Time Square in Google Earth

a href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XJseql2u5l0/SVKXeDfqaoI/AAAAAAAAEWU/oUJkLrKepyU/s1600-h/times-square-google-earth.png” imageanchor=”1″ style=”margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;”img border=”0″ src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XJseql2u5l0/SVKXeDfqaoI/AAAAAAAAEWU/oUJkLrKepyU/s400/times-square-google-earth.png” //abr /br /Google Earth got a lot of new textured 3D buildings for New York (–a href=”http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2008/12/new_york_city_in_photorealistic_3d.html”gearth/a), and here’s what billboards on Times Square look like.br /br /Lots of a href=”http://adverlab.blogspot.com/search?q=google+earth”coverage of Google Earth/a in the past; some highlights:br /a href=”http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/08/avatars-bots-in-google-earth.html”Avatars, Bots in Google Earth/abr /a href=”http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/05/altoids-clues-game-in-google-earth.html”Altoids Clues Game in Google Earth/abr /a href=”http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/04/best-buy-in-google-earth.html”Best Buy in Google Earth/abr /a href=”http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/02/billboards-in-google-earth.html”Billboards in Google Earth/abr /a href=”http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/02/local-ads-anaglyph-buildings-in-google.html”Local Ads, Anaglyph Buildings in Google Earth/adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”br /br /
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This holiday season, give the perfect gift of a href=”http://amazon.com/dp/B00019PDNY/?tag=advertising-books-20″Bullshit/a./divdiv class=”feedflare”
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The Apartment of Puzzles



NY Times
: “The architectural designer Eric Clough embedded 18 clues in the Fifth Avenue apartment of the Klinsky- Sherry family, leading them on a scavenger hunt through the rooms of their home.”
— via Game Tycoon

Google Lively: First Impressions

Big news today, if you haven’t heard already: Google released a 3D chat app called Lively. It’s the same thing that was being tested at a university in Arizona last winter, and probably the same thing that was rumored about in January 2007 and anticipated as early as 2006.

In a nutshell, it’s a 3d chat app where users can customize avatars and create environments (rooms) with stuff they pick from a product catalog. You need to install a browser (FF, IE, Win-only) plug-in to participate. And while it is not exactly an MMO, it is more similar to Second Life than early commentators admit.

First impressions:
1. While object creation is a process open only to participants hand-picked by Google (see a press release by Rivers Run Red, a creator of Second Life presence for many companies), Lively seems designed to be integrated with SketchUp and 3D Warehouse at some point. This would open doors not only to user-generated stuff, but also to branded objects (such as virtual Whirlpool appliances).


Rivers Run Red has a room in Lively, and so does Linden Lab.

2. While all of the stuff I’ve seen in the catalog is free, the very fact that there’s a price tag at all hints at a potential marketplace for virtual stuff.

3. The integration with the “flat” web is pretty tight. Each room has a “real” URL (here’s Google’s), each room can be embedded on other sites (and viewable with the plug-in), some objects can play YouTube videos and show pictures hosted elsewhere.

4. Characters can be equipped with animation scripts.

5. Similarly to Second Life, Lively allows movement around the environment and camera manipulation, and like in Second Life, the controls are not terribly intuitive.

6. Objects can be fitted with hyperlinks to “flat” web pages, just like the lava lamp on the screen cap below pointing to AdLab. This could probably result in some sort of on-the-spot transactional activity: you click on the lamp in my room and a window pops up offering you to buy the real thing.

7. There are half-rumors half-expectations that Lively will be somehow integrated into Orkut, which seems possible since Lively uses the same system-wide Google login.

Lively, of course, will become more, well, lively when Google integrates it with SketchUp and allows user- and brand-generated assets to become part of the marketplace. It could also be hypothetically integrated with Google Earth so that Lively “rooms” become inhabitable interiors of the 3D models on Earth or maybe in the sky.

