Scott Fisher

Speaker: Daishiro Okada, President and Chief Operating Officer of Square Enix, Inc.,
Time: Wednesday, February 28, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: “East-West trends in Gaming – How to Position Yourself for a Career in Interactive Entertainment”

Okada-san will give an overview of his career background, offer a few tips for getting into the industry and cite statistics mostly related to mobile gaming in Asian countries vs. North America.

Square Enix is Japan's leading videogame developer, publisher and distributor. Its two best-selling franchises - FINAL FANTASY and DRAGON QUEST have sold over 95 million units worldwide. As of May 2, 2006, KINGDOM HEARTS II, Square Enix's action role-playing game created in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios, has sold through more than one million units in North America in only four weeks of release, making it one of the top-selling new releases of 2006.

Daishiro Okada is President and Chief Operating Officer of Square Enix, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Square Enix Co., Ltd. with offices in Los Angeles, CA and Seattle, WA. Square Enix Inc. handles operations in North America, including development, localization, marketing and publishing of Square Enix titles including DRAGON QUEST™ and FINAL FANTASY®. Daishiro leads management and operations and is an essential force in realizing Square Enix’s goals for the North American market. Daishiro served as a Senior Executive for Square Enix Co., Ltd. before his current role at Square Enix, Inc. Prior to joining Square Enix, Daishiro served as Representative Director and Chief Operating Officer for a Japanese technology-company. Previously he also built a successful career as a banker at Deutsche Bank AG Group Japan and The Industrial Bank of Japan (currently, Mizuho Financial Group).

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Eric Paulos:

Jane McGonigal will be puppet mastering a big urban game in the SOMA neighborhood of San
Francisco on Friday, March 2, 6 – 7:30 PM.

The game is Cruel 2 B Kind, the game of benevolent assassination. All
you need to play is any old cell phone. You can play alone, or you can
form a team of 2, 3, 4 or more…
It's free, it's outdoors at sunset...
So far, Jane has confirmed players traveling in from as far as San
Diego, L.A., New York City, and Atlanta…
You can read about it on Jane's blog.

Or sign up to play here: www.cruelgame.com/signup

Posted by Scott Fisher at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Eric Hanson, Visura Imaging & USC Hench DADA
Time: Wednesday, February 21, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: Digital Fiction: New Worlds in Film Environments

This lecture will review the scope and range of film backgrounds and environments, from historic precedence to contemporary digital techniques. Speaker Eric Hanson has a long experience of creating CGI backgrounds for prominent feature films, and will showcase shot breakdowns of films such as The Fifth Element, Cast Away, and The Day After Tomorrow. The lecture will end on the topic of creating affordable environments using high resolution panoramic images, and will discuss recent gigapixel techniques Eric has developed.

Eric's Bio is here.
and websites describing his work here:
http://www.visuraimaging.com
http://www.xrez.com

Posted by Scott Fisher at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alice Taylor has a post on her always informative and amusing Wonderland blog about Sony's new afterworld series that they are calling the first example of a new trend in "Multitainment- the online convergence of television and video games ". Hmmm...

Posted by Scott Fisher at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CTIN 511/Spring 2007

Week 1 (1/10) Robert Zemeckis
Week 2 (1/17) John Buckman, Magnatune.com
Week 3 (1/24) Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window
[Profilers: Jack McMahan & Diana Hughes ]
Week 4 (1/31) Rich Gossweiler, Google
[Profilers: Maya Churi & Mike Rossmassler ]
Week 5 (2/8) Usman Haque
Week 6 (2/14) Slamdance Post-mortem
Week 7 (2/21) Eric Hanson, Visura Imaging & SCA DADA
Week 8 (2/28) Daishiro Okada, President, Square-Enix
[Profilers: Al Yang & ]
Week 9 (3/7) TBD
Week 10 (3/14) Spring Vacation – no class
Week 11 (3/21) Pia Tikka, Enactive Cinema group
[Profilers: ]
Week 12 (3/28) 2/4/8 Project (CTIN 542/544/548)
Week 13 (4/4) Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Pat Harrington, Jeremy Douglass,
Mark Marino - “Second Person” Book launch
[Profilers: ]
Week 14 (4/11) Cameron McNall, Electroland
[Profilers: Andre Clark & ]
Week 15 (4/18) Danny Bilson - Writer, Director, Producer
[Profilers: Ethan Kennerly & ]
Week 16 (4/25) IMD Final Project presentations

Posted by Scott Fisher at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Title: Slamdance Post-Mortem: A Discussion about Games as an Expressive Medium
Time: Wednesday, February 14, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Join Danny LeDonne (Super Columbine Massacre RPG), Sam Roberts and Peter Baxter (Slamdance Festival), Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen (flOw, thatgamecompany), and Tracy Fullerton (EA Game Innovation Lab) in an open discussion about the recent controversy surrounding the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition. The pulling of LeDonne’s Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the contest resulted in a protest which saw over half the festival finalists pull their own games from the competition, the IMD pulled our own sponsorship of the event in support of the protest, and the festival ended with the remaining finalists voting to forgo all awards in light of the protest. At the root of this controversy lie several important questions: Are games an expressive medium? Should they be protected as “speech” under the First Amendment? Should we hold them to a different standard of content then media such as films, literature, painting or theatre? Where can provocative, independent games be seen and celebrated if not at venues such as Slamdance? Bring your opinions and be ready to participate. This may be the most important issue facing independent gamemakers in the coming years.

BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

Posted by Scott Fisher at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Here's a pdf file of my slides about the IMD thesis process that we discussed last week in CTIN 548: Download file
The full version of Professor Kahn's thesis document is here: Download file

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: Artkrush

Public art organizations with an eye on new media are using surprising commissions to combat the longstanding cliche of public artworks as oversized sculptures stranded in empty plazas. Creative Time and the Public Art Fund in New York and Artangel in London are weaving video projections, websites, and interactive installations into the urban fabric. Often spinning filmic narratives about city dwellers, these projects resonate with viewers and forge a closer connection between art and the public.

Links, pix, and descriptions here.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)