DIGITAL MEDIA EVENTS Video Games 1.0 Video Blog Explosion Video Games 1.0 Saturday, April 22, 3:00 - 5:30 p.m Father of the Home Video Game Ralph Baer in person In the 1960s, engineer Ralph Baer created an electronic game with a standard television set and inexpensive hardware. His invention became the Magnavox Odyssey TV Game (1972), the first publicly available home video game. He invented electronic ping-pong—the basis of Pong—and has developed many digital toys. This year, Baer, now 83, was awarded the prestigious National Medal of Technology. He will discuss his career in a conversation with Carl Goodman, the Museum’s Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media. Game Design: Forward into the Past Eugene Jarvis, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Zimmerman in person. Moderated by Keith Feinstein Leading designers will present arcade and home games in a discussion moderated by Keith Feinstein, founder and curator of Videotopia, a video game collection and exhibition. Special guests include Eugene Jarvis, designer of the seminal 1980s arcade games Defender and Robotron: 2084; Greg Costikyan, founder of Manifesto Games, which is creating an online distribution channel for independent games; and Eric Zimmerman, CEO of Gamelab and co-author of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. A reception, sponsored by Rockstar Games, in honor of Ralph Baer follows the program. Special Preview Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis for Xbox 360 Saturday and Sunday, April 22 and 23 Nam June Paik Room (located on the 3rd floor) Compete head-to-head in an intense and graphically sophisticated simulation of professional table tennis and get to play the game on 50-inch HD Plasma screens. Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis will be released May 23, 2006.   The Museum gratefully acknowledges Rockstar Games for its generous support of Video Games 1.0 and the reception in Ralph Baer’s honor that follows the program. Video Blog Explosion Andrew Michael Baron, Amanda Congdon (Rocketboom), Ravi Jain (Drivetime), and Jakob Lodwick (Vimeo) in person Sunday, April 23, 4:00 p.m. Video blogs are journal-style websites containing downloadable home-made video clips. “Vlogging” is one of the most interesting and rapidly growing new forms of moving image production and distribution. Andrew Michael Baron and Amanda Congdon’s newscast Rocketboom, produced for $25 a day in Baron’s apartment, has more than 100,000 viewers. Ravi Jain’s Drivetime is a weekly talk show taped in Jain’s car during his one-hour commute to and from metropolitan Boston. Lodwick’s Vimeo is a popular site for uploading and sharing video clips. The panel will be moderated by Tim Schwartz, Assistant Curator of Digital Media.