>This is ‘Da Bomb’ for all you arcade-classics game lovers and Atari fans.

As most of you know, I used to work for Atari over a decade ago and this surely brings back memories!

Check out this Arcade-control hub for iPad!

Together with all your favorite classic Atari games (The app is called ‘Atari Greatest Hits‘ in the iTunes store) you can replay the legendary games on this great console!

The screen below shows you how it works. I WANT TO PLAY DONKEY KONG !!!

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Spil Games, Flavour and BrandNewGame joined forced in The Netherlands to organize an event to enlighten brands and organizations about how games can be used to achieve marketing goals.

The event is in Hillywood (Hilversum – The Netherlands) on the 19th of May from 14:00 hours.

Bart Hufen (BrandNewGame) will explain more about the digital consumer of ‘now’, show the history of gaming and explain why games are such an effective marketing tool.
Emily Jacometti (Flavour) will show a fantastic and effective case how a gameconcept they developed helped to achieve marketing objectives from one of their clients.
Oscar Diele (Spil Games) will show how they have proven in the past 10 years that gameportals can reach over 150 million people worldwide and 1,5 million people in The Netherlands through social media like Hyves. Members are playing games by average of 10 minutes every day!

From today on, there are 10 seats available and you (product-, brand- and marketing managers) can subscribe NOW!

www.speel-kwartier.nl

There will be a special session for advertising and media-agencies in June of July this year, so this event is for Brands and Organizations only!

>Did you see the Fiat Ecodrive system?

It’s real cool!

Check the video to see how it works!

There is even a ‘EcoVille’ (comparable to Farmville in a way 😉 where the top 500 eco-friendly drivers are listed! You can compare your results to friends, your country and even the world!

This is a FANTASTIC example how we can all try to save our planet using playful solutions!

Long live the Gamification of Society!

More examples are featured in my book ‘A Brand New Playground’.

You can download the free summary HERE

>In this presentation Dick Krikke answers three short answers about the games that IJsfontein developed for ABN AMRO bank. I was personally involved in the analyses for the first game (The Retail Game).

It explains the why, how and success in three strong statements.

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I didn’t watch it myself yet, but thought I’d post it quickly before the weekend. It should be good – a lot of Tweets on Twitter @Gabe Zichermann

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A cool way to motivate people to take the stairs more often… and – once more – as you can see: PLAY WORKS! It can actually change human behavior in so many ways as I have tried to show you on this weblog the past two years. Wether it be advisors at a bank, consumers to buy stuff or a whole logistic chain to be convinced that working together improves their business…

I actually did a concept like this stairs with students from HkU (School of Arts in Hillywood) where I helped them to record the sounds of a stairs that sounded like walking through a puddle of water. The installation was displayed in a museum in 2010.

>I am still wondering why brands are still hesitating to start developing cool branded games for the world. My book A brand new playground clearly states all the possibilities to create cool concepts for consumers. Also my research shows that gamers are very much open for brand interaction (hence the 600.000 Nespresso fans on Facebook and over 11 million for Victorias Secret).

Again the most downloaded applications (free as well as paid applications) are GAMES! Surprise, surprise. Of course it’s the coolness of the concept that determines a great deal of the success of the game, but hey, that;s why BrandNewGame is here!

… 😉

Source: www.distimo.com 

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Sony Computer Entertainment just announced it sold 150 million PlayStation 2’s since the release in March 2000. I still remember this milestone event because I worked for Atari in those days as a product manager and we gave away 5 PlayStations to promote Reflections Driver 2!

The PlayStation 2 could play DVD (where the PlayStation 3 can play Blue Ray) and could even be operated by a USB-mouse and keyboard – handy for Unreal Tournament which came out later that year.

Meanwhile, the past 10 years an impressive 10.000 titles came out for PlayStation 2 and they introduced the Eye-Toy in 2003 – which must have inspired Nintendo for the Wii-control system.

In total, 1,5 Billion games have been sold up to now… that’s 10 games on average per PlayStation 2 and 1 game a year per console.

>Finally after three months of updating my book it is currently being translated into English! Hooray!

The title will be: A Brand New Playground – Building Brands in the Digital Era

As I wanted to share the contents in an early stage please feel free to download and share the free summary (demo). You can find it HERE.

The main topic of the book is how games can be used to achieve marketing objectives in the digital era.

The first chapter basically describes the different platforms, genres and provides a historical overview of games throughout the past.
The second chapter describes the consumers that play games. Ten years ago it was merely kids and teenagers playing games, but the past five years we have seen that mothers and elderly are playing online games more and more.
The third chapter reveals a lot of cases that support objectives within the marketingmix, on product-, price-, place, personnel and promotional matters.
The fourth and final chapter reveals how games can be put to use within the field of Brand Management and Marketing on a theoretical level. I have developed three models that help agencies, organizations and brands to develop concepts that build bridges between them and the target audience.

Amongst them are the Branding Checklist, The Brand Play model and the CoCha-model (gotcha!).

Have fun reading it, share the pdf with friends and collegues and tweet your feedback to:

@BartHufen or #BrandNewPlayground

Please feel free to join my community on Linkedin called BrandNewGame

Bart

>I am really honored to speak during Trendsfactory 2011 next to people like Stephen Fellinger (Spin Awards), Martijn Aslander (Lifehacking) and the crazy Cor Molenaar (Shopping 3.0) and many others.

I recommend all Dutch internet marketeers to subscribe to this event NOW as we will present the future of internet, social media and using games as a marketing tool. We will present the future of your marketingmix related to product, price, place (innovative distribution), people (training) and promotion (marketingcommunication).

To read more information about the event or to subscribe, check this link:

http://www.trendsfactory.nl/