All About Video Games

Source: PSFK

В какие игры играют ваши клиенты?

Все мы любили играть в детстве. Кто-то в машинки, а кто-то в куклы. Многие продолжают это делать и сейчас… Именно поэтому, несмотря на экономический кризис, а во многом благодаря ему индустрия игр переживает небывалый подъем. Образ человека играющего или как его еще называют homo ludens уже давно не ассоциируется с асоциальным подростком, пытающимся спрятаться от мира реального в фантастическом мире игр. Сегодня более 10% людей играющих только на платформе Play Station, разработанной компанией Sony, старше 50 лет! Гораздо больше взрослых и успешных людей делают ЭТО – они ИГРАЮТ. Играют в домино, uno, мафию, компьютерные игры или еще что-то. Они тратят на это реальные и далеко не маленькие деньги и… свое время. Несомненно, эта очень интересная тема имеет огромный потенциал с точки зрения маркетинговой коммуникации. Сегодня вопрос не в том играет ли или не играет ваш клиент во что-то… Вопрос в том, как и во что конкретно он играет!

Если вы думаете, что знаете о вашем клиенте все – просто посмотрите это видео про ближайшее будущее игр и… пересмотрите свою точку зрения.

Нам очень интересно разобраться в этом подробнее. Поэтому мы собираемся обсудить эту тему с ведущими специалистами игровой индустрии, т.е. людьми делающими все это реальностью сегодняшнего дня в один из ближайших четвергов.

Если Вы тоже хотите поучаствовать в этой дискуссии – просто напишите нам об этом.

Your future interaction with computer is here...

Remember this... history of controllers

And here comes the future

To be here

Source trendone; lionshead;

Treasure World Sends Gamers on Mobile WiFi hunt

As gaming systems become increasingly integrated with the physicality of the gamer, developers are seizing upon the intricacies of our actual environments for new ways of having fun on-screen. Aspyr’s Treasure World for Nintendo’s DS and DSi handhelds is one such attempt to bridge the gap between the real and the pixelated, launching players on a virtual treasure hunt that requires exploring one’s surroundings for actual wireless networks. Real-life WiFi spots are converted into in-game “treasure,” which can be traded in for items. The game can even be played with the handheld closed—at which point one is literally just wandering around waiting for their DS to grab hold of a network. If this sounds like it could be dull, you’re in good company—Treasure World has garnered a highly mediocre cumulative 67% on Metacritic—but the effort to make the actual part of the virtual is an essential movement in advancing video gaming beyond the living room, though somewhat poorly executed this time around.

Source PSFK via USA Today

Кто кого? Скайнет нас или мы его. Новая игра от создателей фильма "Терминатор"

Sony, in promoting the new Terminator film, has created a game built on the twitter platform. To play you must register at www.resistance2018.com and follow tweets from @resistance2018. Game play follows in a similar manner to @playtwivia in which you @reply solutions to simple puzzles—word scrabbles, fill in the blanks and trivia. As the game is billed as a means for humans to communicate with each other in the “resistance” participants also get to receive “skynet warnings” about ongoing events in the terminator world and, of course, updates about the movie.

The game makes for an interesting weaving of gaming, social media, and marketing that strikes a delicate balance between being engaging and fun without being tiresomely involving. With participants pinged with messages from @resistance2018 on the hour, and puzzles being delivered every other hour, messages are kept at a manageable rate. As of today there are close to 3000 participants to the game that has been live since April 17th.

Via PSFK

В кризис выгодно быть не только дискаунтером...

Announcing its results Nintendo acknowledged tougher economic times but said “the video game industry remained relatively stable in spite of the large consumer spending decline.” 

Подробнее можно прочесть здесь

Источник WARC

Tabletop Gaming

An ad that describes the video-game play between two players using a futuristic game-table hints at how this genre may progress. In this ad for the war strategy console video game Ruse two players scroll and point on a long touch table to convey the game play. We've described similar approaches in IQblog: Old toys - new games

Source PSFK

«Эльдорадо» вступит в схватку Крупнейший розничный продавец цифровой техники устроит праздник для геймеров, чтобы увеличить продажи дорогих компьютеров В конце апреля в пяти крупнейших московских магазинах «Эльдорадо» стартует День геймера — с турнирами по компьютерным и видеоиграм, презентациями игровых новинок и викторинами, рассказал пресс-секретарь компании Илья Новохатский. Далее

Periodic Table of Controllers

Source aleptu.com

Study: In-Game Video Advertising Trumps TV Advertising In Effectiveness

A study commissioned by NeoEdge Networks, a Mountain View, CA-based casual gaming advertising network, says (surprise, surprise) that video advertising within online games is more effective than TV advertising. Preliminary results of the study, which will conclude at the end of this month, seem to indicate online gaming audiences are more inclined to remember and positively percieve brands who experiment with pre, mid and post-roll video advertisements inside Web-based games.

