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Game developer Will Wright , best known as the man behind SimCity (and other Sim games) and Spore , has signed a deal with the Science Channel to create programming for the cable station. These are not games, they're TV shows, though they'll have interactive online components. I've always divided people into two types: visual and verbal. The first time I talked to a game developer at length, I realized there was a third type of person. Sponsor Several years ago, when I worked at a game development company, I had the opportunity to sit down and have an in-depth conversation with the company's chief game developer. What I gained from that conversation was a knowledge that deep-down gaming people see the world in terms of relational information and of decision trees. That makes it sound less magical than it is. This dev described his thought process when he entered a department store as one of finding opportunities, identifying goals, avoiding obstacles, securing rewards and understanding and relating to fellow agents. The dynamism of this view was intriguing. If Wright brings anything to TV programming - never underestimate the ability of a genius in one thing to be a boob in another - it may well be in a renewed sense of story, one that is neither the unfolding of information-loaded pictures, nor of narrative, but of the constant ebb and flow of agents interacting on a reward trajectory. It will be interesting to watch, whether or not any of it is interesting to watch. Top photo by Javier Aroche Bottom photo by Jacob Metcalf Discuss
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Sims Dev to Make TV Shows
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Fans of augmented reality (AR) will be excited to learn that their favorite emerging technology is now front and center of a brand new marketing campaign based around one of the Discovery Channel 's most popular television shows. Unfortunately for most tech nerds, it's not Mythbusters, though I wouldn't be surprised if the campaign was successful enough to spread to other shows. Instead, Discovery is promoting its docu-drama hit Deadliest Catch with a desktop-based AR ad campaign . Sponsor During episodes of the popular show, Alaskan king crab fishing enthusiasts are encouraged to visit a special webpage where they can print a flier that allows them to experience the adrenaline pumping action of "crabbing" for themselves. Okay, not really, but the experience - a 3D game controlled by the flier - actually looks pretty neat. By holding the flier up to a webcam, users can steer a 3D fishing boat that appears on the flier in a race against the clock to snatch up 20 crab pots (see video below). The experience was developed by Total Immersion , one of the top AR vendors profiled in our recently published report on augmented reality marketing . Though the popular show has just returned for its sixth season earlier this week, the AR game was tested in March with the show's Facebook fans - an effort that the company says reached over a quarter of a million viewers. But one of the great things about this AR experience is not the game itself, but rather the all out blitzkrieg of marketing behind it to make sure it reaches as many people as possible. Discovery and their marketing agency PHD are not only promoting the game through on-air mentions during episodes of the show, they are also providing print, online and experiential (ie: big trucks with giant monitors parked in public locations) advertisements as well. The print ads are running in some of the most popular magazines on newstands today, including ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, People and Entertainment Weekly. The online ads can be found similarly targeted websites, including ESPN.com, MSN.com and TVguide.com. The public kiosk-style displays were parked last week in Union Square and Citi Field (home of the Mets) in New York and in Washington D.C. at Nationals Stadium and on the National Mall. Clearly PHD sees sports fans as a crucial cross section of Deadliest Catch fans, as they strategically placed the kiosks at baseball stadiums during the first week of the MLB season. But I'm not excited that Deadliest Catch is getting a big marketing push for the debut of its new season, I'm thrilled that augmented reality is at the center of it, and is getting huge play infront of mainstream eyeballs. A prominent campaign for one the highest rated shows on a very popular cable channel is exactly the primetime exposure that AR needs to keep pushing on the brink of universal adoption. That being said, there could be a downside to this exposure. Is this experience the best form of AR that should be placed in the national spotlight? Could this further the notion that AR is a gimmicky advertising trick because of the gaming aspect? There are plenty of experiences, which we have discussed at length , that provide practical services and applications by way of AR, and steering a fishing boat is hardly one of them. My fear, as a fan of the technology, is that widespread exposure of this type could actually damage AR's growing reputation. So I guess theres a bit of a risk/reward balance that needs to be found in these AR experiences with the potential to reach millions of viewers. The chance to put the technology infront of that many people is impossible to turn down, but at the same time, depending on the application, it could backfire and leave a lasting impression in many minds that AR is nothing but a fun toy that ad agencies get to play with in hopes of engaging users with the "wow factor." Personally I have a preference for AR experiences that actually provide a practical service , but I can't help but be excited for this new campaign from Discovery and Total Immersion. Discuss
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Discovery Channel Puts AR In Front of Millions of Eyeballs
