Influx Insights Tag Feed: videogames

the beatles endure

Influx Insights — 2009-06-07T07:27:55Z

The Beatles are one of the strongest and most enduring brands in the world. Without having the benefit of new material, the only way of staying relevant is to support each shift in technology. From remastered CDs through to staged performance of their songs with Cirque Du Soleil, The Beatles have manged to stay connected to the times.

The Beatles on Rockband is one of the most anticipated software releases of the year and will doubltless be a huge global hit for the 09 holidays.

Here's the E3 trailer

Posted by Ed Cotton

music's impact on video games

Influx Insights — 2009-01-12T09:55:01Z

Rockband and Guitar Hero have changed the face of video games. Now we have some stats from the folks at Guitar Hero that show the impact of the new title- Guitar Hero 3.

- $1billion in sales in a 26 month period- the first video game to reach $1 billion in sales

- 25,000 songs created and posted in the first 10 days

- 141,000 songs posted to date

- 600,000 community members

- 15-843% growth in the music sales for artists featured in the game

For years, no one could make a good music game and the whole genre was in disarray. However, fast forward to today with the impact of great user interfaces and co-operation from the music industry and you have a whole new world.

Posted by Ed Cotton

researching human behavior with spore

Influx Insights — 2008-10-19T11:02:43Z

Spore is the latest game created by Wil Wright, the brain behind Sim City and The Sims. It let's people create their own creatures and evolve them over time. Using simple creature creator tool sets, users get to decide how they want their creatures to look, feel, behave and evolve.

Could Wil Wright and EA's Spore be the latest research tool to help understand human behavior?

The latest issue of Seed, suggests it could.

"It's the potential Spore has to evolve over current and future interactions into a massive dataset of billions of human interactions and decisions that may make the game a target for scientific research rather than a reflection of it."

They already men prefer conquest through blood and aggression and women prefer non-aggressive methods which often involve singing and dancing, this is not especially surprising and seems perfectly obvious, but it's just the tip of the iceberg of data.

The game even in the test phase has an incredible level of participation. It took only 18 days for the Spore community to match the 1.6 million species on Earth. It took just 22 hours to generate 100,000 creatures.

As of the end of September, the game had sold around 1 million units, but more impressive are the 39 million creatures that have been created to date.

Seed Magazine confirms that EA has a massively powerful research tool in its hands, but it remains unclear if they are just going to keep it for themselves or make it public.

Posted by Ed Cotton

video games are now serious play

Influx Insights — 2008-10-06T23:21:11Z

For years video games and their makers have been dismissed by many as irrelevant, child's play.

The industry has carved out an impressive place in the entertainment space, but never seems to get the love or respect it feels it deserves.

With computing power advancing at a rapid rate and consoles being at the forefront of this, we are now starting to see games and the gaming industry being taken seriously.

One of the first examples was Folding@Home on the PS3, which allows console owners to band together to help medical science.

The latest manifestation is the amazing collaboration between Citroen and Polyphony Digital, the makers of the hit driving simulation game, Gran Turismo.

The Citroen GT unveiled at last week's Paris Auto Show was created in Polyphony's computers and then rendered into a live concept at Citroen.

The car therefore has been designed to perfection for both the real and virtual/digital worlds.

Posted by Ed Cotton

pushing tv into video games

Influx Insights — 2007-11-01T08:15:51Z

There was an interesting story yesterday about BBC's Top Gear teaming up with Polyphony, the creations of the racing video game Gran Turismo. The deal involves Top Gear providing program content for the new Gran Turismo channel (I assume this is part of an extended TV network that Sony Playstation is building) and adding the show's unique test track to the Gran Turismo video game.

The channel will launch some time in 2008.

Clearly, it's an example of TV networks reaching out to ensure their content gets distributed as widely as possible. With certain audiences spending more and more time with video games, the seamless integration of additional content onto gaming platforms makes a great deal of sense, especially given the ability of the consoles to handle HD.

It's probably safe to assume that all kinds of media tie-ups will happen and be integrated into games, especially with the sports franchises sharing highlight reels and the like with their gaming partners.

It also suggests that brands might have the opportunity to generate more interesting content within and with video games than just placing their product in the game.

Posted by Ed Cotton

world cyber games- the challenges of the athlete

Influx Insights — 2007-10-08T11:32:19Z

In case you weren't aware, the World Cyber Games in Seattle just finished this Sunday, it's basically the Olympics of video games with competitions in Warcraft, Gears of War, Project Gotham Racing and more. In these games, contestants represent their countries. The tournament ended with USA on top of the medals table, followed by Brazil and South Korea.

Here's a great interview with Geoff Robinson, a Team USA cyber athlete, who plays Starcraft for his country and claims his biggest challenges are getting his roomate to pay the internet bill and finding six hours a day to practice.

Sadly, the interview is cut a little early, just when Geoff starts to explain how he managed to take advantage of his dad's business trip to travel to a tournament.

Posted by Ed Cotton

mass gaming

Influx Insights — 2007-07-10T10:23:45Z

Gaming is about to undergo a major revolution; the success of Nintendo’s Wii has woken publishers, developers and the console manufacturers to the potential reality of a genuine mass market.

Everyone loves to play, but for too long gaming has defined itself and marketed to the stereotypical teenage male gamer and missed out on the rest of the population.

John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA acknowledged this problem in a recent interview.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play.”

Here are a couple of interesting new gaming initiatives, including one one from EA.

1. Newsgames

Persuasive Games recently signed a deal with the New York Times to provide newsgames for the publishing giant. The first game, Food Import Folly explores the issue of FDA food inspections.

Gaming for Times readers, who would have thought?

2. User-Generated Fashion games

H&M and EA teamed up for The Sims to allow users to integrate H&M fashions into their game play. Instead of turning to Second Life, H&M turned to an established brand franchise to create an interactive experience.

With a branded Sims Pack, users also have the opportunity to see new designs, check out virtual stores and create their own designs, with H&M showcasing the best concepts in virtual fashion shows.

H&M’s effort is a nice integration of user-generated content, brand experience and gaming.

Expect to see more innovation from the gaming world as it tries to broaden its audience base and as advertisers chase after opportunities to engage with consumers in new and more playful ways.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the first video game- 1969

Influx Insights — 2007-05-31T00:24:03Z