A photo of a meeting between a participant in Must Love Robots, a small-scale alternate-reality game put on recently by the New York duo, Awkward Hug, and the game's signature robot.
(Credit: Flickr user Tim Scribbles)For Kiaya Steele, the men in suits and dark glasses who appeared suddenly through the raindrops of a New Hampshire morning were the first sign that something very unusual was going on.
One of the men stood under an umbrella next to the car Steele and her friend Kellin had been riding in moments earlier and delivered a message. As Kelli's sister Jenna was brought out of a second car that had pulled up mysteriously behind them, Steele was told that if she couldn't quickly prove that she was "the real Kiaya," the bomb planted inside Jenna would explode.
And this was just the tip of the iceberg of a day spent driving all around the countryside, complete with vans, staple guns, cameramen in trees, threats, red phone booths, and a series of hidden clues.
But this wasn't a situation for the FBI. Rather, it was a very small-scale--and low-tech--version of what is known as an alternate-reality game, an entertainment genre that has grown in popularity in recent years, especially because its traditional use of mixed-media--the Web, cell phones, social media, and others--can allow large numbers of people to play together collaboratively.
Over the years, the games have become a favorite marketing tool of large companies like Microsoft, which has commissioned huge ARGs, as they're known, for the launches of things like the video game Halo 2 and Windows Vista. Indeed, the first widely known ARG was called The Beast, and was used as a promotion for the release of the Steven Spielberg film "AI: Artificial Intelligence."
Those versions of ARGs have seven-figure budgets and allow thousands of people to participate. Yet while they get most of the ink written about ARGs, there has long been a steady stream of games built for very small audiences or, as in the case of Steele and the friend with a "bomb" insider her, an audience of one. It turned out that the intrigue was all part of a day-long mystery concocted by Steele's boyfriend, and involving several of their friends, as part of an elaborate marriage proposal.
"We use a lot of fictional analogies in our lives--gangsters in an alley (and) later in the quest there was a Soviet scientist, all themes that had played out in our courtship," Steele recalled. "We would write stories of sorts to one another before we dated. We'd take an image and run with it until it was too tired to move anymore. The whole thing was kind of a collaboration of our lives together."
Given that the game Steele's new fiance planned for his proposal had such a small audience, it was, to be sure, at the extreme end of the size and complexity spectrum for ARGs. But at any given moment, there are several ARGs being played that have slightly larger, yet still very small, numbers of participants. And it is these games, usually carried out at minimal expense and with no deep-pocketed sponsor, that may well be the true lifeblood of the increasingly popular world of ARGs.
And while there are practical limits to the kinds of interactions that are possible between the people running the larger games--the so-called puppetmasters--and the players, these smaller adventures offer everyone involved a much greater chance at direct communication.
"There are quite a few people making [small] ARGs, either without profit in mind or marketing [who are] saying, 'Look at me, I can do this,'" said Michael Andersen, who runs ARGNet, the leading source for news and information about the genre. "The motivations for a lot of these things vary. [One] advantage of doing these grassroots games is working for yourself. [And], it becomes a lot easier to have those one-on-one interactions [and the] feeling that not only can you communicate, but you can change what's going on" for fans.
Robot love
Earlier this year, a New York duo calling themselves Awkward Hug built and pulled off a small-scale ARG called Must Love Robots, which was centered around the idea of helping make love connections between people and robots.
Through a series of Web sites, social media, YouTube videos and more, Awkward Hug founders Jim Babb and Tanner Ringerud turned a $3,000 budget into a 3-month-long game with at least 300 participants.
Babb said that the project, which was entirely self-funded, came out of an original desire to create a Web series about a robot. But when the two realized that they could "make it so much more" by adding the various multimedia elements, they set out to build a bona fide ARG, one that would allow them to communicate directly with almost anyone who wanted to talk with them, even to the point of playing online games of Scrabble. And, of course, there were real-world meetings between prospective "dates" and the game's signature robot (see video below).
Given the huge gap in size between a large-scale ARG and something like Must Love Robots, it might be surprising that many of the ultimate goals are the same. It certainly was to Babb.
"What surprised me the most," Babb said, was that "players want more and they want to do things with you. It becomes a collaboration. The audience becomes characters."
And while it's not always possible for everyone to participate in person--Must Love Robots attracted players from around the world--one of the great things about the ARG genre is how many people who play do participate directly in one way or another. In Babb and Ringerud's game, for example, 20 people created costumes related to the story line and sent in pictures of themselves wearing the outfits, all of which were intended to be folded into the larger story line.
Kids creators
A different kind of small-scale ARG was Find Chesia, a project put on by the Finksburg, Md., library on behalf of its local schoolchildren and their summer reading program.
The story, said organizer Heather Owings, was centered on the story of Chesia, a 14-year-old girl whose parents have gone missing on an archaeological dig and who sets out to find them. The game was designed by five small teams of 11- to 15-year-olds.
Like with many small-scale ARGs, Find Chesia encountered a series of structural problems, most notably, Owings said, the fact that the kids turned out to be resistant--mainly due to regular conditioning about the dangers of online anonymity--to the idea of posting information in character to the game's Web site. In addition, there was the unforeseen problem that almost none of the kids were old enough to drive to the game's real-world locations.
