SUNCHEON, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 6, 2024--
Meta content company Y.GRAM has teamed up with the global Web3 metaverse platform The Sandbox to host the Numberland Game Jam centered around the upcoming EBS (Educational Broadcasting System)-aired meta animation IP, "Aeko and Friends."
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240805749972/en/
‘Aeko and Friends’ is a new type of educational meta animation where the world and characters of the math play animation ‘Aeko and Friends (Season 1, aired on EBS in 2019)’ IP are applied to the metaverse. Avatar players directly perform math game missions, such as number play, comparison, patterns, and classification, introducing gamification elements to make math learning enjoyable.
The Numberland Game Jam is a user-generated content (UGC) competition open to creators from The Sandbox. It is noteworthy as it represents the leading metaverse platform’s first local Game Jam in Korea. This event invites participants to use The Sandbox’s free 3D creation tools, VoxEdit and Game Maker, to create diverse metaverse game content based on the theme of "Aeko and Friends." Participants will create immersive metaverse content based on the world and story of "Aeko and Friends," to be featured in an upcoming EBS animation airing later this year. Submissions must be made online.
Registration for the Game Jam is open from August 1 to August 15, with submission dates from August 8 to August 29.
With a prize pool of 50,000 SAND, the Game Jam offers one of the largest rewards for a local event. Outstanding creators will receive a share of the 50,000 SAND prize pool, and non-winning entries may be considered for inclusion in Y.GRAM’s EBS animation and UGC content. Selected works might also be considered for publication in The Sandbox’s virtual world or as part of the EBS animation backdrop.
More details about the "Aeko and Friends" IP and the Numberland Game Jam theme can be found in the AMA (Ask Me Anything) video on The Sandbox’s official YouTube channel.
For further questions, join Y.GRAM’s official Discord. Real-time Q&A on Discord will be available from July 25 until August 30, 9 AM to 7 PM.
For more information, visit The Sandbox’s event page, Y.GRAM’s Discord, X (Twitter), or Medium channels.
Y.GRAM joins hands with The Sandbox to host ‘Aeko and Friends’ local Game Jam with 50000 SAND in Rewards (Image: Y.GRAM)
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — The last time Khadija Ahidid saw her son, he came to breakfast in 2021 looking “homeless” with big hair so she offered to give him $20 so he could go get a shave or a haircut that day. Hours later, he shot and killed 10 people at a supermarket in the college town of Boulder.
She saw Ahmad Alissa for the first time since then during his murder trial on Monday, saying repeatedly that her son, who was diagnosed after the shooting with schizophrenia, was sick. When one of Alissa’s lawyers, Kathryn Herold, was introducing her to the jury, Herold asked how she knew Alissa. Ahidid responded “How can I know him? He is sick,” she said through an Arabic interpreter in her first public comments about her son and the shooting.
Alissa, who emigrated from Syria with his family as a child, began acting strangely in 2019, believing he was being followed by the FBI, talking to himself and isolating from the rest of the family, Ahidid said. His condition declined after he got Covid several months before the shooting, she said, adding he also became “fat” and stopped showering as much.
There was no record of Alissa being treated for mental illness before the shooting. After the shooting, his family later reported that he had been acting in strange ways, like breaking a car key fob and putting tape over a laptop camera because he thought the devices were being used to track him. Some relatives thought he could be possessed by an evil spirit, or djinn, according to the defense.
No one, including Alissa’s lawyers, disputes he was the shooter. Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting. The defense says he should be found not guilty because he was legally insane and not able to tell the difference between right and wrong at the time of the shooting.
Prosecutors and forensic psychologists who evaluated him for the court say that, while mentally ill, Alissa knew what he was doing when he launched the attack. They point to the planning and research he did to prepare for it and his fear that he could end up in jail afterward to show that Alissa knew what he was doing was wrong.
Alissa mostly looked down as his mother testified and photographs of him as a happy toddler and a teenager at the beach were shown on screen. There was no obvious exchange between mother and son in court but Alissa dabbed his eyes with a tissue after she left.
The psychiatrist in charge of Alissa's treatment at the state mental hospital testified earlier in the day that Alissa refused to accept visitors during his over two year stay there.
When questioned by District Attorney Michael Dougherty, Ahidid said her son did not tell her what he was planning to do the day of the shooting.
She said she thought a large package containing a rifle that Alissa came home with shortly before the shooting may have been a piano.
“I swear to God we didn’t know what was inside that package,” she said.
Dougherty pointed out that she had told investigators soon after the shooting that she thought it could be a violin.
After being reminded of a previous statement to police, Ahidid acknowledged that she had heard a banging sound in the house and one of her other sons said that Alissa had a gun that had jammed. Alissa said he would return it, she testified.
She indicated that no one in the extended family that lived together in the home followed up to make sure, saying “everyone has their own job.”
“No one is free for anyone,” she said.
FILE - Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, accused of killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in March 2021, is led into a courtroom for a hearing, Sept. 7, 2021, in Boulder, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, Pool, File)
