BandwidthCamp

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.

Heatwave Interactive raises round to become a games incubator
Coke Zero and the NASCAR challenge

Hasbro sues Scrabulous makers, after EA Scrabble enters beta

Chevy Cobalt Labs - the GM Advergame

User-Created LittleBigPlanet Content To Launch Free

With E3 coming to a close this week and a few interesting news pieces coming out of E3. The one very interesting part that I loved seeing is the continued success of music based video games including Rock Band 2. You can check out the list of tracks here.

Guns N’ Roses new album “Chinese Democracy” is going to have a track, “Shackler’s Revenge,” on the next game for the fall season. When you see that the Rock Band sold 2.5m copies and has brought in extra revenue from downloads, of which more than 15m have sold at $1.99 each. You start to see the bigger picture of why Guns N’ Roses, MTV and Universal Music Group want to get togerher for a deal with Rock Band 2. Other songs are going to include Let There Be Rock by AC/DC, Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan and Pinball Wizard by The Who. The Who song reminds me of a bar I drank at in Paris, France a few years ago.

The short of it is that video games are showing more ways that advertisers can bring two industries together. Adding music to Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and The Sim DJ is enhancing and complimenting the experience that each gamer is going to have. We are really making the experience more real and making sure that we are not intruding on the gaming experience.

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. This week has really been about Google’s Lively.

Google and their launch of their virtual world Lively has been the major news this week. It wasn’t just the news but the different perspectives that everyone is taking on Lively. Also, how is advertising going to fit in?

Virtual Worlds Are So Hot Right Now: $345 Million Invested So Far This Year

Lively New Virtual World From Google

Lively launches, but is it relevant?

Lively: Google Launches Virtual World

Google Launches Virtual World Called Lively

10 things you need to know about Google Lively

In other news…

PS3’s Advertising Qore
I would love to track how Qore changes over time as consumers demand evolves for the PS3.

Rockstar Games ad escapes ban despite ‘glorifying violence’
This ad was UK based, but when it comes to Rockstar everyone in the industry tends to feel it.

It’s been a crazy week leading up to E3. This week has been all about Google’s Lively, Rockstar Games potential ban on their Bully: Scholarship Edition game. Then  you’ve Yahoo, Microsoft’s new love interest, shacking things up as the team with Double Fusion and NeoEdge Networks.

I really want to check out more of  Google’s Lively and look at the potential that is containted within. Has anyone tried Lively yet?

Tipster Thursdays is a monthly feature covering technology and how you can incorporate it as part of your marketing plan. We’re going to look at different pieces of technology like Twitter, Pingie, Wiki, SmugMug, Facebook and delicious and show you 5 different and unusual uses for the technology. This weeks column is going to look at podcasts.

A podcast is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet. Once the podcast is recorded and finalized, you can post it to iTunes, your own website or for playback on iPods, portable media players and PCs. Podcasts are an interesting medium, as they haven’t gone beyond the radio show style format for the most part. Insomniac Games’ podcast Full Moon is taking off and the gaming community is enjoying what they have to say. The podcast isn’t strictly about games they are working on, but about the gaming industry from a developer’s perspective. Here are 5 great ways you can use podcasting as a tactic in your marketing plan.

1. Podcasting a side story from your game would be a great way to show off the story telling ability of your team as well as their imagination.
2. Video podcast how to use your mod kit for your game. The more people who know how to use it, the more people who could potential make a cool mod for your game.
3. Launch a video podcast fan kit competition and have your community remix and reedit a song and video from your game.
4. Podcast part of your ARG for fans to find online or on an MP3 player.
5. Take the novel you already have and podcast it chapter-by-chapter and provide another way for your fans to connect with your product.

As I mentioned in my Gamasutra column last year, Online Public Relations: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Don’t go cheap and be as creative as possible. You have to be willing to invest both finances and time into your content. If you are not going to invest the same effort you put into prepping that advertising page for Game Informer magazine, then don’t even get started. Don’t simply do what your competition is doing. as people are drawn to creative and fun pieces of content. Participation tends to yield inspiration as well. When you get the community involved, they inspire and push your content to another level. Never underestimate the power and creativity of your community when you get them involved because podcasts are a great medium.