This bracelet is an important element in the ARG, Finding Chesia, which was put on by a Maryland library on behalf of a town's schoolchildren and their summer reading program.
(Credit: Finding Chesia)Still, the game was successful enough for Owings to want to run the game again next summer, incorporating some of the lessons they learned this year. And despite the problems, Owings said that she came away with an appreciation for what the ARG genre can offer its organizers and participants.
"I like that ARGs use tools that were set up to do something else, and they're used to create something new," Owings said. "It's the taking of something and changing it and using it for something it wasn't intended [for] in a new and creative way."
Plus, she said, Finding Chesia turned out to be a perfect way to get the kids in on the enjoyment of building their own game, even though they lacked many of the skills generally considered necessary for such a task.
"It's a way for teens to create their own game," Owings said, "and we really enjoyed that aspect of it...They don't need to be computer programmer [and] here is a way for them to take ownership for creating a game on a fairly small level. [As well, it] helps them to realize how much the Internet does facilitate networking within the community, as well as outside the community."
These days, said ARGNet's Andersen, there are at least as many small, grassroots ARGs being produced as the larger, corporate-backed games. And those numbers could grow as an increasing number of people become versed in the tools for building them. According to Andersen, teachers at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Mary Washington are both teaching classes about ARGs.
But the real upside in the genre's growth will come naturally, as more people in more local communities get exposed to ARGs and discover the joy of playing something truly interactive and truly collaborative.
And while it's true that most small ARGs quickly peter out as players and organizers discover that they don't have the time or energy to follow through, there are those who feel that the ultimate payoff of participating is there for anyone with the stamina or commitment to grab it.
"For an independent ARG, the most successful thing you can do is complete it and have your core audience go all the way through," said Awkward Hug's Babb. "It's such a cool format, and the people who can make it through a whole one of these get an experience that no other media can provide."
According to IBM, 'BlueMatter, a new algorithm created by IBM researchers in collaboration with Stanford University, exploits the Blue Gene supercomputing architecture in order to noninvasively measure and map the connections between all cortical and sub-cortical locations within the human brain using magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging. Mapping the wiring diagram of the brain is crucial to untangling its vast communication network and understanding how it represents and processes information.'
(Credit: IBM)Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM.
According to the researcher, Dharmendra Modha, the manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, scientists from his company and some of the world's most prestigious universities have already managed to simulate the computing complexity of the feline cortex, a feat that could augur a day not too far off when it will be possible to ramp up to what the human brain can accomplish.
Last year, IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal. Just a year later, Modha said, his team, working in conjunction with the universities' scientists, have achieved two major milestones.
The first was a real-time cortical simulation that achieved more than 1 billion spiking neurons, as well as 10 trillion individual learning synapses. According to Modha, that exceeds what a cat's cortex is capable of.
Second, the scientists created a fresh algorithm they're calling BlueMatter that is aimed at spelling out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha suggested, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information.
The human brain, Modha said, is fundamentally different from today's computers in power and size, and he and the many scientists he is working with are eager to learn from the brain how to build new kinds of computing architectures. Part of the reason, he added, is that as our world gets more and more complex, a "tsunami" of data is being produced and analyzing those data demands "a new kind of cognitive system, a brain-like system, to make sense of it."
To achieve the goal, Modha and his fellow scientists are combining supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology research to demonstrate what's possible. The work they've done has progressed in just a year from the granting of the DARPA contract to today's achievements.
Modha said that examples of what could be done with computers working at this scale are realistic analysis of the world's water supply systems, or financial systems. The idea is to detect causality behind phenomena, and to make those connections quickly and effortlessly, the way the human brain works. Writing such a program using today's computers would be impossible, he said, but these future computers would be able to quickly distill answers to these kinds of enormous problems.
There's no promise, of course, that Modha and his colleagues will be able to advance the difference between the power of the cat and human cortexes in the next decade. After all, there's a difference of a factor of 20 between the two. But he sounded optimistic that a decade is a realistic goal.
But regardless of the timing, the aim is clear: reverse-engineer the human brain and learn its computational algorithms. And then deploy them in a bid to solve some of the world's most complicated computing problems.
U.S. video game industry sales plunged in October, dropping 19 percent from a year earlier, and 16.4 percent from September, according to data released Thursday by the NPD Group.
But with the tremendous, record-breaking, out-of-the-gate performance of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and the coming holiday season, NPD is bullish on the industry's fortunes for November.
Still, the $1.07 billion in total sales turned in by the industry in October were paltry, compared with $1.32 billion in October 2008 and $1.28 billion in September 2009. NPD analyst Anita Frazier tried to soften the blow a little bit in her monthly report, noting that while sales were down precipitously in October, it was still the third-best October sales report turned in by the video game industry.
"The continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales," Frazier wrote in a statement. "Our latest Economy Tracker indicated that although consumers' general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year."
That last sentence is no doubt one of the most chilling group of words imaginable to the honchos at companies like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Activision, and many others involved in putting video game hardware and software in consumers' hands, especially as their most important sales months of the year are now at hand.
As always, regardless of the monthly results, the big console makers each had some things to celebrate in the NPD numbers.
