http://blog.ciphercities.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/launch_web.jpg

CipherCities will be launched on December 5 in conjunction with the Queensland State Library’s Game On Exhibition. It will be a huge night with the launch of CipherCities, talks by Caryl Shaw and Australian games experts, and late night entry to the Game On exhibition.

CipherCities is a place to play, build and share mobile adventures in your own neighbourhood. Play games made by others using your mobile's web browser or via SMS, or get creative and build your own games using the simple game builder. You can lead your players into the new and unknown, tell a story, bury that treasure, plant clues and objects in secret locations, create your own game media, or design ciphers and code breaking challenges. With CipherCities it is easy to share your mobile adventures by inviting your friends or publishing them for the world to play.

Caryl Shaw is a producer at Maxis. With over 12 years of experience building online communities. Caryl’s current project is SPORE, where she is the Pollinated Content Producer - designing and developing the ingame, behind-the-scenes content sharing features. Previously Caryl has managed the websites for The Sims and Simcity before creating and launching the website for The Sims 2.

Joining Caryl Shaw at the Launch to tell stories and share some unique insights into game play and design will be games experts;

• Chad Chatterton, world designer at Funcom (Oslo)


• Helen Stuckey, curator Games Lab ACMI (Melbourne)


• John Passfield, creative director of Pandemic Studios (Brisbane)


• Debra Polson, founder, Newish Media and Research Fellow QUT/ACID


• Sal Humpfreys, research fellow at QUT


• John Banks, research Fellow at QUT

The team behind CipherCities are experienced designers of mobile adventure games, having designed game events for festivals, cultural sites and universities around the country.

“We built CipherCities so that anybody, anywhere could build their own mobile games and publish them for others to play. We design everyday tools for everyday people. You don’t need any specialised technology to use CipherCities, just your mobile phone.”

CipherCities is supported by The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID)

The CipherCities launch is part of the Game On Nights program - Friday, December 5, 6pm – 10pm, State Library of Queensland. Tickets, $21.50. Includes entry to the Game On exhibition, demos, live bands, DJs and a cash bar. For bookings visit QTIX or call 136 246.

For updates and more information visit http://blog.ciphercities.com/launch/

Just a little background. I'm part of the small team involved in CipherCities and we're all independent game and web developers as well as QUT graduates and researchers. CipherCities is/was an ACID research project that we're hoping to grow beyond something that no one ever sees again after the funding dries up. As such we're going to put our own personal resources into it and give it a fair go.

As a long time forum user/lurker I thought you all may be interested. The Game On forum thread came at quite a relevant time. If you're thinking about going to the exhibition (it's pretty cool) perhaps consider coming this night. It's only $3.50 more than the usual price. ;)

Finally, thanks trog for giving this the green light!

last edited by treeoflife at 15:26:40 01/Dec/08