The Art of Draw - A blog about online games and advergames

I want to employ Matt Stafford!

2011-09-22T20:25:00.000+01:00

Whilst judging the BIMAs I came accross this entry for self promotion. Awesome. I'll be using this video in every university lecture I ever give from now on.

Matt, I think you are a genius.

LEGO Star Wars Hits 10 million plays in 22 weeks

2011-08-05T09:26:00.003+01:00

4T2 actually issued a press releases about this as we've never generated traffic like that so fast before. I like this review by Pete Davison in GamePro

The article links to a YouTube video which is well worth a watch.

This is not for you... (Games and Education)

2011-07-11T08:42:00.000+01:00

Really like the first point in this and am wondering how we can fit it into our latest game. Kind of reminds me of that "Don't press this button" website.

Tap-no-Joy as Apple get tough

2011-06-02T15:58:00.002+01:00

Apple say no! The Tapjoy API (used in Gun Bros etc for monetisation) is no longer allowed in iPhone games. I can understand why, but surely there is a comprimise to be had somewhere? I love freemium games and this worked really well. I certainly purchased a few games of the back off their system.

This article explains it all very well:

http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2011/04/22/apple-lowers-boom-apps-offer-walls

TapJoy's system definately made me laugh at one point as I questioned what content I really would download for two free warbucks?...

And just to cheer you up again...

Love this game: Checkpoint. Particular fan of using your own dead body as a platform. Give it a go.

Monkey Quest - WOW

2011-05-04T14:52:00.004+01:00

Monkey Quest - MMOG Unity game with monkeys by Behaviour in Canada for Nick. It's amazing and well worth a look.

My first interview for TIGA

2011-04-01T15:29:00.005+01:00

My first interview for TIGA is here. Do you agree with my rationale on why Casual Games have suddenly become so popular? My thanks go to Aaron from Casualgaming.biz

Gun Bros = Genius

2011-03-22T16:54:00.003Z

If you've not played Gun Bros on your mobile phone yet, what are you doing?

I think this game will set many best practices for all computer games (eg. not just mobile games) in the future.

I'll ignore the great game, stunning graphics and high production value on this blog. These items are obvious for all to see. It's the nature of the payment system and the devices around this to incentivise content purchase that are most interesting to me.

Take the top five future gaming trends I identified in December. Glu have managed to integrate three of them seamlessly. The 'sharing your Gun Bro' concept is number four on my list virtually word for word. It's just ridiculously clever.

Great work Glu.

So what does a Chairman do?

2011-03-17T12:09:00.004Z

I've been a bit busy of recent with many things I can't put online, yet. Sorry blog. However, here is one item that has gone out as a press release so I guess this is therefore public knowledge...

TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry, has today announced a drive to raise the profile and to support casual games creators in the UK. Central to this is the creation of a Casual Games Committee designed to support companies creating games of all formats with production budgets between £10,000 and £300,000.

Mike Hawkyard has been appointed acting Chairman of the Committee. He is co-founder of 4T2, an award digital winning agency specialising in creating online games for children. The move from TIGA comes in response to exponential growth in casual gaming platforms, development software and methods of monetising content.

The Committee has been set up to ensure UK games producers can take full advantage of these commercial opportunities through advising on best practice, identifying new trends, organising discounts on software, developing strategic partnerships, providing networking events and offering marketing support.Membership of the Casual Games Committee is open to all TIGA members who develop casual games.

Mike Hawkyard commented: “The UK has a tremendous amount of skill in the casual games market. Our goal is to utilise this collective talent, helping all of our members deliver the highest quality of gaming experience, at a lower cost, to a larger audience.”

Dr Richard Wilson, CEO of TIGA, said:
“TIGA’s vision is to make the UK the best place in the world to do games business. The UK has successful and dynamic casual game developers, including Kempt, 4T2 Multimedia, Neon Play, Kerb Digital, Playniac, Koko digital, Stick Sports and Matmi. TIGA, through our new Casual Games Committee, will work to advance the interests and to promote commercial opportunities for casual game developers.”

If you work in a UK company looking to join this group, create software / services that would benefit our members or organise any event where this subject is relevant please email mike@TIGA.org for more information.

So please do email me and let me know how I can help!

Porting to Flash

2011-03-02T17:53:00.003Z

Porting Wii games to Flash 11 and Unity would appear to be the up coming trend in San Francisco GDC. Using your mobile phone as the controller seems obvious. Thus I guess the biggest online game of 2012 will be some derivative of Mario Carts where you use your Android phone as the steering wheel. Further more it will generate revenue via virtual or cash based micro payments.

But one mystery remains... Why are American male toilets so low to the floor? Are they expecting an invasion of dwalves with bladder problems?

LEGO Star Wars Flash game released – feedback please

2011-01-19T15:02:00.001Z

I’m proud to announce that LEGO have just released our new Flash game to promote their Star Wars (Clone Wars) product range and the related video game.

LEGO Star Wars - Ace Assualt

We’d really appreciate feedback on what we can do to improve the next release. We’ve got a huge list of things ourselves, but had to draw a line in the sand somewhere. It will be very valuable to get a response from people who’ve not involved in the production.

Huge thanks to everyone involved in this project from LEGO, TT Games and Lucas Arts just in case they are reading this. Have fun and may the Force be with you.

Kong launches Unity competition

2011-01-12T15:25:00.000Z

I’ve just noticed that Kong have launched a Unity game design competition.

This should make virally seeding Unity games significantly easier as if Kong offers this content, others must follow.

4T2's Top 5 Future Trends in Casual Gaming

2010-12-10T15:44:00.002Z

Thanks to everyone who attended my recent talk at the Technology World Event. I hope you enjoyed it.

As promised, here are my / 4T2s top five (publishable) Future Trends for Casual Games.

5 - No more “Visit facebook.com/MyBrand”

Hurray! This was getting really boring. A new wave of ‘super APIs’ have been created by companies such as Janrain and Gigya. These allow you to login to a website or game via any of your social network IDs. You can then pull details of your friends and other data from that network to send challenges, publish achievements and generally annoy your boss by playing games and browsing the web when you should be working.

Social networks will become a conduit for passing information, but no longer be the advertised destination. Why would a company want to push potential clients to an environment where competitors can actively market to them? It’s also getting very expensive to advertise games inside Facebook, so the opportunity to generate high volume, low cost traffic there has now gone.

This will make web games BIG, or even bigger anyway. If a Facebook game can generate millions of plays a day, imagine what a Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube, mySpace, Gmail, Yahoo!, Newgrounds, Kongregate (please integrate these last two!) enabled game can achieve.

4 - Co-operative gaming

This is the most predictable item in our chart, as much of this is happening already. Imagine your friend has kindly spent three weeks building up a super tank in Call of Duty 10. Why sit around with a pistol trying to do the same thing? Either borrow his tank (winning him additional upgrades), rent his tank (allowing him to buy more upgrades) or hire him to help you complete that final level (paying him to buy more upgrades). Both players benefit - everyone’s a winner.

This enables players to achieve one of the key motivations of gaming - showing off how good you are to your friends and peers.

3 – Design-a-gaming

All good games offer the player the ability to personalise the content to some degree, via level builders, avatars, equipment choice and naming privileges.

In the immediate future this will become much more prevalent, with the ability to build the fundamental rules of a sandboxed game yourself. Don’t like FPS? Make your version of our game a platformer instead. Brands will be releasing causal game creation tools with one or two examples built in, allowing users to create their own challenges for their friends. Publish once and get 100,000 games promoting your brand.

Just as importantly, the example game you play will be pre-personalised to your taste. Social networks and blogs will help enable this by scanning your profile to pre-create content that suits your interests.

2 - Throw away your controllers

No one wants to sit down with a mouse and keyboard any more. Look at what virtually every major console manufacturer is currently doing.

Therefore toy companies will without question do the same. Your new Hot Wheels car will be the control device for Mario Carts 6. Want more virtual grip? Change the tyres on your physical toy and presto. This will lead into natural advertising opportunities for consumer goods brands that can give away the optional extras as an incentive to purchase the real product. For example, buy four real Pirelli tyres and get the toy wheels for your son or daughter’s game for free. Want additional fuel for your virtual car? Fill up at a real Exxon forecourt.

Toy based computer gaming, by simplifying the controller and moving it away from a traditional game input device, will also help bring a wider audience to the titles, in the same way the Nintendo Wii introduced the concept of playing games as a family unit.

We foresee any digitally connected device controlling games, from cameras to sat navs.

Note – We are not saying all games here, just a significantly higher percentage.

1 - All games will be free to play

Micro payments, control devices and in game advertising / sponsorship will become so fundamental to the economics of gaming that the majority of content (including console material) will initially be distributed for free. This is the natural extension of try before you buy. Try before you buy, but when you do buy, you are purchasing fully personalised content, tailored to what you want in that game.

Add in cloud based gaming, where you’ll be able to play any game, on any device, at a time that suits you, without having to trudge down to the shops and this argument becomes very persuasive. Companies will be virtually renting out their games for free to hook the public on their titles and then charging to access content like the multiplayer online arenas where the fun really lies.

This obviously has huge impact for high street retailers who are already taking great steps in offering a unique product if you physically purchase a game at their store.

The huge opportunity here is to figure out how a child’s parents will know that they want to purchase a triple bladed, magic enabled sword of doom for Christmas, and offer a simple way of purchasing it. Game or console branded pre paid “credit cards” could become very popular as you’ll still want to hand over something physical. See all of the other entries in this chart for other ideas.

The best game instructions, ever

2010-11-02T16:26:00.004Z

Game instructions – let’s face it, no one reads them. These days all instructions should be in game anyway. Therefore I smiled when, for reasons unknown, I clicked on the “help” option on Plants vs Zombies (iPhone) and was presented with this. For those who've never played the game, you play the part of the plants and have to stop the zombies...

Brilliant.

Another piece of pure genius in this title is the reward video / song when you complete the game. Pointless, stupid, expensive, great. Obviously, clicking on the play button here will spoil your eventual reward!

Still think the Stinky Garlic plant is far too powerful for such a low cost “weapon” though.

Great work PopCap.

You know when you are working on a global campaign when...

2010-10-08T10:36:00.004+01:00

...you've absolutley no idea what people are saying in promos for the game you've built. And, being completly honest, who they all are!

Radio 1 Fastest Time Wins II

2010-10-06T12:07:00.007+01:00

A game created by 4T2 is all over BBC Radio 1 and 1 Xtra again this week with all of the DJs and guests getting involved. See if you can beat them here.

This year we’ve swapped the cars for bikes and simplified the tracks so that they can all be played in a short amount of time on air. There is also a low level of Facebook and Twitter integration.

