E3 – A Few of My Favorite Things
E3 is going on right down the street. I stopped in yesterday to poke around and see what was going on in the world of video gaming. Instead of the outrage and frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy arguments, I thought I’d share what things I’m looking forward to because part of me was blown away.
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Unboxing + Demo of Sphero
Watch as we take a look inside Sphero, a cool new toy from Orbotix.
Hone Your Brain-Jutsu With Memory Dojo
Our friend and former coworker Alice just published her first iOS game Memory Dojo as part of Chin and Cheeks. The game has you guiding “Ninja” through memory lessons with his Sensei. The rounds start innocuously enough but increase in difficulty as you play, adding to the challenge and fun.
The game is available through the iTunes App Store for free. If you’re the first person to beat the game, the fine folks at Chin and Cheeks will send you a secret mystery gift. So get playing!
Check out gameplay screenshots below.
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Interactive Media Award: American Horror Story – Murder House
The agency recently received an Interactive Media Award for work on American Horror Story – Murder House. Congratulations to every member of our team that worked on it!
You can see the award at their official website, or check it out below:
Free Holiday Gift for Yourself- Core Online
Even if you’ve got a bajillion presents under the tree, it never hurts to give yourself a little something more. The fine folks at Square Enix are offering some premium games playable right in your browser for absolutely free! It’s not even a Holiday special – it’s just awesome. Head over to http: Core Online to get started.
You can play Hitman: Blood Money, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and Mini Ninjas (among others), so have a look if you’re looking to try something new.
General Topics InteractiveThe Power of Interactive Storytelling – The Walking Dead
Recently I had the chance to enjoy the surprisingly powerful “The Walking Dead” video game from Telltale Games. The game spans over five episodes based on the acclaimed comic series. Despite the medium, the game was brimming with stark presentation and emotional appeal. In this post, I’d like to focus on the different modes of storytelling utilized by the game. Earlier, I looked at different types of interactive storytelling in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim. Today, I’ll be looking at how this game combined both to make a moving experience rivaling that of film.
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Facebook Gating – Don’t Lock Out Your Customers
There are two things wrong with the image above, which is the first screen you’ll see when you fire up the Highlight iOS app. The first is the logo, but I’ll let someone with some design experience tackle that one. The second and more important thing is the Facebook login. This is something I’ve been seeing more and more often. This blog post was inspired by seeing this screen and by Mullen’s Election Protection campaign for JetBlue. I was checking it out when it asked me to log in with my Facebook and offered no alternatives (although since the contest is over now, you can’t see for yourself). So here we are.
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Hands on with Xbox SmartGlass
At E3, I was wowed by a demonstration of Microsoft’s SmartGlass. The application brought a second screen to the Xbox 360 experience, offering an alternative way to control the device through the use of a smartphone. About 5 months later, Smartglass has arrived. Earlier this week I had a chance to play around with it. How does it stack up to the demonstration I saw? Read on to find out.
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Why the Windows 8 User Experience is Doomed to Fail: It Flies Like a Car and Drives Like a Plane.
Today Microsoft finally released Windows 8. The launch of a new operating system is always exciting. But this is not just an ordinary update. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s most ambitious and most important undertaking since Windows 95 nearly twenty years ago. Windows 8 introduces a completely new user interface (UI), following the unique Metro design language that was created for Windows Phone 7. This time around, however, Microsoft has a serious issue with user experience (UX).
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The Future – Vision and Reality, Part 2:
Envisioning the Future Today
In the Part 1 of this series, we reviewed some visions of the future from the past. Although some of these visions, especially that of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, included rather accurate predictions about the future, many of the predictions were either “laughably conservative” (as Clarke might put it) or overly optimistic and absurd from today’s point of view.
In this blog, we shall take a look at some more contemporary visions of the near future, including those of tech companies such as Microsoft and Google. We shall discuss some of the similarities and common themes as they relate to technology and user experiences that they all share.
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