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ComicCon is quite odd. This is a common topic of conversation here, how odd it is: it's about 30% to do with comics, and the rest is peripheral related nerdtastic popculture, and plenty of Hollywood. You name it: movies, television, web stuff, books, merch, figurines, ceramics, art, cosplaying, tabletop gaming, and videogames. Oh, and journos. Mike tried to show me his nipple.
There's a lot of cosplaying. Not as much as at the Tokyo Game Show, but not far behind. There are 175,000 geekculture-loving people here this year, so the volume is explainable. The quality is pretty good, too; unlike TGS though, there's no dedicated area for cosplayers to gather for posing/pictures, so it's a bit more randomly scattered throughout. It's strong on the fan-fu, this con.
As for Hollywood.. we went to the Sci-Fi channel's party last night, and met lots of fun sci-fi folk, and saw plenty of short actors. Edward Norton is not a tall man, but he was the tallest of the lot. Number 6 is quite tall, but elongated by heels; certainly not the amazing amazon you see on the teevee. She's just comparatively tall. Starbuck is tinsy. Seth Green is minute, Prince-sized (I didn't see him at the party, but I almost trod on him in the DC booth). I think maybe Tom Cruise started it all - once you have a primary short actor, you have to find lots of other short actors, otherwise you get the Luke and Chewie problem.
There were no Chewbacca cosplayers, come to think of it. Disappointing, that. This little fella, however, made up for it:
I LOVE sharks. I could make you sit through the 11 minutes of video of the shark feed and shark swim I was in, but, well, I'll spare you on this occasion. Jaws was my favourite movie of my tween years. Which brings me to area/code's new project (built in nine! weeks!), Sharkrunners.
Sharkrunners, designed for Discovery Channel's 20th Anniversary Shark Week, is a persistent game of oceanic exploration and high stakes shark research. Players take on the role of marine biologists who seek to learn as much as possible about sharks through advanced observation techniques.
In the game, players control their ships, but the sharks are controlled by real-world white sharks with GPS units attached to their fins. Real-world telemetry data provides the position and movement of actual great white sharks in the game, so every shark that players encounter corresponds to a real shark in the real world.
Ships move in real-time, so don't expect any high-speed chases or such; but if you're into shark tracking, or marine biology in general, this is a game for you.
Doppelganger is the group behind MTV's vLES, and their starter-mini-vw, Music Lounge (more like 3D chat really, considering the size); they're about to rebrand their enging to become vSide. They're going straight for the virtual reality thing, with urban environments and embedded adverts. On talking up vLes:
"We wanted to base it on a real world city because that's the environment the average user is familiar with," said founder Andrew Littlefield. "And it gave us an opportunity to insert advertisements."
In a real-world environment, like Times Square, it just makes sense to include the type of billboard advertising that's been largely unsuccessful in Second Life.
"In a focus group, 90% of teens preferred commercial-rich environments because they felt it was more real," Littlefield said.
Plus by having a much smaller footprint of a world, they presumably have a more dense population. While it can often be rare to see other users in Second Life, the Music Lounge has 150K registered users (how many active?) in a space the size of a virtual club. A large one, but a club nonetheless.
We'll probably see a few more years of these worlds and spaces popping up, but at some point they'll have to start differentiating themselves from the basic avatar-purchases-gear model. It'll be interesting to see what sort of things get built in.
I predict cars, first.
Lauren created the first level of Super Mario in cross-stitch needlepoint (sorry, duh), and blogged it over at Crafty Crafty.
Look at all the work that went into stitching the blue..
ComicCon! Almost-naked Leia chicks! More Jedi than you can shake a bright-green-painted stick at. And Gabe and Tycho...!
Also, a new Wonderland comic, also with a red-and-green logo. It's the in thing, you know.
Not to be outdone by that skinny android Barbie, the Bratz are also launching a virtual world. Unlike Barbiegirls.com, Be-Bratz will be accessible only via the purchase of a special doll.
In Be-Bratz, users will be able to choose a screen name and customize a Bratz avatar. They'll also have the opportunity to buy virtual clothes through an online store with currency earned by playing Bratz games.
Oh the originality!
Neither company would told [sic] the Journal the costs of the platforms, but both invested in two-year research and development time lines, in-house design operations, outside programmers, and focus groups.
Now THAT'S interesting.
Just don't, whatever you do, wear them at the same time.
Thanks to Robert and Popgadget for those two.
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