Icarus Studios News

The Virtual University, Part 1

A New Twist on Online Education

Not long ago, when I was teaching at a local university, I had occasion to hold office hours online in the popular virtual world, Second Life. The class focused on exploring the role of the computer in contemporary society, so we looked at everything from questions of ethics to enabling technologies and the digital divide. It’s an exciting course for students because it challenges them to think critically about things they deal with in their everyday lives—things like digital rights, Web cookies, privacy issues, and so on. For the virtual office hours assignment, students were asked to explore the virtual world, experiment with various avatars, and interact with other, regular citizens of the world.

Say It, Don't Spray It, Part 3

Writing a Great Game Design Document

(Continued from Part 2)

Part 3: Okay, But How Do I Make My Game Design Document Full of Win?

If you want to write a really great design document, you should cover the basics (detailed in Part 1), but also get into the world-building features. Briefly—and here’s a word I’m going to use often in these posts without actually accomplishing brevity—describe how your game engine will address things. These topics include conversations between users; the creation of both NPCs and PCs; the plan for cool features particular to various factions, classes, and races; suggested items in players’ inventories; and proposals for interesting locations, creatures, and objects. You might also include information about puzzles and mini-games, which may or may not be consequential to the main quest game-play, but are intriguing additions to the entire game experience.

Big Stage Entertainment Announces Portable You Program; Opens use of Proprietary 3-D Facial Modeling System to Partners

LOS ANGELES, CA - Dec. 10, 2008 - Big Stage Entertainment, Inc., a media technology company that lets consumers project themselves photo-realistically into the digital realm, is opening its proprietary 3-D facial modeling system to third parties for seamless integration into video games, virtual worlds, Web sites, mobile apps, kiosk-based systems and more. This new program, called PortableYouTM, enables any third party to offer a consumer experience that features an animated, 3-D likeness of a user to enhance everything from entertainment to communications and retail.

A key feature of PortableYou is the ability for partners to enable their own users to easily create a sophisticated 3-D model of their face for free. Through the PortableYou system, realistic facial models can be created in less than two minutes using one to three photos taken with a standard digital camera. Core components of the PortableYou system will include APIs, code samples, methods and reference libraries.