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The gaming industry continues to see phenomenal growth - from console systems to social games. The 12 million subscribers of Blizzard's World of Warcraft - once the giant of gaming - now seems small compared to the 80 million Farmville players. Farmville's maker, Zynga was recently estimated to be worth $5 billion - a valuation that appears to bode well for investors and for startups. But are games good buys? Can gaming startups attract the investment they need? Sponsor Gaming industry consultant Nicholas Lovell recently wrote a post on the blog Gamasutra where he suggested "Four Reasons Why VCs Won't Fund Game Companies." Lovell's arguments are as follows 1. VCs don't invest in projects Lovell contends that game developers are good at creating (and even at pitching) projects, but that VCs don't necessarily care what makes a good project - in other words, what makes a good game. "Investors care about businesses; developers show them projects." 2. Investors want to see a running business, not an idea 3. VCs want sustainable businesses Lowell writes, "Traditional games developers are really difficult for any investor to fund. They look like quite late-stage businesses: they may have hundreds of staff, millions in turnover and a proven track record. But fundamentally, they are always just one deal away from bankruptcy. They look like startups from a risk perspective but are like late stage investments from a reward perspective." 4. History sucks The history of the gaming industry is full of failed businesses, and as such VCs find the investment there to be risky. Arguably, investors' opinions might be changing, particularly given the rapidly increasing popularity of social games. While traditional console games and MMORPGs require significant investment and substantial development time before a game is "live," social games are, arguably, "lighter." With the growth in virtual goods and virtual currency, even "free" social games, as Farmville and the like have demonstrated, can become vastly popular and very profitable. Discuss
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Do VCs Like Games? Gaming Startups and Investors
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Most of the initial buzz surrounding Apple's announcement on Thursday of its new operating system, iPhone OS 4, centered on the support for multitasking . While this feature has been long anticipated by users and developers alike, another important but less discussed aspect of the update involves Apple's Game Center - a social gaming network to be launched for iPhone and iPod Touch later this summer. Similar to the networks already prevalent in console gaming, Apple's Game Center will allow friend invitations and multiplayer game-play and will include matchmaking and high-score tracking. Sponsor The Game Center may be Apple's attempt to compete with Facebook's dominance over the hugely popular and incredibly lucrative area of social gaming . A report released this week suggested that the gaming company Zynga , maker of six of the seven most popular social games, is worth over $5 billion. Unlike Facebook, Apple does not currently have a social network upon which to automatically connect players and friends, although implementation of the Game Center may well bring this about. Details about the Game Center were not explicit in Thursday's announcement, although the beta release of the operating system will include a developer preview of Game Center and contain a set of APIs so that mobile game developers can build apps that take advantage of the social gaming network capabilities. Echoing the popularity of gaming on the iPhone, initial analytics since the iPad release point to the continued domination of the App Store by gaming and entertainment applications. The updates to the iPhone OS could provide an opportunity for mobile and social game developers and for entrepreneurs in the gaming industry. Discuss
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Apple's Game Center: More Opportunities for Social Games Developers
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The current generation of check-in based location apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are more or less focused on the gaming aspects of location-based social networking. CauseWorld for the iPhone and Android, however, wants to use location based check-ins for two things: connect you to the stores around you and allow you to use the points you get for checking in to support a variety of charitable causes . CauseWorld features badges and other virtual rewards, but the main focus of the app is on collecting "karma points" that can then be exchanged for donations to participating charities. Sponsor Shopping and Charity The mission of CauseWorld's parent company Shopkick is to bring the physical and virtual worlds of retail together. Besides just checking in at various stores, CauseWorld's users can also scan products in supermarkets to get extra points. Typically, it's been hard for barcode scanners like RedLaser to get to this data for grocery items, but as Shopkick's CEO Cyriac Roeding tols us yesterday, his company manged to strike a deal with Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods, which gives Shopkick access to this data. It's easy to see why these companies would be interesting in making the deal with CauseWorld. After all, whenever you scan a product (even if your motivation is to help the world by gathering karma points), you are already holding this product in your hands and Kraft can now give you a mobile coupon for the product that you can use at the check-out counter. That, as Roeding put it, "is the holy grail for retailers" - being able to create a deeper relationship with the consumer right in the store while they are already looking at the product. After just a little bit more than three month on the market, CauseWorld has already seen 400,000 downloads of its mobile app and plans to release a major update in the summer. So far, the company has received around $700,000 in sponsorship money from Citi for its charity program and is giving away about $100,000 per month. Features The app itself is pretty straightforward. You can check in to stores around you and if this is a participating store, the app will also encourage you to check the store out and scan some products. To make sure that you are not just gaming the system, CauseWorld restricts you to 10 check-ins a day and enforces a three minute break between check-ins. Every check-in is worth 5 karma points (some sponsors also offer double points). You can connect the app to Facebook, but the social networking aspects are really not the focus of the app. One problem we noticed, however, is that the app allows to check in even if the store is still almost mile half a mile away from you. This seems to defeat the purpose of really connecting consumers to nearby stores and makes it rather easy to collect points while you are actually still sitting in your living room. Discuss
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CauseWorld: Checking in for Charity
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