t miss.

GF beams straight to your mobile. No wires, no cords, no lengthy downloads. It’s entertainment on the run - small digestible bites of life for viewers to consume at will. For the content hungry, there’s a website too. Whether you can take the chunky stuff on a broadband connection or the low fat version on your 56K modem, you won’t miss out on the daily sagas of Girl Friday.

GF will be Australia’s and possibly the world’s first mobile cam girl. She is a live action character who on the surface appears ‘real’ but in fact is a fictional part of the GF interactive world. Her story reflects the way devices (such as your mobile) are changing the way we communicate in everyday life. As GF tries to deal with the sagas of career, love and family we journey with her as a friend and confidant.

GF is a sophisticated interactive drama with a comic edge; taking its lead from outstanding programs such as Sex In The City and Ally McBeal. The program will delve into some of life’s sticker questions with insight and humour, and aim to satisfy the content hungry 16-30 year old market.

What is interesting is that the production process is ‘public’ in that updates on the production process are being posted on a blog. This is a trait of storytelling in the new media ecology: pre-production publication. It works as a device to pull audience in and keep them there — ’stickiness’ — and nurtures audience anticipation. I think that access to the production process is a literary device akin to suspense; it also asks the audience to start assisting in the construction of an imaginary world; and brings the creation of content into a game format…

Take a look at the Girl Friday blog and tell me what you think.