For Nintendo, which has seen sales of its once-high-flying Wii dip and perceptions that the console's days of seeming infallible may be over, the numbers had some hope: in October, the Wii took back first place among the consoles--respectively the Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Sony's PlayStation 3. In October, Nintendo moved 506,900 Wiis, beating out the PS3 (320,600) and the Xbox (249,700).
Sony was coming off the first month the PS3 won since being launched in the fall of 2006, but while the console was beaten out by the Wii, there must certainly be some measure of gratification in having the PS3 come out ahead of Microsoft's console offering.
"In October, we saw continued momentum [for the] PS3, with nearly 70 percent growth, when compared to last October," Peter Dille, Sony Computer Entertainment of America's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement. It was "the only console to see any growth year over year."
NPD itself touted Microsoft's chief bragging point for October: "Across all categories, the Xbox 360 platform contributed the greatest portion of total industry sales, representing 27 percent of total industry sales for the month," Frazier wrote.
Yet despite the record-smashing first-day sales posted this week by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the video game industry as a whole is facing a very painful reality: If sales don't improve quickly, there will be layoffs, slashed budgets, canceled games, and more.
Electronic Arts, for example, announced this week that it is planning to lay off 1,500 people as part of a major restructuring--the company's latest--and as a way to stave off growing losses.
And while the industry may have hoped that console sales--especially with prices for next-generation hardware now at their lowest levels ever--would help it rebound, Frazier did not offer much hope.
"Year to date, the hardware category has experienced the sharpest decline in the industry, with unit sales down 10 percent compared to the same time period last year," Frazier wrote. "Recent price cuts helped spur a one- to two-month increase in unit sales, and this month's Wii sales reflect that boost, but the other platforms have not sustained the sales momentum [after] price reduction."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is said to have broken the single-day sales record for an entertainment property. According to Activision, the game earned $310 million in North America and England alone in its first 24 hours.
(Credit: Activision)So much for the supposedly unbreakable first-day sales record set last year by Grand Theft Auto IV.
On Thursday, Activision said that its brand-new Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare, which hit store shelves on Tuesday, had "shattered" the previous record for opening-day sales by an entertainment property, earning $310 million in North America and the U.K. alone. That equates to 4.7 million copies of the new game sold in those regions, and, if true, would eclipse the previous first-day sales record of $310 million globally, which GTA IV set in May of 2008.
Given that GTA IV had nearly doubled the previous record of $170 million, set by Halo 3, I wondered at the time whether its new mark was unassailable. Clearly, the new Call of Duty has answered that question, and loudly.
Now, we have to ask once again whether there could be another challenger for the crown. It would be foolish, it seems, to conclude that there won't be, given the dominance of franchises like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Grand Theft Auto itself, and, of course, Call of Duty.
A bigger question could be: Why do we care? That's especially true given how frequently these mega-records are broken. Still, it's hard not to get worked up about what it means for a single video game title to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in a single 24-hour period, particularly while we're still mired in a fairly deep recession.
There are all kinds of arguments to be made about why video games do well in tough economic times, and I've trotted a number of them out in this space. But most games don't come anywhere near selling $310 million worth of product in their entire lifetime, let alone on their first day, so Activision--and its Infinity Ward studio, which actually developed the new Call of Duty--seem entitled to a little bit of attention.
But at the rate these records are falling, I'm going to have to start thinking twice every time a new game sends me one of these announcements about breaking records. Sooner or later, it's not going to be all that noteworthy, no matter how much money is earned in a single day. Until then, though, watch this space for word on which game will be next in line for the throne.
CNET News reporter Ina Fried testing out Microsoft's much-heralded Project Natal.
(Credit: CNET News)According to a report issued by British games magazine MCV, Microsoft's much-heralded Project Natal hands-free gaming control system could hit store shelves as soon as November 2010 and cost as little as $50.
MCV said that Microsoft could launch Natal with a 5 million unit global shipment.
"This and other details have emerged following a behind-closed-doors Microsoft tour of U.K. publishers and studios," MCV wrote. Microsoft "has been demoing the tech and detailing its 2010 plans in order to spur more development support."
MCV also said that it had been told by a publishing source that Microsoft is "trying to get as close as possible to 'impulse buy'" with Natal.
The technology is considered very important for Microsoft as it seeks to differentiate the Xbox from Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii.
The Seattle Times weighed in on the story by predicting that, "This is probably a preview of what (Microsoft CEO) Steve Ballmer and (president of the entertainment and devices division) Robbie Bach will disclose at the Consumer Electronics Show in January."
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There are literally hundreds of banned Xboxes for sale on Craigslist right now in the wake of a decision by Microsoft to kick as many as a million players off of Xbox Live for illegally modifying their consoles to play pirated games.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Update (5:45 pm): This story now includes a statement from Microsoft.
Want an Xbox 360 but don't care about playing online or taking part in any of the Xbox Live services? Then this is your lucky day.
Thanks to a recent decision by Microsoft to ban as many as a million players from Xbox Live for illegally modifying their consoles to run pirated games, there is now an absolute glut of "modded" Xboxes for sale on Craigslist.
