October 16, 2003
Booth: Braided Matrix featuring 4D: the Game
I dropped by the Braided Matrix booth to look in on Lincoln Stoller, and discovered that he had Brendan Coveney and Dave Dell'Aquila visiting.
Dave Dell'Aquila (left), Brendan Coveney, and Lincoln Stoller pose in front of the Braided Matrix booth.
Braided Matrix had made many interesting improvements to their 4th Quarter accounting software since I'd last seen it, but by far the most amusing thing in the booth was 4D: the Game. Lincoln had taken a game based on the Lord of the Rings and re-purposed it toward 4D. The goal of the game was to take 4D from Paris to the Fortune 100, with main playing pieces Laurent Ribardière and Brendan Coveney facing such opposing pieces as Bill Gates, FileMaker, MS SQL, and Britney Spears (whose sole purpose appeared to be being conquered by Laurent's game piece).
4D, the Game: overview
4D, the Game: detail
Pieces included: Oracle, .NET, Server Attack, Virus, FileMaker, MS SQL, Britney Spears, Bill Gates, and DB2 on the dark side. The light side pieces include: W3C, 4D, Laurent, 4D Connectivity (which, oddly, has zero strength), 4th Quarter (with strength four, naturally), Steve Jobs, Deep Sky, Brendan, and WebSTAR.
Playing pieces moved from Paris through 4D University, 4D Summit, Comdex, Info World, Mac World, Culture, Market Awareness, Sales, Money, De Facto Standard, ISO Standard, US Government Adoption, International Dominance, and North American Dominance on their path to Fortune 100.
Several cards made the play more interesting. On the dark side, there were Outside Investor, Vaporware, and Market Manipulation that subtracted points from the light side pieces. On the light side, White Knight, Obsolete Technology, New OS Released, and New Version added points.
Very clever, Lincoln!
[Ed.: Check the Braided Matrix press release for more information.]
Posted by bryan at October 16, 2003 09:54 AM