The Postbank (Dutch ING bank) in Habbo Hotel and eBay in the console race game GRID. It’s nothing new to see brands make an appearance in games to reach out to various demographics. Marketing agencies have discovered the secret of communicating with those markets hard to reach through traditional advertising. But yesterday at Branded Games [...]

Posted on: June 28, 2008 | No Comments »

The movie and cartoon giant Disney is on a quest to bind their audience to them in a series of Virtual Worlds developed for kids in different (consecutive) age ranges, growing up inside the fantasy world as Disney creates it. Disney became a serious player in the virtual worlds industry with their acquisition of the [...]

Posted on: May 5, 2008 | 3 Comments »

It’s often said 2D has advantages over 3D just as 3D has advantages over 2D. While 2D allows good overviews, particularly with text (a 2D medium per definition) and area/location based overviews (maps) it also has its limitations. 3D gives more of a feeling of presence, and has advantages due to a better relation with [...]

Posted on: March 13, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Lets face it. Web applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Gmail spoiled us. Major services who are absolutely free to a vast majority of its users. Even advertising is almost frowned upon unless its very unobtrusive. The ‘we want it all, we want it now, and we want it free‘ mentality is something we wont [...]

Posted on: February 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »

In and earlier article I mentioned the 7 things marketers could learn from online games, and IBM published a report on how games can teach important leadership skills of the future. Now John Seely Brown, a scholar at the University of South Carolina and Douglas Thomas, an associate professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication [...]

Posted on: February 14, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Interesting months ahead for the gaming industry. The big gaming news of Q1 2008 was EA announcing its plans to release its FPS game Battlefield Heroes for free. It offers the game as a free download, and supports it trough micro-payments (you can buy in-game bonuses for real money or pay monthly fees for premium [...]

Posted on: February 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »

The games of today are no longer the simple mind challenges such as Tetris and Donkey Kong. Games have evolved to complex, social environments, aimed to challenge and entertain the user. The educational value of games has been much discussed, but what can companies and their marketers learn from these immersive [...]

Posted on: January 10, 2008 | 2 Comments »