A new online games site created by Fabrica: BENETTON PLAYS ON THE WEB

Ponzano, 4 April 2006. Benetton launches a new online multiplayer games site for anyone who wants to put their creative skills in animation, graphics or music to the test and share their work with an online community. Registering a username and email address gives access to the Benetton Toybox: a place open to all where people meet, play, communicate and get to know each other better. Benettonplay has been created by a young team of international designers and artists at Fabrica, the Benetton communication research centre in Italy. The site features four games, and new games will be added on a regular basis. FLIPBOOK Animation as a form of communication. Using their mouse, players trace an image sequence to build, figure by figure, little animated loops. The player can save the animation to the gallery and share it, vote on other animations or send them to friends to build up a creative community of countless little stories. Flipbook was recently awarded the Japanese Media Arts Festival Grand Prix for Entertainment in Tokyo. ODD ONE OUT A memory-boosting game requiring fast reflexes, Odd One Out is a seriously addictive experience. Players are challenged to pick out the non-identical element in a series of images in the shortest time possible. The aim is to beat all the other online players and make it to the top of the high score table. DOODLE Doodle is a collaborative graphical chat space. The player has a white square to draw in, just like the notepad that gets filled with doodles during a business meeting. Once your doodle is finished you place it on the page with all the other doodles from around the world. Doodles can be published in a grid updated in real time, creating an instant group of images. Players can also modify other players’ doodles, sharing little snapshots of creativity. ORBIT A musical game. The player chooses one of ten backing tracks, from pop to classical music, and an instrument, ranging from piano to sax and even recorded voices. Using the keyboard, players compose a piece which can be saved to the gallery and shared with other players or sent to a friend. A musical community that explores and shares music, creating a world-wide, real-time dialogue. For further information: www.benettongroup.com/press www.benettonplay.com www.fabrica.it