Gamers Get real Guitars

Ask any musician what’s wrong with video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band and you’ll get some variation of this response: If gamers spent half as much time with a real instrument as they did pushing plastic buttons on a toy version, they could become musicians instead of just mimicking them.

That argument has been heard loud and clear at Seven45 Studios in Boston, where game designers have come up with Power Gig: Rise of the SixString, which puts a genuine electric guitar into players’ hands, allowing them to unplug from the game, hook up to an amplifier and rock for real.

Apple’s iTunes LP 6 Months Later: No impact at all.

When it was first unveiled, Apple’s new iTunes LP format -– codenamed “Cocktail” and introduced at a “rock and roll event” in San Francisco -– promised to give consumers a new reason to buy albums instead of individual songs. Offering expanded cover art, lyrics, videos, animation and other digital goodies, iTunes LP was intended to evoke the feeling of spinning an LP record and holding the jacket in your hands. Especially when paired with a tablet computer (then rumored, now real) that would provide a new way to view large-format art, consumers were promised a digital experience that mimicked a physical one.

Musicians turn to corporate advertising and product placement to promote their work.

With CD sales in free fall and opportunities for radio or television airplay increasingly rare, the rules governing the interplay between pop music and advertising are being rewritten.

It’s no longer possible to “sell out” — at least, not within a certain time-cherished understanding of the term. Rockers, rappers and up-and-coming pop titans of all stripes are licensing music and image as an integral part of brand-building, which largely has usurped selling music and concert tickets as many musicians’ professional end goal.  L A Times

Indie game developers join together with cut-price bundle

Three independent software developers have joined forces to offer short-term discount on their cult hit PC games: Solium Infernum, Gratuitous Space Battles, and AI War.

Separately, all three plus the included expansion packs would usually cost just under $90 , but until March 9 they are bundled together for $59 and available directly from a website backed by the three creators.  Independent

Technorati Tags: indie games

Slide Lays Off 10% Of Staff, Shutters Short-Lived Games ‘SuperPocus’ And ‘Top Fish’

Slide, the online entertainment company founded by Max Levchin (who we just interviewed in Davos), has decided to stop development on two of its social games, Slide SuperPocus and Top Fish, and will be laying off “less than 10%” of its employees in the process. The company had around 40 employees working on the two games, some of whom will be reassigned to work on other projects. Prior to the layoffs, Slide had around 137 employees.

One-Touch Shopping, for Members Only

HauteLook, Gilt Groupe, Rue La La and Ideeli are just a few of the members-only sales sites introduced in recent years with offerings of deeply discounted designer apparel and accessories. Now, to the delight of beauty enthusiasts, they have added beauty products and services. With millions of members, growing friend by friend, day by day, the sites offer everything from Botox treatments at a dermatologist to detoxification at a spa. Some industry watchers predict these sites will change the way we shop, but others wonder whether online flash sales are a flash in the pan.

When you work in animation, there’s just no avoiding those Pink Slip Blues

Disney Legend Floyd Norman returns with a column that discusses one of the lesser popular aspects of working in Toontown. And that’s the layoff that invariably comes whenever a new animated feature completes production.  Jim Hill Media

Technorati Tags: animation pink slips

Greece could sell islands to cut debt

Greece should consider selling some of its islands as one option to reduce debt, , two members of the German parliament in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition said.

Reuters

An Indie Takes On Animation’s Big Boys

“The Secret of Kells” is a throwback to the era of animation before computer-generated imagery, its promotion is pure digital age, forgoing the pricey ads and flashy parties that Academy Award campaigns are traditionally built on in favor of cheaper social media and savvy targeted marketing. It was a lark, and it worked.

“We scratched our heads and said, ‘What is the best way to get this film a nomination?’ ” said Eric Beckman, the president of GKIDS, the four-person company that bought the rights to distribute “The Secret of Kells” in the United States just days before the Oscar nomination forms were due. “Do we need to take out big ads in Variety to reach the 100 or so people in this committee? It seemed like a viral word-of-mouth campaign would be more successful.”  NY Times

Oldest Graphic Design Found

Archaeologists have discovered 270 pieces of engraved ostrich eggshell, which date to around 60,000 years ago, from a site called Diepkloof in South Africa’s Western Cape province. Why is this important? According to Scientific American:

The fragments constitute what the researchers say is the “earliest evidence of a graphic tradition among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations.” As such, the finds help to illuminate the emergence of symbolic representation—a hallmark of modern human behavior.

Brooklyn-based artist/designer Roy Stanfield had an interesting comment on this news item, “Funny this is framed as graph design instead of art.” Very true, I wonder why.  Hyperallergic