SceneCaster hits a milestone

 Posted by (Visited 3473 times)  Game talk
Dec 102007
 

The Facebook version of SceneCaster has hit a milestone — it was the “most active app” a few days ago. Now, Facebook defines “most active” as what I would tend to call daily tie ratio; meaning, they are ranking apps based on what percentage of those who have it used it that day, and not total users. In SceneCaster’s case, it was a highly respectable 80%. (I just checked and today they are down around 16%).

Total usage for SceneCaster is around 21,000, based on that 16% figure, which is a far cry from being a mainstream app on Facebook (the top apps have multiple millions of active users, and some get tie ratios above 20%, such as Super Wall or Scrabulous). But it’s still an interesting stats, because it shows that a mostly non-interactive “virtual world” app can garner an audience that seems interested.

Virtual Worlds News has an interview with some interesting tidbits.

“Our philosophy going into this was very different from your traditional virtual world philosophy,” explained Zhoar. “We looked at how people are interacting, and it’s all asynchronous. People come in and leave a message on your wall, and we’ve tied into that with this application that gives them a great capability to express themselves on the Web through these highly immersive experiences and then publish them.”

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The Sunday Poem: I Saw and Heard

 Posted by (Visited 4213 times)  The Sunday Poem
Dec 102007
 

Sorry for posting so late, but I was at a very enjoyable party up in LA today, and wasn’t home most of the day. This here is a rewrite of a fairly old poem, mostly just cleaned up for meter.

I saw and heard

A tethered girl with a guitar, restringing
On a park bench, clothes and voice wringing
Wrinkles from a rag. She twitched her head,
A nervous finch, her bones aslide, fluid
Bumps beneath her drum-tight skin, a flock
Of birds enclosed by brittle flesh, a-cracking,
And cracking only when she sang.

                                        I feel
A minor need to make her something real:
To steal aloft the eagles trapped within,
To cut them free from helpless hampering skin,
Take hold of jesses, loose them in a spasm,
To watch the music soar past sky and chasm.

But “real” lies in beholder’s hearts, and “real”
Is not lived day to day — is just a tale
Told to children full of fancy dreams,
Who picture avian souls and eagle’s screams.

The whole short scene was just her playing.
She’d sung some words before, I’d say,
Will sing again, will strive, earn cash, survive,
And lyrics do not modulate our lives.

But where is the poem in that?

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MIT Fan Labor panel audio and video

 Posted by (Visited 3346 times)  Game talk
Dec 082007
 

MIT Convergence Culture Consortium: Archives

The final panel on the first day of our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference, on fan labor, is now available for download in audio and both high-res and low-res video form.This panel is available here in audio and video form. The video is intended for download, and some browsers may try to display text if you don’t right-click the link to save to your computer. If your browser tries to download it as a “.txt,” remove the “.txt” from the name, and the file should work as an “m4v.”

The panel features a conversation among Mark Deuze of Indiana University, Jordan Greenhall of DivX, Raph Koster of Areae, Elizabeth Osder of Buzznet, and Catherine Tosenberger of the University of Florida, moderated by Henry Jenkins.

Monopoly, WW2 hero

 Posted by (Visited 6044 times)  Game talk
Dec 072007
 

How board game helped free POWs – CNN.com

Along with the standard thimble, car, and Scotty dog, the POW version included additional “playing” pieces, such as a metal file, a magnetic compass, and of course, a regional silk escape map, complete with marked safe-houses along the way — all neatly concealed in the game’s box.Even better, some of the Monopoly money was real. Actual German, Italian, and French currency was placed underneath the play money for escapees to use for bribes.

Also, because of its collaboration with the International Red Cross, Waddington could track which sets would be delivered to which camps, meaning escape maps specific to the area could be hidden in each game set. Allied soldiers and pilots headed to the front lines were told to look for the special edition game if they were captured. The identifying mark to check for? A red dot in the corner of the Free Parking space.

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