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July 2, 2009

Video Games Make You Smarter... Really!

by: Roger Dooley

Can video games make you a better air traffic controller? How about a better surgeon? And, for the huge demographic bubble of baby boomers, can video games keep you cognitively sharp into old age?

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June 9, 2009

Ethics in Viral Marketing

by: Taylan Kadayifcioglu

It really bothers me when news like this shows us that people still don't quite understand what viral marketing is and what it is not. One might say a publicity stunt is not viral marketing. That argument, however, would not have been helped by the fact that it was a viral marketing agency staging all this and that they got media outlets reporting on it as real news.

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June 3, 2009

Project Natal - MS Brings Motion Control to XBox 360

by: David Polinchock

The long rumored motion controller for the XBox 360 was announced yesterday and so far everyone seems pretty psyched with it. Much like our AudienceGames In-Cinema Experience, they are using motion capture to make you the game controller. Of course, Project Natal is a lot more advanced then what we've been doing in cinema, where we have look at a whole audience of people, and they also added facial & voice recognition, which should add some really cool experience options to what they're doing.

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May 30, 2009

Augmented Reality Microsites: First Impressions

Since I got my webcam upgraded anyway, I thought I'd do a follow up on the Augmented Reality is The New Second Life post and spend a lunch break looking at a few recent implementations of augmented reality in promo microsites.

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May 28, 2009

Augmented Reality Is the New Second Life

People have been comparing Twitter to Second Life, but I think "augmented reality" is a more accurate analogy, with most advertisers getting lured by the futuristic wow-factor, riding the hype cycle, and pretty much misunderstanding the potential of the medium. The thing has officially entered the collective industry consciousness, too, now that WSJ picked it up.

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May 22, 2009

Twitter (Adver)games

The ongoing puzzle at @Resistance2018 (promoting the new Terminator movie) is probably the first -- and excellent -- attempt at advergaming on Twitter, but I'm anxious to see how people will explore the potential of this new medium further. While Resistance2018 is not really an ARG, it's easy to see how Twitter will become another tool for ARG gamemasters, like those behind the new rumored (but possibly unofficial) Lost game unfolding over at @Simeonhobbes.

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May 1, 2009

Game Developer Submits Game of Resignation

A game developer submitted his resignation from a game dev shop by creating, what else, a game. (Play with arrow buttons).
- via Facebook geek friends

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April 30, 2009

New Contributor - Taylan Kadayifcioglu [mini-interview inside]

After a short B&G break, we're back with a brand new contributor. Taylan Kadayifcioglu is young, is keen and writes mind-blowingly sharp posts on branding in video games. His posts are now available on business&games and his own blog  The Selling Game: A Quest to Innovate. Mini-interview with Taylan and article links after the jump.

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April 29, 2009

Future of Marketing and Advertising... Is Gaming?

by: Taylan Kadayifcioglu

I have exposed myself to a number of new ideas (and reminders of old ones) over the last week, all about the present and future of marketing and advertising; and they are beginning to converge nicely.

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April 13, 2009

OnLive Will Kick Your Ass! No, Seriously

by: Taylan Kadayifcioglu

Will OnLive kill the console market? Will they put everyone out of business? Will they beat up your dad? Your mom?

As you can probably tell from the prelude, this is going to be about the recently announced gaming platform OnLive and its fortunes. Since reading about it for the first time, I have lost count of the blog posts explaining to me and everyone else why OnLive will fail, crash, burn, cry in the rain, and possibly regret ever being born in the first place.

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