In a slightly modified competition format, Radio 1 and 1 Extra are letting the DJs practice as much as they want, but they only get one shot at recording a lap. This has added a great new angle to the event.

Watch Tom Deacon playing the game live on TV here. View from three minutes in.

Watch Fearne Cotton playing live on webcam and Radio 1 here.

Below are two images of Fearne. One is a promo shot, one is her prior to recording her lap. Feel the pressure!

Big shout to all involved for getting this live and online in a very short amount of time.

Two great snippets from "Oh My God What Happened"

2010-09-07T13:20:00.003+01:00

"A brand should insert itself meaningfully into people’s lives by enabling and enriching their existing behaviours, not by requiring new ones."

"Do it for real! Burger King really fed people who had never seen a Burger in their life with the Whopper. 7Eleven have really re-built their stores into Quick-e-Marts. The Swedish agency, ACNE, has really thrown an oversized dice down a glacier and had people bet on the outcome. All these campaigns have received intense media coverage. Why? Because it was no fake; they did it for real."

Download the full book here.

Lewis Hamilton playing our new race game

2010-08-04T11:21:00.009+01:00

4T2 have been using lots of different celebs to promote and play our new games of recent. All of the BBC Radio 1 DJ's and their guests have played FTW live on the radio. Now we've got F1 drivers playing our new campaign for Mobil 1.

Kong sold

2010-07-27T16:44:00.004+01:00

I think the following is massively important to our industry and a sign of the times...

http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/30344/GameStop-bags-Kongregate

"In what can only be described as a hugely significant move, video games retailer GameStop has acquired leading online Flash games portal Kongregate. The website boasts in the region of 10m users and is one of the most important players in the increasingly significant casual games sector.

Kongregate will now act as a wholly owned subsidiary of the retailer.

The deal will also allow GameStop to evolve its website from a pure e-commerce portal to one that actually hosts a huge amount of game content. Kongregate is widely regarded as having some of the very best free-to-play titles on the internet – ironic, really, seeing as it’s the rise of such portals that has asked some of the most serious questions put to traditional retail."

Unlockable content taken to the max

2009-12-14T13:48:00.004Z

Quick blog about “Upgrade Complete” by Armor Games.

Well worth a play as it contains a novel idea I’ve not come across before. As well as upgrading your weaponry and speed, you can purchase enhanced graphics, sound on / off buttons, achievements, title screens etc. This kept me entertained for exactly 2,158 seconds (plus blogging time) which is not something you can often say.

It also has some very effective Kongregate achievements, the best being at the end where it points you towards their next game. Obvious now you think about it. Probably a good idea for high score tables as well.

Designagaming has most definitely arrived

2009-11-09T09:43:00.010Z

In the November 2008 issue of the magazine ‘Brand Strategy’ (RIP) I identified that a growing number of children and teenagers were taking pleasure from creating computer games, as opposed to just playing them.

I then described a potential marketing campaign a brand could run to take advantage of this trend:

“In the gaming world, new software and online tools are making it ever easier for enthusiasts to build their own games with high production values. In the near future I predict this trend will extend towards “Designagaming”. The more adventurous brands will run competitions for the public to create advergames on their behalf. The money previously used for content creation will be switched to prizes for the most successful games and building libraries of assets for willing developers to utilise. Why have one campaign when your target audience can create a hundred different variations, all competing to become your most effective marketing material?”

Nov 2008 Brand Strategy Magazine with Nov 2009 New Media Age
One year later the social gaming website Kongregate has teamed up with the bubblegum brand Stride and done something extremely similar:

“Kongregate and STRIDE® gum are challenging game developers to answer the most epic question of our time: how long can you last?

To answer (and perhaps win our $10,000 first prize) design a Flash game with the theme "endurance". You are free to interpret the theme in any way you like, so get creative! The 15 highest-rated entries will automatically become finalists, winners will judged based on creativity, innovation, use of the theme, and how fun they are to play.”

The site then goes on to list several examples of games that would suit this challenge. Huge respect to Stride for being brave enough to try this marketing strategy and Kongregate for organising it. If anyone has done this before, I’ve certainly missed it.

I’m just sorry that the competition is only open to US residents. I would have really liked to see how game designers from all over the World would have taken to this challenge. I suspect this would have created a much more diverse set of entries as different cultures attempt the same challenge. Perhaps Stride is only sold in the US so they required a US winner for their competition PR.

Turner Media Innovations have also recently launched a designagaming website – Ben 10 Alien Force Game Creator. This site is claiming to have had over 9.5 million plays with over 17,500 games created in just eight weeks. This provides children with a set of prebuilt graphics and a game builder similar to Playcrafter.

Designagaming had definitely arrived. I wonder what some clever marketing type will name this style of campaign?

BBC Radio 1 Fastest Time Wins game launches

2009-10-26T09:16:00.003Z

Chris Moyles and the breakfast team launched ‘BBC Radio 1 Fastest Time Wins’ live on their show at 7.50 this morning. Chris recorded a lap of 40.89 setting the standard for other DJs and guests to beat.

Got to say, it feels pretty good to help a national radio station launch its Game Week.

Congratulations to the team at 4T2 who worked really hard to make this look amazing.

LEGO TRC is BIMA nominated

2009-10-23T10:14:00.006+01:00

LEGO: The Robot Chronicles has been shortlisted for a BIMA Award in the Online Games category. Nice.

It’s up against the following:

It has the ‘tiny’ disadvantage that when we submitted the game it was not live. Therefore no stats. We are hoping it will be top of the Viral Chart next week across all the major categories. It’s currently number one in the UK. If only this had been a month later!

The winners announced on the 19th of November.

Guest Racer Concept Finally Under Starters Orders

2009-10-22T08:41:00.006+01:00

A new flash game designed and created by 4T2 Multimedia for a well known Radio Station is due to launch next week. This campaign allows competitors to race against recordings created by guests and DJs from the station, helping listeners engage with the show. But for me personally, Monday is the end of a story, not the beginning...

4T2 built a racing game that featured keystroke recording technology for Exchange & Mart in 2003. We really liked Xchase (which, in 4T2’s eyes was ISC Racer v3) and saw the opportunity this technology combined with a Flash game offered to media companies. Therefore the ‘guest racing’ concept was proposed to MTV for their Total Requests Live Show later that year. Unfortunately, 4T2’s contacts there moved on before the project was fully commissioned.

The correct opportunity for this idea never arose again till now, so the key press recording software we originally designed was relegated to a security backup role spotting people who had hacked into game based competitions trying to win prizes. For example check out Rob Fell's lap from a Vauxhall promotion. If you’re wondering why 4T2 were so paranoid about cheats check out this great story

The 2009 campaign obviously looks much better than if 4T2 built this in 2003, as we don’t need to be quite so stringent on file size and the capabilities of Flash has moved on, but the basic principle is still the same. So therefore, next week, I finally get to see if this concept is a winner or not. Fingers crossed.

PS. Come on Top Gear – Surely it’s time for a “Star in a Reasonable Price Car” online game using GPS data fed from the real laps? You can then input the performance stats from all of the other cars being test driven as well, allowing the audience to experience the difference being in the latest Ferrari really makes.

The Robot Chronicles Game

2009-10-14T15:45:00.011+01:00

This is taken from a case study so is more formal than articles normally on my blog... (sorry!)

The Robot Chronicles online game is the first time The LEGO Company has used a single digital campaign to promote several distinct product brands. The success of this campaign could have significant implications for the company’s global marketing strategy across all media. This case study examines the techniques used to make the creative execution cohesive. It also challenges received wisdom about how to encourage repeat visits to online games.

The Brief

When children play with LEGO®, they mix and match the models with little regard to what sub-brand the toy belongs to. LEGO was intrigued to find out how they could mirror this behaviour in an online game and promote their brand as a whole. The Robot Chronicles is The LEGO Company’s first ever cross brand campaign and features challenges for the plastic population from LEGO City, Racers and Agents. If this project is successful, it could revolutionise the way LEGO market their products in the future. An online game was the most cost-effective method to conduct this research on a global level.

The campaign therefore presented many challenges. For example, each product line has its own target age group, storyline, style and ethical guidelines. Designing a single gaming experience to satisfy this diverse scope was a complex challenge. 4T2 Multimedia, devised a solution by focusing on an element that unifies a lot of childrens’ play experiences – a strong sense of narrative. The agency presented a cartoon storyboard to illustrate how the ingredients of the three brands could combine and interact to build a compelling storyline.

Once LEGO understood that this campaign could be safely delivered without compromising any individual brand’s narrative integrity they were ready to hear about a very ambitious game proposal.

For the approach to be considered successful, The Robot Chronicles will have to beat the statistics generated by previous LEGO online games created by 4T2. This includes an average playtime of over 16 minutes and a return rate of 66% for one game, and well over fifteen million visits a year for another. When you consider that the industry average playtime for an online game is 5.14 minutes and the return rate is 26.33% (statistics from web game monitoring service Memecounter.com), you start to realise the scale of this challenge.

Strategy

To reflect the primary objective of this campaign, the creative team followed two rules. The first is obvious – ensure the game is fun for children to play. The second is summed up by the ethos “play the way you want, whenever you want to” – in other words a strong departure from the traditions of linear game play.

With the game going live on three different and popular LEGO brand portals, traffic was never going to be an issue. But how do you address the challenge of preventing a fan of one sub brand being bored or confused by another?

The Robot Chronicles online game has three bespoke title screens and music tracks to suit each entrance point. On launching the game, a child plays one of two key missions for that brand. For fans of LEGO Racers this means immediately getting down to burning rubber in a high speed tour around the City Centre. LEGO CITY starts off with a mission to tow various vehicles back to the garage for repairs. This helps to ensure all players are comfortable with their initial exposure to the campaign. No mission lasts for more than a few minutes and yet, whatever actions you take, your progress through the game is always preserved. This allows children to drop in and out of the game as their time restrictions and attention span permits.

All of the missions are introduced in an interactive cartoon format by a brave reporter who is trying to get to the bottom of why all of these events are simultaneously occurring.

Children can complete these initial missions in any order they wish and drive whatever vehicles they have unlocked at a time of their choosing. This campaign is a Persistent World and as close as the designers could get to creating a “Live” City.
The combination of casual exploration whilst solving the larger mystery is critical to the playability of the game. Younger children can spend their time putting out fires, arresting villains and rescuing injured people and be completely entertained. Older children will be searching for the story based elements and looking to solve the larger puzzle.

After completing the first three missions the plotline is fully revealed and a rampaging robot is let loose on the City. From this point on children must figure out the correct order to complete certain missions as the brand narratives become fully integrated.

