Yes, the official launch is finally upon us!

Join us at the State Library of Queensland: 6pm, December 5th 2008.

The crew behind CipherCities will be presenting the new look and wonderful features of CipherCities and how you can become a Cipher Citizen. There will be CipherCities games to play and to make… and we will reveal the first CipherCities International Game Competition.

The launch is part of the Game On Nights program at the State Library of Queensland
$21.50 Includes entry to the Game On exhibition, demos, live bands, DJs and a cash bar.
Get Your QPIX Tickets Here!

Special Guest Presenter- CARYL SHAW, Producer of SPORE

Caryl is the Pollinated Content Producer for SPORE… designing and developing the ingame, behind-the-scenes content sharing features.
“Spore is a multi-genre massive single-player online metaverse video game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.” Thanks wikipedia!
“Just after the Creature creator launch, we had an influx of uploaded creations. This cumulative look at the rate of asset upload shows an explosion just after the launch of the core game. We’re now at forty five million and counting!”

And to commemorate this momentous occasion we’ve invited a panel of game experts to join Caryl in discussing:

• Designing for and managing user content creation
• Creating community around user content creation
• New business models and strategies

Presenter Information

Caryl Shaw, Producer of SPORE
With over 12 years of experience building online communities, Caryl most recently managed the websites for The Sims and Simcity before creating and launching the website for The Sims 2. Her current project is Spore, where she is the Pollinated Content Producer - designing and developing the ingame, behind-the-scenes content sharing features. Prior to working at Maxis, Caryl was on the launch team for PlanetOut and then worked at HotWired - the online arm of Wired Magazine. Working with communities that centre around content creation has shown Caryl that given the chance users will make creative choices that push the original game design into new and interesting directions. And that game developers can apply the learnings from those emergent behaviours to make better games.

Chad Chetterton - World Designer, Funcom (Oslo)
Chad is currently the World Designer for Funcom in Oslo, makers of ‘Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures’ a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO). Before then Chad was one of the founders of the acmi{{park}} project which is being developed for the ACMI at Federation Square by selectparks. He was the game co-designer, world modeller and mapper. Chad graduated with a B.A. in Japanese Studies and Art History in 1991. He followed up these studies with a B.F.A. in painting from the V.C.A. He has been exhibiting since 1996 and has also written for Art and Text and Like Art Magazine. He was also the recipient of the Australia Council Tokyo Studio in 2002. Chad hopes to further critically engage with online gaming and virtual place-making, highlighting its important function in contemporary culture.

Helen Stuckey is curator of the Games Lab at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
At ACMI Helen initiated and project managed the ground breaking virtual place acmipark (2003), created by Australian artists and game developers SelectParks. Previously, Helen was the inaugural Interactive Screen Arts (ISA) Program Manager for the Digital Media Fund, Film Victoria. She has curated several major new media exhibitions including Experimenta House of Tomorrow with Shiralee Saul and Liz Hughes (2004) and Altered States for Interact Multimedia Festival with Shiralee Saul (1997).

Debra Polson – Founder, Newish Media and Research Fellow, QUT/ACID
Deb Polson is an independent designer (Newish Media) and academic (QUT/ACID) focusing on exploiting unique aspects of digital games and creative social networks to create mixed reality game events and game authoring tools. Recently Deb has conceived and produced a number of successful innovative projects such as SCOOT, CipherCities, Milk, and SCAPE. They are explicit interventions in real and virtual spaces that connect mobile, web and public display systems and interfaces to demonstrate the value of games that can re-enchant our relationship to place and each other, near and far.

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