Business & Games: The Blog

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by: Lynette Webb

There was a really interesting article in the New York Times recently that looked at the gold-farming phenomenon. For those who don’t know, ‘gold farming’ is the term given to people who play online games like world of warcraft in a manner so as to earn the maximum ‘gold’ which is then sold on to other players who don’t have the time/skills to earn it themselves.

Continue reading "It Is Hard To Think Of Anything More Surreal Than A Chinese Goldfarmer" »

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Playboy Island in Second Life is opening soon. Look for Playboy in group search, join, and you too can be a playmate (that's the title group members get automatically). I bumped today into someone who said the island was actually open, but when I tried, the teleport failed. Don't you love the island's shape, though? It's one of the few businesses for whom Second Life is a natural fit, given how many of the residents spend most of their time.

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/05/playboy-soon-in-second-life.html 

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Continue reading " Screenshots: PlayStation Home" »

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Continue reading " Visa Launches World of Warcraft Card" »

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Some MMO-related articles caught my eye because they stray out of the old, beaten path (Where is <game> headed? or What is the next WoW killer? or A new era dawns as patch 5.43.21b is announced).

First off, a Clickable Culture article reinforcing the point that, no matter what you design your game for, there'll be people who'll find new, weird and sometimes interesting uses for it. 

Staying in Azeroth, a piece about 'coming of age'. And as horrible as that may sound, the author makes a pretty good point. Yes, it's a game but it's still played by real people, even if they're behind really cartoonish characters.

Finally, a very detailed article by Nick Yee on MMO superstitions. I found it to be a delicious read, although, if you never played a MMO in your life, the post might read more like a psychiatry ward visit.

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When I read about passively multiplayer online games, I immediatly thought about Progress Quest, basically a mock RPG where character creation is pretty much the last interactive part. After that, the game sits quietly in the background and plays itself, basically grinding up a character while you go about your business.

PMOG however is a concept crafted to define the next level. It's a "game" where what you browse defines your character. Quite amusing, really.

Continue reading "Of Browsing and Passive MMOs" »

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Continue reading "9dragons, Part I: 5wastedhours" »

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We all know World of Warcraft, right? It's all over the internet so chances are, even if you never played a MMO in your life, you still heard about it. It's that game that gets people hooked faster than you can blink. Of course, as with any big thing, it has its detractors, still, the game has alot to offer to alot of different categories. Yes, the quests are dull and repetitive, yes, roleplaying (in the purist meaning of the word) is all but rubbish for the most part, yet somehow, the game's mix has the certain je ne sais quoi that fascinates. Mind you, I only say 'je ne sais quoi' as a figure of speech, the game has been debated and analyzed in more articles than you'd ever want to read. Eitherway, Warcraft's not the only thing I want to talk about, but I'll just use it at a start point for a few musings on MMOs and such. And if that doesn't appeal to you, there's screenshots!

Me, as seen on www.uglybatriders.com 

Continue reading "Oh, WoW..." »

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Continue reading "In The News: Buy More Lizards!" »

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Continue reading "SL predictions..." »

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Continue reading "In The News.." »

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MochiAds is the world's first advertising network for casual games. Comprised of two facets, MochiAds enables advertisers to reach a highly sought-after demographic through engaging, virally distributed Flash games and simultaneously provides game publishers an effective, non-obtrusive revenue channel to support their creative talents. Together, MochiAds offers a powerful and deep-reaching platform to deliver a memorable brand message.

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Terra Nova makes a playful attempt at converting MMO currencies into Monopoly cash. Here’s how it’s done:

“[…]here is how I worked out the worth of Monopoly money. It’s very simple and yes it ignores the fact that since 1935 about 200 million sets have been sold, so there’s certainly a money supply out there. I simply went to the Hasbro web site and found that each set contains bills with a face value totalling $15,140, and that replacement money (which I take to be a full set) is $3.50. The rest of the figures I got from around the web.”

Certainly not the most scientific approach but the article is quite interesting, albeit short, and the notion of using a board game’s currency as a measure unit for virtual currencies has an air of beautiful irony about it.

The full article

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“Following the lack of any progress towards introducting citizens voting rights to Second Life the [Second Life Liberation Army] began in-world military operations.

The SLLA selected as its first target the American Apparel Store in SL. Volunteers from the SLLA have been posted to the store and are preventing SL residents from buying any goods from this vendor.

The SLLA has no complaint with American Apparel but is seeking to introduce voting rights to Second Life. We hope that American Apparel will join us in putting pressure on Linden Labs to do this. The SLLA can then stop our attacks against customers using their store.”

–SLLA blog, August 11, 2006, via PSFK

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“Acclaim Games announces a free, totally brutal massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) designed specifically for adult gamers. This M-Rated title is targeted at those looking for an adrenaline soaked experience and aimed squarely at players looking to kick @$$ for free! With no subscriptions, and no charge to download the game, it will be funded mostly by advertising–and (even more radically) the user will be allowed to turn off the in-game adverting if they choose. With Perry’s approach, Acclaim is determined to offer truly free gameplay by creating a new kind of advertising model for the industry.”
– press release via Gaming Age

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Starwood Hotels and Resorts — the company that operates Sheraton, Westin, Four Points and other brands — is building a new-brand (and brand-new) hotel in Second Life while blogging about the progress. The first real-world Aloft (they spell it aloft) is planned to open its North American doors in 2008, so the Second Life builders are working off a single exterior rendering.
– via Three Minds @ Organic

x-posted on Adverlab

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part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Ansible Berkman: Susi?