And while a brand-new Xbox Arcade--the lowest-price version of the console--sells for $200 with no free games, it is now possible to spend as little as $100 for a used, modded Xbox that comes with a slew of hit titles. You just have to be willing to give up using Xbox Live and be OK with your new game collection including mainly pirated titles.
Running a search for "modded Xbox" on Craigslist's Bay Area site returned 35 listings from the past three days. A similar search on New York Craigslist resulted in 87 listings. And dozens and dozens more are for sale on other local Craigslist sites.
One listing promised a "banned/modded" Xbox 360 with a 20 gigabyte hard drive; 20 HD movies; and 13 games including Madden 2010, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, NBA 2K10, and others.
"Everything works perfectly," the ad reads. "The 360 was treated better than I treat most people."
The ad also reminded potential buyers that, "since the console is banned, you will not be able to connect to the Xbox Live service. Therefore, this posting is for those of you who don't care if you can play online or not."
One Craigslist poster named Danny Cuccovia, a 22-year-old student from West Valley College in Saratoga, Calif., was actually looking to buy a modded Xbox 360, and despite the incredible deals available right now, wasn't interested in one that couldn't get him onto Xbox Live.
A gamer looking to potentially go pro, Cuccovia suggested that modded Xboxes are great because there is no end to the supply of pirated games and that sellers of those games put very realistic-looking labels on them.
He also said he was sure that many of the people selling their banned Xboxes on Craigslist were doing so because they want to get a new one.
That was certainly the case with Kevin, a 29-year-old from Manhattan's East Village who logged into Xbox Live a few days ago only to discover the bad news about his console.
"I logged in, tried to play a game online, and it said I had been banned from the service for violating the terms of service," Kevin, who wouldn't give his last name, said. "I cursed, put my controller down, cursed Microsoft, and then bought another Xbox."
But even though he bought another used console that was advertised as being unmodified, Kevin said that when he tried to log on to Xbox Live, he quickly discovered he'd been cheated: the new device had been banned, too. So on Tuesday, he bought another one.
"If you're interested in a modded Xbox," he said, "I've got one for you."
Interestingly, Kevin and another New Yorker with a banned Xbox, 16-year-old Muhummad Sheikh, both said that the ban seemed to apply only to the console and not to their Xbox Live accounts.
Kevin said that his account still works, and that he was able to keep all his achievements, but he lost all the saved games. "They've done something funny," he said. "They call it a corrupted profile."
For sellers like Kevin, the rush to sell their banned Xboxes in order to buy a new one is pitting them against dozens, if not hundreds of people in the same boat. That means that getting the price they want is going to be near impossible. Kevin said that he had originally asked for $175--with an available legitimate copy of Rock Band for an additional $50--but has now dropped his price to $150. And still he has no bites.
"Someone (offered to) buy it for $100," Kevin said, "but I haven't capitulated yet."
In a statement issued late Wednesday to CNET News, Microsoft suggested that players who buy used Xboxes should beware that the company doesn't necessarily stand behind the consoles.
"If you purchase a modified console second-hand, the warranty is not transferable and the purchaser assumes the risk for any previous modifications," the Microsoft statement said. "If you purchase a console that has been previously banned, you will not be able to connect to (Xbox) Live."
To Kevin, the fact that the consoles have been banned but players' accounts still work smells a little fishy since that means if someone buys a new Xbox, they'll be able to get right back into their Xbox Live account and pick up, more or less, where they left off. And that could well mean that for the Xbox Live obsessed, there's no choice but to buy a brand-new machine, especially since many of the other consoles for sale on Craigslist right now have also been banned.
"Well, the holidays are around the corner," Kevin said. "They know what they're doing when it comes to making money."
Update (5:50 p.m.): This story has been updated with a statement from Microsoft.
It's oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.
Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft's Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.
This week, Activision's new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game's developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.
"Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software," InformationWeek wrote, "but some players have successfully 'modded,' or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections."
Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it's not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.
In a statement Microsoft said its "commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken."
And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player's being banned.
"Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use," Major Nelson wrote. "The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.
"When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn't just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won't be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye."
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--While I'm sure that many of the people in the room were familiar with prediction markets, I wonder how many of them had ever seen an active one up close and personal before.
Providing that sense of deep immersion, of course, was exactly the point of an exercise run Monday during a session of Singularity University's executive program by Melanie Swan, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager. Swan, the principal of MS Futures Group, had tasked small groups of students with coming up with world-changing product ideas and then simultaneously had the students vote in an online prediction market looking at which product and team would be rewarded with the most faux-venture capital.
Despite the fact that some technical problems got in the way, the point was made: prediction markets, given enough active participation, are increasingly seen as an excellent way to arrive at the answers to any number of questions, whether it's sales figures, who will win presidential elections, or who will get the most VC funding. Indeed, the winning technology concept--a pill that could cure cancer--and team were accurately prognosticated by the market.
For the group of superstar achievers like the students in the executive program, this was but one piece of a meticulously constructed nine-day education that many hope will supplement and enhance already successful careers in a wide range of disciplines.
