ARISE the sleeping dragon!

The latest video game, Broken Sword - The Sleeping Dragon, devised by Revolution Software, the world-renowned York multimedia venture, will be launched this week .at SightSonics, York's four-day international festival of digital arts

A talk by Charles Cecil, Revolution Software's managing director, about how the epic video game was created, including its first-ever public viewing, will take place at 5.30pm in York City Screen on Thursday.

The Revolution Software team, responsible for devising the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game software, combined classical arts techniques, cinematography and interactive audio in the £2 million gothic narrative development, which is due for release on PC, PlayStation3 and Xbox, on November 14.

This will be the third in the Broken Sword trilogy produced by the company, with the two previous storylines selling more than a more than a million discs each for a total of 100 million dollars. "We hope this version will outperform the previous two," said Mr Cecil.

In this latest version George and Nico return to fight through the steaming jungles of the Congo, eerie castles in Prague, the chic back-streets of Paris and the historic village of Glastonbury to unravel the secrets of the Sleeping Dragon and save mankind from global catastrophe.

SightSonic, whose backers include the Arts Council Yorkshire, City of York Council and Science City York, takes place in 11 venues across the City between Thursday and Sunday, featuring 37 events from comedy and theatre to art and education.

The festival kicks off with digi.biz, a five-hour event organised by Science City York at the Novotel, York, starting at noon on Thursday.

High-tech businesses all over the city will display their expertise in a bid to excite would-be new media and digital arts entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into reality during workshop sessions.

These will be held by Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi of London-based design business Dixon Baxi; Richard Morrice of York marketing and communications company The Morrice Partnership; Keith Evans of the Creative Industries Development Agency (CIDA) which covers Yorkshire; and Charles Walker and Russell Turner from Protechnica, the consortium of high tech York professional services.

Updated: 08:56 Tuesday, October 14, 2003