Execution

Online games have traditionally used high score tables to encourage repeat play. Recently this has evolved into “Achievement” systems. Now you can reward people for performing any action you like inside of a game, creating endless, optional mini-challenges. For example, completing mission one is easy, but can you do it by only driving backwards?

The Robot Chronicles embraces this approach. It replaces traditional scoring systems with task-based rewards. Amongst these is a secret prize in an off-road location that you simply drive through to collect. Some children will now search every single square inch of the map, uncovering many other surprises along the way, so they can tell their friends that they’ve completed every aspect of the campaign. This will lead to higher repeat visits, increased game playtime and very passionate playground advocates.

In order for a reward system to work you need an integrated online social network that allows people to brag about their abilities, or else what was the point of pulling off a ten minute donut in a digger? My LEGO Network (MLN) is at the forefront of social networks for children because it’s extremely safe and yet still great fun. At no stage do children share any personal information and they can only communicate with others via a selection of prewritten messages.

The MLN components for The Robot Chronicles allow children to unlock virtual friends, stickers, badges and blueprints in return for performing in game tasks. Once a child is engaged in the MLN activities, a whole new set of interconnected challenges and mystery await them. This allows both LEGO and 4T2 to add new levels of detail to characters that co-exist and interact in both the web game and social network environment. Efforts in one discipline will influence the other, creating many more ways to progress through the adventure.

A child can complete missions related to the primary storyline in approximately thirty minutes. To complete the entire game and win the ultimate MLN achievement, takes many hours. This significantly expands the lifespan and repeat-visit appeal of the campaign.

The rewards also give children a very clear incentive to complete the main game. Only by defeating the robot will a child get to experience the emotional high of a final victory. Making the connection between a brand and a positive experience is possibly the single most important goal of any marketing-oriented game, yet the one most commonly forgotten. Just like high score tables, trying to prevent someone from completing a game by making it increasingly difficult in sudden spurts is a tactic developed by the makers of arcade machines in the eighties. Their goal was to encourage you to put another slice of your pocket money into their machines. Why would you do this now? Instead you actually want as many people as possible to eventually complete your games, as they are then much more likely to return to your content in order to receive another injection of pure, unadulterated self esteem. The campaign must still be a challenge but, if a user gets stuck, don’t leave them bashing their desk. This is another clear advantage of a non-linear game. Instead of closing the game, the child can simply attempt another task and return to the mission they previously failed when they have unlocked more tools to assist them.

To help children of all ages, the campaign also automatically alters its difficulty, depending on the user’s performance. If you are completing the missions too easily, the game automatically gets harder and vice versa. This allows as many children as possible to experience a challenge that is customised to their abilities.

Results

Watch this space. Huge thanks and massive repect goes to Rob Fell, Nick Galaxy, Edd Fahy, Justin Bryant and the crew at LEGO System A/S (Stefan, Peter, Gabe, Leah, Thomas, Pia, Niels and Brent.)

Coming soon...

2009-07-09T09:32:00.002+01:00

It's time to move on

2009-07-08T22:29:00.002+01:00

Having just spent a thoroughly enjoyable two hours with Jesse Cleverly, I think I can sum up our conversation in one graphic.

I tried to write a simple explanation for this, but I’ve deleted it and will leave it up to your own interpretation. Please, think big though!

Just in case I’m starting to sound like I have lost sight of reality, I would also like to thank the lady on the desk of the Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue. Being an uncultured northerner, I had to phone up to find out what the dress code was to get in. She instantly responded with “Bermuda shorts or a mankini”. Not bad for eight in the morning.

Augmented Reality and jellyfish

2009-07-02T09:50:00.003+01:00

For all the people I met today at Showcomotion, this is the link to the Augmented Reality videos I was talking about. I don't think there is anything else that needs saying if you watch those videos.

It's also well worth spending a thoroughly enjoyable ten minutes playing Blush. Brilliant. Possibly the best Unity game I've seen yet. Thanks to Corrin for sending me link. If you read my recent blog on 'fun first, message second' (in relation to a naff Samsung promotion), check this game out. Note the play as guest option. No messing around and still full functionality when you click on it. This site shows you how easy getting someone to sign up to something really can be - Entertain them first.

Other things I may have gone on about the greatness of are: MLN (My LEGO Network), www.playcrafter.com (Designagaming), Kongregate / Newgrounds and of course, Manchester United.

I've got to go now and save some sprites from a witch with a sunburned toe. Apparently all I need to do is find some leaves. This makes no sense to me either, but I love puzzles.

Adobe Air – Why no low / medium StageQuality?

2009-05-19T12:47:00.000+01:00

4T2 have just completed our first game to be distributed via Adobe Air. Flash based Games on your Desktop and Start menu– great!

However, I’ve got to question Adobe’s logic in not supporting low and medium StageQuality in Air. We nearly always make our Flash games in low StageQuality mode (no anti-aliasing) so they run faster. So why would Air not support this? If they want people to develop games for this platform it is a crazy choice.

I’d like to publish every game we ever make in Air so that at the end of the online game you can click on a button to add it to your desktop. This would be an amazing feature as it would definitely increase the number of times our games are played as they pop on and off various homepages. We could also then add some further features to encourage this behaviour. It should be easy…

What is even more annoying is the fact Adobe don’t exactly come forward and announce this fact. The key information can be found on this page. Note the reference to Air 1.0 and then ‘not supported’ later on. Thanks for that!

If anyone from Adobe is reading this, can you put this near the top of your ‘to fix’ list please. It would help us massively. And if anyone knows how to get around this I’d be very grateful.

Encouraging game completion

2009-05-19T12:07:00.003+01:00

4T2 have just finished our latest project for LEGO City – Build It

The interactive puzzle game is targeted towards six year olds so is relatively simple to play, yet highly addictive due to a collecting element.

The major difference between this campaign and our other LEGO projects is the integration between the game and My LEGO Network. I’d recommend anyone have a good long look at MLN as it is awesome.

After completing a set of vehicles in the game the user can collect a special MLN reward.

The reward is sent to the players MLN ‘email’ account by a special character you can go on to make friends with.

The virtual friend, Jack Drill, gives you a blueprint for a trophy to display on your personal homepage – leading your friends to ask – “How did you get that?”.

This integration encourages people to sign up for a LEGO Account and takes players from one LEGO promotion to another. It helps to completely immerse a child in the world of LEGO and allows us to strengthen the plot of the game. More importantly, it encourages the child to complete the ‘Build It’ game in full, experiencing all that has to offer.

Look out for more such activates in our next LEGO campaign…

Ok, I admit, the game name ‘Cogitate’ has grown on me

2009-04-14T16:09:00.005+01:00

Cogitate is a new advergame from 4T2 currently doing the rounds. Thanks go to the IET (Hoey and Clare) and Frantisek, Garry, Nick and Edd from 4T2. A special shout goes to The LEGO Company for letting us use virtual LEGO Technic pieces.

It’s a lot more complicated to play (I’d go as far as saying fiddly) than our normal games, so it will be interesting to get feedback on it. So far it is looking extremely positive. Why not pitch your wits against the laws of gravity with the new Cogitate physics game? Be sure to look at some of the ingenious solutions.

PS. Told you there would be many more Fantastic Contraption style games coming!

Samsung Mobile fail to deliver

2009-04-01T12:06:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I encountered a great example of placing your final goal before you have engaged your audience, and ruining the whole experience. Thank you Samsung Mobile.

Having received an email about an Easter Egg Hunt where you must solve cryptic clues in order to win a phone I willingly followed the link hoping for some brain twisting fun.

Arriving on the main page there are buttons to “Play” or “Register”. Fine by me, I’ll play, and if it is any good, I’ll register.

But no!

After clicking on play I’m shown the following exciting page…

Being busy, I then went back to reading the rest of my emails. I can only hope that the puzzles are sent to your mobile and that is why you need to log in. Even so, having some puzzles shown on a virtual mobile online to start with may have engaged me enough to sign up for the rest of the game. Alternatively, a "Play as guest" mode would have been good. Then I might have registered to show off my brilliance or claim a prize.

Fun first, message second!

Is the "G" word about to vanish again?

2009-02-04T10:03:00.003Z

Sticky Content > Viral marketing > Advergames > Casual Games > App (?)

It appears someone I’ve never met has gone and changed the name of the product my company makes, again. Great. So before the word “Game” vanishes beneath another layer of marketing talk, let’s look back on its ten-year rise to becoming a serious enough business application to be renamed to just three letters.

The rise of Sticky Content

Ten years ago a small and forward thinking group of companies (including 4T2 where I work) started to create mini games in Macromedia Flash. The Internet back then was a predominantly a boring place to surf and this new technology was helping us to inject a little fun – even over a 56k modem.

When releasing these games we soon found that third party websites were taking this content and placing it on their own sites to entertain their visitors. At first our clients resisted such use of their campaigns, worried about “bandwidth theft” and losing control of their content.

The unfortunate term “sticky content” started to become prolific and online games began to show their true potential.

By 2001, MiniClip was becoming very popular by collating and sponsoring as many of these online games as possible and offering them to third parties - “free games for your site”. MilkAndCookies.com also started to show up in log files. This site allowed American students to instantly and freely submit any online content that they thought would be of interest to their friends. At some stage in the future, some clever marketing type would call this “Social Bookmarking”.

Industry recognition was gained by your game being at the top of the all-important Lycos Viral Charts.

With a relatively small number of quality online games being produced, content placement was free. You could also generate amazing national PR because of the originality of your promotions.

Viral Marketing catches on

In 2002, companies like 4T2 were touring advertising and PR agencies educating them to the benefits this style of marketing offered. The agencies we worked for at the time were still nervous about using the “G” word in meetings, so told us to refer to it as “Viral marketing”. I guess it sounded more expensive. The theory was that one person would play your game, and, if they liked it, tell two of their friends about it. This would of course lead to an explosion in traffic (note to self – really must find the time to update our company website and my blog as it is full of this stuff!).

To promote “viral spread” (and keep the people in fancy London offices happy) 4T2 spent time building mini-leagues and other fiendish social networking devices into our games. None of this ever made any noticeable impact to traffic figures but it was a lesson we needed to learn. Getting our clients’ games listed on a selection of popular websites was a much more cost-effective use of our time.

This reality led to media owners joining the party and commercialising content placement. For example, if Lycos found a brand name in the game you submitted to their site they would no longer add it for free. Bugger.

By 2003, 4T2 were producing enough “virals” for well known brands such as Comet and Vauxhall that we plucked up the courage to start using the dreaded “Game” word in meetings – in fact, it was becoming expected.

