Participants will develop, in teams, presentations for
an interactive narrative product which is then discussed and evaluated by the entire plenum.
The training is aiming in the first place at professionals
(developers, writers, producers, designers, programmers, artists, researchers...) coming from MEDIA member countries. Applicants coming from other countries please contact the sagas office for details.
There is a limited budget available for scholarships (participation fee, travel and/or hotel funding. In case you need to apply for this please make sure to contact the sagasnet office before February 20.
sagasnet is a non-profit vocational training initiative in the frame of the MEDIA Plus Programme of the EU and is aiming at furthering innovative story-based content creation for interactive media.
More details and application forms available at <www.sagas.de>
BIO__Greg Roach
Greg Roach, M.F.A., is the CEO and Artistic Director of HyperBole Studios, which he founded in 1990. For nearly fifteen years Roach has been recognized as a worldwide leader in the field of interactive film, video and storytelling. His company, HyperBole Studios, explores interactive multimedia as a new artistic and cinematic form. In 1990, Roach´s first effort was the creation of an online, interactive digizine - years ahead of the internet explosion. During the two years he published HyperBole magazine, he designed, wrote and produced the world's first interactive, multimedia novel. The Madness of Roland, one of the first non-reference CD-ROM's, which was published to great acclaim. The New York Times called the effort "stunningly beautiful." While finishing work on Roland, Greg also wrote, produced and directed a short interactive film called The Wrong Side of Town, a work that the American Film Institute considers to be the "first interactive narrative film." With these two milestones under his belt, Greg began work on Quantum Gate, the industry's first full-length interactive movie, and the first product to use his newly conceived VirtualCinema technology. Quantum Gate solidified
Roach's reputation as both a talented writer/director and a visionary technologist and designer. His first six years in business culminated when Fox approached him and asked him to helm the much sought after X-Files game.. After receiving a ten-page story outline from Fox, Greg created the design (1000+ pages), wrote the shooting script (250 pages), directed a 2-month location shoot and oversaw the entire editing and post process. Upon its release The X-Files Game exceeded all expectations, premiering at number one in nearly every territory where it was released, and going on to sell over a million copies worldwide. Currently he is primarily focused on the DVD and wireless platforms. The ROM applications which he designed for "The Terminator 2: Extreme" DVD won an IRMA award for best DVD ROM. He is currently working on several DVD and wireless projects for major publishers. Recently, he presented a paper entitled "Imagine Places: Distributed Telepresence Installations for Creating Immersive Historical Reconstructions" at the UNESCO "World Heritage in the Digital Age" conference held in Alexandria, Egypt
BIO__Dave Szulborski
Dave Szulborski has created, developed, or worked on some of the most successful and critically acclaimed Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) of all time, both independent and professional, including Audi's Art of the Heist, Chasing The Wish, and Urban Hunt. The Art of the Heist campaign, widely acclaimed as one of the most innovative marketing efforts of the year, received several prestigious awards, including the coveted "Best in Show" title at the 2005 MIXX Awards. A pioneer of this new and rapidly expanding genre of online entertainment and marketing, Dave created the very first independent alternate reality game in 2001, while entertainment giants Microsoft and Electronics Arts were just beginning to experiment with the medium. Dave is also the author of "This Is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming," the first published comprehensive look at the history, philosophy, and art of creating ARGs, as well as a followup book about the genre entitled, "Through the Rabbit Hole: A Beginner's Guide to Playing Alternate Reality Games."