Other sessions included looks at the state-of-the-art in medical research from Daniel Kraft, an instructor in Stanford's cancer/stem cell biology institute, and Chris deCharms, the founder of Omneuron, a company working on new MRI technologies; future forecasting from Peter Bishop, the coordinator of the futures studies program at the University of Houston; a workshop in the future of medicine and biomedical technology from Stanford developmental biotechnology professor, Stuart Kim; and a talk by Harvard Law School professor and Internet law expert Johnathan Zittrain.
And that was all just on Monday.
Four start-ups emerged
Earlier this year, Singularity University (SU) ran its inaugural summer session, a nine-week program based at NASA's Ames Research Center here in the heart of Silicon Valley, aimed at giving the best 40 of more than 1,200 applicants a highly concentrated education in a series of exponentially growing technologies like biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; AI, robotics, and cognitive computing.
For those students, who were chosen based on having demonstrated top-level academic rigor, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, an interest in global issues and who were seen as already being at the top of their chosen fields, the nine weeks were a marathon of long days and nights of lectures from world-leading thinkers, workshops in the technologies that could shape the future and group projects centered on coming up with ways to positively impact a billion people. Already, four start-ups have emerged from the summer session.
But now the first of SU's nine-day executive program is in full swing, and according to co-founder, X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, the goal now is to distill the best parts of the nine-week SU version and present them to the new students in a way that will be of the most use to them.
"The executive program is really focused on providing the information in a much more organized and digestible fashion for executives, addressing the issue of what's in the lab today and where is this going in five years," said Diamandis (see video below). "What is the key terminology that (the students) should know about these fields, what are the top ten breakthrough milestones that you should be watching out for, and, ultimately, how are these breakthroughs going to affect you, your company and your industry."
That's obviously a very ambitious mission statement, but for many of the 20 people lucky enough to be taking part in the executive program, Diamandis and his fellow organizers have succeeded in pulling together something very worthwhile, even as it is one of the most intense experiences of their lives.
"It's like taking medical school and boiling down four years into about four days," said Michael Gillam, a physician who runs the health care innovation lab at Microsoft. "That will give you a sense of the sort of depth of the material" covered during the executive session.
From the beginning, SU's founders--futurist and "The Singuality is Near" author Ray Kurzweil; Diamandis; and ex-Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail--had planned on the institution offering both the longer summer sessions and shorter, three- and nine-day executive programs. In the process of actually putting them together, though, Ismail said, the three-day version got scrapped for simply being too short.
Instead, the executive program's first group of students--20 people of varying ages and professions, half of whom are American and half international--arrived at Ames on Friday having paid the $15,000 fee, each in search of something a little bit different.
Sole focus is on tomorrow
For Gillam, the rationale for taking nine days off from work--he said he'd come on vacation from Microsoft since it would have been impossible to take part in the summer session--was crystal clear: to get a deep dive in the technologies that are coming screaming down the line at us.
"You can go almost anywhere today and hear about historical trends (or a) deep analysis of today," Gillam said. "But there's virtually no place where the sole focus is on tomorrow, and where we are going. That was extremely intriguing and what captured my attention."
For Peter Platzer, a currencies and commodities trader from New York, attending SU was all about having meaningful interactions with the diverse and accomplished group of faculty and staff and to get a better understanding of the kinds of exponential technologies that are being discussed there.
And according to organizers, some of the students, whose numbers include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and government representatives, even came solely for the chance to meet, and potentially invest with, members of the start-ups that came out of the summer session.
Alumni network
Those potential relationships are possible because one of the things that's already developing at SU is a strong alumni network. That's evident at the executive program in the group of summer session graduates who have returned as faculty assistants--who also happen to be able to sit in on all the deliberations and discussions--and in the number of faculty who themselves have come back for more.
Diamandis said that there's no doubt that SU is fostering an ongoing network that is sure to benefit all who join. For example, he suggested that if, in the future, a graduate wanted to find someone who was a European robotics expert, they would likely be able to find such a person in the SU program. Because the executive program will be repeated in February and again in April, and the nine-week program next summer, there will only be more members of the network as time passes.
And as proof that SU graduates take their membership in that network seriously, Ismail pointed out that though it's only been two months since the summer students graduated, they'd already had a reunion.
To faculty member Dan Barry, a former NASA astronaut--and cast member of CNET News parent company CBS' "Survivor"--the main difference between the summer session students and those in the executive program is that while the former tended to be very smart people at crossroads in their lives and careers, the latter are very established in their respective businesses and are seeing how they can become aware of, and perhaps utilize, the future technologies being discussed.
Still, Barry said he sees more similarities than differences between the two groups. Both, he said, are "interested in technology and the future and are concerned about the state of the planet and the people on it."
For Barry, taking part as part of the faculty has been a refreshing change of course that, thanks to the "potential and excitement (I see) reflected in their eyes," has re-energized him professionally.
"When I talk with other astronauts...about space, we tend to talk about technical things," Barry said. "When I talk (to the students) it helps me to remember...what's spectacular about going to space."
This photo of U2 lead singer Bono, shot during U2's Rose Bowl show on October 25, by amateur photographer Bruce Heavin, was taken with a Canon PowerShot G11, and is representative of the high-quality pictures that ticket-holders can easily take these days at concerts and other events with point-and-shoot cameras. Note the people in the picture snapping their own images of Bono.
