Serious Games Applied

Wednesday and Thursday of this week saw the annual Apply Serious Games conference in London, organised by Martine Parry of the Apply group and held at the RIBA headquarters in Portland Place in London. The event is a mixture of academic, business and research led presentations over the course of the two days. Its an interesting mix of content that can be stimulating if not a little dry in places. For some of the talks you really need to like your tech. The keynote speaker this year was Lord David Puttnam, renowned film maker and now eco warrior, he spoke on the connections between serious gaming and climate change, not as big a leap as you might think. If serious gaming is your thing its a good event to attend.

Marvelous

If you havent noticed, Marvel are back. After a few years of the wilderness and some less than impressive movie ventures they seem to have turned a corner. Iron Man the movie has turned some heads and put the franchise firmly on the map, and is a pre-cursor to a series of films and properties surrounding the Avengers. Their stand at the licensing show was dominated by Iron Man, but the thing that did intrgue me was a new property called Marvel Super Hero Squad. Not much info at the show about the nature and point of view on the new show, but expect to hear more in the near future.

Can you feel the Force?

The Star Wars phenomena isnt over. If you think it ended with the finale of the second trilogy of films, you wrote it off too soo. LucasArts are about to launch another assault on the youth Sci-Fi market with the continuing Star Wars adventures with The Clone Wars. The animated show focuses on the years between Episode 3 and Episode 4, a period refered to in the films as the Clone Wars. The look and feel of the characters and the animation are quite stylised and in keeping with the asthetic of the films, and with the Lucas marketing dollars behind it, will be a massive success post its August '08 launch.

LucasArts itself had a low key presence at the recent Licensing Show in New York but the video screens on the stand were showing long sequences from the forthcoming series, but having watched the showreel several times during the course of the show, I can't predict anything other than 'hit' for this one.

Who ya gonna call ????

Licensing Show 2008 in New York didnt have a barrel of suprises for the regular visitor but one thing I wasnt expecting to see was an attempt to relaunch the Ghostbusters franchise. There is a very nice looking Playstation 3 game on show as well as the usual cheesy marketing activities, 4 guys dressed as the ghostbusters walking around the show floor for photo ops. The films still have a fan base, I loved the first one but was cool on the second one, but I guess enough time has passed between the original releases and now that a re-entry into the market might bring the concept to a whole new audience.

My biggest gripe was not being allowed to take pictures of the PS3 game, which in this day and age is ludicrous, pathetic and counter-productive, as I am now not going to blog or write anything nice about the game having being stopped from taking shots.

Keep your eye open for the game and probably some impeding press release on a new film or tv show.

Kung Fu Panda

At last years Licensing Show, I made a call on Kung Fu Panda being big when it hit the streets. Im happy to say I got that call right, and whilst it might not be everyones cup of tea, its obviously a winner at both the box office and at the shops with the merchandise.

The KFP bandwagon was still rolling at this years show, and wait for the announcement of the sequel, I can't see them not doing a second one.

Play a game and do some good ...

www.freerice.com
Play a word game and donate rice at the same time. Great if you just want something to play for a few minutes.

Innovation Edge

I was going through a recent notebook and I came across some notes I took at a recent event I attended in London, called Innovation Edge. The event is part of the NESTA program. NESTA stands for National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts. Its a publically funded organisation in the UK which helps young people create and innovate.

Speakers on the day included Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the Internet), Bob Geldof and as indicated by the picture, Gordon Brown, the current Prime Minister of the UK.

The day was generally good, the speakers were interesting, the information was relevent to the audience and the tempo was high, meaning the day didnt drag or become boring.

If you want to know more about NESTA, check out http://www.nesta.org.uk/