A lof ot related links from AdLab’s past years here, so I’ll just give a couple of broad pointers:
Google and virtual worlds
Virtual worlds in general
Posts related to Second Life
Advertising in games

Tips for Corporate Builds in Second Life

Chris from One-to-One Interactive writes in with a new report that compares corporate professionally-done (and often committee-approved) builds in Second Life with player-made stuff. Even if you think Second Life is sooo 2007 but are interested in interaction design in general, take a look. Among other findings, there’s this gem about how the biggest sim is not always the most popular, and for the reasons that are familiar to architects and urban planners but not necessarily to software designers [emphasis mine]:

“Corporate builds are sprawling virtual landscapes that distribute users throughout multiple locations of activity. Visitors to corporate builds were likely to interact with the content alone or with one or two friends. In contrast, user builds focus visitor activity into a few key areas. As a percent of overall land, user-created builds devote 40% less space to dedicated social areas, such as clubs and dance floors, than corporate builds. The limited social space in user-created builds encourages residents to collect into more densely populated and socially active areas, discouraging resident sprawl. Visitors to user-generated builds were more likely to be in groups of 10, 20, or even more. Second Life is ultimately a social world; social interaction is the primary activity among its users, so spreading users apart amongst well-produced buildings, spaces, and activities is self-defeating.”

History of In-Game Advertising and Advergames: The First Wave

A couple of years ago, I wrote a thesis on in-game advertising. One chapter about history didn’t make it into the final version, but now you can view and download the entire chapter in its original format, complete with proper references. Here, I am publishing a series of excerpts, illustrated, where possible, with screenshots and gameplay videos that have began to appear on YouTube. This first installment deals with the early years of advergames. The next one will be about brands and arcades.

The exact moment when third-party brands become part of the games is hard to pinpoint. The Internet Pinball Machine database that lists 4,832 different units contains images of the Mustang (1964, Chicago Coin) machine. It is unclear whether the makers licensed the brand name of the Ford’s new sports car that appeared in April of the same year but the website describes it as being about car culture, and the game’s playing field and backglass art incorporate images of cars that look similar to those early Mustang models.

One of the early games that appeared on mainframe computers together with Hamurabi and Hunt the Wumpus in the late 1960s was Lunar Lander. It was a text-based simulation where a player piloted a spacecraft by typing in acceleration values. In 1973, Digital Equipment Corporation (the same company that put Spacewar! on its PDP-1 machine) commissioned a graphical version of Moonlander to demonstrate the capabilities of their new GT40 graphics terminal. One of the game versions included a hidden feature:

If you landed at exactly the right spot, a McDonalds appeared. The astronaut would come out, walk over to the McDonalds and order a Big Mac to go, walk back and take off again. If you crashed ON the McDonalds, it would print out “You clod! You’ve destroyed the only McDonald’s on the Moon!” (source)

While this cameo was most likely a joke of an anonymous programmer and wasn’t sponsored by the fast food empire, the “only McDonald’s on the Moon” was probably the first instance of a brand integrated into the gameplay. It is not clear whether this Easter egg (as hidden features are known) survived the subsequent commercial adaptations of Lunar Lander (the game was made an arcade by Atari and was also distributed on tapes for Apple I), but for McDonald’s it marked the beginning of a long involvement with the medium. Arcade cabinets would become commonplace in its restaurants; the company recently initiated a trial of McImagination game kiosks shaped to resemble corporate characters.

In 1982, McDonald’s teamed up with Atari for a nationwide contest in which the restaurant gave away 12,000 video game consoles and home computers worth over $4 million. In 1983, Parker Brothers was working on a McDonald’s-themed game with Ronald feeding hungry aliens with shakes, fries and hamburgers and with the aliens biting into the Golden Arches, but apparently the game failed to generate interest outside the 8-9 year-old demographic and the project already advertised in the catalog was scrapped.


(source)

Regardless of whether the lunar McDonald’s was authorized, by the early 1980s video games had become a large enough part of popular culture to attract at least a few marketing minds at mainstream companies. Around 1983, Coca-Cola approached Atari to produce a game to be given away as a gift to the participants of Coke’s sales convention in Atlanta. Atari came up with a special version of Space Invaders, a blockbuster game that had sold millions of copies since its release a few years earlier. The rows of aliens were replaced by the letters P, E, P, S, I and the command ship above them was replaced with a Pepsi logo. The player controlled a ship whose goal was to shoot down as many enemy characters as possible within the three-minute limit, after which the game would end and the message Coke Wins would flash across the screen. Only 125 copies of Pepsi Invaders were made, but the game eventually trickled down into the broad gamer community.

