BandwidthCamp

Last October Sony launched an in-game ad group which was an announcement that in-game ads are real business. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has just announced a deal with nDreams, which is launching a new division called Brandplay that will work on interactive entertainment for brands.

nDreams was founded by ex-Eidos executive Patrick O’Luanaigh in 2006.

O’Luanaigh previously worked as creative director at SCi, before taking over creative control of Eidos franchises such as Tomb Raider and Hitman, following the acquisition of the publisher by SCi last year.

Fuel Industries has been working in the branded entertainment field for a long time and its something they know really well. I want to call them a Canadian success story having worked with just about every global consumer brand that you can think of. It’ll be fun to watch as nDream competes in very lucrative market.

[Via Next-Gen.biz & Gamasutra]

Last week at Consumer Electronics Association (CES) Reactrix Systems launched a Wii like gaming system for interactive advertising. My first gut reaction after seeing the press release was that this would be great for advergames.

The Reactrix technology is called WaveScape, and it was demonstrated on Samsung’s large-format 570DX display at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week. Above the display was a sensor that kept track of a person’s hand and body movements so they could interact with an on-screen game. The sensor can cover five meters.

This sounds an awful lot like the Wii. The only difference is that they are going after the corporate market, for now.

Despite the technology’s almost universal appeal, Reactrix has no plans to launch a version for consumers.

“We wish we did, because we want to get this to as many people as possible, but rest assured we will get there.

“Our first application is going to be advertising and interactive signage,” said Matt Bell, who is chief scientist at Reactrix and developed the system. “Our first roll-out of these displays will be in the second half of this year in 150 Hilton hotels. They’ll be a mixture of fun, interactive games and information about hotel services.”

I think the system is a great idea and pretty smart to go after the corporate market. The only problem is that they have keep the costs of the system down otherwise the corporate market will just go out and buy a Nintendo Wii. It has more brand appeal and everyone knows what a Nintendo Wii is after being the hottest sought after toy this holidays season for a second year in a row. Having worked with Coca-Cola, The Amazing Race and Hilton hotels, we should start seeing a lot of these around town.

I was looking through the bookmarked items this morning in my rss feed and came across this story in the New York Times; More Than Games, a Net to Snare Social Networkers. The story talks about the Zynga Game Network, a company devoted to developing online games that work on the pages of popular sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Not a week goes by that I don’t read about another company looking to tap into social gaming and the idea that you have to build communities around your game in order to support the advertising. The only problem is and this is a big problem really. The market is becoming to saturated with everyone wanting to get involved in Facebook and soon MySapce’s game section. I believe in the idea of the Long Tail by Chris Anderson. However, I also know there are only so many people in the world that can support so many versions of Texas hold ’em or Scrabble like clones.

A piece of advise for my marketing peers. Tread lightly if you’ve not already entered this space. In a few months it’ll be one year since Faccebook opened up its API and the battle to be number one or even get decent traction is harder then it was just 9 months ago. Check out the Playstations 3 demo of Home at GDC below. Maybe this isn’t the future of social gaming but it’s a fun interpretations of what it could be.

Update: GameDaily’s AdWatch has a short interview with the CEO of Zynga Game Network.

Here is the latest news and stories having an affect on our industry over the last week. Our readers share bookmarks with the BandwidthCamp community by tagging them BandwidthCamp on del.icio.us (a social bookmarking tool). If you’d like to participate, sign-up for delicious and share articles you think the community might find interesting. Enjoy some light reading over the weekend.

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I don’t know what this year is going to hold for advertising, marketing and PR as a whole. However, I do know one thing for sure. It’s going to be another year of continues learning and change. After last weeks look at the year we left behind. I thought it would be a good idea to see what the year ahead might look like. Marketing is always in flux and someone somewhere is always coming up with a new service that can aid us or helping change how the game is played.

However, with all things being equal. Here are my thoughts on what will be the top trends for marketing in 2008. The first few are a given I think when we look at 2006 & 2007. After that I think my list becomes a bit more interesting and maybe even a bit wild and crazy.

1. In-game ads continue to dominate all platforms.
2. Branded games and advergames make an aggressive push into the mainstream.
3. Ads appear in more mainstream places like daily newspapers, movie theater magazines & on public transit property.
4. More real world inclusion of video game characters. I’ll explain what I mean by this in a minute.
5. ARGs become a more mainstream fixture in marketing plans. However, all won’t be as elaborate as ilovebees or Trent Reznor’s Year Zero.

I think number 4 and 5 are tied together a bit. But what I meant by “real world inclusion of video game characters” is that more marketers are going to take their characters and put them in places that we wouldn’t normal see digital characters. Second Life being on the cover of Business Week is great and Tony Montana on MTV’s Cribs is interesting in a how long did it take them to produce that video kind of way. With both of these events happening over the last couple years and Halo going more mainstream then anyone could have hopped for. I see a future where we completely blur the lines between digital and real world marketing to the point that we treat our digital characters as if there where real humans.

In the end I don’t know if any of my trends will come true, but I do plan to look at them again at the end of the year and maybe even half way through the summer.