IGDA Chicago - Meeting Report

Meeting Report

Wireless and Online Gaming with Cybiko and Butterfly.net

January 28, 2003

by Carrie Gale

Have you seen Sprint or Verizon's prime time TV commercials touting wireless cell phone games? Handset technology is quickly expanding with high res TFT screens and speedy processors delivering quality game experiences. With over 140 million cell phone users in the USA, it's clear there is a huge opportunity to find new gamers, and these telco's are all expanding their product offerings.

Donald Wisniewski, President, and Rich Dombeck, Director of Graphics, from Cybiko Wireless, one of the nations leading wireless game developers, will talk about the expanding opportunities in the cell phone gaming market. Cybiko has launched over 55 games for THQ, Sega, Midway, Sony and others. They are credited with the first 3D racing game, and their products have been embedded on Motorola, Nokia, Sanyo, Hatachi, and Samsung phones.

David Levine, CEO and President of Butterfly.net, a development studio and technology infrastructure provider for massively-multiplayer online PC, console and mobile games, will be discussing ways to use open source and publicly available technologies, such as the Globus Toolkit, Linux and Python to create impressive, extensible online game environments for the PC, PS2 and mobile devices. Butterfly.net is the developer for the first computing grid for Massively-Multiplayer Online Games, which millions of gamers worldwide use to face challenges together in real-time, immersive 3D worlds.

David Levine has over 15 years experience in the Internet and entertainment industries. Previous entrepreneurial endeavors included the creation of Ultraprise Corporation, the leading business-to-business exchange for the financial services industry and Co-Founder of HuskyLabs, Inc., which offered Internet software infrastructure, integration and security services for such customers as BellSouth, The Coca-Cola Company and Times Mirror. He has established himself as an early Internet leader, by participating as a presenter and panelist in landmark events such as the FirstInternational Conference on the World Wide Web at CERN Particle Physics Lab, the first business on the Internet panel at Comdex, and lecturing on Java and streaming media at Internet World between 1995 and 1997. He wrote one of the first books on the Java programming language, Live Java, Database to Cyberspace and was the keynote speaker at the first NASA Java Day in Cape Canaveral.

In addition to his interest in technology, Mr. Levine has been an active essayist, poet and songwriter. He recorded four CDs for European music labels, produced a video for MTV and toured extensively in the US, Canada and Europe. He has received grants to pursue these interests from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, NCR and Shell Oil. David earned a BA in Philosophy from Yale University and was a Rackham Memorial Fellow in Poetry at the University of Michigan.



		Meeting Report Wireless and Online Gaming with Cybiko and Butterfly.net January 28, 2003 by Carrie Gale Have you seen Sprint or Verizon's prime time TV commercials touting wireless cell phone games? Handset technology is quickly expanding with high res TFT screens and speedy processors delivering quality game experiences. With over 140 million cell phone users in the USA, it's clear there is a huge opportunity to find new gamers, and these telco's are all expanding their product offerings. Donald Wisniewski, President, and Rich Dombeck, Director of Graphics, from Cybiko Wireless, one of the nations leading wireless game developers, will talk about the expanding opportunities in the cell phone gaming market. Cybiko has launched over 55 games for THQ, Sega, Midway, Sony and others. They are credited with the first 3D racing game, and their products have been embedded on Motorola, Nokia, Sanyo, Hatachi, and Samsung phones. David Levine, CEO and President of Butterfly.net, a development studio and technology infrastructure provider for massively-multiplayer online PC, console and mobile games, will be discussing ways to use open source and publicly available technologies, such as the Globus Toolkit, Linux and Python to create impressive, extensible online game environments for the PC, PS2 and mobile devices. Butterfly.net is the developer for the first computing grid for Massively-Multiplayer Online Games, which millions of gamers worldwide use to face challenges together in real-time, immersive 3D worlds. David Levine has over 15 years experience in the Internet and entertainment industries. Previous entrepreneurial endeavors included the creation of Ultraprise Corporation, the leading business-to-business exchange for the financial services industry and Co-Founder of HuskyLabs, Inc., which offered Internet software infrastructure, integration and security services for such customers as BellSouth, The Coca-Cola Company and Times Mirror. He has established himself as an early Internet leader, by participating as a presenter and panelist in landmark events such as the FirstInternational Conference on the World Wide Web at CERN Particle Physics Lab, the first business on the Internet panel at Comdex, and lecturing on Java and streaming media at Internet World between 1995 and 1997. He wrote one of the first books on the Java programming language, Live Java, Database to Cyberspace and was the keynote speaker at the first NASA Java Day in Cape Canaveral. In addition to his interest in technology, Mr. Levine has been an active essayist, poet and songwriter. He recorded four CDs for European music labels, produced a video for MTV and toured extensively in the US, Canada and Europe. He has received grants to pursue these interests from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, NCR and Shell Oil. David earned a BA in Philosophy from Yale University and was a Rackham Memorial Fellow in Poetry at the University of Michigan.