Of course, studies ordered by commercial companies with a clear stake in the subject of the research like this one always need to be taken with a grain of salt, but the results are interesting nonetheless, and deserve a closer look. After all, major companies like Googleand Sony are eyeing in-game advertising revenues in a big way, and for good reason: depending on which research organization you trust, spending on in-game advertising is supposed to grow to between $732 million and $1.8 billion by 2010, although I personally believe the current economic climate might prevent spending to reach even the more conservative prediction by the end of next year.

For more context: some say in-game advertising will ruin the video game industryaltogether, others believe standards will spur industry growth, and a recent article on our sister site Crunchgear (based on another study) suggested gamers don’t have a problem with in-game advertising at all.

Read more here.

Source TechCrunch

WOW: New reality but old art

continuing started discussion on IQblog: New Age of ART: STAGE BATTLE CHOREOGRAPHY we find more interesting stuff

wow dance stars and their prototipes

wow rock band' inspired by legendary murloc character (with bonus lirics)

and... offline celebrities

and even legends...

and of course some fun...

more about World of Warcraft (WOW) find here

GAMES TRUMP SOCIAL NETWORKS AMONG US TEENS

NEW YORK: A total of 78% of US teenagers regularly play online video games, compared with just 65% who use social networking websites likeFacebook and MySpace, according a new study by The Pew Internet & American Life Project. 
The "Generations Online in 2009" report also found that the number of 12–17 year-olds using email fell from 89% in 2005 to 73% last year, a drop attributed to the rise of social networking.
Says Sydney Jones, research assistant at Pew: "Teens really gravitate to these instant forms of communication. They're not likely to be sitting around waiting for e-mail."
Overall, 97% of teenagers play video games of some kind, but just 10% of 12–17 year-olds use "virtual worlds" like Second Life, a figure falling to 2% of older web users aged 18–32. 
Among the latter group, 50% of web users regularly play games online, and 67% are active users of social networking services. 
Members of both age ranges are more likely to use the web for entertainment than practical purposes according to the survey, which was conducted late last year among 2,253 internet users.

Data sourced from AdWeek (USA); additional content by WARC staff, 02 February 2009

Read more here IQblog: Sony запускает виртуальную вселенную Home

Future: Life Skills Through Video Games

Artist, film maker and game designer Michael Highland discusses the significant impact video games have in programming the brain in his film As Real as Your Life:

The beauty and reality of video games today lies not in the lifelike graphics, the vibrating joysticks or the virtual surround sound, it lies in that these games are beginning to make me emotional.  What is sadder is that my inability to understand and decipher the real world I live in makes these simple, virtual emotions even sweeter.  The people that make these games are smart, They know what makes me tick.  What makes me scared, excited, panicked, proud and sad.  They use these emotions to train me to survive in the worlds they create.

As Real as Your Life (Original Cut) from Michael Highland on Vimeo.

Michael Highland discusses the way virtual violence is increasingly mimicking that of the real world, with real violence often reflecting methods used within video games.  Highland believes the increasing amount of time spent in the virtual world allows gamers to form emotional bonds with virtual characters.  The use of repetition and real-life situations in gaming creates survival instincts within the brain.  Once purely virtual, these survival instincts begin to arise in real-life situations, making video games a most effective tool for propaganda and ‘brain reprogramming’.  Highland believes that video games’ significant influence over people’s brain functions can be used to educate people for the better, but warns: “Be careful what you play, and what your game might be wiring into you.”

Source TrendONE, PSFK, As Real as Your Life (Original Cut) from Michael Highland on Vimeo.

Michael Highland - As Real As Your Life / games and experience

Sony запускает виртуальную вселенную Home

Спустя почти полтора года после анонса, Sony Computer Entertainment наконец-то завершила подготовку своего самого масштабного проекта. На завтра назначен релиз виртуальной игровой вселенной Home. Данная разработка, по задумке Sony, станет ключевым местом встреч, общения и игр владельцев игровых консолей Playstation 3. Концептуально, "Дом" производства Sony будет представлять собой классическое смешение стилей - здесь будут присутствовать элементы из Second Life с одной стороны, из Microsoft Xbox Live с другой, и социальных сетей, таких как Facebook, с третьей. Читать дальше

Source CyberSecurity

Faux Rockstar!

