SiliconSurfer

At the beginning of this panel Jordan Mechner, Creator, Prince of Persia, asked the audience who came from the Hollywood side and who came from the Game side. It was very interesting to me that the number of people from the Hollywood/Movies side were about 25% and the Games side was about 75%. There is a lot of talk about how important story is to video games, and how special the process is that gets a good story into a good video game and the huge influence a good story has on the success of a game.

There is a lot of agreement that convergence is when people play a game, live a story they have influence over, and care about the characters and moments of meaning that arise as you participate. That is where the convergence of the two mediums happens. So, I guess in that sense convergence has happened and it’s just a matter of deeper convergence.

Kim Libreri the VP Advanced Strategy from Digital Domain has been talking about how convergence is happening, and will continue to happen because the digital assets that are created for films are more and more easily available to the games world and vice versa. Soon game engines will be the platforms used to create TV shows and then to create movies. That’s pretty cool.

Bottom line is no surprise, talent is talent and valuable wherever and whenever.

Hollywood and Games Summit, June 26-27, 2007. It’s interesting, one of the first things that the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, John Kilkullen said here at the conference is that games are a larger industry than movies. I think we’ve known that for a while, but I think it’s interesting that it would be one of the first things mentioned here in the heart of Hollywood by the Hollywood Reporter.

Clive Barker was fun to listen to. The big thing I took away from what he said is: “I believe in games. I believe in what games can be.” After his presentation I talked with CanalPlus and one of the things they asked seems to be something that people who are less familiar with the games world seem to worry about: Will games kills Hollywood? They didn’t ask it like that, but that seems to be the underlying theme. Well, I think there are some analogies with ‘new media’ and ‘old media’ back in the early days of the Internet. How I see it is that discovering strawberries doesn’t mean the end of banana smoothies, it means the beginning of strawberry banana smoothies. Yes, maybe people will spend less on bananas as the strawberry craze gains steam, but it doesn’t mean the end of bananas, and there is actually a real opportunity to grow the whole market for everyone.

Since the days of Virtual Vegas I have been saying: “If content is King, then context is Emperor.” And, I think the exciting thing here is the MMO aspect of giving people a fantastic, exciting and compelling context within which they can play and create their own content as they make their choices. I see this as being the ‘interactive movie’ people were tying to capture back in the day. But, rather than letting the audience vote on which way to branch at some scene or another in the movie the MMO game context allows for Massively Multiplayer collaboration in the creation of an ‘interactive movie’ ongoing and in real time.

Here is the full PDF of the press release. And below are the winners of the auction.

• Avatar Janus JD D’Arcwire, representing a real life bank, (more information to follow) - paid $59,060
• Russian Internet Payment Provider MONETA.ru, by avatar Yuri iNTellect Efremov - paid $99,900
• Entropia celebrity and famed virtual night club owner Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs -paid $90,000
• Famous cross-world virtual celebrity and entrepreneur Anshe Chung - paid $60,000
• The avatar “Jolana Kitty Brice” (veteran Entropia Universe participant and entrepreneur who wishes to remain anonymous at this time) - paid $95,000

Janus represents a German Bank. More information to come.

And here is the press release regarding our recent announcement about entering China. And the short version, below.

Swedish MindArk and Chinese Cyber Recreational Development Corp. sign Agreement to Create the Largest Virtual World Ever
MindArk’s CEO Jan Welter and CRD’s CEO David Liu sign the landmark agreement to create a cash-based virtual economy for China. Goteborg’s Mayor Göran Johansson was also present at the ceremony, as were leading officials from MindArk and Business Region Goteborg.

The new project will permit up to 7 million concurrent users logged into the virtual universe with an overall aim to attract some 150 million users from all over the world. Entropia Universe, a three-dimensional universe on the Internet intended for entertainment, work, commerce, community building, culture, and much more, is expected to generate over $1 billion annually in commerce from this partnership.

It will be happening October 10-11, 2007 in San Jose. More as it happens. . .

Things from the Virtual Goods Summit on the web/blogosphere will be tagged vgsummit2007. That will help you find things out there about this. I will post as I am able. And, they have created a Twitter stream for this conference. If you’re a current Twitter user, you can either text ‘follow vgsummit’ to 40404 from your mobile phone or click the ‘add’ link on http://twitter.com/vgsummit so that your twitters will be broadcast to our VGSummit channel. If you can’t be there, but have an interest in the day’s events, you can check this out.

As well, I am hoping my friends Tony Parisi of Media Machines and Josh Crandall of Media-Screen will both be coming. Media Machines is the creator of the Flux player web brownser plug-in which brings virtual worlds right into the browser. Media-Screen does excellent strategic market research and consulting.

I was recently interviewed on MN1.com - Market News First. They are an IPTV channel about breaking market news.  Their tagline is: The exclusive IPTV source for the microcap markets!

It was fun! Kate Delaney is a fan, she loves this stuff.  Click here to get to the blog and then click on Podcast to watch the clip.
I visited a second time two days later and we talked about the China announcement, as well.  Click here for that visit! Click on Podcast to watch the clip.

Virtual Worlds Weekly just arrived in my in box containing this interview from June 8th with David Simmonds and myself regarding the China announcement. As usual, it ignites passionate debate!