Advergaming hits the big time

By the end of 2005, there was a huge raft of new media agencies offering “advergames”. The “viral” branding must have died out due to the fact it was mainly pony. By this stage 4T2 were privileged enough to have The LEGO Company as our main client so did not have to worry as much about game seeding, allowing us to concentrate on the marketing aspect of our work. Instead we focused on “360 degree marketing”: driving traffic between media by publishing unlock codes on product packaging, movie trailers and point of sale units that gave access to additional content within online campaigns. A similar approach focused on driving traffic between TV shows and related online content. For example, our planning meetings with GMTV Kids now revolved around what actions we could put into an online game that could actually be performed by their presenters in real life so the content matched perfectly.

Casual Gaming becomes the trend

In 2008, the term ‘Casual Gaming’ started to be heard to a much greater extent. Previously, I had associated this with low cost games a user purchased after playing a demo. Almost overnight, ‘advergames’ seemed to have become a sub-category of this field.

By now the commercialisation of game based websites had hit a new level, with Spil Games purchasing many existing websites and a selection of expensive domains. Two new models for brands to pay for game placement became commonplace based either on guaranteed visitor levels or a pay-per-play format.

On the other side of the coin, social gaming websites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds had become fully established marketing tools in their own right. By offering free game placement and a selection of APIs to integrate high score tables and achievements these sites built a huge following. The ability for games creators to take revenues from these sites by joining their advertising schemes was a huge benefit for student developers all around the world. Being at the top of the Lycos Chart was replaced by the honour of becoming a featured game on Newgrounds.

Will “App” be the next name change?

In 2009 the name for what 4T2 build seems to be changing again. Already this year we have received three separate briefs to build “Apps”. The trend seems to be led by an iPhone TV advert that featured Super Monkey Ball, and the growing requirement for Social Networking game integration. Apparently, because a game needs to be playable on Facebook, it must only be referred to as an App. Helping to consolidate this change of title is also the growing requirement for game creation systems such as YoYo Games and PlayCrafter. After all, if we are leaving it up to the end users to build their own games using some form of clever construction kit, surely the developer is creating an App?

Another, more disturbing possibility, is that the Credit Crunch has once again made agencies scared of using the “G” word. Is an “App” more commercially viable?
Will this catch on? Who knows? One thing is for certain – don’t spend too much on your printed marketing material as it will be out-of-date very quickly! So to conclude, here are the top three lessons I have learned over the last ten years:

3) Save your time, sanity and budget - place your content where the traffic you want is currently residing. Don’t try to push people to a new location for no apparent reason.

2) Test your games with your target audience before releasing them to ensure they actually are fun for people outside of your office.

1) 4T2 make online GAMES. Beware of using product titles that do not contain the G word as they will tempt you into focusing on the marketing aspects of your campaign, or an over complex method of increasing spread. Above all you must make sure your campaign is fun, or it will fail.

Designagaming article in Edge Magazine

2009-01-26T13:22:00.002Z

There's a great five page article in Edge magazine (A UK computer game mag) on Designagaming this month. Well worth a read.

Sandy Duncan (CEO of YoYo Games, formally heading up the Xbox business in Europe for Microsoft) makes some very good comments. I found the part about about game publishers acting like funnels by restricting the flow of ideas interesting. He also notes that Xbox did not want ten different football games all launching at the same time as it would flood the market.

With Designagaming you can take what is there, tweak the game engine to suit your needs, and publish a new version. The nearest thing you will be able to compare it to soon is open source programming languages.

I also like the reference to Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit. Something I spent many hours messing with.

DesignaGaming and Doritos

2008-12-23T11:47:00.004Z

Turn your Xbox on and go crazy with Doritos (and Dinosaurs!). Similar to the project 4T2 ran for LEGO last year, Doritos challenged their fans to come up with a great new game for them. Entrants sent in their ideas with the top four concpets having a demo proffesionally made. The winner then had their game turned into an Xbox Live game.

For full details check out www.unlockxbox.com

Brilliant. I personally would have had the entrants making the Flash demos (as opposed to sending in their ideas on paper etc) and managed this by sponsoring Newgrounds or Kongregate. This would have given Doritos lots of Flash virals that both advertise their product and promote the competition. Then make an Xbox game out of the most popular. However, as promotions go, this one is extremely good. Great work Doritos and the development agency Ninja Bee.

Designagaming gets a big step closer

2008-12-16T14:29:00.004Z

Check out www.playcrafter.com. Awesome games creation website. You can very easily imagine a brand creating games on there and challenging the visitors to make their own versions using the assets.

Others to look at include:

Yo Yo Games
Roblox

I promise you - Designagaming will happen soon! If I worked for Spil Group I'd be getting my cheque book out again.

Brand Strategy Article in full

2008-11-24T08:59:00.006Z

I'd like to thank Brand Strategy (November issue) for using my piece promoting advergames in their magazine. The counter argument by Jonathan Salem Baskin (The author of "Branding Only Works on Cattle) also makes very interesting reading. I actually think some of his points are similar to mine. Thanks also to Dan Mascall for locating this opportunity for me. Anyway - Here is the unedited (sorry) version of my piece. It's worth noting I wrote it two months ago. Already many things have moved on....

Everyone wants to win

The fundamental success of gaming is due to everyone’s desire to beat their rivals and impress their peers - To experience the thrill of achieving an easily identifiable victory in a World where real life success can be hard to gauge.

Advergaming taps into these motivations and uses them to create an online experience that supports specific marketing objectives. Gaming can be used to drive brand awareness, educate about product features or provide compelling calls to action. Conventional marketing campaigns struggle to compete for the attention of a passive audience. Advergaming uses basic psychology to guarantee the audience actively participates in the brand experience and has fun while doing it.

From the marketer’s perspective, advergames allow your audience to feel an instant positive emotion directly connected to your campaign content. For example, consider an online racing game where you can pick up a new set of branded tyres half way around the track that improve your virtual car’s grip.
“Wow – I won!” and all because of the benefit of that product. Now I’ll challenge my friends to beat my lap time, encouraging them to share the brand experience (and appreciate my glorious achievement!).

What turns a game into a successful marketing tool?

Organisations as diverse as charities, drinks manufacturers and political parties have all used advergaming to promote their messages. The most successful campaigns follow three fundamental rules:

1. Fun first, message second. Whatever your game concept, it must be entertaining. You want people to instantly enjoy their experience and share it with their friends. Don’t bury the potential for fun beneath bland marketing messages or overt sales objectives. For example, several campaigns have failed because they ask for the participant’s email address before he or she is emotionally engaged with the game and willing to part with any personal data. Virtual Worlds that insist on a user joining before giving them access to any fun content can suffer a similar fate.

2. Choose a simple promotional message. The player’s primary focus will be on completing the game, so don’t expect them to remember anything too complicated. Large amounts of information don’t sit well in an entertainment-driven format.

3. Incentivise response. Good advergames will incentivise the player to perform a set action after participation and reward them for taking that next step. For example, a Monty Python themed campaign for Spam asked users to enter product barcode numbers in return for unlocking various in-game enhancements. Last year the Telegraph’s Fantasy Football Game rewarded participants with player transfers for entering code words found in the paper.

The rise of social networking gaming

An advergame has greater intrinsic entertainment value than most marketing content. This gives you a lot of leverage when it comes to ensuring return on investment. For example, third parties may be willing to promote your game for free via their website because it gives them a way to entertain their own audiences. Their motivations may be kudos, personal allegiance to your brand, or to generate revenue by placing their own advertising around your content. They would be unlikely to consider a similar deal with more conventional marketing content.

This means that a few days spent ‘seeding’ an advergame on relevant websites can produce high volume traffic far more cost-effectively than paid-for advertising. (MIKES NEW COMMENT - This is changing VERY fast at the moment and will probably be no longer be true by the end of the year in the UK)
A new wave of social network websites specialising in games such as Newgrounds.com and Kongregate.com make this seeding very simple. These sites allow anybody to upload their content for free, combining professionally created advergames with material added by highly skilled and passionate amateurs.

A wealth of ideas, instant feedback and recognition can be gained by participating in these communities. Just as importantly, they provide a shop window for the thousands of other sites looking for free, interactive content for their own properties.

If you want to understand how these social network sites will develop in the future, turn on an Xbox and make some new friends. You will soon experience the pride of being personally invited to participate in a team game by other people on the Xbox network who are impressed by your skills.

In terms of marketing strategy, there’s obviously a balance to be struck between the free traffic to be gained through social gaming networks and the need to control the context in which your campaign is viewed and the profile of the audience you attract. However, the ability to drive high volumes of traffic and engage that audience in a richly interactive experience makes seeding a powerful technique.

But what makes a great game?

Of course, to be successful advergaming relies on creating highly addictive and enjoyable games in the first place. Some brands find games fit naturally with their ethos and style. Others may dismiss games as not suitable for their target audience or messages. However, there are remarkably few brands where an effective advergaming strategy cannot be devised. Here are some pointers to consider when brainstorming ideas:

· Target audience: set aside the notion that advergames will only appeal to children or computer geeks. The online gaming demographic has broadened significantly in the last couple of years. For example short-format ‘casual games’ attract a significant audience of women in their 30s and 40s, whilst games such as Scrabulous on Facebook re-introduced traditional board games to the social networking population. Similarly, advergames can be used to attract any audience you want, as long as you pick the correct genre. The successful “Dyson Telescope Game” and the RNLI’s recent “Brain Waves” campaign both utilised puzzle-based formats to attract an adult female audience. Games for young males lean towards racing and shooting challenges.

· Nostalgia and originality – everyone’s played with a paper aeroplane in their past and yet that didn’t stop 200 million of them being thrown via an online advergame created to promote Microsoft Flight Simulator. Giving a new twist to an established game format is very effective. The audience will immediately understand the basic game objective and enjoy the feeling of nostalgia it may evoke. At the same time they can admire the novel elements and creativity of your particular version

· Utilising existing rivalries – GMTV’s Toonattik.tv website asks children to score points for either the boys’ or girls’ team. This encourages kids to keep playing to ensure their team is victorious each week. Sporting loyalties, professions, countries and age groups can all be used in this way to build a sense of competitive spirit and give people a reason to want to keep playing

· Personalisation - many commercial games including Spore and Little Big Planet now allow users to completely personalise their gaming experience. This helps the game to stand out from the crowd and drives player loyalty. Sophisticated personalisation is now also within the scope of advergames. For example, the latest LEGO BIONICLE online game allows children to create new levels and share their creations with others. This has the added bonus of increasing the lifespan of the promotion as the challenge to other players is continually growing.