(Credit: Flickr user Bruce Heavin)At last month's huge U2 show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., how could you tell the difference between the professional photographers and your average amateurs?
Answer: the professionals were the ones whisked away after Bono and friends finished their third song, and the amateurs were still there, happily shooting to their heart's content.
Nearly every person at any show these days is going to have some form of camera with them, be it a point-and-shoot, an iPhone or some other camera phone, and it seems that there is almost no way to imagine keeping all those devices out.
That new reality is forcing an increasing number of bands to come to grips with the fact that they can't really control the images from their shows, and that, for the most part, they're better off letting fans cram Facebook and Flickr with such pictures anyway.
"It's an acknowledgment of the way technology is changing, and how much digital cameras have become a part of our lives," Rob Sheridan, the creative director for Nine Inch Nails, told CNET News. "Now that everyone has video and still cameras in their phones, and pocket digital cameras take HD video and great quality pictures, not only is it impossible to keep cameras out of shows, but it's fighting an increasingly uphill battle against what is now a cultural norm: people freely documenting their lives and the things they do to share it with friends and family."
In fact, the only people who may emerge frustrated from this new paradigm are the professionals. For those shooting with credentials, the phrase is "three songs and you're gone," said Bob Carey, the president of the National Press Photographers Association, meaning that pros are generally allowed to shoot from a designated "pit" near the stage during a band's first three songs, and then they have to leave.
Last month, I was one of those sporting a photo pass at the 96,000-fan U2 Rose Bowl show. And even as I was clicking away during those first three songs, I was acutely aware that there were hundreds of people even closer to the stage than I was, toting cameras capable of taking some pretty great pictures. Indeed, a quick Flickr search confirmed just that.
Little dynamos
Many of those fans--and thousands more throughout the Rose Bowl that night--were shooting with nothing more than a camera phone. And no one worries about the dissemination of images taken with devices like that. But some people were shooting with cameras like Canon's new PowerShot G11, a little 12.5-ounce, 10-megapixel dynamo much more than capable of producing professional images.
Shot with a press credential from the photo pit and with a digital SLR, this CNET photo is not all that distinguishable from the photo (seen above) by amateur Bruce Heavin, which he took with a Canon PowerShot G11, a point-and-shoot camera.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)So, while the professionals are being ushered out after those three songs, how is it that the fans are able to keep shooting?
The answer is camera policies in effect at concerts, which are almost always defined by the bands themselves. And conversations with people throughout the music industry make it clear that while there are no standard policies, and that the rules run the gamut from "anything goes" to "no pictures, please," artists today are increasingly tolerant, even encouraging, of fans taking all the pictures they want.
Look, for example, at the Nine Inch Nails Web site, which spells out the band's open camera policy, "inviting fans to capture the events with anything from a cell phone to a hi-def video camera." The reason is clear: "The results have been overwhelming, filling our own galleries with thousands of images and videos from every show, and inspiring a number of ambitious fan-sourced video projects within the NIN community. Some of those projects are starting to surface now, and we couldn't be happier with the way the fans have organized themselves and created some truly impressive work."
Further, Sheridan told CNET News, even the proliferation of pictures of the band's shows taken by fans hasn't hurt its commercial interests.
"Despite the fact that our fans take thousands and thousands of their own photos at each NIN show with whatever camera they'd like, we still sell prints of live photos taken by me through a Web site called frcphotos.com," said Sheridan. "This is presumably the type of thing that other acts would be trying to 'protect' by limiting photography at shows, but we've found that fans are still eager to purchase reasonably-priced professional prints, often taken at angles or distances that only someone working for the band would have access to."
Some artists are clearly concerned about fans' rights to take pictures, and go so far as to issue reminders when there are restrictions. For example, the indie rock due, Tegan and Sara, have sent tweets saying things like, "Hollywood Bowl restricts cameras that are deemed professional. This usually means cameras with a removable lens. So keep that in mind!!!"
And, of course, other rock stars are not at all behind the notion of fans taking pictures. Among those are said to be Prince, Kanye West, Bjork, and others. At shows by those artists, security is known to assiduously stop people from taking pictures of any kind, even with camera phones, though one wonders just how effective such policies can be.
Less anti-camera attitudes
But clearly, anti-camera attitudes are becoming less and less prevalent these days.
"It's something that artists have come to realize they have no control over," said Abe Baruck, a manager who works with big-name acts like Journey, Clint Black, and Peter Wolf. It's "more a realization that this is just the way people enjoy entertainment. They want to capture something for their own nostalgia (and it) just doesn't go anywhere other than for their own use."
That thinking is likely what is behind the restrictions on specific kinds of camera equipment at some shows, like U2's, and on professionals.
Even though millions of amateur photographers now own digital SLRs, there is still a mindset in the entertainment industry that anyone toting one at a concert is a professional and therefore should be limited in where and how they shoot.
That's why some bands, like U2, make a point of allowing fans to take pictures, so long as they stick to lower-end equipment. "Since 2001, U2 has openly allowed fans to bring cameras to their shows," reads the FAQ on the site U2tours.com. "Your camera, however, must be a point-and-shoot camera; DSLRs are not allowed."
