An historic 12-day journey to space by legendary game developer and space explorer Richard Garriott will have its world premiere at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin. Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission, is set to blast off with two screenings at the 2010 conference. The first will be 1:30 pm on Sunday, March 14 at Austin’s Paramount Theater and the second will be Thursday, March 18, at 2:30, also at the Paramount.

Virtual Fairground (www.virtualfairground.com) and world famous DJ Ferry Corsten (www.ferrycorsten.com) have teamed up to develop Pulse (www.pulsethegame.com), a dance themed rhythm game for iPhone and PC digital distribution network Steam. On March 27th Pulse will be launched at the Winter Music Conference in Miami Beach, USA. Ferry Corsten has produced seven new music tracks exclusively for Pulse.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- Mark Rein was at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas for DICE 2010 to award the winners of the Intel $1 Million Make Something Unreal Contest with their prizes during a luncheon that officially kicked off the annual videogame conference. The grand prize winning mod team from Germany was awarded an Unreal Engine 3 commercial license in addition to a check for $50,000 for The Haunted, with runner-up winners receiving $40,000 for The Ball, $30,000 for Angels Fall First: Planetstorm, $20,000 for Prometheus and $10,000 for Hazard: The Journey of Life. Educational category winners also received a total of $25,000 in cash, for a grand total well in excess of $1 million in cash and prizes awarded through all phases of the competition.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- The winners of the inaugural Indie Game Challenge sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), GameStop, and The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University were announced tonight in Las Vegas following the conclusion of the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit at the Red Rock Resort & Casino.

At a luncheon co-sponsored with Intel at this week’s 2010 D.I.C.E. Summit (www.dicesummit.org) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Epic Games announced the grand prize winners in its $1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest. Designed to help independent and aspiring game developers learn Unreal Engine 3 technology and gain recognition for authoring high-quality game experiences, the competition rewards top modifications, or “mods,” created for Unreal Tournament 3 with cash and hardware prizes in four preliminary phases and a grand final judging.

After a two-year hiatus to travel to the International Space Station, work on a film documentary, ignite a personal rapid transit initiative, and wrap up post-flight experiments and speaking engagements, veteran game designer, Richard Garriott, is returning to the video game industry where he has been a fixture for more than 30 years – this time with a broad-based new social media company called Portalarium. Garriott is best known for his award-winning Ultima Series (ORIGIN/Electronic Arts) of fantasy role playing games and Ultima Online, the first commercially successful massively multiplayer online game released in 1997 and still operating today.