I apoligize to people that visit my blog regularly… I have been so busy in the past three months that I did not have time to write new posts…

First of all I am working on a new book called ‘Playing on the Job’ – which will be about using games as a way to make work more fun and effective for employees.

Secondly I am working on a new method of brainstorming, called ‘GameStorm’ (for now)… Check the screenshot. It starts with ‘setting the challenge’ in 1 of the 4 quadrants and then starting with 4/5 people to define actions that people need to start or stop doing to achieve the set challenge, but also define activities that people currently do that are neither productive or destructive (mostly routine work). This way you can eliminate processes and ‘work’ that actually has no effect on the set challenge and optimization of profit… More about the GameStorm later…

Upcoming Monday, we (me and my many partners) will launch three projects.

1. MT Challenge – a gamification tool that improves the chance that students (freshmen) achieve all points in their first year of college

2. Serious Game to train people on a new product (a knowledge game)

3. Serious Game to train staff to listen better to their customers

So all-in-all I have been quite busy… Also I finally achieved the ‘brandnewgame.com’ url – so chances are that this address and my email will change somewhere end of this year… It will also spare me from spam I hope… 😉

For now… check out the screens and I hope I can tell you more about my book, the GameStorm and the results of the projects I mentioned above within two months…

Game On!

Posted in Bart Hufen, Gamification, Personnel | No Comments »

One of my clients is looking for a ‘Head of Gaming’…

With immediate effect they are looking to recruit for our office in Amsterdam:

Head of Online Gaming

The Dutch authorities are going to legalize online gambling, and want to issue licenses for this. My clients’ aim to apply for such a license, for the Dutch market, to play for money. The objective is to build a new business aside of their current operations to support their causes. In line with the their current business, a substantial share of the gaming revenues will be donated to charities.

To ensure that my client is in pole position when the market opens, they are already looking for a Head of Gaming to lead this online gambling initiative. Until they get the license the head of gaming will be responsible to develop the business plan, defining the strategy, building the platform and setting up a team. Pending the regulatory decision-making we will start to launch free games. As soon as we have the license the head of gaming will be responsible for the marketing launch, and developing a substantial new business.

As Head of Online Gaming you will be the dedicated business developer building our new state of the art integrated gaming platform, and shaping the future of it. This platform combines fun, entertainment, winning and sharing to one of the best game experiences of the near future. This platform will be built by a 3^rd party (that has been chosen already) and will leverage our existing brand and customer base.

You’ll take the lead in creating multi-disciplinary teams that run the sites and the apps, which create a fantastic gaming experience. You’ll shape the voice of the platforms from determining positioning feature prioritization and making strategic decisions, to organizing product launches and forming the future marketing strategy to ensure growth. This means you’ll have to create a cross-functional team in collaboration with existing experts in the Lottery of (online) revenue/retention marketeers, game content experts, web designers and copywriters.

You’ll be responsible for developing the Gaming portal and its growth of the overall revenue. We will start with free games but when our license is in place, (hopefully within 1,5 year) we’ll launch paid gaming, so in the end you will be responsible for the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

The Head of Gaming will report directly to the Managing Director. Tasks and responsibilities for this position include:

• developing and executing the strategy vision goals and business plan for the Gaming Portal;
• building and managing a cross-functional team of professionals;
• carrying full profit & loss responsibility for the portal which will attract a lot of unique visitors each month;
• improving the overall gaming experience by delivering the best high performing content;
• identifying and defining the best monetization strategies and revenue models for our audience/customers;
• growing the business sustainably in terms of reach and retention, revenues, ad impressions and margins;
• being on top of industry best practices and newest trends; and
• bringing a high degree of innovation energy and focus that will support significant expansion.

Your profile

• Master’s  degree in relevant field of study;
• Experience in online gambling development
• Extensive experience with an online consumer-facing platform (B2C)
• Experience in product management
• Previous exposure to online media and technology enabled services (e.g. online advertising) is essential
• Demonstrable passion for driving high quality, innovative and engaging user experiences
• Demonstrable experience in building and managing successful teams
• Ability to work effectively in a hands-on role in a start-up environment
• Strong analytical skills and a data-driven approach to decision making
• Prior cross-platform knowledge and experience (mobile tablets web) desirable
• Passionate about online games and about the target audience

Why join this company?

Be part of a business who is looking to grow rapidly in online gaming, where selling tickets for a better world is our daily work.

• A competitive salary and bonus system
• A good pension plan
• Extras such as visiting our projects in the Netherlands and abroad
• And most importantly a budget for training and development—because when you grow we grow with you!

