In two days time the latest Mark Burnett show, I blogged about in April ‘Alternate Reality TV‘ , will begin. I think this programme will start to blur the line between pure reality TV and the immersion afforded by alternate reality game type quests across media. Much of this seems to be primarily designed to [...]

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I was quite shocked when I heard the news that TOTP (Top of the Pops) is to close down after 42 years and some 2100 episodes. Is this the first of many major ‘heritage’ media brands that are just becoming irrelevant in today’s easy find, on-demand and share with everyone emerging media landscape? Will many [...]

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A quote to start off yet another Virtual World post…
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion” Democritus (Greek philosopher, 460-370bc)

We live in a world where you don’t need to eat or drink, you cannot die or harm yourself, you can breathe underwater and you can fly? Add to this our [...]

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Give people very simple and highly social tools for producing and creatively sharing content and truly inventive things will happen. In a growing ‘easy to publish’ movement the current user generated, digital personalized content explosion will continue indefinitely - the creative big bang. A digital stills or video camera and a computer in the right [...]

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…and the never changing human.
Senor Hontar: “We must work in the world. The world is thus.”
Father Altamirano: “No Senor Hontar…thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it”
Final lines of the film ‘The Mission’
There have been several events this week that have focused my attention on the nature of immersion. Within AFTRS and [...]

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Ok the title sounds a little ’space cadet’ and paradoxical but bear with me on this one because the implications go way beyond the focus of this post which is a quick orientation and guide to non-scripted but organised ’social play’ inside a virtual world and a great way to plan a Real World Alternate [...]

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Just got back from leading the third LAMP lab in Perth (there will be more info about the great projects in the lab on the official site over the next few days) and I was also speaking at various multi-platform, digi distribution events - during which I caught up with a couple of NY Times [...]

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Great to see my old friend Jon Dakss now running the iTV roost at NBC New Media. Jon was a pioneer in interactive development when he introduced me and the BBC to Watchpoint’s Storyteller a few years ago. Storyteller was something ahead of its time (still) as apart from the basic single screen multi iTV [...]

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Following on from my recent posts on Mark Burnetts exploits with Gold Rush here is another ‘distributed-story-quiz-quest’ thing borrowing heavily from Alternate Reality Games. Reuters reports with “Hit series “Lost” inspires a global online game” and demonstrates the fine line now between content and the marketing of that content
The marketing initiative, announced on Wednesday, is [...]

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We do live in interesting times. In my opinion it has only taken around 6 years to go from a world dominated by broadcast and scheduled viewing to one where any type of media is available on-demand (OD) - well we are almost there. A new report from Insight Research with the catchy title “Streaming [...]

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Humans love to work through problems. When we were producing early broadband and interactive TV services at the BBC from 2000-4 it came as a big surprise that outings such as Test the Nation (IQ), maze games and video/audio ‘observation’ quests (Mammals, Pyramid, XCreatures, Death in Rome and later Spooks) drew such loyal and ’stick-at-it’ [...]

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Another Milia-post break so I can add the next in the ‘Media Journeys’ episodes started a few weeks ago - epiposts? I had a seed sown (read: scribbled on the back of a programme!), during Milia, of a simple evolution of media and associated receiving devices. My diagrammatic excursion below is not intended as a [...]

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Some more words of wisdom from Gary Carter CCO of Freemantle that should have been in a previous post. These are from the final q and a and even though the questions are a little shallow the answers offer a simple ‘manifesto’ for traditional producers looking down into the black hole of digital cross-media entertainment.
How [...]

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