>As you might know – I am going on a ‘UK-Tour’ next week organized by our Ministry of Funny Walks, I mean Economic Affairs and Foreign Affairs and we’re going to visit London, Birmingham and Manchester in four days time (and then some leisure time for me in London). During the tour we will meet a lot of game developers and brands that are interested in using games as a marketing tool. Amongst them are Matmi – and they have quite an impressive list of advergames and cool brands they  work for (amongst them: Lilly Allen!).

Check out the advergame below and be sure to check my blog next week to see the pictures after I handed out my book (Laat met je merk spelen) to our very own prime minister Mark Rutten during the high-tea in Manchester! You can still download the English version of my book HERE. Should be cool!

Also we are visiting the BBC Studio’s in Manchester (on Tuesday), Microsoft Kinect and the conference ‘Future gaming and digital media’ in Birmingham on Wednesday. I will be in London again on Thirst-day, Free-day and Sad-third-day when I leave again…. 😉 so if you want to meet up – give me a shout through Twitter or Text message!

Matmi presents Iron Maiden The Final Frontier…

Check out more advergame concepts at their website: http://www.matmi.com/games_playgames.php

>

To be honest, I still sincerely doubt whether we will play games in this way. I would always miss ‘feedback’ whether it be through the controller in my hand, vibration, a steering wheel (makes sense driving a car)… etc. This is the same reason why a lot of people prefer a BlackBerry over an iPhone. The typing just feels better if you can feel buttons…

>

My personal best Kill-Death Ratio today in Call of Duty: 2,57…

I play on PC – Join me! 😉

>

It looks more like a film than a game, incredible! – Let the long-winter-days come –

>

Below a screenshot of the game, I can’t wait until I find time to actually play the game!

>

It looks stunning!

>Although I HATE the term ‘social gaming’ – since gaming in itself mostly is a social activity (either with other players or social interaction with your character in the game), I thought I’d post this well designed Infographic about ‘social gaming’ from Mashable, thanks to Lauren Drell.

It shows you something about the economics of social gaming and apparently some things have changed…! I told my audience yesterday that most of the time just 1% of all gamers is totally hooked on games and spends a lot of cash on in-game items, mostly 9% tries it for one time to see how it works and buys a few credits or in-game products and over 90% plays the game for free. You still need those ‘free-players’ however to establish a large consumer (player-) base.
This infographic however claims that over 80% of all ‘social gamers’ (read: gamers that play ‘casual games’ within ‘social networks’ or dedicated gameportals) spend REAL cash for VIRTUAL goods.
I found that amazing! Imagine how much money you can make selling virtual branded products in games. I know that Diesel is making MILLIONS in PlayStation Home selling virtual collection.

>

This scene REALLY freaked me out the first time I played it through…

>

Check out my presentation at Games 4 Brands below 

BrandNewGame @ games for brands final

View more presentations from Bart Hufen [BrandNewGame]

This is the first version of my presentation for today.

To download a free copy of my book, please go to www.brandnewplayground.com and spread the word! Let me know what you think through Twitter @BartHufen

>

Our web-app’s key selling point is that unlike competitor’s complicated, feature heavy, systems, ours is feature-light and you can figure out how to use it in a couple of minutes (at least that’s what we reckon anyway). So we have to think very carefully about adding any feature that would require a page to explain it. We’ve learned this from the success of HipChat’s private group chat service, which has lots of features but they don’t make the system hard to use, so HipChat has managed to land loads of big clients. Our No. 1 priority is to keep Vetter a low-maintenance system for a manager in a business. 

Bart Hufen added this comment: @Duncan and @Steven please check out my presentation about Gamification at Slideshare or join me tomorrow in London at the ‘Games for Brands‘ event.