Business & Games: The Blog

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.

Continue reading "In the Virtual World Land Rush, a Landscape of Inconvenient Truths" »

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by: Rick van der Wal

This year we’ve seen many brands come and go in Virtual Worlds. Some have invested in their own worlds, other have invested in a presence within social virtual worlds. Today I want to list some of the ways users and corporations have been playing with the Metaverse, creating the following overview of Business models they used both successfully and unsuccessfully.

Continue reading "6 Business Models for the Metaverse" »

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by: Rick van der Wal

Earlier I reported about Virtual World News’ survey amongst 45 big players in the field of Virtual Worlds, and now they want bloggers to answer the same questions:

Continue reading "What Are Your 2008 Predictions and Business Goals " »

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by: Rick van der Wal

A new trend, a new Buzzword. Probably the latest one (and very niche) is ‘Avartising’.

Continue reading "Avartising: The Translational Interface" »

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by: Rick van der Wal

One of my favorite websites is Trendwatching.com. They list, analyze and explain upcoming trends, hypes and subtrends and present these findings in a very attractive and readable way.

Continue reading "8 Important Consumertrends for 2008" »

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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.

Continue reading "$9 Bi: Microsoft's Conservative Estimate For The Serious Games Market" »

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by: Rick van der Wal

This is going to be a short post because if you haven’t heard about Johnny Lee you should really just look him up on youTube. His latest experiment he shows us perspective based 3d interaction, all for the price of a Wiimote and a pair of safety goggles. His other experiments include a multi-touch screen using nothing more then a Wiimote and some infrared lights on a pen, normally costing well over thousands of dollars. But for now, here is Virtual Reality the Wii-way.

Continue reading "Virtual Reality the Wii-way " »

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by: Rick van der Wal

Usability prayers seem to have been answered with the new (beta)search in Second Life. The re-designed (2d) interface fixes some major problems that have been haunting Second Life from the start. The ‘alphabetic ordering’ and single word search query limitation are things of the past once this search gets installed into the main client.

Continue reading "Googlepowered Search in Second Life" »

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West Midlands the most active region in terms of Serious Games

Via: SGI - Serious Games Institute Projects

Continue reading "Mapping The Serious Games Industry Within The UK" »

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"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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Continue reading "SteelCase Talks Design Virtually" »

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Serious Games generating an immersive community hub

Continue reading "Serious Games For Anyone To Make The World Of Their Dream" »

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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

Continue reading "Serious Games Creating In-Person Meeting Experience Over The Network" »

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Serious Games emerging as places where consumers can shop

Continue reading "Serious Games As Customer Touchpoints" »

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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.

Continue reading "Serious Games Become Tangible Using Mobile Technology" »

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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.

Continue reading "Values@Play: Designing Social Values in Serious Games" »

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  (image via the Pain website.)

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Military are increasingly making use of virtual worlds for training

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.

Continue reading "Military Turned First To Serious Games, Now To Virtual Worlds" »

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Via: Next Generation - When Work Becomes A Game

and Boxes and Arrows - The Design Behind The Design

Continue reading "Serious Games Moving Training Into A Gameplay Environment" »

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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.

Continue reading "Forterra Makes Serious Games More Accessible To All" »

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

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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.

Continue reading "Serious Games Sessions Europe: Real Time Universe Simulator" »

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Continue reading "Perceptions of Qwaq" »

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

Continue reading "GDC08: Newly Expanded Summits Broaden Serious Games Coverage" »

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