You Really Don’t Know Transmedia Yet

During the last week of September, Amsterdam’s 5th annual PICNIC conference took place. Since 2006 PICNIC has allowed for scientists, artists, think tanks, marketers, designers, media experts, government leaders, entrepreneurs, inventors, game developers,  students, teachers and many others to come together to put their minds together and discuss creative solutions to all the current and upcoming problems. Well, not all, but quite a few.

During this years’ conference an interesting panel took place revolving around transmedia properties, what some of you may know as ARGs(alternate reality games). Some of of the business’ biggest creative minds, such as Dan Hon of  Wiedden + Kennedy (Old Spice campaign), Tommy Pallotta (rotoscoping technology used in A Scanner Darkly) and Anita Ondine (Sieze The Media) shared their insight of transmedia property. The panelists touched on the beginning; which many believe to be A.I.: Artificial Intelligence’s The Beast, some interesting instances of ARGs bringing people together and of course the future of transmedia properties.

Over on ARGNet, Daniël van Gool was able to write up an incredible summary of the entire panel available for your reading. The speakers touch on some great issues which are sure to see some interesting and big changes in the coming future.

Transmedia at PICNIC [ARGNet]

If You Haven’t Heard: Nintendo Announced 3DS Release Date, Pricing And A Bazillion Games

While we may be a little late to the party by announcing this now some of you may find this as news! Less than a week ago Nintendo held a 3DS press event with promises to blows us away. Fortunately for you, they blew us ALL away. Gamers will soon have Nintendo’s beautiful 3DS in their hands by February 26 in Japan and a less cemented release date of “March” in Europe and North America. Nintendo claimed they were aiming for a 2010 release but feared there would be too big of a shortage to meet gamer’s demands, not that you should expect to get the 3DS day 1 anyways.

Release date not good enough for you? Good thing they announced a price (for Japan anyways).  The retail price will be around ¥25000 (about $300) on day one, dwarfing the price of past Nintendo handhelds. While this may seem like a lot (and it definitely is a lot according to my wallet), past handheld releases have held a higher price point in Japan compared to the rest of the world, here’s hoping this trend continues. Although, seeing gamers initial reaction to the 3DS I wouldn’t be too surprised if it stays within this price range.

As for the games, it seems Nintendo is once again breaking away from it’s casual market and pushing more towards their core audience. Hit the jump to read the massive list

I Humbly Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

The time has finally come to bow down to our robot masters. Dr. Peter Kormushev and his colleagues of the Italian Institute of Technology have successfully programmed a robot to aim and shoot a bow and arrow. Not only is the robot capable of hitting a target, but with within eight shots the robot was hitting a bulls-eye. After each shot the robot is capable of seeing where it hits allowing it to adjust its aim each and every time.

Lucky for us the program ARCHER (Augmented Reward Chained Regression) is completely open source, allowing the production of defensive drones to be started immediately.  So get started on your own TODAY.

We are doomed: robot teaches itself how to use a bow and arrow [DVICE]

Dead Space May Have Easily Been Canned

Dead Space, one of EA’s new flagship titles, began with a very rocky development cycle. During the first games product Visceral Studios exec producer admits that the game was under an “immense amount of pressure” in a recent interview with CVG. “With [the first] Dead Space, any time we showed it [to EA] there was immense pressure,” he said. “At any minute we might have got cancelled, they might have said, ‘This isn’t making any progress, we don’t like it'” said Steve Papoutsis.

There has been a huge amount of flack towards EA’s development cycles, with some studios claiming they were working 24 hour a day just to get the game where EA wanted it. With Dead Space 2 and a new Need for Speed just around the corner it almost seems like EA is taking a new path with the games they release, but are they taking a new path with the way they treat their Devs? Only time will tell.

Dead Space could’ve been canned ‘at any minute’ [CVG]

Why So Serious Video Game Trailers?

With Halo Reach right around the corner, Microsoft is in full-assault mode with their advertising campaign. Much like Halo 3, Microsoft is taking the route of live-action television spots rather than showing off the sweet sweet gameplay. While it definitely worked for boosting the popularity of the behemoth known as Halo 3, it now seems that these live-action trailers are being used as an industry norm for advertisement. While these trailers remain mostly faithful to their video game counterpart, are they really showing what matters? The gameplay?