The next speaker geeking up UC Irvine's Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds this evening is a renaissance man when it comes to gaming, Internet start-ups, mobile platforms, online reality television and using casual games to reduce memory loss. He's Brent Bushnell, the engineer and entrepreneur who founded mobile platform Dopplegames, game maker Anti-Aging Games and content creator Syyn Labs, and also appeared on camera as the inventor on the online add-on “Home Edition” of ABC's Extreme Makeover.
]
During the 2011-12 Speaker Series event from 5 to 7 p.m. in 6011 Donald Bren Hall, Bushnell addresses “Opportunitites in Immersive Gaming,” which the center decribes thusly:
A trend in entertainment and particularly in video games has been to increase the immersion of the user in a given environment. Guitar Hero, Wii and Kinect all helped engage players in increasingly natural ways but still required play in front of a stationary display. The plummeting price of sensors and hardware coupled with the proliferation of mobile devices opens up new opportunities for immersive gaming that is literally everywhere. Disney EPCOT's Kim Possible adventure, MagiQuest, and Red Robot Labs are scratching at the surface of an entertainment revolution that was once only in the realm of science fiction. In this talk Brent will survey past approaches to this entertainment style and discuss some current available opportunities.
Speaking of Disney, that's one of the companies that has retained Bushnell's Syyn Labs creative collective, as has Google and Sears. Find out more about him at brentbushnell.com and @brentbushnell. If you want to hear him speak tonight, it's free to attend, but you must RSVP at ve****@ic*.edu.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.