CreatureSphere important crack at edu-tainment market for Collideascope

Halifax-based Collideascope Entertainment is branching out into edutainment with an original interactive property on ecology it hopes to begin selling internationally early next year. The company is in the last stages of completing CreatureSphere before testing and hammering out distribution and content aggregator deals to put the innovative new concept in the hands of schoolchildren.The project will teach children online about such ecological concepts as the food chain and adaptation. The $242,000-project is being funded by the federal and Nova Scotia governments, as well as the Banff Centre for the Arts (see sidebar). Collideascope will retain ownership of the property, which is rare in the current new media production sector in this country.Collideascope VP production Mark Campbell tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the site is "70 per cent finished," and should head into two months of testing soon. He plans a product launch in late February or early January. He says CreatureSphere (known as the Project Eco-Lab during the fundraising process) will be marketed to schools, museums and content aggregators such as high-speed Internet providers with the help of an as-yet-undisclosed international distributor.Campbell cites Aliant Telecom, AOL, Microsoft and CompuServe as high-speed Internet providers that each license content for the "walled gardens" in their home sites - content usually available exclusively to their subscribers and not the general public.He says there will likely be a basic version of the site posted for free use, but that it will be a stripped-down site compared to the content available to registered users.The site will feature a back-end database with some artificial intelligence built in that will allow children to piece together over 1,000 different animal parts to build a new creature that will be inserted into an online environment with other kids' own creations."It's kind of like Sim City meets Mr. Potato Head," Campbell says. CreatureSphere project fundingSourceType%BudgetBanff CentreEquity22%$54,275Canada New Media FundEquity50%$121,138NSFDCEquity21%$50,000Producer InvestmentEquity7%$16,863"You create this fictitious planet and then you cobble together animal parts to create your own original animal. Then you let your animal loose on CreatureSphere, which is the planet. Your creature interacts with other creatures that other kids from around the country or from around the world let go and then they evolve together. You get reports back on how your creature is evolving based on the different experiences that it's having."The site will also incorporate encyclopedia references related to ecology and evolution from Microsoft's Encarta.While the "edu-tainment" label has been described as the kiss-of-death by some observers because of its negative connotations for children, Campbell says the market is healthy. "We think it's pretty good, actually, and we've had some positive feedback. I know (president Steve Comeau) has had some meetings in Toronto, not only with some of the distribution companies interested in repping this product, but also some of the major portals that would be interested in acquiring it."We don't have anything in place that we'd actually want in print right now, only because nothing has been signed," he says.In 2001, consulting firm IDC estimated the Canadian market for K-12 instructional technology was $4 billion, with growth pegged at 18 per cent. K-12 spending for online services was $143 million last year. The home edu-tainment market was expected to be $2 billion in 2000.

CreatureSphere important crack at edu-tainment market for Collideascope

News | 12/11/2002 5:00 am EST

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