Sunday, August 13, 2006

Time Magazine - "Do Gooder Games"

Time Magazine writes about the use of Serious Games for persuasion ... with an article in its August 14, 2006 issue "Do Gooder Games".

"Call them playstations with a higher purpose. Activist video games--which use whiz-bang formats to address real-world issues--are scoring high with both kids and teachers. Given the success of the U.N.'s aid-relief game Food Force (with more than 4 million downloads in 15 months) and the MTV-affiliated Darfur Is Dying (more than 800,000 players since April), techno do-gooders are proliferating, and gamers are saving the world."

They do cite some other cool agenda games ... but, I had the sense that in this article the games appear as isolated accidents ... especially in the context of their title for the article ...

Nonetheless, it is encouraging to see more mainstream media coverage for persuasive game initiatives.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Deadman's Hand Advergame

If you watch Deadwood on HBO (one of my favorites) you've been noticing a trailer for a videogame based on the series.

Fuel Industries created this advergame for HBO, which is called "Deadman's Hand". The Fuel team was able to produce this game in only six weeks using Virtools.

When I spoke with the guys from Fuel after their presentation at the 2006 Serious Games Summit (San Jose), they mentioned that they had a number of new game projects in their Virtools production pipeline.

"It gets deadset of the point, which I like in most situations ..."

- Al Swearengen

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