"It's just a very simple calling card saying, 'I'm a professional media person,'" Philip Blaine, a producer with Coachella promoter Goldenvoice, said of photographers with digital SLRs, "'and I know how to utilize this media in a professional manner.'"
And while it's generally bands that are setting camera policies, some venues have also asserted control over what fans can and can't bring.
One example is the Hollywood Bowl, in Los Angeles. As evidenced by the tweet from Tegan and Sara, that venue imposes restrictions around certain kinds of equipment. A Hollywood Bowl spokeswoman said that that venue won't let ticket-holders bring in professional-grade equipment.
Professional sports seem to largely work the same way. According to NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy, football fans are allowed to bring in any kind of still camera--though lenses are restricted to less than six inches long, for security reasons--they want. That policy is standard across the entire NFL, McCarthy added, and prohibits fans from bringing in any kind of camcorder.
The same basic policy applies to other sports, too. According to Nick Ohayre, a spokesperson for the NBA's Golden State Warriors, fans are free to carry and use cameras at basketball games, so long as they don't use flash and don't bring large, professional equipment.
But over time, as the technology improves, it may become more common and force sports leagues and entertainers to pay more attention to what's happening with imagery taken by the thousands of small devices fans bring with them to events, especially as the quality of pictures from those devices is often good enough for professional publication and licensing.
Some even think that band representatives need to do a better job of keeping up with what's possible in technology.
"I don't think they're aware of some of (what's possible) with new devices," said Carey of the National Press Photographers Association. "I don't think they've figured out the nuances of what point-and-shoots can do with photos and video."
But the increasing permissive attitude toward letting fans shoot whatever photos they please may simply come down to the realities of what it would take to do a serious search of every one of the thousands of people who go through an event's gates.
In the old days, said New York freelancer Lia Bulaong, if she wanted to sneak a camera into a show, she would hide its battery in her bra and then convince security she had brought her powerless camera into the show in order not to risk it being stolen from her car.
But in the last two or three years, she said, such subterfuge is pointless.
"No-camera policies just became extra ridiculous because pretty much everyone has a camera in their phone," Bulaong said. "Venues can't turn away camera phones and will never the capacity to check them in like they do coats and bags."
Plus, she pointed out, more and more, the bands want to incorporate the fans' phones into their shows.
"The one thing you will see at every concert now, regardless of the artist, is the moment when everyone has their camera phone out and the venue is awash in tiny lit up screens."
In a world in which Disney defines its brand and the content it releases under its own name as being aimed at the broadest possible audience, Mickey Mouse is known largely as a feel-good, happy-go-lucky cartoon character.
But that's not how Mickey was in the early days. Back in 1928, when he first hit the world stage, he was a very badly behaved mouse. And now, one of the best-known video game designers in the world wants to bring back a little of bit of Mickey's dark side.
And he'll get his chance to make that a reality. Warren Spector, the game designer behind the Deus Ex franchise, is working on a new game, Disney's Epic Mickey, which is being positioned, in part, as a "re-imagining" of Mickey Mouse.
Planned for a fall 2010 release, Disney's Epic Mickey will be an adventure-platforming game exclusively for Nintendo's Wii. The story is built around a world--crafted by the sorcerer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice--in which a series of forgotten Disney creations live, and thrive. Among those characters is Oswald, Walt Disney's earliest cartoon star. As the years pass and Oswald becomes bitter at Mickey's success, Mickey inadvertently destroys Oswald's comfort zone in the cartoon wasteland and he must face the consequences of what he has accidentally wrought.
"It's a game where we remind (people) that Mickey is a hero who solves problems by dynamically changing the world around him and deciding how to interact with the people and places and problems he encounters in this strange new world," Spector said.
In 2005, Spector formed a start-up, Junction Point, which Disney bought when it commissioned him to work on the Mickey Mouse game. "I've wanted to work for Disney forever," he said, "so that was not a stumbling point for me at all."
And because Spector is a lifelong Disney fan and animation "freak," everything came together in 2007 for him and his Junction Point team to take on perhaps the best-known cartoon character of all time. On Tuesday, Spector talked with CNET News about the project.
Q: How did you get involved?
Warren Spector: I was out pitching a near-future science-fiction game and an enormous epic fantasy role playing game, and my agent suggested we talk to Disney. They turned things around and asked me if I wanted to a Mickey Mouse game, and I told them no, because I don't do kids games and Mickey's been kind of a kid property for a long time. But they said, No, no, we want someone to bring Mickey to a gaming audience in a whole new way and make him a hero for the 21st century. Pretty much at that point, I was in.
What was it like to get a chance to re-imagine Mickey Mouse?
Spector: How often do you get a chance to work with the most recognizable movie star character property on Earth? That's an opportunity most people never get. There was pretty much no way I could say no. Mickey touches everybody, and none of us will ever meet a human being who doesn't know about this character.
What's the best-case outcome for this game, in your fantasy?
Spector: The best case is to change the way people think about Mickey Mouse. He's not just your 8-year-old kid's best buddy, or a character who teaches infants colors on Mickey's Clubhouse. He's a hero again. In his early days, he appealed to every body. From 1928 to the mid-1930s, moviegoers around the world, everybody, men, women, old, young, you name it. Everybody loved Mickey. And the opportunity to bring him back to that place, where he's not just an icon on a watch or a T-shirt, but is actually a character that people care about in a narrative context, or want to be, to look up to as a character whose skin they want to inhabit for awhile, Boy, I can't think of a better (challenge) for someone who tells stories and makes games for a living.