Source TrendhunterTV

Immersion: Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be

Source The New York Times 

Видеогеймеры — более ценные потребители

Люди, которые активно играют в видеоигры, являются более ценными потребителями, чем те, кто играми не увлекается, — утверждают в IGN Entertainment и Ipsos Media CT. Исследование потребительских привычек видеогеймеров «Are You Game?» (PDF) было проведено в июне 2008 года Ipsos MediaCT среди 3 тыс. пользователей Сети в возрасте от 12 до 54 лет. Выдержки из него приводит Marketing Charts. Подробнее здесь

Источник МедиаРеволюция

Real Pilots Racing Against Virtual Airplanes

More news on the augmented reality front - Sky Challenge is working on a new sport that will mix real life planes with computer obstacles and competitors. Players at home would be able to compete with real life pilots, flying through a virtual obstacle course that is overlaid on top of real world terrain. The real world pilots would also be able to see their virtual challengers and the computer generated obstacles. Sky Challenge hopes to make this a world-wide event, where anyone could compete from home via their computers.

These kind of games bring up questions of how to navigate in these augmented spaces. How will people in the real spaces discern what’s what? Virtual players could accidentally (or purposely) cause very real problems for the pilots.

Source Gizmodo

Beat this Video Game, and We’ll Lower Your Insurance

Allstate insurance is testing out a new program, called InSight, that uses online video game tests to identify safe older drivers. Using simple games that measure brain fitness, the company is hoping that gaming proficiency will indicate aptitude with the same skills in real life. One of the games, Jewel Diver: Divided Attention tests subjects ability to track multiple objects at a time. The InSight program plans to offer insurance discounts to drivers over 50 who successfully pass the online tests.

Ars Technica reports:

Allstate is currently piloting a new program which seeks to find out if playing driving video games could make better drivers out of those over 50. If the study shows that it can, the insurance company plans to offer discounts to mature drivers who pass the online tests and the current, single-state pilot would be spread across other states next year. The initial run at the program is taking place in Pennsylvania. Select customers in the state aged 50 to 75 will be brought in to test out the special games as part of a free option in the customers’ current insurance plan. The total number of hours played by this experimental group will be tracked and then accident rates will be compared to a control group that had no contact with the games.

“As Allstate seeks ways to reinvent protection for the consumer, we are taking intelligent risks that are focused on finding new ways to bring value to our customers,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “This innovative approach to improving driver awareness and reaction time has the potential to significantly reduce accidents. That would make the roads safer—and potentially save lives.”

Source PSFK

Video Games Will Not Cause the Downfall of Society

The Pew Institute released a new study on “Teens, Video Games, and Civics” last week that provides some great insight on youth and gaming culture and where they meet. Social media researcher Danah Boyd highlights a few key points:

Almost all (97%) of teens play games. They play many different kinds of games and gender is a salient factor.
Gaming is often social and teens often game with people they know.
Parental monitoring of game play varies.
Teens encounter both pro-social and anti-social behavior while gaming.
There are civic dimensions to video game play.
Boyd points out that perhaps one of the most illuminating findings from the report is that the archetypal gamer isn’t the antisocial, Dungeons and Dragons geeks they’re stereotyped as. The near ubiquity of game-playing among teenagers and the growing diversity of gaming experiences is changing the image of the gamer. She explains:

Games are regularly referenced as proof that the world is ending. The stereotypical image of a gamer is an oily-haired, pimply-faced geeky boy with no social skills or interest in human interaction. The prevalence of gaming amongst youth dispels that notion, but there is still a myth that those who game are anti-social. As such, it is often assumed that gaming makes people anti-social, anti-community, anti-civic.

Pew’s findings show that there is no correlation between civic/political activity and gaming. In other words, high participation in gaming does not decrease civic participation…

…Participation in gaming does not cause a decrease in civic participation and, if anything, certain forms of gaming activity are correlated with civic engagement (although causality cannot be determined).

All too often, we blame technology for the downfall of society. Gaming has long been the super demon, the crux of media effects panics. It’s fantastic to have a study to point to that conclusively shows that our fears make no sense.

Apophenia: Teens, Video Games and Civics
Source PSFK