Philip Rosedale, Second Life

Living a Second Life as an Avatar

Philip Rosedale, CEO of LInden Lab and creator of Second Life, a public virtual-reality space where people live a parallel existence as avatars, said his users enjoy "this tremendous sense that they are collectively building a new world. When you do something like a charity event in Second Life, people are really engaged...charitable organizations are realizing a higher dollars per return on their event than in the real world."

View Rosedale's video from the IDEA conference:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid1726720187

Spore's User Generated Universe

This "Creativity" article explores how Electronic Arts' new game "Spore" puts creativity in the hands of gamers.

"Spore is essentially a series of editors, the first of which, Creature Creator, was released in June on the Spore website. With these editors, gamers can create organisms and direct their evolution from single cell to full-on creatures. But that's just the beginning. Once a species has been born, players can help them evolve from primitive beginnings, all the way to space explorers. If someone wants to dominate the universe, he can build a space armada and blow up planets. But peaceful exploration is also possible. Gamers can also just spend all of their time making creatures, which are then uploaded into the Spore universe. Players can use their creations, or ready-made designs that ship with the game, or browse the myriad community-created entities in an online database, Sporepedia."

To read the entire article which includes an interview with Spore's creator, Will Wright, who also developed the popular Sims, go to Creativity Online by clicking below:

http://creativity-online.com/?action=news:article&newsId=131036