Siggraph 2007: immersing your audience within a gaming tournament
Siggraph, as always, presented a number of gems within the cathedral-like show floor. The event, dedicated to the great and good of innovative digital visualisation, revealed a number of innovators, lurking around the corner of all the graphics card companies. One such company is Gamecaster. A multi-disciplined set of experiential deliverables all based on the application of traditional broadcast techniques to the virtual world of online gaming. It is now possible to dispatch a multi-camera crew of seasoned professionals, normally used to pointing their tripod mounted cameras at NFL players or Britney and her dancers, and in almost a Fantastic Voyage way, send them inside the games themselves. Gallery directors can call shots to cameras that move inside the gameplay space, with the operator using the same camera-style set up they would use at Dodgers Stadium, or Roland Garros. It takes a moment to get the value of such coverage, but seeing how Gamecaster now not only cover games from within, but have become part of the tournament organising wave as well, provides for the true combination of technology innovators who make their content happen.