At least three other promotional games were produced and offered to the general public through mail-order by consumer goods companies that year. One was Tooth Protector from Johnson & Johnson, a bizarre game in which the main character, the Tooth Protector, was armed with a toothbrush, floss and dental rinse to protect teeth from the cubes dropped by Snack Attackers. The manual read:

The game ends if 3 teeth disappear or if 3 T.P.s are carried away and eliminated by the Snack Attackers. When you are successful in protecting the teeth, valuable points will be accumulated, and there will be no end to the fun you can have! (source)

The other game was by Ralston Purina whose commercials for Chuck Wagon dog food featured a tiny wagon rolling out from a bag of dog food and across the kitchen floor. The commercials apparently were so popular that the company decided to turn it into a computer game with the wagon as its main character. The game was appropriately titled Chase the Chuck Wagon.

Finally, there was Kool-Aid Man made by M Network for General Foods. It, too, was tied to a commercial in which a giant pitcher was breaking through a brick wall and served Kool-Aid to everyone in the vicinity; the concept was reiterated on the game’s box art and in the opening sequence. In the game, the Kool-Aid Man fought evil Thirsties who were stealing water from a swimming pool.

Whether these three games were a marketing success is hard to tell. Distributed for free in exchange for proofs of purchase, they are now considered collectible rarities unlike many other Atari titles of that period, so the companies probably didn’t send out too many units. One of the reasons why these games didn’t do well is their bad fortune of being released during the unraveling of the game industry known as the Video Game Crash of 1983. In 1982, when these titles were probably commissioned, the industry was at the peak of its popularity and profitability; that year, the American public bought $3 billion worth of games (over $6 billion in today’s money), tripling the previous year’s amount. The news media sensationalized the boom and many companies rushed to open video games division to capitalize on the tidal wave; Quaker Oats, for instance, acquired US Games and presented eight titles, mostly clones of the existing hits, at Chicago’s Summer Consumer Electronic Show of 1982. The market became saturated with bad games and numerous variations of the same concepts, and the next year the sales dropped to $2 billion, and then to $800 million in 1984 and $100 million in 1985. Quaker Oats’ game division lasted one year.

Wii Advergames

There are quite a few advergames designed to be played on the popular Wii console out there. Pictured above is MINI’s Pinball. Early last year (news), Wrigley’s has optimized a number of its games for the Wiimote, and Live Free or Die Hard movie was also promoted by a Wii-able game (now gone). Like the iPhone advergames, Wii games are designed to be accessed through the console’s browser.

Eventology from Argentina creates Wii-powered games for tradeshows to attract booth traffic (see in action in this YouTube video). [update, May 19, 2008: the devices are not Wii-based and are build by Eventology directly; see comment].

Earlier:
How Would a Wii Dance Pole Work?
3D TV With Wii Remote

Ikea Stuff Pack for Sims 2 Confirmed

The rumored Ikea-themed stuff pack for The Sims 2 is due out on June 24 for $19.95, according to this this now removed but cached page on EA store.

Ad copy from the site:
– Turn your Sims’ living room into a haven of comfort and relaxation with a plush Ektorp sofa, a unique Expedit TV unit, a complementing Leksvik coffee table, and chic décor, like the Vanna mirror.
– Create a bold, vibrant, and revitalizing bedroom with a new Malm bed, matching chest of drawers, a shapely Storm floor lamp and a bright IKEA PS rug.
– Indulge your Sims with an office that is sure to promote order and productivity with its elegant Vika Hyttan desk, inspiring Kila desk lamp, bold Helmer drawer unit, and Lack zigzag wallshelf.

Guardian has a full-size pack shot. Some interesting stats in the accompanying article:

“In its first year, sales of the H&M Fashion software pack [for the Sims 2] reached 1m. EA also struck a deal with Ford to enable Sims players’ characters to own a Focus or Mustang car. To date, 2.7m Ford add-ons have been sold.”

Fisheye Quake

Fisheye Quake is a version of quake (software rendering) that allows you to play in ANY fov [field of vision], i.e. 10 to 360 and over.”

Apple Eyeing Virtual Store?

Is Apple prepping a 3D shopping interface? A Second Life resident thinks it might (via Brand Flakes) if the new patent is any indication. The patent was filed in September 2006 and published a couple of weeks ago. (Follow a lengthier discussion.)

There have been a couple of fan-made Apple stores in Second Life before: see this set of Flickr pictures of one such store and a video of another one below.