Susi Spicoli: Do you think that we will go beyond traditional marketing: participation in product development, open-source like, which makes traditional marketing obsolete to some extent because consumers are designing their own products? For example, a bank might design (with users)/test their future offering incl branch lay-out, which then already will have a strong in-world following which will spill into the RL. Finally, you might get some great international ideas fertilization (easy in SL), what if Italian customers would give comments and ideas on American Apparel?

Continue reading "Panel on Marketing to Virtual Avatars, Part 4" »

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part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Ansible Berkman: And now, we already have a few questions lined up. Let’s see what the audience has to say. Divo?

Divo Dapto: My question is what essentially is the difference between the real world and virtual words - from a marketing communications perspective? In other words, what opportunities do virtual worlds offer that real world does not?

Continue reading "Panel on Marketing to Virtual Avatars, Part 3" »

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part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Ansible Berkman: We shall begin with a small blurb from each panelist on a very broad question I’ll ask them and then the conversation will be open to the audience. Please right-click on me and send me a note if you would like to participate. I’ll hold a queue of individuals and call on you when the person before you has finished “speaking”.

Continue reading "Panel on Marketing to Virtual Avatars, Part 2" »

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part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Today, Harvard’s Berkman Center hosted a panel discussion titled “Avatar-Based Marketing: What’s the Future of Real-Life Companies Marketing to Second Life Avatars”. The two-hour event took place on Berkman Island in Second Life. Panelists included the following avatars (pictured above, left to right, real names in brackets, info taken from the event’s notecard):

Continue reading "Panel on Marketing to Virtual Avatars, Part 1" »

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Study by comScore, press release, May 16, 2006. Also in Marketing Vox. Verbatim highlights from press release:

The Players research found that 25% of Gamers are Heavy Gamers, playing 16 or more hours per week across any gaming platform, or playing 11 hours or more per week and playing on two or more platforms.

Light/Medium Gamers — those that play less than 16 hours per week on one platform — represent 75 percent of Gamers.

Continue reading "Data: Gamers Not Averse to In-Game Ads" »

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“World of Warcraft’s European customer base is currently at more than 1 million players, with the worldwide total now at more than 6 million players.”
– press release, Feb. 28, 2006

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Hacking and griefing are some of potential problems that advertisers in virtual worlds should plan for. In October 2005, the entire Second Life grid was taken offline, overwhelmed by the load of self-replicating objects that have become known as Griefspawn (see article in The Escapist).

Griefing refers to players intentionally causing discomfort in other players and can be manifested in a variety of ways that range from verbal abuse to an assault by automated scripts that ruin the game experience or even crash the system. The results often are visually entertaining (at least to the griefer, if not the victim), and the scripts are fairly easy to acquire.

Continue reading "Second Life: Problems: Griefing" »

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“In March, 2006, 2K Sports will launch College Hoops 2K6, the first game to offer online play that mirrors the actual top teams at the NCAA college basketball championships popularly nicknamed “March Madness.” General Motors largely underwrote the game’s development, but rather than feature unnatural appearances of cars within the storyline, the designers created sponsor screens like this one. The screens reflect brand tie-ins at most sports events (think of the Nokia Sugar Bowl in college football, for instance) and branded score reports during TV coverage.”

Slide show for Reena Jana, Business Week, Jan.25, 2006, “Is That a Video Game — or an Ad?“

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This article is related to the recommendation for any advertising messages to stay in-character: “When gaming online with Xbox Live (XBL) or with a PC/Mac it’s important to choose the correct “voice” when talking with the online community within your genre.” The article looks at how game genres influence players’ choice of language.

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Game industry market research firm DFC Intelligence issued a report estimating the opportunities of games to capture a share of overall online advertising (see DFC’s brief, Game Daily’s commentary, Gamasutra’s piece). Major points:

• Online games are attracting an increasing amount of consumer time, but they attract a comparatively low rate of advertising spending.

Continue reading "Report: In-Game Advertising Revenues Five Years Away" »

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I’ve already written elsewhere about the inevitability of in-game spam. Here are some supporting links (I’ll be adding more as I discover them):

“Mmospam-bots: “Bots” created for the specific purpose of harvesting user data (via ‘who is online’ or ‘what characters to is active on a given server’) to then send spam (using the same bot or another bot) via in game messages (aka “tells”) and/or via the in game mail system to advertise products for sale for real world currency.” (EQ2-Daily)

Continue reading "Scratchpad: Spam in Games" »

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“PC Gamer, the country’s largest magazine of its kind, will stop taking ads from companies involved in the trade of virtual objects and characters from online role-playing games.

In the February issue, editor Greg Vederman said the magazine was responding to readers unhappy with “gold farmers,” who play to accumulate items such as gold coins for resale.”
– AP

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