Send me a TWEET if you are interested! @BartHufen

Posted in Personnel | 1 Comment »

>I was surprised recently that big telephone companies like Vodafone and KPN (The Netherlands) didn’t foresee the fact that apps could gradually make certain functions of their business proposition redundant. To name one example: texting / messaging. Since Whatsapp (do we still remember Budweiser’s Wassup) telephone companies are loosing loads and loads of turnover…
And it must have been their biggest chunk of turnover if you take a look at this Infographic from OnlineEducation.net According to this research students spend 3 HOURS (on average) PER DAY sending text messages to each other…!!!

This is incredible, that’s even more than watching TV!

I recently received a hand-written note from a guy aged 25… it was illegible and looked like the handwriting of my grandfather AFTER he died… If 82% of all students prefer to use digital tools to learn, why are we still not using games as a training tool on schools I wonder. Are teachers really that terrified that they will lose their jobs? I think teachers will become the admins of the future teaching playground, but that’s another subject. For now, go check out this great infographic – and a BIG thanks to Lessie for keeping me posted on interesting shizzle for the peepz!

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>It’s been a while since I wrote a full article myself, but here we go again! – I am trying to do this every morning now starting today (although it is hard to find inspiration sometimes).

The past two years have been great. I wrote my first posting just a little over two years ago preparing myself for writing my book ‘Laat met je merk spelen’ which we have almost finished translating into English. The English summary is available at www.brandnewplayground.com

18 months ago I started my own company called BrandNewGame and since then I have been working on great projects for ABN Amro Bank (confidential), Air Cargo Netherlands, Dutch Customs, Schiphol Airport, The Port of Amsterdam and Holland Casino (confidential). All great projects where games were used to influence behavior in all sorts of ways. This is one of the reasons I wasn’t able to write so much from time to time, but I am still very happy and very proud of the thousands of unique visitors that visit my weblog each year – I thank you for that!

If you have any comments or ideas for this blog, please share them by email, Twitter (@BartHufen) or on my group on Linkedin called BrandNewGame. Twitter probably works best as I get a lot of spam theses days by email.

Now, let’s have a look at the Top 10 games of today (thanks to http://www.vgchartz.com)!

I must say I am still happily surprised that games like Wii Sports Resort, Wii Sports and even Zumba Fitness (10th place) are still selling well! This means women (mostly) are still using the Wii actively to do their workout at home in front of the TV, instead of going to the gym! I hear this a lot from friends around me.
Exercising for fitness by means of motion controlled games is something I describe in chapter 3 of my book. Here I show all sorts of cases how games can be used as a marketing tool, for instance to keep your staff healthy doing exercises! It was great to see that at Holland Casino, they stimulate staff to use the Wii at all their casino’s to keep their staff in a good healthy state. Check these pictures of Holland Casino Headquarters…

As you can see it’s not just women playing Wii Sports…

And this is me in an office with ‘my Deal-or-no-Deal-ladies’…

I will try to post some more in-depth articles soon, but hope you appreciate my efforts! 😉

Posted in Personnel, Wii | No Comments »

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‘A Brand New Playground’ will show you how games can be used as a marketing tool and how to build brands in the digital era. We are talking about the era in which people have transformed from passive consumers to participating players.

This is an impression of the room and the crowd!

And me … 😉

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Microsoft used an Alternate Reality Game to encourage players (employees) to increase cooperative working. The puzzles had to be solved by working together before the 7th of december….

Posted in alternate reality, Microsoft, Personnel, Serious game | No Comments »

>Today my dear client Air Cargo Netherlands (Aniek) and I held a presentation at the Marketing Information Event 2010 at the World Forum in The Hague (Den Haag ;-).

IJsfontein GameWise, Atos Consulting and BrandNewGame have teamed up to develop a great game containing loads of e-learning elements in a series of three stunning games of which the first is soon to be released.

It all started end 2009 when Air Cargo Netherlands, Schiphol airport and the Dutch Customs approached IJsfontein GameWise with the question how a game could support their goals.

We sat down with them and decided to go into an ‘analyse-fase’ to determine if – and if so – how games could help to achieve their goals. Soon we discovered that this would be a really cool project and we have been working on it the past year, doing interviews with all the stakeholders within the logistic chain surrounding Schiphol. After the interviews BrandNewGame developed the first ideas which gameconcepts could be effective for their specific needs. IJsfontein is nearly finished developing the first game and I am very proud to have been working with them on this FANTASTIC project!

The presentation below will explain more about their specific situation and will give you insights how games can be used to achieve marketing goals.

The gametrailer for the first game is stated below:

Posted in Case, Personnel, Serious game | No Comments »

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Posted in Personnel, Serious game | No Comments »

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America’s Army Extremely Effective Recruitment Tool – Technology: “’30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined’.”
Below some more screenshots to show you what the game is about.

Or go to: www.goarmy.com

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