The future of advergaming

Walkers Crisps recently demonstrated that big brands are willing to push the concept of user-generated content even further by launching their “Invent the next flavour” competition. Getting your audience to collaborate with you in shaping the future of your brand is an enormously powerful technique. In the gaming world, new software and online tools are making it ever easier for enthusiasts to build their own games with high production values. In the near future I predict this trend will extend towards “Designagaming”. The more adventurous brands will run competitions for the public to create advergames on their behalf. The money previously used for content creation will be switched to prizes for the most successful games and building libraries of assets for willing developers to utilise. Why have one campaign when your target audience can create a hundred different variations, all competing to become your most effective marketing material?

A more imminent development will be the impact of the growing number of virtual worlds being launched by brands such as LEGO and MTV to compete with Second Life and World of Warcraft. These projects represent the natural evolution of the online gaming experience and offer enormous marketing potential. A good quality advergame currently has an average session time of around ten minutes. But if the same game is presented as an integral part of a virtual world, then the capacity for a brand to engage and entertain the visitor online can be extended indefinitely. You may never want to leave a branded virtual world if the game content inside is good enough.

Mars Mission codes in full

2008-11-24T08:47:00.003Z

For all the people who keep emailing me about Mars Mission codes:

Astros:
Level 1: mars
Level 2: powerup
Level 3: niceman
Level 4: buggy
Level 5: flyboy
Level 6: range
Level 7: stomp
Level 8: ufo
Level 9: elton
Level 10: eclipse
Bonus 1: pizza
Bonus 2: match
Bonus 3: manic
Bonus 4: amaze
Special Ops 1: drill
Special Ops 2: cavein
Special Ops 3: jacks

Aliens:
Level 1: earth
Level 2: zapper
Level 3: extra
Level 4: retreat
Level 5: doctor
Level 6: scramble
Level 7: flow
Level 8: redalert
Level 9: 5050
Level 10: nightfall
Bonus 1: temple
Bonus 2: checkmate
Special Ops 1: theylive

50000 starting credits: fatwallet
Build faster: 299792458
Build faster: quickbuild
Double fire rate for friendly units and buildings: awesome
Triple shields for all friendly buildings and units: n00b
Triple shields for all friendly buildings and units: newbie
Reveal shroud on all levels: clearskies
Disable all prior cheats / reset: 1337

Console wars Iframe

2008-10-27T17:16:00.000Z

Console Wars – A trip through game history

2008-10-24T16:05:00.009+01:00

As briefs go, this one was a peach. Create a game for GAME about games. Where do you start! No matter how hard you try it’s impossible to make a game that everyone likes, especially with a wide age range in the target audience.
4T2 therefore concentrated on what generic computer game topics we talked about the most and looked to build a campaign around those. We hoped to find something that people would want to discuss, even if they disliked (shock!) the campaign itself. For me this came down to two things:

At school, half of my friends had Amigas and half had Atari STs – which was the best? The rivalry was intense. I think I may even have had a fight (schoolboy arm waving style) on the subject when I was young. This argument may have moved on a couple of generations (Xbox versus PS3 etc) but will carry on forever. As GAME don’t sell Spectrums we had to turn this around a little bit, but that was the original concept.

An image of the original concept from the sales pitch
Secondly, I don’t mind getting my head cut off by a cocky ten-year-old American when playing Gears Of War, but it does annoy me that I don’t even understand what they are saying whilst being booted out of “their” game. I find myself a N00b and hate it. Urban Dictionary describes me as “A person who, regardless of experience, lacks the skill or competence to be competitive in a certain game”. It all comes down to that part about “regardless of experience”. I’ve completed Street Fighter on the hardest skill level, taken ages to master Kick Off and spent many hours battling through Doom. Pay me some respect! I’ve simply not got the time any more to practice all evening. But I can also see this from their point of view. Who’d want me on their team till I’ve mastered the game?

I’ve a really bad feeling this is just called getting old. When I play six-a-side soccer it's getting harder to chase down a young player. This I can understand though – I’m not twenty any more. What I had not realised (and is harder to accept) is that the same would happen to me in a virtual world.

So that’s how we came up with a campaign based around Retro versus Next Gen. It may well be an entire generation of gamers last chance of victory before the skills we have mastered become obsolete. It also gives Next Gen players the opportunity to bury us for good. We pay tribute to the machines and games that have that have gone before and give credit to the new technology that makes today’s consoles so awesome.

You can play Console Wars here. I hope you like it.

Thanks to the team at 4T2 (Rob, Robin, Nick, Edd, Justin) and at GAME (SWM and Brian) for making this all happen.

PS. Can you find an ST in the campaign anywhere? Long live the Amiga!

It's the little things that make the difference

2008-10-21T23:22:00.002+01:00

I imagine that the BBC have spent a fair few bob on their website. No end of fancy technology and clever content. The personalised news i've got set up is itching to tell me all about Manchester Uniteds victory over Celtic, or the delights of what tonights Last Man Standing has in store. So why then do I find all of my attention being drawn away from this to watch the damn clock in the top right corner? I love it. Just the way the second hand clicks into place giving it an old school clockwork feel. So to whomever made that clock, and just in case no one has ever said this - brilliant work.

Fantastic Contraption - The best game of 2008?

2008-10-06T18:00:00.003+01:00

With hundreds of new games being launched everyday on sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds it is getting very hard to find something new that really blows your socks off. Today I found one – Fantastic Contraption.

Like all great games it sounds really simple - by joining wheels together you must build a contraption to take an object from one point to another over various obstacles. Very quickly you’ll be creating simple vehicles and being rewarded with your first taste of success. So why is it so good? Take a look at other people’s creations and you’ll soon find out. Whilst your simple car may have proved functional, another users catapult device will leave you in awe. At this point you realise that it’s not just completing the challenge that matters – It’s all about style.

User generated content, endless solutions, simple game play that’s open to all ages and skill levels... Everything about this game says success.

Congratulations to Colin Northway and his team for creating such a fun and addictive concept. Expect to be seeing hundreds of different versions of this game across many platforms in the near future.

Expansion pack released for Mars Mission

2008-09-02T09:07:00.005+01:00

4T2 have just released four more CrystAlien Conflict levels featuring the 2008 Mars Mission products. If players find themselves struggling with the new levels they may not be too pleased to hear that completing them really should be child’s play.

A competition was run in November 2007 by LEGO Club Magazine for their readers to design the new levels by sending in sketches and stories explaining what is happening in the game.

First prizewinner was eight-year-old Jack Hardy who imagined the LEGO Mars Astronauts locating the Alien main base and being faced with their evil Commander. His ideas have been incorporated into levels 2 and 3 of the new game up-date with the title ‘Jack Attack!’ in his honour. Standards were so high that Thomas Lea, 11, was added as runner up for his excellent proposed level guide that consisted of a large map with tracing paper overlays giving opposition locations.

Both boys came to the 4T2 offices to play test the level they devised on Friday 4th April. Jack and Thomas are now part of LEGO history as the first ever fans to officially create content for their online games.

By watching many children play the existing game 4T2 already had several concepts on what we could do to make it even better. This competition was specifically designed to allow us to go a stage further – to understand how children perceived the game in their imagination. I wanted to know what kids expected to find waiting around the next corner? What would the next challenge be and how would they conquer it? Jack’s beautiful illustration and story gave us that answer.

4T2 have now taken this concept even further with the new BIONICLE Mistika game (due to be released this month) containing a level designing system.

GMTV testing day thanks

2008-08-14T13:40:00.008+01:00

I'd like to express my personal thanks to the children who came into the 4T2 offices and helped us test various online games. I look forward to developing some of their concepts.

So cheers to Dylan, Gideon, Saxon, Emma, Paitin, Tash, Jack and Bradley. Thanks also to GMTV Kids for their support and presence at this event.

It was clear that small mini games like on www.toonattik.tv and www.actionstations.tv were extremely well received.

4T2 & LEGO win the NMA Effectiveness Award 2008 (Games)

2008-06-27T15:42:00.003+01:00

4T2’s LEGO Mars Mission: CrystAlien Conflict game won the “Greatest Prize in New Media” last night. Big respect to all involved, especially Rob, Nick, Robin, Brent and Stefan. Thanks also to all the judges and the NMA magazine for organising such a great night! Thanks to The LEGO Company for their belief in us and commissioning such a brave project.

Congratulations also go to Jeff at Matmi (cheers for sorting out the table last night) and Digital Outlook who were short-listed.

Thomas and Bob get a CGI makeover

2008-06-09T14:50:00.003+01:00

Not really viral marketing, but I found it interesting that future series of Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder are going to be created using CGI.

For more info click here.

New LEGO Police game

2008-06-09T14:14:00.006+01:00

4T2 have recently finished a game for LEGO City. It is similar to Chase HQ but viewed in isometric. This is the first campaign we've ever built with a pre-loading game to keep young children's attention.

Click here to play the game at LEGO.com. Any thoughts?

NMA Effectiveness Awards

2008-05-28T09:35:00.002+01:00

I’d like to pass my congratulations on to the teams at 4T2, Matmi New Media Design and Inbox Digital for getting short-listed for the NMA Effectiveness Awards.

See you in London on the 26th of June. That’s if I survive the Three Peaks Challenge the weekend before.

RNLI Brain Waves Game

2008-05-27T16:18:00.022+01:00

Here is 4T2's first campaign for the RNLI. Good cause, good game and good fun!

The game can be found at http://www.rnli-lifefirst.org.uk/. Please visit the main site to show your support. There you will find embed codes and score tables.

Massive thanks to Rackspace for sponsoring the hosting for this.

Exciting times?

2008-04-01T09:21:00.001+01:00

Over the last six months I have really noticed the inevitable introduction of Global Brands entering the casual and advergaming market. The company I work for are finding ourselves pitching more and more against foreign companies or the likes of Cartoon Network or Jetix, as opposed to English development companies of similar sizes, such as Kerb or Skive. Game based websites like Addicting Games are also all being bought by media owners or large conglomerates.

Reinout te Brake (From Spill Group – a company setting up a Global network of casual game based websites) points out on his blog that Paramount Pictures have just expanded their interactive department to suit.

My views on this are simple. Like in all markets, small independent companies have got to stay ahead of the tide by simply being better than their larger rivals. Whether having the edge on service, technology or price – it’s important that they stand out from the crowd. This is nothing new - The same happened with website development around eight years ago. The same happened with commercial computer game development in the eighties.

So I wish all of the small independent companies out there the best of luck in these changing times. Some people will win, some people will lose. Make sure that you win.

Highlander and the Di Vinci Code

2008-03-28T14:46:00.001Z

On a completely different subject… Hopefully someone else will Google the same phrases I just did and find this blog entry:

Whilst watching the classic film “Highlander” the other night I noticed numerous items repeatedly appearing that related to Dan Browns book - The Di Vinci Code. Some are really obvious (The huge picture of Mona Lisa half way through), some are in the plot line (why have a certain group of people got special powers? / why should they not fight in churches?) and some are subtler.

