Parking Wars: the game is an advergaming for the upcoming A&E television series Parking Wars about metermaids and parking reinforcements (!) ; the game is a Facebook application to promote the show, in which you have to put cars in your friends’ streets and if the cars stay long enough they start earning money - as Ian Bogost points out, this structure really takes advantage of the social network structure, and, I might add, it adds a whole new dimension to the cross media product. When are we going to see content creation through Facebook applications? I mean, micro-content adding up to some story universe? Has it been done already?/news courtesy of Water Cooler Games

A new version of Freedom Fighter ‘56 game, educational game based on the Hungarian Revolution, includes a graphic novel based on the game’s story. The publisher is Lauer Learning, although I think the creative work is by The Inspiracy. The books “56 stories” contains 56 personal recollections of the Hungarian Revolution, with original photographs, sketches, an original map, timeline, and glossary.I wish I had these sort of things at school…

A book to be printed out from contributions of MySpace users is already something completely new, but what is best about it is that the topic is, again, environment (could it be that we are all, finally, getting rightfully scared about it?). On MySpace/OurPlanet you can write your thoughts about environment, learn a lot about ecology, meet other ecologists, feel like an activist without actually being one, AND you can have your reflections, from a sentence to a paragraph, published in a book, credited to your username and geographic location.I wonder how many other books are going to be prepared this way. The pivotal “First Person”, edited by Noah Waldrup-Fruin and Pat Carrigan, I remember was born on the website of the Electronic Book, and benefitted from online comments that were included at the bottom of the pages in the printed books.In a previous post I mentioned how one of the models for future journalism is collective writing organized by a “moderator”, who will take the place of the traditional journalist; many essays and scientific writings already feature several different authors.Social networks are making young people used to express themselves in a social context, although this seems contradictory with the blog (solitary writing) being the main expression form on the internet.In this scenario, what are the odds for collective writing to become an official form of writing?/news courtesy of Angela Thomas

The video and audio podcasts from Future of Entertainment 2 (MIT Comparative Media Studies and Convergence Culture Consortium) are available.Scheduled speakers include: Jesse Alexander (Heroes), Danny Bilson (The Rocketeer), Marc Davis (Yahoo!), Mark Deuze (Indiana U), Raph Koster (Areae), and Tina Wells (Buzz Marketing Group).

I am adding a new link, real wealth of information, about grassroots media productions, often bordering with media activism. It is not by chance that many of these productions or actions involve the use of different media, employ cross media storytelling or cross media distribution strategies.Their name is Produzioni Dal Basso (bottom-up productions), unfortunately only in Italian, I will try and translate all their posts regarding cross media productions.

Technorati Tags: media activism

During the Cross Media Storytelling conference I had the chance to learn more about LAMP, (Laboratory of Advanced Media Production), aimed to upgrade media professionals to cutting-edge production modes, which means of course cross media.As far as I know nothing like that is actually happening in Europe, except maybe the (internal) training at BBC 360°, the Immovator meetings in the Netherlands, which are not exactly training, and perhaps something within the Media program (the brilliant Sagas courses have been denied funding this year, let’s hope in the next one). I understand something in that direction is going to happen at the MEC centre in Mechelen, will post about it later on.Probably for this to happen in Europe we will need cross media to reach some sort of “official” status, which it still has not. Let’s wait and see..

Orphan of Christy Dena’s blog, who did all the dirty work of finding what was actually going on, and much more than that, I will have to post more about new cross media productions, in case somebody is actually reading this blog :)A new TV spin off ARG is seeing the light, here is one of the original posts in the Jericho community:Yes, that’s right! A Jericho alternate reality game! Betcha didn’t see that one coming! Or at least, I sure didn’t!A few days (maybe a week?) ago, some people in the fandom received an email which linked them to the ARG. Apparently, it’s been around for awhile or something, but right now, the morse code involved is being updated regularly with new clues.It pretty much set the CBS message boards on fire with speculation and excitement (does this mean they’re actually promoting our show?!).So, if anyone wants to play along, the main site is www.jenningsandrall.com. It’s also being followed closely and discussed on these threads on the CBS message boards: jenningsandrall and Black Hills Radio Broadcasts.Associated sites are www.sacredhatcasino.com, www.blackhillsradiocontrol.com, and I think there might be a fourth as well so if you want to play along, check out those sites and get involved! :)Also, the production blog was updated with photos of the cast walking the picket lines with the writers…you can check them out at www.jerichorises.com.I d follow it, but I am still too busy trying to keep up with Year Zero

Cross media as an academic topic is definitely gaining ground: a conference about Cross Media Storytelling is going to take place November 23-25 in Mechelen (half an hour from Brussels).

The program features many interesting scholars from around the world and an interesting angle between academic and professionals, addressing narrative issues from all sides.

Technorati Tags: conference, cross media

It was with great delight that I found one of my favorite graphic novel series, entitled “Les Cités Obscures” by Benoit Peeters and François Shuiten, being expanded into a cross media concept. Interactive maps on the web site allow visitors to navigate among stories from the graphic novels and to see animations conveying the same surrealist spirit of the drawings. I read on a newspaper there is a theatrical work also in the works, based on the “Obscure Cities”, but I couldn’t find any traces of it on the Internet - does anybody know about it?

Perhaps you knew about it already, I didn’t : during the Mediamatic workshop Fredrich Kirschner mentioned an episode of South Park happening in War of Warcraft, episode 1008 (episode 8 of the 10th season) to be specific; take a look at the teaser here and then FIND the episode and watch it, if you hadn’t before - awesome