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January 4, 2009

Superb Presentation: Video Gaming Trends

Via: Advertising Pawn - Video Gaming Trends

One's got to love this presentation! 54 oh-my-god-this-is-awesome slides packed with dare, motherly affection, and a good dash of future; to better grasp where gaming stands today.

Jéromé Sudan from Advertising Pawn created a great set of slides for his presentation on Video Gaming Trends:

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January 3, 2009

GDC 2009: Challenges of Designing an ARG

Via: Game Developer Conference 2009 - Serious Games Summit Track

Just Announced SGS Session: The Skeleton Chase - Designing a Fun Serious ARG

Speaker: Lee Sheldon (Assistant Professor, Indiana University)

The Skeleton Chase is an Alternate Reality Game funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The purpose of the game is to study whether or not fitness and health can be achieved simply by playing a game that does not set out to explicitly teach anything.

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December 28, 2008

The Guardian: Games Have A Serious Role To Play

Via: The Guardian - Games Can Have A Serious Role To Play

Victor Keegan
Thursday 11 December 2008
Article history

In this article, Victor Keegan provides some hard evidence that Britain has special skills in Serious Games which need to be harnessed if they are to fulfill their potential and reach a global audience.

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December 26, 2008

Economic Turmoil and Serious Games

I must confess I had not dedicated too much thought to the impact of the recent economic turmoil on Serious Games market size until some of my Blog readers brought this up.

My latest post on the subject Reconciling Serious Games Market Size Different Estimates, projecting the figures for the Serious Games market size short term, have probably become obsolete – at least in terms of "timing". As we know, in a scenario of contingent budgets, organizations tend to defer discretionary costs.

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December 23, 2008

IBM Developing Virtual World Interface for the Blind

"Virtual Worlds User Interface for the Blind is a prototype "accessible rich Internet application" (ARIA) that gives blind users the ability to participate in many virtual world activities. Although this interface for the blind is a GUI and can be used by sighted people, the virtual world space is not rendered pictorially. Instead, all information flowing to the user is text-based in order to allow compliance with ordinary screen-reading technology. Recorded verbal descriptions are also played for the user."  (via )

Isn't it what MUDs used to be?

Original Post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2008/12/ibm-developing-virtual-world-interface.html

December 16, 2008

19 Tips for In-Game Advertising

I wrote down these thoughts some time ago for a project we did together with Futurelab; they were intended as closing remarks for a larger work on in-game advertising. Some of these tips may seem trivial in the real world, but turn out more useful in the context of a game space. Others may be less intuitive to someone unfamiliar with the medium. I hit a writing block at #19; perhaps you could add one more to round it off.

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December 15, 2008

Playstation 3 Home First Use in Videos

by: Gary Hayes via Marketing Innovation Blog

I haven’t been able to log into Sony’s PS3 home yet but have been fascinated in the trickle of videos onto YouTube showing first usage in the past two days. There are many posts over the last 2 years about PS3Home on this blog and it is great to finally see it come out of alpha (it still feels like a mature beta) as promised ahead of the XMas fest this year. Previous posts followed by some nice ‘early captures’:

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December 13, 2008

And the most popular Android app is...

You know Android, the mobile platform, right? Well the results are in for the month of November and it turns out that the most downloaded application is ... *drumroll* ... Pacman! Yes indeed, with more than 250k downloads, the free arcade classic is sitting on top of the list, ahead of apps like MySpace Mobile and The Weather Channel. Also on the top ten list, two other games, Bonsai Blast and Brain Genius Deluxe (wow, what a title!).

via Fast Company

December 12, 2008

When the Economy Gets Rough, Virtual Worlds Get Growing

by: Gary Hayes via Marketing Innovation Blog 

Just back from a short break in the lovely town of Broome in NW Australia (my pics). It was interesting being disconnected from ‘the cloud’ but in the process having a few ‘virtual experiential’ moments. One of these was watching the controversial film ‘Australia’ in the worlds oldest picture gardens, Sun Pictures (pictured below).

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December 10, 2008

In-Game Ads? No Problem!

by: Joseph Mann

Being a marketer and also a relatively serious gamer in my down time, I usually take notice when I read things about the business of games and in-game advertising. Of course in-game ads are nothing new but as I've put my XBOX 360 through its paces I've come to notice ads embedded within game content more and more. And apparently this is an OK thing: according to a recent survey 82% of gamers have no problem with in-game ads .1

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