Has any one else noticed this? If my memory serves me correctly Dan Brown mentions that lots of films carry reference to this “secret”. It may even refer to Highlander and that’s what made me think of it n the first place.

Anyway – it just got me thinking.

And if you think I’ve gone mad, check out the wording on the sign they have the final sword fight on….

LEGO Games for girls

2008-03-26T17:15:00.011Z

LEGO for girls? Yes, it really does exist.

Click here to play LEGO the new Belville game built by 4T2.

Here's the embed tag should you require it.

LEGO City Police game coming soon!

Lots more LEGO stuff

2008-01-09T11:40:00.001Z

Happy new year.

4T2 is currently working on a strategy guide for Mars Mission Crystalien Conflict. Here's the map for level 10 / conflict mode as a sneak peek. This should give you a great clue on how to complete the level. Check out the starting location of units and bonus objects.

You can also check out our new games for LEGO Racers and BIONICLE here.

Mars Mission CrystAlien Conflict bonus level

2007-12-18T16:50:00.000Z

Happy Christmas! The LEGO Mars Mission game has a new bonus level during December and January. Simply enter the access code "Santa" on the title screen. Ho ho ho. Can you complete it?

Mars mission alien levels

2007-12-10T09:30:00.000Z

The Mars Mission alien levels are currently live on www.actionstations.tv. Enter the website ignoring the Scalextric promotion and choose either the alien or robot team. When you get to the planet select screen click on the right arrow to visit the LEGO planet and you are away.

Have fun

Mars Mission level codes

2007-10-31T17:53:00.000Z

Here are all the Astronaut level codes for LEGO Mars Mission. It looks likely that the Alien levels will go exclusively live on GMTVs new Action Stations website on the 16th of November. They will appear on the LEGO website in January. Here's a sneak peak

Level 1: mars
Level 2: powerup
Level 3: niceman
Level 4: buggy
Level 5: flyboy
Level 6: range
Level 7: stomp
Level 8: ufo
Level 9: elton
Level 10: eclipse

Bonus 1: pizza
Bonus 2: match
Bonus 3: manic
Bonus 4: There is one - I just can't say the code yet...

Have fun

Computer Futures Update

2007-09-16T16:09:00.000+01:00

I think it is only fair to comment that Computer Futures have now contacted me and said sorry. 4T2 have now removed from their records so hopefully no more phone calls or emails.

Mars Mission - One giant leap for LEGO kind

2007-09-16T15:27:00.001+01:00

I'd love to know your thoughts on our new Real Time Strategy Game - Mars Mission. Check it out at http://marsmission.lego.com.

Level codes for the game are as follows so you can get to the good stuff:

Level 5 - flyboy (Always need a Star Wars based level code)
Level 7 - stomp (This is the level from the screenshot)
Level 9 - elton (Play the level and think about the song...)

We've built 6 more Astronaut levels that are coming soon. The Alien levels are being released near Christmas. LEGO Club magazine are running a competition to design one of the levels.

The embed codes for it is here. Feel free to add it to any website you wish.

Have fun.

If you prefer quick and simple mini games there are several more Bionicle games at www.bioniclestory.com now. Jaller is my personal fave.

Indi's back, but this time he's plastic

2007-07-31T13:49:00.001+01:00

Hahli game now live

2007-07-31T13:46:00.000+01:00

The second Bionicle Mahri game is now live.

Click here to play. The mask code is LEA.

LEGO Castle game now live

2007-07-19T16:02:00.000+01:00

4T2s new LEGO Castle game is now live here

Have fun. I particularly like the caged knights you can release with a great shot. There is also an interesting call to action built in the "cheats" section of the game.

Any comments?

Dear Computer Futures....

2007-07-19T13:14:00.000+01:00

This is an open letter to the recruitment company Computer Futures as they seem to pay no attention to me, either on the phone, or my responses via email. Neither 4T2 Multimedia or myself have any interest in the services you offer. Zero, zilch, nada.

In recent months I have replied each of your many staff requesting that you stop sending either me, or anyone else at 4T2, any more emails with apparently random CVs attached. For a company who specialises in Computers I can’t imagine that this is very difficult.

On a previous occasion I have gone so far as to replying to your staff stating that should you send me any further CVs, I will use Google to locate the individual in question and email them my opinions of your services. This obviously did not have the desired effect as yet more CV’s keep flooding though.

So when I get another email from yourselves and the first line says “I know another email, another CV when will they stop.........Driving you mad isn't it???” I become even more agitated. Obliviously my response of “Yes it is driving me mad. Thanks for noticing and please stop emailing me." was not direct enough as I got another four CVs from this individual today.

Please, delete 4T2 from ALL of your databases. Imagine we do not, and never have existed.

For the record we work with a great recruitment agency called Fresh Recruits who take time to consider whether we would really be interested in an individual before spraying CVs at random to their database.

And for anyone reading this who would actually like a job in a particular area, my suggestion is to do your homework and identify a selection of companies that you might like to work for. Now send them a noticeable CV (insert imagination here) and follow up with a polite phone call. If you really want the job you could try just turning up at their offices and see what happens. The worst case scenario is that you’ll find out exactly who you should send your CV to, and they will normally give you some clues on what to put into it to impress them if you are polite. When this person now gets your CV they will know how enthusiastic about the position you really are. I’ve won work with several Blue Chip companies doing exactly this to their marketing departments. Two people work in the same office as myself that have used this tactic, and only two people have tried it.

If you still can’t make your mind up on whether using a random recruitment agency is good plan or not think about the following. The chances are that somewhere out there, there is another individual who also wants a particular job and has similar skills to you. They might have applied directly. Do you think that a company, given a fifty / fifty choice on potential staff member will decide to employ an individual that costs them an additional 20% - 30% on top of a wage, or the one who applied directly?

Thank you

NMA awards - Big screen, lots of drink

2007-07-17T15:34:00.000+01:00

Thanks to everyone (Kerb, Killer Viral, Matmi, Underground BLC) who sat with us at the New Media Age Effectiveness awards last month. A good night was had by all. And so was a bad morning.

Congratulations to Inbox Digital for winning the Advergame award this year. 4T2's Spam campaign and Kerb's poker game were both nominated in this category along with MSN.

New LEGO game - Hewkii

2007-07-05T12:44:00.000+01:00

Click here for the Hewkii game

Embed code for this game:

This is the first of six mini games for Bionicle - one for each of their new Mahri. Feel free to take the embed code from here and add it to your site.

LEGO City Game by 4T2

2007-06-25T11:58:00.000+01:00

The embed code for this game is as follows:

(XML now working. Cheers Rob and Anders!)

The full game can be found here

I'm not taking you for granted

2007-06-06T16:59:00.000+01:00

Dear blog

Sorry for ignoring you for so long but I’ve been busy working on numerous projects for LEGO and Egmont. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at Bournemouth Uni’s Interactive Media Production show so I should be able to take some good pictures for you then. It’s at Dray Walk Gallery in London from the 7th till the 11th of June. The exhibition website is here if you want a look.

Rumours of me spending time testing social networking sites like Face Book are all lies. You are the one for me.

I embed you with two 100% exclusive images of games we are building for LEGO at the moment as proof of my commitment to you.

Aquaraiders embed code

2007-04-17T09:56:00.000+01:00

Hitting the green - Envirowise golf game from 4T2

2007-04-10T17:38:00.000+01:00

Hit the green for the good of the globe with 4T2's new golf game!

Comments please! Can anyone not unlock the main game? The main site can be found at www.puttitaway.co.uk

#1 game on www.lego.com

2007-03-28T14:13:00.000+01:00

4T2’s first ever game for LEGO Systems was today the most popular game on www.lego.com

For everyone who wants it, embedd code is on the way very shortly.

Brent - You the man.

PS3 – Instant and unnecessary disappointment

2007-03-23T15:41:00.000Z

Recently I had a whinge at Microsoft 360 support, so today, I’m going to even things out a little.

Having waited patiently for a PS3 for many months the big day finally arrived. PS3 – An awesome Hi-Res gaming and DVD machine. So perhaps you might expect to get a lead capable of delivering Hi-Res content to a suitable screen when you purchase said item? We’ll you’re going to be disappointed because you don’t get one. You’ve got to purchase it separately. Therefore before you have even turned the machine on you are disappointed and frustrated.

Am I the only person to think this stupid?

How good is it to be Stumbled Upon?

2007-03-14T13:08:00.000Z

StumbleUpon is a free tool that you can use to help launch your viral campaign. Visit stumbleUpon to find out more.

I “stumbled” across this site today http://onemorelevel.com/games3/double-wires.swf

How effective is it? Well our Spam game has been linked to by over 4,000 websites. StumbleUpon was the tenth highest referrer. So not bad at all assuming this is legitimate traffic.

Do you Digg it?

2007-03-14T12:14:00.000Z

The article below was automatically generated from a post on digg.com. Nice functionality! Check out the forum entries about our Spam game if you are bored.

If you attended my talk for the Media Trust on the 15th of March and have found your way to my blog looking for more information on viral tools I suggest you visit Digg.com. It is a really simple way of reaching out to bloggers and online communities.

Monty Python's Spam-A-Lot Game

2007-03-14T12:13:00.001Z

A must play for any Monty fan.(I fart in your general direction)

read more | digg story

Spam hits the big time

2007-02-28T10:04:00.000Z

Our SPAM campaign has received over one million visits in sixteen days. This game was not commercially advertised and is currently not linked to any existing SPAM websites. The site simply did not exist before the 12th of February. What a result!

I would like to thank everyone who added or hyperlinked the campaign to their websites or blogs.

Thanks also go to Chris for of all the help with the MemeCounter.com tracking.

Scoring too highly on search engines

2007-02-27T10:01:00.000Z

We received the following email today. I’ve removed the young mans name as adding it to my blog would not help his cause very much.

“Dear 4T2 multimedia,

It appears that I am on the leaderboard for the game Exchange & Mart Sports 2000 Racer PLAYERS NAME AND POSITION. I would really appreciate it if you could remove me from this site, since it is one of the first hits when a google search is done with my name. It is not something that I would like to others to see when searching for me. I appreciate your help. Also, the results are from 2003, over 4 years ago, so the removal of that page would be a good idea. Thanks,”

And he’s right – If you enter his name in Google his score is the very first entry.

So has any one come across this before? Is this really our responsibility? Xchase is only still online for portfolio purposes and to keep traffic flowing to that URL in case we create a new version of the game.

For reference - I’ve removed his name from the score table.

Any thoughts on this matter are appreciated!

Who needs fancy graphics when you've got plain text!