This is me in a bootleg Apple store in Second Life in early 2006. The store was selling iPod and iPod shuffle replicas but was eventually shut down. There, you could also pick-up a black outfit and a green “cardboard” background and walk around looking like an iPod commercial.

Virtual Personal Space, Spam Museum, Fictional Fiction, Wait Times, iPhone Usability

As usual, too many open browser tabs with interesting stories that don’t deserve to languish in the del.icio.us obscurity:

Anti-social bot invades Second Lifers’ personal space (Nov 2007)
“A software bot that masquerades as an ill-mannered human user within the popular virtual world Second Life is being used by UK researchers to investigate the psychology of its inhabitants. The bot starts a conversation with human users and deliberately invades their personal space to see how they will react.”

A trip down spam memory lane
Commemorating spam’s 30th anniversary, New Scientist rounds up a bunch of interesting links, such as this archive that’s been aggregating spam for the past 10 years.

NY Times on fictional fiction:
“‘Charm’ was released in the fictional small town of Pine Valley, Pa., as part of the [ABC’s soap “All My Children”] story line. […] It has sold more than 100,000 copies and made its debut in February at No. 13 on the New York Times best-seller list.”

The Psychology of Waiting Lines (1985):

  • Uncertain waits are longer than known, finite waits.
  • Occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time.
  • People want to get started
  • Unfair waits are longer than equitable waits
  • Unexplained waits are longer than explained waits
  • The wore valuable the service, the longer the customer will wait
  • Solo waits feel longer than group waits

iPhone Usability Evaluation Report:

“One feature of the popup keyboard on the iPhone is the drag and lift feature which is said to reduce errors. Unfortunately not one user discovered this feature.”

Campaign Monitor is built for designers who can create great looking emails for themselves and their clients, but need software to send each campaign, track the results and manage their subscribers.

Selling Music Through Games

– “In a nod to the ascendancy of video games, rock ‘n’ roll bad boys Motley Crue will become the first group to release a new single through Rock Band, the developer of the wildly popular game said on Monday.” (Reuters)

– Music from Amazon is coming to Liberty City and will be available via in-game cell phone downloads in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV:

“Rockstar Games and Amazon have teamed up to create an ambitious new model for digital music distribution. Built exclusively for the upcoming video game blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV, it allows players to buy real-world MP3s of tracks heard over the game’s numerous radio stations in a very seamless manner. (Initially, this service will only be available in the U.S.) Advertised throughout Liberty City, the cheekily-named “ZiT” technology is built into the game’s mobile phone interface system. As players cruise around the world listening to the in-game radio, they can at any point ‘mark’ a song by opening their phone and dialing the number ZIT-555-0100.” (Yahoo)

Your Own McDonald’s in Second Life

If you have a Second Life account, go buy yourself an entire McDonald’s restaurant for $2. Creative possibilities abound. Live in it. Organize protests in it. Or order a photorealistic avatar of your favorite president and put him to work.

IBM’s Code of Conduct for Virtual Worlds

IBM Virtual World Guidelines (does your company have one?): “In general, your digital persona’s appearance is up to you. When you are using your avatar or persona in association with IBM, however, your judgment in these matters should be shaped by the same general guidelines that apply to IBMers in physical environments – i.e., that your appearance be appropriate to the context of your activities. You need to be especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.”
— via a comment on Second Thoughts

It was written up in USA Today last year, too.

BP in SimCity Societies, Ikea in Sims

This windmill farm in the recently released SimCity Societies was brought to you by BP. Other energy sources in the game are coal and nuclear plants, but those are unbranded, and I haven’t seen any other kinds of branded assets in the game either. I haven’t unlocked all the building yet, and apparently there are other clean BP-branded power generators and a BP truck. You can remove the BP logos by isntalling this fan-made update.

There’s a microsite explaining BP’s involvement with EA and its game:

“The EA/BP collaboration is a result of the organizations’ complementary interests. During the development of SimCity’s next iteration, EA looked for a way to raise awareness about low-carbon power choices. As one of the first major energy companies to publicly acknowledge the need to reduce carbon emissions, BP has constantly sought ways to further acceptance of alternative energies.”

And there’s a rumor — although no screenshot — that the Sims 2 franchise is getting another branded stuff pack, this time from Ikea (the first one was from the apparel retailer H&M, still available on Amazon). Preorders taken on this Dutch (?) site.


