Digital Career Building

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are computer- and Internet-based "games" (sometimes they're not games at all in a traditional competitive sense) that create virtual environments and self-contained, fully elaborated worlds. The games usually feature an interactive, real-time narrative that involves multiple participants directly with characters, and the action unfolds as a result of participants' responses to challenges and puzzles. Participants often form a community of sorts to play the game, coming to strategic decisions and coordinating their responses and actions in the virtual world through media of the actual world, such as telephone, email, snail mail, and the Internet. This book introduces readers to the dazzlingly elaborate, intricate, and wildly imaginative world of ARGs and shows how a career can be forged out of a form of "play" that is both serious and entertaining, ingenious and imaginative, fun and profitable.

A mashup is a Web site or application that combines content from multiple sources. This book teaches young people how to combine the technologies of Web music, video and software to create their own applications and how to use their talents in pursuing a career.

Skinning and modding allow individual users to alter commercial computer software. These skills are typically used to create or modify objects or characters in a game setting. In Career Building through Skinning and Modding, readers learn that their skinning and modding skills are not only gaming skills but also career skills they can potentially ply in the digital marketplace.

The digital technology skills that teenagers are developing as hobbies can turn into professional opportunities. Today's culture is being enlarged and redefined by digital technologies. Among them are digital sampling and remixing, in which musical artists sample and remix existing materials as core components of their own work. Career Building Through Digital Sampling and Remixing explores the phenomenon and success of digital media in and of itself, as well as how the teen reader may expand upon his or her particular digital skills and use them as a foundation for a career.

Fan fiction writing has been around for centuries, but has only just recently become a viable career option. Fans of some of the most popular works of fiction have been published or have found their own level of fame as authors for writing supplemental stories or novels as a tribute to their favorite work.

Machinima, meaning "machine cinema," is the technology of using computers to create cinematic features. This book teaches readers, who may be hobbyists in the art, how to use their talents to produce lifelong careers from what they love.