The logo for Disney's Epic Mickey.
(Credit: Disney Interactive Studios)
Why does Mickey need re-imagining? And why now?
Spector: There's these characters, like Mario and Link (from the Zelda games) and Sonic, and I don't know if it's true, but you've got to believe that those characters--who are three heads tall and cute and iconic--at some level were inspired by Mickey Mouse. So why shouldn't Mickey be at the top of the gaming heap? Mickey deserves to be at the top of the game hero pyramid.
What are some of the things you're doing to make this new Mickey recognizable for everyone?
Spector: I came into this with a pretty good idea of who Mickey was. I wanted to remind Mickey that it's okay to be mischievous and badly-behaved. For so many years, he hasn't been allowed to do anything remotely mischievous. But if you go back to those early cartoons, he was very badly behaved, and we've got to let him get back to that. And in his early cartoons, he was very cartoon-y, he squashed, he stretched. He could remove his tail and use it as a sword. That was the second thing. And the third leap was mischievous cartoon character made of paint. So we talked about what we could do if we gave Mickey control over the stuff that he's made of and let him paint and then use paint thinner to remove stuff.
Were there other things that were essential for bringing Mickey to this medium?
Spector: One major challenge was finding a look for him, especially a 3D look. With a couple of rare exceptions, Mickey's always been in 2D and the animators cheated all the time, with the way his ears work and the way his nose fits relative to the rest of his face. In 3D you can't do that, so I looked at the few previous 3D Mickeys and I didn't feel anybody had gotten it right. We went through probably thousands of concepts trying to find the right look.There are a lot of people at Disney who care a lot about Mickey Mouse, and so getting a look that people could get behind was tough. Rendering it in 3D was tough and then getting it to move like a cartoon character was a huge challenge and tons of fun, and you'll tell me if we succeeded.
Warren Spector, lead designer on Epic Mickey.
(Credit: Disney Interactive Studios)
How much control did you have and how much control Disney assert?
Spector: I was really worried about that when I first started on this. There are lines you don't cross with Mickey Mouse, OK? But the thing that surprised me was how far out those lines were and how obvious it is where the lines really are.
There are people who say, 'Oh, give Mickey a big knife and put a gun in his hand, and then I'll like him.' Well, come on, nobody's going to do that. And you're not going to make Mickey evil, you know? And when you have an icon, where any combination of three circles defines Mickey Mouse for most people on the planet, you're not going to make his head square. I'd say it was a pretty easily negotiated deal, creatively.
Talk more about where the story idea came from?
Spector: During a meeting with the Disney guys, they showed us a PowerPoint with the concept of cartoon wasteland, a world of rejected and forgotten Disney creativity. And the foundation was making Mickey relevant to a gaming audience and a modern audience. It was funny because I watched this presentation thinking, Holy Cow, this is phenomenal and the seed of an amazing thing. And then all the execs were saying, Oh, you don't have to use any of that, this is just our think tank's concept. And I'm sitting there, going, Are you guys crazy. That's a great idea. Why would I not use all of that? I just thought it was so funny because they were trying so hard to make it clear that I had all this creative freedom, and I was like, No, I don't want it, I want this as my starting point.
Can you tell me something about working with these famous Disney characters that would surprise us?
Spector: I think the thing that surprised me the most is how easy it is to get these characters almost right. It's like, drawing Mickey or any other character in the Disney archives, they are so well known and defined and recognized and have such strong personalities that getting them 90 percent right is very easy. But that last 10 percent that just nails them, that's really, really hard. And that goes for how they look, and how they act and how they move, which is one of the reasons why I was so proud of my animators. I didn't tell them to do this. They came up with this idea on their own, of going back to the old cartoons, and rotoscoping them. They took the old cartoons and took our model and rig and then duplicated classic 2D animation, and composited our guy into classic Disney 2D cartoons. When you couldn't tell if it was our model or the original 2D animation, that was when I knew we had it.
Why only the Wii?
Spector: At the beginning, it was supposed to be on all platforms. I remember vividly how nervous I was about that. The idea was we were going to do a Wii port and I was never comfortable with that because the Wii really deserves its own design, something that takes advantage of what the Wii does best. We were talking about this one day and (Disney Interactive Studios executive vice president) Graham Hopper basically said, What does it take to ensure quality? I said, you can never guarantee greatness, but you need enough time and money to be competitive and it helps if you can focus. A single platform would be great. And it was an easy step from there to, Hey, we should do a Wii exclusive.
What about the Wii "stalling?" Does that worry you at all?
Spector: Yes and no. I've been doing this for 20 years, and I've had this saying, That I just need to sell one more copy of a game than is necessary to get my publisher to fund my next one. So I'm looking at this as, I've got a responsibility to Mickey Mouse and to Disney, and if I do something really good, commercial success will follow. I've got to believe that. And once you start talking about painting, people's hands (on the Wii) just immediately start moving as if they're holding a brush. It just totally works. I think we're on the right platform.