2007-02-24T14:47:00.000Z

Here’s a great example of simple and cost effective email based viral marketing. Note – I was sent it from a friend, not the company in question. I am not even sure the company in question has anything to do with it at all. But anyway, enjoy:

Typical English 40 something male:

Having split from his latest girlfriend, decided to take a vacation. He booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life, that is, until the ship sank. He found himself on an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing, only bananas and coconuts. After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore. In disbelief, he asks, "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

She replies, "I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed here when my cruise ship sank."

Amazing, he notes. "You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you." "Oh, this thing?" explains the woman. "I made the boat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.

"But, where did you get the tools?"

Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock is exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware." The guy is stunned.

Let's row over to my place," she says. After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man looks to shore, he nearly falls off the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, it's not much but I call it home. Sit down, please. Would you like a drink?"

"No! No thank you," he blurts out, still dazed. "I can't take another drop of coconut juice."

"It's not coconut juice," winks the woman. "I have a still. How would you like a Pina Colada?"

Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet." No longer questioning anything, the man goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, a razor made from a piece of tortoise bone. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside a swivel mechanism. This woman is amazing," he muses. "What next?"

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her. "Tell me," she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, "We've been out here for many months. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for?" She stares into his eyes..

He can't believe what he's hearing. "You mean .. " he swallows excitedly and tears start to form in his eyes.

“Don't tell me you've got Sky Sports as well"

Chopped Pork and Ham Game

2007-02-12T12:56:00.000Z

I’m very proud to launch our first campaign for SPAM ®. As you can hear – No more annoying theme tunes on our games until you want to load them. Nice work Rob.

The following are parts of a press release sent to NMA. Will any of it make the magazine?

‘One of the most challenging aspects of building this campaign was the communication between all of the relevant parties. Every time we used the word ‘SPAM’ in any of our emails we began to question if the content would ever reach its intended recipient.’

And

‘To promote the game in our email footers we have had to purchase ChoppedPorkAndHamGame.co.uk. Can you imagine the consequences of all of our emails having SpamSpamSpamSpam at the bottom?’

Well I though it was interesting anyway!

Check out www.SpamSpamSpamSpam.co.uk or www.ChoppedPorkAndHamGame.co.uk to see the full campaign.

You like?

Why is my Xbox 360 broken and why can’t Microsoft use email?

2007-01-25T18:21:00.001Z

For the record I would like to state that I think Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is a groundbreaking machine for many reasons. Anyone who experiences Xbox Live to its full potential instantly gets a view of the future. A future where one of your best friends could live on a different continent. A future where children can’t play computer games anymore because their parents are hogging the family console. For a person who works in the viral games industry it is like finding a Holy Grail.

However, mine is broken. And is not just mine. The four people I personally know who own an Xbox 360 have all had the same issue - Three flashing red lights on the front in every position but top right. One broken machine. Design fault perhaps?

So you may think that Microsoft are getting good at solving this issue. They seem to have had plenty of practice. Therefore why can’t they help me?

I’ve phoned customer support four times now (weekday mornings as phoning past school closing time is like trying to get through to the Queen) and they have promised to send me an email with instructions on how to send my console to be repaired. Four times this email has not appeared. I’ve checked our firewall and spelt out my email address so precisely a monkey on Mars could get it right. M I K E @ 4 (number 4) T (letter T) 2 (number 2). CO . U K.

So my question is quite simple. Why can’t Microsoft send me a simple email? If a representative from Microsoft phones my mobile – 0044 7976 624855 – I’ll take you through the process if it helps. I’ll not even put you on hold.

I want to be nice about your product as it is extremely good when it works. Please restore my faith.

Using Google to launch viral games

2006-12-12T15:03:00.000Z

During a recent seminar for Licensing Pages I talked about the use of Google when trying to make games go viral. I suggested searching for “submit games” to locate websites that may wish to feature your content. A large proportion of the sites you find will embed your material in order to make their own websites more popular, therefore earning them additional revenue from banners or content sensitive advertising.

www.Ikoncity.com recently tried this tactic and increased their Alexa ranking from 100,000+ to under 7,000 in a matter of days.

Assuming that you are happy for your material to be used in this way you also might want to try placing the code a user will need to embed your content directly underneath the material itself. Using the code I found on www.ravengame.co.uk I did the following in approximately two seconds.... (And then took it off again when I kept playing the game instead of adding Blogs!)

PS. The code to gain additional lives is Wave, Tree, Mountain, Cloud, Moon, Sun.

360 degree marketing for children on GMTV

2006-10-12T13:07:00.000+01:00

GMTV’s latest competition on its Toonattik TV show uses 360 degree marketing to tie online activity into the on air format.

During the TV show children can win the opportunity to “creatively apply” makeup to the presenter of their choice in a future episode. The TV slot promotes a website competition where children can use a virtual copy of a digimakeover product to apply wigs, make up and false eyelashes to photographs of the two presenters. Kids can then enter their altered images into the competition. By the time the results are shown on air, a child will have followed the brand through a TV show, onto its website and back to the TV show.

Some examples of Toonattik competition entries

GMTV is also running a competition for children to design the next Toonattik Twizzler website game. The winner will have their game made by 4T2 and then personally launch it on the show. More about this soon.

At the same time 4T2 have just released the latest Twizzler mini-game for Toonattik: Attik Racer.

Various secrets are revealed on the TV show each week to encourage interaction between website and on air content. In this case cheat codes given out by the presenters add a gloop gun to the vehicles and children are told how to enable a funny mode, which swaps the cars for racing snails. All of the points scored in Twizzler games result in a prize being given out a future show to either the boys team or the girls team.

Encouraging interaction between the website and the programme is one of the key reasons Toonattik has seen a 600% increase in website’s visitor levels compared to the same time last year.

Have you seen any good examples of this kind of behaviour recently?

Greenpeace take a bite out of Apple

2006-09-27T15:43:00.001+01:00

So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of Apple’s product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have abandoned?

Greenpeace have cloned and edited the Apple site to help spread this message and are using viral marketing to get this message out. Nice work.

So my big question is should Apple let their lawyers lose or not? If they don’t they look stupid and open the doors for much more of this type of behaviour. If they do, they pour rocket fuel all over Greenpeace’s campaign, guaranteeing increased press coverage whilst keeping the issue in the public eye for longer. Tough decision.

Personally I would resolve the hazardous material issue as quickly as possible in a very public manner. Therefore my suggestion to Apple is that they employ someone (or a team of people) specifically to look into and resolve this problem. This person should have a public blog and place daily reports on his or her progress on there till the project is completed. I would also ask Greenpeace to link to this blog from the cloned site. What is good for the goose…

What would you do?

My congratulations go to Greanpeace for a stunning and inevitably award-winning piece of viral marketing. This campaign is infinitely better then their previous viral video of hijacked plane crashing into a nuclear power station. Please leave scare tactics to the government.

As requested I have tagged this article greenmyapple

Thanks go to Viral Monitor for pointing this campaign out.

NBC viral on YouTube.com

2006-09-22T16:25:00.000+01:00

One for Friday afternoon - NBC using viral marketing on YouTube.com and ripping into themselves for doing it. Well worth a watch.

The Zombies are coming

2006-09-21T17:30:00.000+01:00

4T2 have just finished our first campaign for BBC Worldwide. The first series of Zombie Hotel, a children’s cartoon by Alphanim, is due to be released on DVD on the 16th of October. We have created an online game to promote this fact.

The campaign goes live on the first of October but can already be accessed by visiting www.zombiehotelgame.co.uk

We are hoping this campaign will be a great success because:

1)It’s a good game (based loosely on Defender for any retro game fans)
2)Alphanim’s art work is fantastic and this game really brings it to life
3)We’ve linked the campaign to the cartoon as much as possible by introducing each of the main characters individually and including as many ZH backdrops as we could. Therefore ZH fans should love it.
4)Banners on AOL and Nick promote the game – not the DVD. As 4T2’s catchphrase goes - Fun first, message second.
5)It is a seasonal campaign – Zombies at Halloween. Therefore many sites will be looking for such content in the very near future.

If you’ve got any ideas how we can improve the campaign we would love to know. Have fun.

1000 reasons why word of mouth works

2006-09-21T17:22:00.000+01:00

During my on going Business Link presentations I refer to the recent success of www.onethousandpaintings.com. If you don’t know what I talking about then this site is well worth a look and should inspire any would be online entrepreneur.

The very moment 300 more people decide I am completely mad
Therefore my thanks go to Sala for providing me with the best possible demonstration of how any product, no matter how bizarre, can become a huge success if you capture the attention of enough opinion leaders and get them talking about your product, brand or message.

The Art of Draw is on the road

2006-09-06T14:22:00.000+01:00

Do you live in the South West of England and want free tea, coffee and cakes? I'm involved in a series of talks for Business Link on viral marketing. During the break you get fed!

Thursday 7 September - AFC Bournemouth
Tuesday 12 September - Royal Chase Hotel, Shaftesbury
Thursday 14 September - The Corn Exchange, Dorchester (Best cakes!)
Tuesday 19 September - University of Southampton
Thursday 21 September - Quay Arts, Newport
Wednesday 27 September - Basingstoke Country Hotel
Thursday 5 October - Hilton National Portsmouth

Amongst other things I’ll be demonstrating how a furniture company could use viral marketing to it’s advantage. This was a challenge by a previous guest who claimed that online games were of no use to his business.

Contact Business Link Wessex for more details. The event is called E-Technology – Maximising your potential. All events go from 17.00 to 19.30.

Some events may be full. Contact me and I’ll make sure you get a ticket.

Noah's bad hair 2356 days

2006-09-05T12:16:00.000+01:00

Noah has taken a photo of himself everyday for the last six years. He’s then converted this into a video and placed it on youtube.com. Why not take a look or visit his website.

Now come on, be honest. Wouldn’t you like to pin him down and shave his hair or an eyebrow off? Surely there is a hair stylist somewhere that can see the PR opportunity here! Give the man a noticable haircut and some new clothes and perhaps he’ll get laid. He may even start smiling then.

Nice work Noah.

Richard Sweeting - Internet Entrepreneur of the year

2006-08-30T17:32:00.000+01:00

I very much consider online Fantasy Football Leagues to be a great example of viral marketing – Especially the mini league sections. Someone reads a newspaper and sets up a league. He or she then tells all of their friends to join in.

This year I am part of the Telegraph competition. I like the fact Alan Hanson has a team so I can pit my managerial / soccer knowledge against his. Pity it is not very easy to see how many points Alan has got though.

It’s well worth having a look at how the transfer system works. The Telegraph want you to purchase their paper. Therefore to enable player transfers you must enter a code printed every Wednesday.

