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October 31, 2007

Audi Campaign - It's Your Turn

audi.jpgA Spanish campaign for the new A3 that features a TV spot and an online game that goes with it. Good integration but there's just something missing, as far as the spot goes anyway. The game doesn't look half bad either but, if I'm to be critical, it isn't even half as entertaining as it could've been. Still, don't take my word for it, go and try it out yourself. Also, thumbs up for the integration!
via Adverblog

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Future-Making Serious Games Tackles Successful ARG Design

Serious Games removing cues to fictionality



Via: Cross-Media + Transmedia Entertainment - Why ARGs Aren’t Hoaxes and
Jeremy Vernon Blog – ARGs – Educational Tools
We Are Not Building A Game
We Are Building A Page Of Real Life

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Virtual Music Video Contest

mtvmachinima.jpgMTV and Metacafe are running a machinima contest. The rules are simple - pick a song from MTV's list, log in to any of their virtual worlds, capture some footage, edit it and upload it to Metacafe. (Link)


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Gaming vacations?
A great article over on Travelhacker about gaming vacations. I've taken the liberty to repost it below. Now, think about it, with travelagencies being the main victim of the consumers freedom to create his own travelplans on the Internet, the only way for them to survive is to specialise. At the same time, gaming and gamers are moving from sub-culture to mainstream.
When will we see the first GamerTravel Inc agencies?

By Jessica Hupp

You may be content to hole up in your gaming lair at home most days, but even a game geek gets the urge to hit the road every now and then. There are plenty of drool-worthy vacation destinations for gamers, ranging from cheap electronic districts to conventions and tournaments. Check out this list for some of the best vacations spots a gamer can dream of.

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October 30, 2007

Ben Sawyer Debunks Ten Myths About Serious Games
Via: The Escapist Magazine

Ben Sawyer, co-founder of Digitalmill, also co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative, and the Games for Health Project, has just published a superb article via The Escapist: Ten Myths About Serious Games.

As he states upfront, "The serious games field is rife with misconceptions because it encompasses so much. To help spread the truth about Serious Games, let's debunk 10 of the biggest myths about the genre."

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Screenshots: Kinset 3D Shopping Browser
Kinset is a new company that builds virtual 3D storefronts for online and multi-channel retailers. The storefronts can be viewed with a special browser that comes in a rather small download. One of the potential applications for the service is a virtual environment that can be used to test real-world store layouts, and this video shows how these storefronts are generated and populated with merchandise. If you download Kinset browser and go "in-world", you'll see their two test stores populated with Amazon's affiliate goodies. Their news release says Brookstone will have built a store on the platform, apparently by the end of the year. Here's a recent Boston Globe's write-up on the company.

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New World Builder


If you ask Bruce Joy about the idea of one metaverse, he'll tell you to 'forgetaboutit'. This particular Joe Pesci imitator is the CEO of VastPark, the developers of a new tool set allowing you to create your own virtual space.

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Twinity: Europe's play for virtual world dominance?
by: Alain Thys

I just requested to participate for the beta of Twinity, a new virtual world going online in about 3 months promising to be "just not so virtual".  Not the traditional exercise in digital escapism, the idea is that the world will act as a virtual extension of your own life in which "even your avatar will look pretty familiar".

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October 29, 2007

IAB Defines Types of Game Advertising
by: Alain Thys

Now marketers have finally caught on to this interactive thing and seem to be ever more shy of places to put their new found digital 2008 budgets, gaming finally seems to be hitting the radar as well.  An excellent time to seize the day, the guys at IAB must have thought as they just released the first of a series of papers to establish some standards in the chaotic world of advergaming (or was it gamevertising?).

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Virtual Worlds Forum Europe Keynotes
Since last week, more precisely but I only got around to posting it now. Go ahead and listen (day1, day2), it'll be worth your time if virtual worlds are in your range of interest.  Also, (Lord) David Puttnam's speech is also available in pdf  (here). I recommend you at least scan the text, as it touches on some sensible points and, if I may say so, makes some bloody fine observations.

Here are a couple of quotes that stuck:

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October 25, 2007

Links for 25-10-2007
After the jump, as they say. There's Gamasutra, Nick Yee and some other stuff.

Continue reading "Links for 25-10-2007" »

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October 23, 2007

Virtual World Advertising Dollars Poised to Tenfold
by: Alain Thys

Whether and how the numbers make sense is hard to estimate, yet Park Associates has just released a study claiming that the US Virtual World Advertising spend is poised to tenfold from $15 million in 2006 to $150 million in 2012.  According to the researchers this is only "advertising in existing worlds" and the amounts exclude virtual worlds set up by brands themselves.

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Kinset: “Straight Retailing” 3D VR

I’ve just given Kinset, a 3D virtual shopping application, (Link) a spin. Before I offer my opinion, let’s start off with what it’s supposed to be. From the website:

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October 20, 2007

Virtual Earth Building Momentum
Shortly after all the buzz surrounding rumors concerning Google Earth, I posted a Twitter telling people to watch for news on the Microsoft Virtual Earth front. Sure enough, things started popping up on my screen. And now add what I consider the most interesting news courtesy of C|Net, “Microsoft Virtual Earth offers 3D building capability” (Link).

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Design News Noticing Second Life
It wasn’t too long ago I was taking upFront.eZine/WorldCAD Access writer Ralph Grabowski to task (reLink) for what I considered extraordinarily subjective (and, by extension, myopic) comments regarding the potential of Second Life and social applications that, like it, allowed for immersive 3D content creation.

