Business & Games: The Blog

Serious Gaming on the rise in corporate environments

Via: The Economist - Playing for Profit: Why video gaming can be good for business
Aug 26th 2008

Continue reading "Serious Games Reach The Economist " »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

 by: Rick van der Wal

BREAKING NEWS

The University of W has conducted a survey amongst X residents/people within the Y demographic and found Z. Virtual World analyst/University professor A is not surprised by the outcome saying:

Continue reading "University W Has Researched X amongst Y People and Found Z. Gasp!" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Reinout te Brake

The NPD group, the leading market research company, has recently carried out a study, in which it discovered some interesting findings about the gamer population. It defines seven gaming profiles, defined by ownership, usage and frequency.

Continue reading "7 Types of Gamers" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Gary Hayes via  Marketing Innovation Blog 

The Sydney Morning Herald, and a few blogs who should know better, continue the tiresome trend of metaverse and specifically Second Life bashing. Asher Moses ( decided to run a recent item based loosely on a few lines of an old bit of research from a PhD student looking at the potential of Virtual Reality (an old academic term for what we now call Virtual Worlds).

Continue reading ""A Few Lives Left" for Poor Research into Virtual Worlds" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Rick van der Wal

One of my key interests in virtual reality, or virtual environments is the way it is able communicate an experience, linear immersive experiences (otherwise known as stories) in particular.

Continue reading "Fictional Narrative Evolved (part 1)" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

Good news everyone! Business and Games now has a new contributor. Rick van der Wal blogs at digado.nl, where he provides a very fresh perspective on the metaverse and its future. DigAdo stands for Digital Adoption and, in his own words, his articles are about "how can we use Virtual Worlds in a realistic, meaningful way for the businesses of today and tomorrow".  Welcome aboard, Rick.

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

So it turns out they're now making games based on the For Dummies brand. Interesting. And a rather natural transition, I should say. Everyone knows "For Dummies", right? And pretty much everyone owns a PC. So putting one and one together...

Continue reading "For Dummies: Now as PC Games" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Rick van der Wal

Virtual culture, future and business blogger Wayne Porter pointed me to the presentation of internationally celebrated inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil at the Game Developers Conference.

Continue reading "Virtual Reality is Real Reality" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Scott Goodson via Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

What can we learn from McDonald's creating their own virtual world? That they are moving into their own customized world says one thing to me, that it will become more valuable for brands to create and curate their own virtual worlds rather than joining existing public virtual worlds.

Continue reading "McDonalds Is Launching Their Own Virtual World. This Is Smart Business." »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Reinout te Brake

IndieGames.com, a sister publication of Gamasutra, the leading website of gaming industry information, has published a countdown of the 20 most addictive online flash games.

Continue reading "20 Most Addictive Online Games" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

This article should read as an interlude between the first five advergame model ideas and the next five, which should go up any time in the next few days. Also, as a fair warning, this article is quite a bit longer than my usual ones.

We talk about advergames on this blog and we talk about it quite alot. Why and when they work, what we like, what we sneer at. Sometimes we find advergames that we're genuinely excited about, because the execution, delivery and final purpose are so damned well thought out. And we write about them. Throughout all this though, there's one thing we often leave unsaid.

Continue reading "On Pointless Uses of Advergaming" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

Serious Games help children learn about managing their finances

Continue reading "Serious Games to Build Teens' Financial Capability - Update" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

Interesting article on casual games at Forbes.com. In a nutshell, their angle is: casual games - not as profitable as you might think.

Continue reading "Forbes on Casual Games: Gold Rush Over" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

So what about them advergames? Some people simply ignore/dismiss them, other swear by them. Then there's that category of people/companies who figure that all they have to do is buy some silly casual game, slap their logo all over it, put it on their website and voila, mission accomplished, budget well spent. The only problem with that approach is that it's the least interesting thing you could do. It's so boring and uninspired that most people don't even notice the company's game, despite the PR flood that comes with it.

That being said, let's look at some ways to make it more likely that people will talk about your company's advergame, should you decide to get one. (Five ideas today, five in the next installment).

Continue reading "10 Ways Your Company Can Use Advergames (Part I)" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Reinout te Brake

Electronic Arts (EA) Mobile is the largest mobile games publisher in the US, with a 27.2% market share in Q2 2008, according to mocoNews, quoting a private Nielsen report.

Continue reading "EA Dominates US Mobile Games Market with 27% Share" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Reinout te Brake

Vigster is a social network for video games where users can build virtual game shelves to show off their video games collection, connect with friends, discover new and exciting video and computer games, rate and review video games, create and play video game quizzes, voice their opinions, have their say, discuss games, ask questions and get answers from fellow gamers, share gaming experiences, buy video games, explore games and much more.

Continue reading "Vigster; a New and Unique Social Network for Video Gamers" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Rick van der Wal

What do you do when you don’t want to become ‘just another player’ in the battle over the metaverse?

Continue reading "Blue Mars: Themepark of the Future" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

Ian Bogost, who usually has interesting posts, writes about the advergame accompanying Universal Pictures' new Mummy movie. As the post is rather short, I'll put it all here, since I found it hilarious.

Continue reading "Who Needs Long Reviews Anyway?" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Gary Hayes

Gary Hazlitt and Gazlitt (aka as me!) take a ‘break’ in over fifty worlds comprising the current metaverse, here is the holiday video…

Continue reading " 2008 Metaverse Tour Video: The Social Virtual World's A Stage " »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Rick van der Wal

With the recent launch of a number of virtual worlds such as Google Lively, Vivity and WebFlock virtual worlds inside the browsers seems ‘the way to go’.

Continue reading "Is Second Life Being Replaced? " »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Reinout te Brake

Games companies looking to launch massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) should give up hope of charging subscription fees, according to researchers.

Continue reading "Online Gaming Market Tightens; Subscription Services No Longer Feasible, Say Analysts" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend

by: Reinout te Brake

Google is testing an in-game version of its Adsense advertising system, reports tech news blog VentureBeat. Adsense for Games has reportedly been trialled during recent months, with insiders claiming it could be launched "very quickly". The platform will provide ads for online games, as well as disc-based PC titles, console games, and mobile phone games, the report claims.

Continue reading "Google Tests In-game Ad System" »

digg this| del.icio.us| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) • Email this article to a friend