Now Google the following: “Telegraph Fantasy Football password”. 1,000 websites and blogs with this code on!

I particularly like http://www.richardsweeting.org/pages/telegraph.html. Richard is accepting donations via his pay pal account for telling you the code. Very funny.

Cheating and viral campaigns

2006-08-03T11:50:00.000+01:00

Inspired by this blog article on a Google / Da Vinci Code fiasco.

I often encounter cheating in the viral campaigns we create. To me it is simply part of the game - Get your enjoyment in any way that you see fit. One attempt stands out from the crowd though…

4T2 were running a racing game competition for Exchange & Mart in 2003. The game recorded your laps making cheating very hard as you could watch a replay of any previous performance. Check out X-chase. As this is not live any more we do not monitor it. The people claiming to have completed a lap time in one second are hacking the game. However, they will not have a valid recording. At the time we deleted these players.

The prize was a new Pay As You Go mobile phone – WOW.

One morning I received an email from Exchange & Mart informing me that the current leader was cheating and requesting that we delete his entry. I can only find the version I forwarded to our client but here you go. Click on the image below:

So I watched a replay of the current leader and could not see anything wrong with it. I was also very surprised at the pro-activeness of our client to do all of this. Therefore I took a second look at the email. Check out the email address.

Therefore I emailed “Tanya” back and received a complete confession from a suitably guilty sounding young man. He simply wanted to win and had invested so much time in this endeavour that he was willing to try anything.

I can’t remember if we sent him a prize for doing this or not - I hope we did. But hey, if you invest this much effort into a brands marketing campaign, surely you should be rewarded.

Lego’s Bionicle game shows how you should do it

2006-08-02T16:22:00.001+01:00

This is one great viral game. Fun, addictive, attractive and cleverly put together. I especially like the awards section where you win badges for completing certain in game achievements - Someone’s been playing on an Xbox 360.

One thing I did notice though - Lego used to be very good at linking to on pack promotions for power ups etc and I can’t find this on the campaign. Perhaps it is later on. Pity (and I think a mistake) if they have dropped the idea.

For a similar game produced by 4T2 check out Spyware Shooter

Any thoughts? Anyone know who made it?

The Internet is for Porn (& user generated content)

2006-07-14T14:24:00.000+01:00

User generated content has been popular for many years and seems to be the new “in thing” with many organisations and TV studios. How many companies asked you to send in photo messages in order to win World Cup prizes recently?

I must admit to really enjoying viral songs and parodies. Check out the game intro we built for Comet two years ago for example. So when the two combine...

This example has got to be the best user generated content I have seen for a long time. "The Internet Is For Porn"

Thank you to Bernadet for making my day by sending it to me.

Have you seen better?

The RNLI – The story continues

2006-07-05T10:43:00.000+01:00

Anyone who has been following this story on my blog or has been to one of my recent talks will know that I have been trying to show the RNLI a mock up campaign we designed for a Media Trust talk.

Success! I met several of their team last week and ran them through the possibilities. A TV studio and a corporate sponsor have already shown interest so fingers crossed.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me with this – Especially Cia-Louise from Mad River.

Stick Soccer Beta launched

2006-06-26T14:01:00.000+01:00

Stick Soccer is on its way! Will it be as successful as Stick Cricket? Will I actually be able to score?

Form your own opinions: www.sticksportssoccer.com

Thanks to Chris from www.Advergamer.co.uk for the heads up.

Using events to launch your viral marketing

2006-06-23T16:46:00.000+01:00

Good viral campaigns utilise existing passions and current events to generate high levels of PR. A simple example is newspapers and websites wanting to find interactive Christmas content to add a level of festivity to their products during December. Ideally you want to find a popular event that is not used by many other companies so that your campaign stands out.

So what’s coming up…

Wimbledon (Global audience)

Farnborough Air show (Great calls to action!)

Tour de France

The Ryder Cup (Extremely good for Director level targeted campaigns)

The start of the football season

The Grand National

Halloween (Very good for a youth audience and totally underutilised online)

Christmas!

Has anyone got any other ideas?

Business Link Email Talk

2006-06-12T10:33:00.000+01:00

My presentation can be downloaded here

If anyone has any questions I'll make sure I answer them here.

Thanks and I hope it was useful

Why don't games companies use Viral Games (Well)

2006-06-08T13:29:00.000+01:00

I am always confused why games companies and distributors do not use viral games more effectively to promote their products. For instance my company created a racing game to promote Vauxhalls VXR car range that was played 20,000,000 times and resulted in 3,000,000 unique visitors to their website. Tie this in with a “Do you want to test drive this car” message at the end and bingo – car sales. The user has formed an emotional bond with the brand, experienced some degree of the product and are open to calls to action.

Granted, several companies have gone down this route – take Skive’s / SCEE mini game for example, but none do it well.

Seeding a viral campaign for a computer game would not be that difficult. Creating a suitable mini game would be easy. But why not leverage it more?

For example has anyone done any of the following seemingly obvious calls to action after a user has played an online viral game:

1) If the user “completes” the viral game they are rewarded with a code to unlock a character / level / special ability on the real game. This promotes people buying the game and encourages existing owners to visit the viral site where they can spread your message very easily to their friends.

2) Referred to “on package” material in their viral campaign. If a viral game is doing well then people are going to want more of the same content. Refer to something on the back of the actual games box as a method of unlocking more online content in the same manner listed above. This could be the barcode number, the third word on the second sentence or the colour of something on the packaging. If you tied this in with an online competition with a reasonable prize and then made the item you unlocked more likely to make you win (EG you can score more because your car is faster) then you would have lots of people walking into shops and picking up your product. Could you ask any more from an advertising campaign? With Xbox 360 you could tie this in with downloading the demo.

3) Promote a PR event using the online viral game as a qualification for the day. We suggested to a razor company they did this recently and proposed their PR event was held at a motorway service station. To qualify you had to complete the online game (easy) and turn up at the venue with two days of stubble – thus allowing them to “test drive” razor before playing the prize game. Imagine the PR.

We’ve got lots of other ideas but don’t want to give them all away for free! Has anyone tried any of these items or got any better ideas?

Fun or Skill for viral?

2006-05-31T18:17:00.000+01:00

I would love to know what you all think of our new viral campaign:

Studs Up Soccer

It is very different from our traditional work as we normally focus on skill gaming to make people visit - Take www.escape2victory.com as an example.

This new soccer campaign is intended to go viral due to people enjoying the funny animations and wanting to show their friends as opposed to getting hooked on a game and desiring to advance through levels / complexity. There are not many soccer games where The Hoff plays in goal for the Germans.

No idea if it will work but we thought we would give something new a go. Our convoluted theory is that more people might participate due to a wider audience that includes non-game players.

Any thoughts?

PS. If you're Scottish it is not my fault.

LIMA presentation download

2006-05-30T09:45:00.000+01:00

My LIMA Spring Fling / Introduction to Licensing presentation can be downloaded here. A PDF of the Art of Draw pamphlet is being created as I speak. When it is completed I will upload it to this blog. If you want me to email you when it is online please reply to this message and leave your email address. Cheers.

Viral marketing email lists

2006-05-22T15:08:00.000+01:00

One good way to promote your latest viral campaign is to submit it to Viral Monitior - http://www.chinwag.com/viralmonitor/. Sign up to recieve their emails and then submit your own. The majority of viral marketing companies are members of this list.

Does anyone know any other good ones?

The Eurostar Quest

2006-05-17T10:24:00.000+01:00

Having read all of Dan Brown’s books I was very much looking forward to playing the Eurostar Da Vinci Code Quest. It did not disappoint. The first thing that I took notice of were the amazing prizes. Complete the Eurostar Quest and you could win €200,000 and a lifetime pass for Eurostar. Not bad! The finals take place in London on the 14th and then you hop on the train to Paris till the 16th. (I guess someone who does not like football organised those dates – France vs Switzerland on the 13th and England vs Trinidad on the 15th!)

The quest itself takes you on a tour of around 15 flash based mini games. Some of these are very original but the majority are all tried and tested puzzles. Each one of them is very well put together and surprisingly enjoyable.

The only thing that disappointed me was the lack of clever code based challenges and riddles. Being a big fan of the book I was looking forward to some extremely challenging decryption and lots of hidden secrets. I found the original online challenge that promoted the book much harder. (Especially for someone in the UK – See the final question).

However, this may actually be extremely clever planning by the creators, de-construct. This website was always going to start online communities like the one here. If all of the puzzles had “answers”, as opposed to being interactive challenges, then you would be able to visit a site like this and complete the challenge in a matter of minutes.

Anyway, it is well worth a look. If anyone figures out something I have missed please let me know. I can’t help but feel that there is a “correct” numeric code for some of the prize challenges hidden away somewhere. Perhaps something to do with the divine proportion or pi.

Paying to advertise viral marketing campaigns?

2006-04-20T16:03:00.000+01:00

Sites like Kontraband, BoreMe and the Lycos Viral Charts can charge up to £5,000 a week to place commercial viral campaigns on their sites. I question paying to have content displayed in such a manner being referred to as viral marketing – This is just advertising interactive promotions to existing audiences. What do you think?

To me viral marketing is all about people willingly and freely passing on your message. If paying for placement is “viral marketing” then you may as well count banners, billboards and TV adverts. Does Ainsley Harriott’s latest Fairy Liquid Washing Up Liquid TV advert make him the king of all viral campaigns?

Don’t get me wrong. Commercial charts and content aggregation websites do have their place and can be extremely useful. I just disagree with the term “viral marketing” being associated to them in this scenario.

Quite why viral marketing sites think they should charge you for giving them great sticky content whilst they run banner adverts off the back of their visitor numbers is another good question. If Channel 4's website lists Advergames for free, why should others charge? Will sites like this sort resolve the issue in the long term anyway?

Am I alone in this thought?

And has anyone got any ideas on how we can thank non-commercial websites that link to campaigns. Often there are no contact details on them so agencies can’t easily write to the authors. All praise to sites like www.milkandcookies.com - They did this first and they still do it the best.

Media Trust Viral Talk II

2006-04-13T15:37:00.000+01:00

I spoke at another Media Trust event yesterday, this time at Channel4. Nice building. My presentation can be downloaded below and the podcast should come through soon. This AOD presentation is about viral messaging and strategy.

Viral talk II

Comments and feedback welcome.

Chairing the event was Linda Vezzoli from Maverick. Would this be the same person as linda.vezzoli@viralchart.com? Indeed it was. Mystery solved.

I may have even made contact with the illusive Channel 4 Games Chart – You never know your luck!

Other than that I have to thank Jon from Kerb for sending me their latest campaign this morning. Not to be viewed by anyone easily offended! The punch line is a bit of a kicker so stay till the end!