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December 31, 2007

In the Virtual World Land Rush, a Landscape of Inconvenient Truths

No one following the news - online or off - is surprised by how often a story mutates beyond recognition. We have jokes specifically addressing the inability of most people to accurately relay information. However, beyond simple mistakes, I’ve noticed an increasing number of virtual worlds-based business blogs providing their own convenient versions of events in what seems to me to be the single-minded pursuit of selling themselves (or their client projects).

Here’s one apparent example, which I promised the site owner I’d blog.

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December 23, 2007

$9 Bi: Microsoft's Conservative Estimate For The Serious Games Market

Via: BusinessWeek - Microsoft's Games Get Serious

Innovation December 21, 2007

Following my prior post Microsoft Shaping The Serious Games Movement Into A Multi-Billion Dollar Market, where I state that "by no means would Microsoft join either a current $ 150 million dollar market or a to-be $ 1 billion market only in 2011" (as projected by a few sources), BusinessWeek has published an article this week where David Boker, senior director of the Business Development Group at Microsoft's Aces Studio, one of Microsoft's game studios where ESP was developed, says Microsoft conservatively estimates this market at $9 billion.

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December 21, 2007

Mapping The Serious Games Industry Within The UK

West Midlands the most active region in terms of Serious Games



Via: SGI - Serious Games Institute Projects

The West Midlands (UK) region is fast becoming recognized as one of the key EU regions with regard to the development of Serious Games.

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December 19, 2007

Sketchpad: China Mobile Users

"The amount of the cell phone users in China had exceeded 500 million up to Oct 2007, and it is forecasted that China mobile phone game users would exceed 20 million in 2007, amounting to 24.43 million.
With the rapid growth of the cell phone users and mobile communication industry, the mobile phone game has gone through from the simple pre-installed games, the download games to the colour-screen Java game, large-scale network game and multi-player network game currently, and it would continue developing towards the trans-platform network game in the future. It can be forecasted that the mobile network game would be the future development trend for mobile phone game."

Link

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December 17, 2007

SteelCase Talks Design Virtually
About a week ago I was lucky enough to get myself logged into Second Life to attend a question & answer session with representatives from Steelcase, the office furniture manufacturer. Unfortunately there won’t be an audio posted online, so I thought I’d post a couple of things I wrote down at the conclusion of the meeting and share them here; mostly for the benefit of any Industrial Designers that might surf through. But don’t quote me, eh? I went in assuming an audio file would be made available. So here goes:

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Serious Games For Anyone To Make The World Of Their Dream

Serious Games generating an immersive community hub



Via: VastPark - From the Founder, Features and Gallery

“Dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible” - T.E. Lawrence

“VastPark is a virtual content platform that enables you to create and deploy your own 3D virtual world within minutes. Play with ideas, add physics, trial concepts and publish them online. You might not have used 3D before, but you can do this!”

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Serious Games Creating In-Person Meeting Experience Over The Network

Serious Games making remote conferee present in the room



Via: TelepresenceWorld.net - Telepresence Tech and Teleportel Team with Sony and Imago to Launch New Era in 3D HD Telepresence

Telepresence has arrived... It may change the way we hold meetings, communicate, conduct business and operate globally.

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December 14, 2007

Serious Games As Customer Touchpoints

Serious Games emerging as places where consumers can shop



Via: Virtual World News

By 2010, says Gartner, 20% of global Tier 1 retailers will have some kind of marketing presence in online games and virtual worlds.

In Gartner's predictions for what changes 2008 will bring for consumers and retail, the research group also looked a little further. It predicts that by 2010 20% of Tier I retailers will have a marketing presence in virtual worlds. It also predicts that through 2012 the number of consumers using mobile phones to shop will increase at an average of 25% per year.

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December 13, 2007

Serious Games Become Tangible Using Mobile Technology

Enhancing Serious Games with mobile technology



Via: Mildly Diverting - Possible Futures

What happens when the space you're exploring to unlock a narrative is the real world?

What happens when you apply that idea of episodes of a story being unlocked by moving through a space into the real world? There aren't many examples yet - but as mobile devices get smarter and quicker, the idea of a story becoming a game in real space gets closer.

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December 12, 2007

Gartner On Virtual Worlds And Retail
According to Business Communicators of Second Life, Gartner released a report, predicting that by 2010, 20% of top retailers will have some sort of presence in online games and worlds. The piece then gives a few examples of stores that have already been launched, such as Kinset (previously mentioned on this blog here and here.)

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December 11, 2007

Quick updates
Just a quick note that two of Csven's posts have been updated to reflect the updates on his website. They're both really interesting so, if you missed them, here's your chance to read the latest version.

A virtual world-based PLM for the fashion industry
Figureprints, Fabjectory and Toys

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Values@Play: Designing Social Values in Serious Games

Harnessing the power of Serious Games for humanistic principles



Via: Values At Play - Designing Social Values in Computer Games

Aware of the tremendous and wide-ranging impact games have in our world, the Values at Play (VAP) research project seeks to assist and encourage designers in creating games that further the understanding and appreciation of such values as equality, diversity, creativity, and many more.

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December 10, 2007

PS3 Gamevertising

  (image via the Pain website.)


Via the IPG blog - Sony releases first Playstation 3 advertising
Turns out that Pain, a downloadable PS3 game will include advertising, placed on the in-game billboards. Nielsen will be responsible for monitoring and keeping track of the relevant data. According to IPG: "The idea of using essentially CPM measurements to determine the cost of in-game advertising is an interesting one. Traditionally, prices for in-game advertising have been based on projected sales figures for games, but, initially, at least, Sony’s going to set the price at about $30 CPM, and the presumably adjust it based off of the figures it receives from Nielsen."

