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Oder Skall of the Second Life Herald posted about this latest ‘experience’ in the online virtual world Second Life. The press release about the experience sounds quite enticing:
Continue reading “Discover Manoa!: Second Life RPG & the problem with ARGs“
“Aporia Cross-Media Entertainment” is the new name for a company set up (formerly Naked Rabbit Studios) by Jason Chrest and Jessie Greene. Their “main goal is to provide the best service and product possible by creating valuable multi-media entertainment with mass advertising appeal”. From their website:
As a grassroots development group, Aporia CME has produced low budget games with little to no corporate financial backing. Though Aporia CME has begun the process of forming itself into a marketing development team, the primary goal is to continue making exciting and intriguing ARGs. Once a grassroots development group, Aporia CME seeks to become a familiar entity within the game community as our growth allows us the opportunity to focus primarily on the games and offer better swag to players world-wide.Â
Our goal is to produce intriguing storylines which evolve through innovative puzzles and believable characters. We use various media sources to relay the games to the players while maintaining professional quality graphic interfaces. We design our own websites, and refuse to follow suit with many of the other grassroots developers who use free webhosts laden with advertisements to run their game. We see value in unique launch methods to broaden the audience demographic and give a the players an unusual experience.
I find their name interesting, of course, because these are all terms I use quite alot: “cross-media entertianment” and “aporia” (as in Espen Aarseth‘s “aporia” and “epiphany”). I also find their website interesting as their approach of having different entry-points according to interest is exactly what I recommended to the ARG SIG for their website. They should be doing some interesting things as their 2006 ARG Ny Takma was highly regarded by the ARG community.
Check out their site: www.aporiacme.com
Check out their blog: news.aporiacme.com
Jak Bouman told me about this research resource developed by Australian Paul Budde when I was in Sweden! Here is a bit from his bio:
He specialises in the strategic planning of interactive services such as video media, Internet, multimedia and intelligent and value-added networks based on telecommunications, broadband and satellite networks. His particular expertise lies in identifying how these new media can be used by organisations to enhance their competitive edge in the market, and how they can be applied in mass markets.
I also just missed out on participating in the broadband study and trade mission to The Netherlands.
In March 2007 I organised a broadband study and trade mission to The Netherlands. The Australian Minister for Communications, Helen Coonan, participated (via video), as did three other executives from her Department (DCITA). A total of 15 Australian and New Zealand delegates took part in the mission as well as 50 people on the Dutch side. The mission included trips to the various centres where FttH and digital media activities are most active, as well as an Australia-New Zealand Roundtable with the Dutch delegation. In addition to The Netherlands events, I also visited the United Kingdom and Sweden.
Full reports of the event are available for free: http://www.budde.com.au/conferences/dutch-mission-overview.html