Today we had our games module playtest where our game was set up and people were invited to play it along with the other games produced on the module. There was some really cool stuff on offer and everybody did well. Ours went swimmingly and we had positive feedback. It also proved useful for other people to point out things that they felt were missing or needed improving on. We documented the day with a video camera ready to produce our promo video this week. It will be posted up on here when its done.

I haven’t really been blogging about the game we’ve been making as it has all been a bit of a secret. However the game is now done and we presented it today.

Our company, Spotjam, make Augmented Reality Games (ARGs) that enhance audience engagement with an Intellectual Property (IP) or brand and provide additional revenue streams for IP owners. Our first game ShinobiAR is an augmented reality spy game, created as an example of what is possible with the spotjam platform.

My critique into Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the Nintendo Wii looks at Morality in games and the use of the interactive capabilities of the Wii console. Download the PDF here.

I have just finished building and uploaded the homepage for the spotjam website…looks good. There will be a few odd tweeks here and there and obvioulsy the rest of the site will follow but for now its here

After our meeting today we decided on a final logo for the company. Everyone is pleased with it…which is nice!

Adam and I are now cracking on with the website branding and should hopefully have a live company site by the end of next week, fingers crossed!

Just a quick update on progress…

So the games project is steaming ahead with some pace now. We have done so much in so little time its scary how organised we are with this! Aside from the group work such as brainstorming, decision making and the like, I have been working on the branding of the company for the website and any print materials. I am nearly finished with the logo and have got some colour schemes ready for a team meeting tomorrow to discuss. The potential logo is below.

We got to play with one of iDAT’s Aibo dogs in the games module the other day. Seem pretty cool if not rather expensive. Also Sony shut down their robotics division in 2006 so they don’t sell them any more…or offer any support! Nice one Sony!

Aibo wikipedia depinition below:
“AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt, homonymous with “partner” in Japanese) is one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction in 1999. Able to walk, “see” its environment via camera, and recognize spoken commands, they are considered to be autonomous robots, since they are able to learn and mature based on external stimuli from their owner or environment, or from other AIBOs.”

The aibo is basically an artificially intelligent robotic dog with loads of cool things bunged in…like wifi connections, cameras, voice and face recognition, sensors and the whole thing is programmable to pretty much whatever you want it too. There are loads of downloadable personalities for it…some quite questionable…but on the whole its quite a cool bit of kit!

I took some videos of it doing random stuff…we couldn’t work out what personality it had loaded at the time.

Simon has expanded on my post about shotcodes. Our initial idea was to make up stencils of the shotcodes so we could spray paint them onto surfaces…aside from the legal issues involved in that idea, the stencils would be a nightmare if not impossible to make. So Simon has found a company that can make up vinyl stickers quite cheaply…good work!

Shotcodes aren’t brand new but this week is the first time I have really looked into them. They are like little circular barcodes that, when used in conjunction with the shotcode mobile phone app, become mobile URLs that can be placed literally anywhere you like. They are better described by shotcode.com:

“The circular sequence of black and white blocks represents a url, any url you want, for example to your products website or a point of sale. The ShotCode reader understands this code and connects the end users mobile phone to your location in three clicks or less!”

I’ve had a play with making my own shotcode using the online generator…this one just links to danlake.com