Player-made Ikea store for SimCity 4

Whoever is designing the Ikea pack doesn’t even have to work too hard given how much fan-made Ikea assets are already out there, like this Markor set on a Sims mod exchange (compare to the actual furniture), or on Google’s 3D warehouse.

Rockband Sells 6 Million Song Downloads

“Harmonix Music Systems Inc., developers of the music video game Rock Band and its predecessor franchise Guitar Hero, reports that more than 6 million game levels based on songs have been purchased through its online music store since the game launched in November 2007.

Since launch, Cambridge-based Harmonix has been adding downloadable content weekly, and now has more than 70 songs available for purchase, officials said. With an average cost of about $2 each, the downloaded tracks could have brought in up to $12 million additional revenue to Harmonix since the game launched.”
Mass High Tech

In-Theater Games Come to A Theater Near You

In-theater games such as NewsBreaker will soon become a part of the usual moviegoing experience. Our friends at Brand Experience Labs say that they have partnered with National CineMedia and will begin “rolling AudienceGames out to the top 20 markets on about 750 screens” after the initial test.

National CineMedia operates the largest digital in-theatre network in North America through a venture of AMC Entertainment, Cinemark, and Regal Entertainment Group, the three largest theatre operators in the U.S. Our national theatre network includes over 15,000 screens in over 1,100 theatres in 47 states, reaching more than 600 million moviegoers annually.”

Very exciting, especially combined with industry rumors that 3D cinema is coming back big time.

Make Games with MS Excel

I wrote about games build in and for MS Excel earlier, and now Gamasutra runs a very detailed feature showing some of the hidden powers of the office application:

“It’s time to learn a new 3D game engine name: Microsoft Excel.

It is understood that Excel is an all-round office tool, but probably it is unknown that it has a bunch of features that makes Excel a high-class 3D graphics engine.

In this article I will demonstrate Excel’s arithmetical facilities, the embedded rendering subsystems (there are two of them!) and the revolutionary approach which might just cause a paradigm shift. I hope you will discover that Excel effectively and efficiently incorporates practicality, tons of features, the multi-platform portability and the high performance with the unique and futuristic 3D engine features.”

Check out Excel Music Synthesizer build on MS Excel 2007.

Also:
PowerPoint Karaoke

Machinima Production Tool Kit – MovieStorm


This homage to Pulp Fiction was made with Moviestorm.

Moviestorm is a stand-alone (and free) application for machinima production with an impressive list of features. The company claims this is the first such dedicated tool, but you’ll remember The Movies game from a couple of years ago as well as Chrysler’s machinima contest. And while machinima production might be a fringe activity, it’s a “lunatic” fringe: The Movies Online game community website “has around 29,000 Studios with a total of 138,404 movies and all those received more than 803,000 ratings and comments.” (source).

Some of these videos are fan-made interpretations of real commercials, like this one about AllState Insurance:

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“Lost: Via Domus” Game Ships

If you are into transmedia storytelling, and especially if you are a Lost fan, check out the Lost: Via Domus game (PC, Xbox360) that Amazon began shipping yesterday (mine is on its way). You will be playing a new character — a photographer with amnesia — in an environment that is true to the TV series and that has been vetted by the show’s creators. There isn’t much shooting involved, but you will get to solve a lot of puzzles and explore a lot of places that has remained off the TV screen, including some hidden nooks inside the stations. Many of the original voices were recorded for the game, including Ben’s, but unfortunately not Sawyer’s.

Despicable Use of In-Game Advertising

Gamespot’s Dubious Honors Awards for despicable use of in-game advertising:

2004 (Need for Speed Underground)
2005 (SWAT 4, where the dynamic in-game ads made one of the first appearances)
2006 (Fight Night Round 3, a boxing game with the Burger King’s King in it)
2007 (Need for Speed ProStreet):

“Need for Speed ProStreet isn’t exactly an example of in-game advertising restraint. Playing the game offline isn’t all that offensive, but as soon as you jump on to Xbox Live, the deluge begins. The game has dynamic ads that start downloading the very first time you get online. What’s worse and even more ridiculous is that the game’s Xbox Live achievement points have ads attached to them. That’s right, even the achievements in this game are brought to you by a commercial sponsor.” Video review of the game below.

Also note the readers’ choice selections as well as nominees.