Antonio Barimen (aka skribe) is a versatile social marketer and digital media consultant. He is also a published author, screenwriter, actor, producer and director.
He has developed social media projects for clients including CBS, Evian, P&G, Discovery Networks, Pernod Ricard and American Express.
When he is not being a dad to his two boys he likes to pretend that he is a capable PC gamer. He is currently based in Perth, Australia.
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Science Fiction:
Frozen. Desperate. Alone. One ship must risk a weyr of dragons to save the human race.
As some of you may know I’ve been spending a great deal of time in Blue Mars. I’ve been mainly providing video tutorials but I’ve also been keeping a close eye on forums and blogs that reference the new virtual world by Avatar Reality. One thing that keeps cropping up is the idea that Blue Mars will fail – or at least struggle – because it doesn’t cater to the Second Life demographic. This is a short-sighted view and fails to take into consideration what attracts people to virtual worlds. In fact, the way in which Blue Mars differentiates itself from Second Life may have a greater bearing on its success than any similarities.
This is a test we did in Blue Mars. It takes the form of a mock film trailer. Blue Mars offers sublime graphics and New Venice, the region where we filmed most of the trailer, looks amazing. If the developers of Blue Mars can implement some decent machinima tools then it has a wonderful potential for making dramatic machimima, which is something Second Life never really achieved to its full potential.
Avatar-Reality have just released the SDK for their virtual world, Blue Mars. They are signing up a limited number of content partners to provide compelling social spaces, entertainment experiences, and creative content. They have also announced an art competition with the aim of rewarding and promoting artists and designers with talent and vision. Each participant receives a 3m x 3m x 3m exhibition space in a shared virtual gallery to display their work.
Despite recent speculation about Avatar-Reality‘s fate, it seems that the creators of the virtual world known as Blue Mars are still alive and kicking. Although their latest news release dates from August 2008, they’re expected to be attending Engage! Expo in New York and GDC in San Francisco both in March.
Fonterra have announced that they have received the National Training and Simulation Association’s Modeling and Simulation Cross-Function award. The award recognizes the significant achievements in modeling and simulation innovation by commercial companies.
