On Site: SXSW 2008 - Keep Austin Geeky
By Carl Weichert, Training and Resources Strategist
My SXSW report in chunks . . .
Chunk 1
Most of the panels I attended were focused on some type of gaming. The first two I want to talk about were:
• The Future of Virtual World & Game Development: Rise of the Indies
• Cross-Media Cross-Pollination: Mashing Up Video Games and ARGs
Rise of the Indies was presented by Corey Bridges, Co-Founder of multiverse.net. Bridges reviewed the shift that’s occurred in the broadcast, music and newspaper industries as a result of people distributing their own content via sites such as YouTube (neatly summed up by Bridges: “Sucks to be you, Media Oligopolists”). He went on to assert that the video game industry was the next on the chopping block, citing issues in the current model, issues similar to those in broadcast and so on.
Trends mentioned by Bridges that are opening the industry to indies: faster connectivity, middleware (software that allows other softwares to talk with each other), and the move towards a universal client for virtual worlds (meaning a player in one virtual world, such as Second Life, could visit another world, such as There, with the same avatar).
He also discussed the rise gaming in social network sites, such as Facebook, that now allows users to add games, such as Scrabulous. to their pages, and software such as Flash that allows for easier development of simple games (if you want to check some out, try Kongregate.com). (more…)
Add comment March 15, 2008