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Sony's Virtual World Brand-Friendly


A couple of announcements indicating that Sony's upcoming PlayStationHome (site, wiki) virtual world will have plenty of ad inventory:

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Mind Control for Second Life Avatars
Pink Tentacle: "A research team led by professor Jun’ichi Ushiba of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory has developed a BCI [brain-computer interface] system that lets the user walk an avatar through the streets of Second Life while relying solely on the power of thought. To control the avatar on screen, the user simply thinks about moving various body parts — the avatar walks forward when the user thinks about moving his/her own feet, and it turns right and left when the user imagines moving his/her right and left arms."

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British Spies Advertise in Video Games


image source

Yahoo/AFP: "The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's intelligence listening post, will embed the adverts as billboards in video games including 'Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent' in a bid to attract 'computer-savvy, technologically-able, quick-thinking' recruits.'

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/10/british-spies-advertise-in-video-games.html 

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October 18, 2007

Serious Games - Are We Really A Community And The Chaos Theory

Serious Games challenging us to play a SG community



As I finished reading Kevin Corti's opinion piece 'Serious Games - Are We Really A Community?', where Kevin thoroughly discusses the nature of the 'serious games' movement and the deep divisions amongst the various sub-sections, I immediately empathized with its essence.

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Serious Games Shaping Cultures And The Environment

Serious Games challenging us to play a better future



Via: Education Futures and Open the Future

Electronic Arts (EA)’s SimCity, the popular simulation game that challenges users to build and run a metropolis, is set to release its latest version in mid-November - SimCity Societies

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October 17, 2007

Greener SimCity Virtual World as Channel to Influence Real World Behaviors

by: David Wigder

Electronic Arts (EA)’s SimCity, the popular simulation game that challenges users to build and run a metropolis, is set to release its latest version in mid-November - SimCity Societies - and is generating a lot of buzz in the process.

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Machinima Fun
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Video made for a Converse contest. Alot of you might have seen this already since, in internet time, it's older than dirt. Still good fun though. (Via BrokenToys.)

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Transreality Interfaces: From Whiteboards to Grey Matter
After I first saw the above video on the The Weekly Squeak blog (Link), I immediately did a search on prices for interactive whiteboards. That is a seriously cool combination of technologies. And I’m not the only one who thinks so; Julian Lombardi has been posting rare updates to his blog (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4), so he’s certainly into it.

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October 16, 2007

Where Now, Portable Avatar?
By now I assume that those of you with an interest in the virtual world topics I cover here have read about the announcement made at the opening of last week’s Virtual World Conference and Expo; Fall 2007: Linden Lab and IBM have joined forces to push “avatar portability”. Those of you surprised by this move either haven’t generally been paying attention or haven’t been reading my posts (e.g. “Standards of Avatar Portability” - reLink). Shame on you.

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October 13, 2007

OnRez Second Life Viewer: Serious Games Embrace New Way To Watch Entertainment

Serious Games are all about fun


Via: Buddy TV - CSI: NY to Enter the Virtual World of Second Life

On the October 24 episode of CBS' hit drama CSI: NY, the crime procedural will feature a murder investigation that meanders into the virtual world of Second Life. Gary Sinise's detective will track a real-life killer all the way into the popular world of Second Life.

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October 12, 2007

Serious Games Set In Your Favorite Google Earth Locations

Architectural Wonders allowing anyone to create a working Virtual World

Via: CNET News.com - Google Tools To Power Virtual Worlds
Virtual-worlds platform developer Multiverse Network is set to announce a partnership Tuesday that will allow anyone to create a new online interactive 3D environment with just about any model from Google's online repository of 3D models, its 3D Warehouse, as well as terrain from Google Earth. 

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Avatars Passport To Roam From One Game To The Next

A digital alter-ego that can travel to many virtual worlds



Via: Education Futures and The New York Times - Free The Avatars

At the Virtual Worlds Conference, IBM and Linden Labs announced plans to develop a set of open standards that would allow avatars to roam from one virtual community to the next. The goal is let a person create a digital alter-ego that can travel to many virtual worlds, keeping the same name, look and even digital currency.

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Toyota's Advergame First on XBox Live Arcade



Gamespot: "Now the Xbox 360's downloadable game service is getting its own advergame, as Microsoft announced that Toyota's Yaris will be one of this week's Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday releases. The game lets players hop behind the wheel of one of three new Yaris models and race through oddly twisting tracks, shooting enemies with a tentacle rooted in the car's hood, collecting loose coins, and unlocking a dozen new Xbox Live achievements along the way."

Here's the game.

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/10/toyotas-advergame-first-on-xbox-live.html 

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October 11, 2007

Serious Games Sizeable Market, Virtual Worlds Sizeable Investment
Via: Virtual Worlds News - $1 Billion Invested in Virtual Worlds in the Last Year

The Numerator – Gross Revenues

In my prior posts Serious Games, Serious Money: A Sizeable Market and Serious Games: A Sizeable Market - Update, I addressed how the video game industry was finding more business outside the entertainment sector.

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October 10, 2007

Doom As Tool for System Administration


A project to turn Doom into a sysadmin / data visualization tool back from 1999: "I am proposing a new mapping for managing system loads. As mentioned above, people frequently talk about "blowing processes away", and the Unix command to destroy a process is "kill". This suggests a metaphor for process management. Each process can be a monster, and the machines can be represented by a series of rooms."

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Avatar Machine And Other Virtual World Stories


"Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface." In other words, it's a camera that let's you see yourself from a third-person isometric perspective, just like in a video game. Trippy. (via brand flakes for breakfast). Related: Creating Out-of-Body Experiences

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