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.

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?

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.

Is Facebook the Napster of the Games Industry?

Serious Games and Energy Costs Leverage Virtual World Events

A few articles over the weekend touch on Facebook becoming more of a social gaming platform and trying to leverage that success into a subscriber number. You has The Star; Facebookers can now become virtual art dealers and AllFacebook’s; Is Facebook the Napster of the Games Industry?. Both articles are featuring Gabe Zichermann who was the founder of Trymedia and an early client of Napster. Now he’s involved with rmbr.com. He cites a few successful games on Facebook and most notable Scrabulous.

 Scrabulous took an established game and leveraged Facebook as a social utility to achieve a new level of success for the game Scrabble (at least its hard to believe that the board game would have over 600 concurrent users 6.22.08)

We’ll see if his own game, Prized Collection, is ready for prime time. You can check out some posts I wrote a year ago on Facebook becoming the next social gaming platform.

Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 1
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 2
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 3
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 4
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 5
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 6

Guy Alex Bogusky Make Microsoft Cool?
CPB is trying to make Microsoft and all the products they own cool again. They did it for BK, Mini and Virgin Airlines.

From MySpace to Facebook to Flickr to LinkedIn, here’s looking at you
An interesting look at some of the top websites that people use to form communities and build networks of link minded people.

Become One With the Game
A look at using video games as a way to market your product to the world.

Tim Zuckert, president-CEO of Shift Control Media, has penned a piece over at AdAge; Become One With the Game. He gives a nice overview of gaming and why more brands, Geico and Aflac, should get involved with video games.

• Games are a reflection of your brand; they should be original and entertaining first and foremost.
• Just as marketers wouldn’t spend all their money to produce a TV spot and leave nothing for media, they shouldn’t just drop a games onto their websites with little or no media support.

With numbers like “62% of online consumers play video games each month, while only 11% of marketers employ game-based initiatives.” It’s still a great time to get involved in gaming and using it as part of your overall integrated marketing strategy. The Digital Design Blog from Avenue A | Razorfish gives examples from the consumer electronics, finance & consumer packaged goods industries. As long as it’s not H&R Block leading the way, then we’ll all be ok. We the year half over I hope to see some more great examples of brands trying to enter the gaming space.

Reactrix has signed a deal with National CineMedia to create interactive displays in theater lobbies in the US. National CineMedia also developed a program called AdverGame that allows the audience in movie theaters to move as one fluid team and act like a human joystick. The program is currently available on 750 screens in 50 theaters in the top 20 markets. National CineMedia launched this with Brand Experience Lab, which is the same team who helped MSNBC.com launched last year with a RSS newsfeed on the big screen.

Eisner thinks the product comes before the audience. Not saying he’s wrong but maybe you need both to have a good execution. Branded Entertainment is only as good as when you target the right audience.

In fact, his company’s first major foray into branded entertainment, a web series for sports trading-card company Topps called “Back on Topps,” only came about because he acquired the brand last year. “We never thought, Who’s the audience? [People] are saying the internet is made up of 13-year-olds, so gear toward them. But I just don’t think you should. I like to make it, then figure out who to reach.”

A guy filmed his girlfriend using Wii Fit and uploaded the video to YouTube. After two million views and Nintendo PR getting wind of the video.. they had to come out and say they had nothing to do with it. The guys works in advertising and some people tried to put two and two together.

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, Prologue, SmugMug, Qik and delicious and show you 5 different uses for the technology. This weeks column is going to look at Flickr.

Flickr is an online photo management tool. I’ve been using Flickr for more then a few years now… mind you I need to reactivate my pro account. Flickr has always been about the community. I don’t think it would have gotten to where it is today if it didn’t focus on connecting like minded people.

DeSmogBlog put the power of the community to use for them in their Flickr contest; The Greenest Photo Ever Contest group. They have just over 140 people following the group. These are people who opted-in and wanted to learn DeSmogBlog and help climate change.

DeSmogBlog exists to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change.

The key to using Flickr from a marketing perspective is to think about it as a community building tool. The question you need to ask yourself is “How can I leverage the community at Flickr”, which could be the following:

1. Employ Flickr’s mobile feature to upload photos from your events for the community.. in near real time.
2. Run a Wallpaper or screenshot contest like DeSmogBlog
3. Use the group feature to build a community and promote photos from the group on your website a la Torontoist.
4. Make use of the photos in your group to create a calendar/poster for Child’s Play Charity using Qoop. Have the dev team sign the poster(s).
   

Flickr is a great tool and one I use on a regular bases. Getting the most out of social media.. is more about giving your community what they want. What would you use Flickr?