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Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel (born 1950) is an American interaction designer, video game designer, and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a "pioneer in developing virtual reality", a public speaker, and an academic. She was founder and chair of the Graduate Design Program at California College of the Arts (2006–2012). as well as the Media Design graduate program at Art Center College of Design (2000–2006). She has worked for Atari, co-founded the game development studio Purple Moon, and served as an interaction design consultant for multiple companies including Sony Pictures, Apple, and Citibank. As of 2021, her current work focuses on STE(A)M learning, and the application of augmented reality within it. Early life and education Brenda Kay Laurel was born on November 20, 1950 in Columbus, Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Arts from DePauw University, and her Masters of Fine Arts as well as her Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Her Ph.D. disser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Purple Moon
Purple Moon was an American developer of girls' video games based in Mountain View, California. Its games were targeted at girls between the ages of 8 and 14. The company was founded by Brenda Laurel and others, and supported by Interval Research. They debuted their first two games, ''Rockett's New School'' and ''Secret Paths in the Forest'', in 1997. Both games were more or less visual novels and encouraged values like friendship and decision making. Purple Moon's games were part of a larger girl games movement in the 1990s, initiated largely by the surprise success of Mattel's 1996 CD-ROM game '' Barbie Fashion Designer''. Laurel based her game design on four years of interview research she had done at Interval. An associated website, purple-moon.com, featured characters from the games and allowed users to trade virtual items. Some items arose from brand partnerships with companies such as Bonne Bell and SeaWorld. Children were required to have parental consent (email or verb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scott Fisher (technologist)
Scott Fisher is the Professor and Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab there. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality, including pioneering work at NASA, Atari Research Labs, MIT's Architecture Machine Group (now the MIT Media Lab) and Keio University. Early life Scott S. Fisher was born in 1951 at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. He was educated at MIT, receiving a Master of Science degree in Media Technology in 1981. His thesis advisor there was Nicholas Negroponte. There he participated in the creation of the Aspen Movie Map. Career Much of Fisher's career has focused on expanding the technologies and creative potentials of virtual reality. Between 1985 and 1990, he was founding Director of the Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW) at NASA's Ames Research Center. They atte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment), or destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment). This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one. Augmented reality is largely synonymous with mixed reality. There is also overlap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gamasutra
''Game Developer'', known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021, is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine '' Game Developer''. Sections ''Game Developer'' has five main sections: #News: where daily news is posted #Features: where developers post-game postmortems and critical essays #Blogs: where users can post their thoughts and views on various topics #Jobs/Resume: where users can apply for open positions at various development studios #Contractors: where users can apply for contracted work. The articles can be filtered by either topic (All, Console/ PC, Social/Online, Smartphone/ Tablet, Independent, Serious) or category (Programming, Art, Audio, Design, Production, Biz(Business)/Marketing). There are three additional sections: a store where books on game design may be purchased, an RSS section where users may subscribe to RSS feeds of each s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more than 150 countries. The company operates through three business segments: North America, International, and American Girl. It is the world's second largest toy maker in terms of revenue, after The Lego Group. Two of its historic and most valuable brands, Barbie and Hot Wheels, were respectively named the top global toy property and the top-selling global toy of the year for 2020 and 2021 by The NPD Group, a global information research company. The name of the company is a portmanteau of the names of two of the company's founders; the surname of Harold Matson and the first name of Elliot Handler. History Origins and early years Harold "Matt" Matson, Ruth Handler, and Elliot Handler founded Mattel as Mattel Creations in January 1945 in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transmedia Storytelling
Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. From a production standpoint, transmedia storytelling involves creating content that engages an audience using various techniques to permeate their daily lives. In order to achieve this engagement, a transmedia production will develop stories across multiple forms of media in order to deliver unique pieces of content in each channel. Importantly, these pieces of content are not only linked together (overtly or subtly), but are in narrative synchronization with each other. History Transmedia storytelling can be related to the concepts of semiotics and narratology. Semiotics is the "science of signs" and a discipline concerned with sense production and interpretation processes. Narratology looks at how structure and function factor into narrative with rega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interval Research Corporation
Interval Research Corporation was founded in 1992 by Paul Allen and David Liddle. It was a Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator focusing on consumer product applications and services with a focus on the Internet. A 1997 version of the company's web page described itself as ''"a research setting seeking to define the issues, map out the concepts and create the technology that will be important in the future.... ursuingbasic innovations in a number of early-stage technologies and eekingto foster industries around them – sparking opportunity for entrepreneurs and highlighting a new approach to research."''. A 1999 ''Wired'' magazine article based on a memo from Paul Allen described the company as under fire from Allen to produce "less R and more D." Interval Research Corporation officially closed its doors in April 2000, while a small group of former employees were kept on to form Interval Media to continue a few specific projects. Interval Media was closed in June, 200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balance Of The Planet
''Balance of the Planet'' is a simulation video game developed by Chris Crawford. He self-published it in 1990 for Macintosh. It was ported to MS-DOS and PC-98. Development Chris Crawford was approached in early 1989 by Epyx's Joe Miller about working on an environmental game to coincide with the film ''Voice of the Planet'' to be released for Earth Day in 1990. While wary of licensed games, he developed a design concept that explored the intricate connections between ecological and economic factors. He created a hypertext system to house his game. In order to place values into the game (e.g. whether the economic value of a factory is worth the deaths from air pollution), Crawford was forced to place a value on human life; he spent a lot of time treading on eggshells before conceding that no matter what value-based decisions he made he would be accused of bias. Crawford designed the title as a serious game; to be very educational but not necessarily a lot of fun. He self-pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Crawford (game Designer)
Christopher Crawford (born June 1, 1950) is an American video game designer and writer. Hired by Alan Kay to work at Atari, Inc., he wrote the computer wargame ''Eastern Front (1941)'' for the Atari 8-bit family which was sold through the Atari Program Exchange and later Atari's official product line. After leaving Atari, he wrote a string of games beginning with '' Balance of Power'' for Macintosh. Writing about the process of developing games, he became known among other creators in the nascent home computer game industry for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form. He self-published '' The Journal of Computer Game Design'' and founded the Computer Game Developers Conference (later renamed to the Game Developers Conference). In 1992 Crawford withdrew from commercial game development and began experimenting with ideas for a next generation interactive storytelling system. In 2018, Crawford announced that he had halted his work on interactive storytelling, concluding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LucasArts Entertainment
Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including ''Maniac Mansion'', the ''Monkey Island'' series, and several ''Indiana Jones'' titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the ''Star Wars'' franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based ''Star Wars'' titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016. The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979 in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the expertise of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition of Infocom. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles and home computers. The company's products, such as ''Pong'' and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. In 1984, as a result of the video game crash of 1983, the home console and computer divisions of the original Atari Inc. were sold off, and the company was renamed Atari Games, Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as the derivative coin-operated arcade rights to the original 1972–1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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