Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Diesel Kick Ass Sneakers Training center in 3D



Great 3D animations to learn how to kick-ass!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Yoda recording for TomTom GPS - behind the scenes



Tom Tom voices by Darth Vader and Yoda!

Walk on water (Liquid Mountaineering)



This is a FANTASTIC farce! Weird enough to spread around the world! ;-)

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Officially new Gran Turismo 5 Trailer 2010 HD



Stunning graphics!

And loads and loads of in-game branding!

Nielsen proves in-game advertising increases SALES with 24%!



In-Game Advertising in EA Games Lifts Brand Sales

First Time Research Connects What Consumers See in-Game with What They Buy In-Store

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sep 14, 2010 — Electronic Arts Inc. today revealed results from a study conducted by The Nielsen Company which shows the degree to which brand advertisements within video games can boost real life sales. The study, commissioned by EA on behalf of Gatorade, shows that in-game advertising increased household dollars spent on Gatorade by 24%, and offered a return on investment of $3.11.

The study focused on households that purchased at least one of six EA SPORTS(TM) titles: NHL(R) 09, NHL 10, NBA LIVE 07, NBA LIVE 08, NBA LIVE 09 and NBA Street Homecourt. Gatorade had a variety of product placements within the games including arena signs, players’ water bottles, score updates and other call outs.

The study was based on Nielsen’s US Homescan panel of more than 100,000 households, representative of the US population, including a subset of Homescan homes that scanned video game UPC (Universal Product Codes) barcodes. The scanned barcodes were matched to a reference library of more than 14,000 video game titles. Nielsen compared the households that purchased at least one of the studied games before and after Gatorade branding was integrated into the games (the test group) with households that didn’t purchase one of the games (the control group).

These test and control group homes are projected out to the broad Homescan panel by matching them with the larger Homescan household universe based on similar purchase patterns and demographics in order to achieve a statistically reliable sample. Finally, the sales impact of Gatorade advertising was measured by analyzing and comparing Gatorade purchase behavior between the households that had and hadn’t purchased the games that carried Gatorade advertising.

This is the first time that this type of sales lift analysis has been done for advertising within video games. The study is the result of work undertaken by EA and The Nielsen Company to help marketers better understand the potential of advertising in this space.

“Nielsen’s study is a milestone for interactive entertainment,” said Elizabeth Harz, Senior Vice President of Global Media Sales at EA. “For the first time, advertisers are able to link the value of their in-game marketing or sponsorship to actual sales. Now brands can feel confident adding gaming as a core media channel for their advertising.”

“Video games are a deeply engaging consumer experience,” added Gerardo Guzman, Director, Media Product Leadership for The Nielsen Company. “Bringing our industry accepted ad effectiveness understanding to video games is another way to help marketers understand how consumers respond to advertising across different environments. This should help optimize the impact of and derive a return on media investments. In this case the story is simple – dollars put into video game product placement result in more retail dollars.”

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Youtube take-over: The Expendables & Tipp-Ex





Nice way of promoting a movie in an 'almost' interactive video on Youtube. Check the experience through the link below...and don't forget to share this article! ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/expendables

This is another cool one, by Tipp-Ex:

Watch it by following this link: Tipp-Ex on Youtube

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

KLIK Leader 2010 by Artibite - Kevin Megens




KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival 2010 Short Trailer. from klikamsterdam on Vimeo.

Check http://www.artibite.com/

KLIK Animation Festival leader (contains virtual nudity)



Nice concept of real vs virtual world or reality versus dreams.


Klik! festival leader from House of Secrets on Vimeo.

Animations by http://www.arjanm.com/

Nike - I love dust animation

A very cool animation for Nike. For more information about the project check: http://ilovedust.com/project/view/nikesister


Nike chase from ilovedust on Vimeo.

Games still the most popular apps on smart phones

Research done by Nielsen amongst 4.000 US Smartphone users shows that games are still the most popular downloads.

Interesting to see that social networking websites (Facebook & Twitter I guess) are more popular than 'communication apps' like Voice over IP (Skype) and Instant Messaging (MSN). Also the weather and news is high in the list.

The charts speak for themselves I guess ;-)





PlayStation Move conquers Amsterdam City-life

A giant moving PlayStation Move controller shook up Amsterdam City this week. The device was actually moving through the streets of Amsterdam. People that took a picture and uploaded it to the website www.room299.com could win great PlayStation prizes.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Mario 25th birthday!

Happy birthday dear plumber ;-) may you keep inspiring future gamedevelopers!

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Just add points? What UX can (and cannot) learn from games

A good presentation why games are so much fun, effective and how they can inspire developers...

Bottle Bank Arcade - TheFunTheory.com - Rolighetsteorin.se





A Classic way to change people's behavior! - GAME ON!

Nostalgia Night - Video Art in Utrecht (The Netherlands)


Nacht van de nostalgie videomapping from mathijs on Vimeo.

VERY FREAKIN COOL ANIMATIONS!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Presenting at SRM tonight! I appear to be a GURU?!

Stuart Brown says: Play is more than fun! It's the way we learn things in Life!



Heroes never die!

After writing my book 'Laat met je merk spelen' - soon to be published in English (end of 2010, called A Brand New Playground), I have started to become more philosophical and keep thinking why games are so special to me and to hundreds of millions of people around the globe...
Today I had an insight why games are so cool and the reason is that in games 'heroes never die'... comparable to most books, comics and films. We love heroic creatures and wished they live forever, protecting the world from harm.
It is only in real life that our life is so precious (we have only one). Still - our best friends, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters die even though they've done nothing wrong. In epic films like Lord of the Rings, some heroes die (Boromir), but the real heroes (Frodo and his friends, Aragorn and Gandalf) fortunately don't. I wonder how we would feel if they would all die and we would have to start to get to know new 'heroes' in part 2 and part 3 of the book / film...
How would you feel if you buy a RPG or action game and after playing it for ten minutes, your hero dies and the game is truly 'game-over'? Would you be angry? Or would you accept it and buy the game again (or choose a new / different hero)? I guess you would be really disappointed and angry. How much is a virtual life worth? Wouldn't you be much more cautious playing Call of Duty if you would have to pay a dollar for each life you spoil? It would make the gameplay much more interesting I guess, because the 'stakes are higher'. Maybe it would even be interesting if you gain 50 cents for each kill you make, compensating the costs you make for each life you spoil... ? And the more kills you get, the harder it would be for people to kill you (a build-in experience/skill-model, like in Fallout 3 for instance).
It would be interesting to see if a game-developer would take the chances of developing a game with these mechanics in it!

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Friday, September 3, 2010

Virtual Goods: Why & How They Work

A nice overview in what way virtual goods can add value to gameplay or add value to your business model! Cool brands can actually make a lot of money selling their products within virtual environments (in-game). The horse in this example (slide 15) brought the developers of World Of Warcraft more than 2,5 million dollars in turnover in less than a day! More information through www.BrandNewGame.nl

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Most popular games on 'Steam'

Incredible to see that Football manager is in the top 10 list of most popular games.
An amazing 2 million people play games through Steam every day!

Pivot - The Movie



Pivot from Pivot on Vimeo.

Check out this cool short film animation from my dear friend Kevin (amongst others) at Artibite.

This is the link to the website: http://pivotthemovie.com/