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December 7, 2007

Military Turned First To Serious Games, Now To Virtual Worlds

Military are increasingly making use of virtual worlds for training



Via: The Washington Times - Military Sets Sights On Virtual World

Since 1997, when the Marine Corps used Software Inc.'s popular "Doom" game as the basis for a training tool, agencies have experimented with computer games for serious purposes.

The Serious Games Movement got a start in 2002 when the U.S. Army released the video game America's Army as a free online download. That game was the first successful and well-executed serious game that gained total public awareness. More than 5 million people have become registered users.

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Serious Games Moving Training Into A Gameplay Environment
Serious Games help bring tacit knowledge to the surface



Via: Next Generation - When Work Becomes A Game

and Boxes and Arrows - The Design Behind The Design

TruSim, formed in 2005, is a division of leading European independent developer Blitz Games that was established to create products that tap the burgeoning Serious Games market.

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Forterra Makes Serious Games More Accessible To All

Forterra's Olive making it easier to create and deploy Serious Games



Virtual Meeting and Presentation

Via: Forterra Today's Press Release

Company Offers Three Separate Options to Support All Stages of the Application Development Lifecycle

Forterra Systems, a major player in private virtual worlds, announced today the launch of the Company’s Developer Programs designed to make it easy for consultants, system integrators, value-added resellers, Independent Software Vendors, technology partners, education institutions, and business organizations to create, integrate, and deploy 3D applications using Forterra’s OLIVE™ (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment) software platform.

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A Virtual World-Based PLM for the Fashion Industry [Updated]

Now this is interesting. From the SLNN site (Link):

"The Fashion Research Institute (FRI) in conjunction with IBM is developing a product lifecycle management solution for the fashion industry that specifically addresses the industry’s unique needs, cutting time to market. Designers will be able to access 3-D tools from within SL or Open Sim to create their fashion product. The 3-D models of the design can be shown in a virtual showroom. Everyone who has a share in the product will be available to review the design: product managers, designers, design directors, merchandizers, costers, executives, sales staff and show room managers. After the creative vision has been finalized, factory specifications are created that will enable the item to be manufactured in real life."

Continue reading "A Virtual World-Based PLM for the Fashion Industry [Updated]" »

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Figureprints, Fabjectory and Toys [Updated]
[yt]eUvqT4M1zNI[/yt] Here’s a quick note to call attention to something that might be of interest: Another avatar fabbing outfit has set up shop. Most of you are probably already aware of Fabjectory, the service that’s been “3D printing” Second Life avatars and objects for the last year or so. Well now there’s a service available for fabbing World of Warcraft game characters. The company is called Figureprints (Link) and from the artwork on their website it appears they’ve licensed the content from Blizzard (I was actually more interested in what Blizzard would do if Figureprints were offering the service without getting clearance. Guess I’ll have to wait.).

Continue reading "Figureprints, Fabjectory and Toys [Updated]" »

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December 5, 2007

Serious Games Sessions Europe: Real Time Universe Simulator

Serious Games - a faster learning interface


Via: La Fabrike Interactive Blog - Serious Games Session : Climatus alpha1

The 3rd Serious Games Sessions Europe, was held on 3 December 2007 in Lyon, France, Cité Centre des Congrès, with the value proposition of understanding Serious Games in three steps: applications aimed at innovation, tools aimed at action and and environment with huge great potential, with a forecast turnover of US$10 billion in the United States in 2008 for e-learning alone, according to the Financial Times.

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December 4, 2007

Links for 04-12-2007
Gamasutra - Double Fusion's Bellamy breaks down in-game ads
New World Notes - Generating Avatar Buzz: Nestlé Promoter Distributes 17,000 Virtual Items in One Week
Raph Koster - Another phone MMO

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December 3, 2007

Perceptions of Qwaq
I caught word of Qwaq, the Croquet-based virtual world collaboration application, receiving an additional $7M in funding a couple of days ago and have been watching the word spread, both curious as to how it would be received but also because of what CEO Greg Nuyens told Red Herring (Link):

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Vivendi and Activision to Create Activision Blizzard
Activision, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) and Vivendi (Paris: VIV) today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to combine Vivendi Games, Vivendi's interactive entertainment business -- which includes Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft®, the world’s #1 multi-player online role-playing game franchise -- with Activision, creating the world’s largest pure-play online and console game publisher. The new company, Activision Blizzard, is expected to have approximately $3.8 billion in pro forma combined calendar 2007 revenues and the highest operating margins of any major third-party video game publisher. On closing of the transaction, Activision will be renamed Activision Blizzard and will continue to operate as a public company traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ATVI.
Full press release
Later Edit: Gamasutra outlines the key points of the merger here.

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EA Exec Bearish on In-Game Ads Revenue

Finally, a voice of reason:

"Bullish forecasts suggesting that revenue from ads placed within videogames could top $1 billion within three years are wildly optimistic, the head of the world's largest game publisher said. John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts Inc., said Thursday that in-game advertising will eventually emerge as a key source of revenue for videogame publishers, but it will likely take much longer than many in the industry anticipate."
-- Money.CNN

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/12/ea-exec-bearish-on-in-game-ads-revenue.html

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Games, Death and Advertising


A set of heat maps from Valve that show where players die on each level of Half-Life 2. If you were to place your brand in the game, where would you stick it?

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/12/games-death-and-advertising.html

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GDC08: Newly Expanded Summits Broaden Serious Games Coverage

Two out of six focused summits at GDC08 are Serious Games related


Via: Worlds In Motion - GDC 2008 Debuts Summit Speaker Details

Game Developers Conference, the major industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of interactive entertainment, has revealed session details for its newly-expanded lineup of single-track summits that take a closer look at the industry’s emerging trends.

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