If anyone has any thoughts on how we could pimp igfest, please do get in touch. And if you want to volunteer to help run the festival, please get in touch. And if you want to play – get your arse down to Bristol town centre on 11, 12 and 13 of September for some serious frivolous mental fun-ness. Over n out Cap’n.

This is all good news, considering the nature of the next Happy Packages release! We’re currently beavering away on our iPhone application which, funnily enough, revolves around location specific information, social network connectivity and even a little hint of gaming! Read the Happy Packages journal for updates, discussion, prototype launches etc

As an aside, Simon Games have been the talk of the festival with their Hat game, which was mentioned again by Alex Krotoski but in print this time – Thursday’s Technology Guardian. See Other articles here.

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5YbwfOucET8[/youtube]

They packaged the whole product to explore the lands completely through your browser, no need for a separate client application, just download a package (windows only) and install it to run in Internet Explorer or Firefox! A full 3D world in your browser to go explore, to read more about the product check out Lively.com but now read to open up thoughts on the wider aspects of Lively.

Offshoots

The package initially makes me wonder what kind of extra offshoots are going to start appearing from the ‘player’,  if I can embed parts of a digital world on my Facebook, blogs etc… it could mean having a window into a virtual world at all times.

Imagine this, you pulling up to your mate’s Facebook Profile in the evening and see in one of their application panel (past the Zombies, FriendWall etc…) a world which is moving, viewed like a quick web-cam following their avatar running around in a space chatting to some mates and doing silly stuff.

All you’d have to do is click, and go join them in their digital escapades. Suddenly with the whole application being viewable in a browser player, we can start crossing over to these spaces quickly.

The links with their Open Social (if Facebook joined!) are blindingly relative too, now the oppurtunity for another world to start integrating with our flat faced Social web-sites is apparent. Let’s wait till it becomes institutionalised like the Social Networking sites (facebook, bebo, myspace), then I’ll eat my digital hat.

Got the time?

However this does bring up some valid arguments for it’s use, what are going to be doing in that world? Just hanging out?

Is there really time in our lives to spend sitting in-front of our computers pretending to be in another world? Personally I’m busy enough with singing in the evenings, spending time at the Pervasive media studio looking at new technologies like ‘Multiple phone calling’ and sleeping! Possibly in the long term we’ll find it’ll be used a bit more in the Winter when people are staying in getting a bit bored and cold, but for now I’m struggling where to fit it onto my diary on a social level.

Why everyone can play there

I suppose the most exciting part about the whole Lively release is the brand it’s released under, Google.

In itself, Google represents a tool who is primarily accessible to any sex, race, class or age and most people use it daily. In turn, the same feelings will be passed with those who discover Lively. Suddenly we’ve got a 3D world who’s only barriers to entry are, “do you have a browser & do you know who Google are?”. Not much is it.

This means for those normal people who’ve read odd extracts in the papers about Second Life/ World of Warcraft and imagining it’s “something only for geeks” will now have a new social network where they can join in on the 3D avatar based fun and not feel so out their comfort zone. It’s Google, not Dungeons and Dragons!

Gaming

As we’re in the same space with Simon, we have Gaming on our minds quite frequently and it’s sparked another notion, “with the platform being so open to any everyone, is there a market for the biggest MMORG ever?”.

Already there’s links games like Fight Club, but imagine if the Lively platform opened up an API for huge rooms, then companies would start being able to produce Mass Multiplayer Online Role Play Games on the pre-built open platform.

They wouldn’t have any distribution, server load, login worries, all they’d have to do is program the game interface, rules etc… and there’d be barely any bigger technical issues to deal with.

Phew

I’m a bit excited by it all and most of my thoughts are widely speculive, but often with Google, things seem to go that way. All I have to do now is wait for them to release it on mac…