In the most recent step toward the conversational agent takeover (a conversonator apocalypse), the new video game Bot Colony by Montreal-based North Side is nearing completion. The game’s website promises “Unrestricted conversation in English between players and characters.” WRT took some time out from rearing our own chatbots for some unrestricted conversation with Bot Colony chief designer, Eugene Joseph.

[updated 6/1/09]

Introducing PeoplePaper:
Last spring, Holly Willis and the Institute for Multimedia Literacy hosted the 24/7 DIY Video Summit. (See the newly relaunched web-page here, complete with videos and much much more.) here’s a project that invited you to DIY using the participants of that summit! Don’t just cite media critics, make them say what […]

WRT has it on good authority (the authors’) that Chris Crawford, collaborating with Laura J. Mixon, is readying the full launch of an interactive story-authoring system almost 20 years in the making. Introducing “SWAT” (Storyworld Authoring Tool) and Storyteller (the software for playing a SWAT Storyworld). Crawford first took on this epic quest […]

Carolyn Miller who literally wrote the book on “Digital Storytelling” is delivering a talk at USC on the origins of this class of lit.
Here’s the info:

Carolyn Miller: DIGGING FOR THE ROOTS OF INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING
12:30 pm, Wed. Feb 18
Cinematic Arts Building (SCA) 112
University of Southern California
Free and open to the public
A talk by Carolyn Handler Miller
[…]

A few years ago, we blogged about the movie-making tool built into Activision’s Sim-Tycoon video Game The Movies. It had proved an easy-to-use and powerful tool for creating the machinima “22 Short Films about Grammar.” Now it seems an even easier-to-use movie-making film is coming to a web browser near you.
Enter Xtranormal, an […]