Sometimes the line between virtual world and real world is blurry. It's been known that Chinese gold farmers make a real living out of the WoW gold. On Friday, Sanrio Digital, maker of the Hello Kitty Online game, for the first time turned the in-game food to real money for a good cause.
(Credit:
Sanrio Digital)
The company announced the conclusion of the first Hello Kitty Online charity event called "Food for Friends." The event was held in the final week of the Hello Kitty Online closed beta.
Players created and submitted 344,965 in-game food items. Based on the number and value of items submitted, Hello Kitty Online will donate $12,000 to Unicef and the Asian Youth Orchestra.
The Hello Kitty character turned 34 years old on November 1, and the "Food for Friends" event kicked off immediately following the in-game birthday party.
The present version of the game will shut down at midnight EST on Saturday to allow the development team to continue work on the game and prepare for open beta.
Current players will retain their characters and certain benefits in future versions of the game. It's unclear when the open beta will be announced.
(Credit:
Sanrio Digital)
If your kids start to show serious signs of loving New York and you don't know why, this might be the reason.
Sanrio Digital, maker of the Hello Kitty Online 3D virtual world that's currently in beta, announced Friday the game's largest in-game event: the building of New York City. Players of the Hello Kitty Online Founders' Beta can take part in a series of quests to collect and organize materials for the building of a new New York area that will appear in the next phase of the game--and will undoubtedly be far more pink than the real Big Apple.
Players who successfully complete all the required quests will have the names of their character permanently recorded on virtual commemorative plaques located throughout the virtual New York (the plaques will appear in future versions of the game's North American edition).
These permanent rewards and status, as well as the character's progress, will be carried into the final version of Hello Kitty Online. The game is free to play and can be downloaded here. Currently it's unclear when the game will be finalized.
For those who are no longer kids and already heart New York (like my college Joseph Kaminski and his co-hosts of the Digital City podcast), this is also very exciting news.
Microsoft showed off its Massive advertising platform in Times Square in New York on Tuesday.
The tech giant wanted to show the advertising world, which is gathered in New York for the annual Advertising Week conference, exactly how the dynamic in-game advertisements work.
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Warner Bros.)
Flashing high above 43rd Street were clips from a series of games that showed avatars stopping to view a movie trailer for the Hollywood blockbuster 300. A Toyota advertisement also lined the outfield wall in a baseball game that's played on Microsoft's Xbox game console.
"The idea is to have advertisements appear and fit in naturally to the games just as they would in real life," said Jay Sampson, vice president of North American and Asia Pacific sales for Massive, Microsoft's in-game advertising marketplace. "But these advertisements are also dynamic. So the ads can be updated or changed by the advertiser at any time."
Microsoft, which bought Massive in May 2006, is a leader in placing dynamic advertising in games. The market is filled with many smaller players, such as a company called Double Fusion. But it's also attracting other big technology names, including Google, which bought AdScape Media for $23 million earlier this year.
Analysts say the in-game advertising market is worth about $514 million today. And dynamic in-game dynamic advertising, which allows advertisers to change the advertisements at will, is expected to reach $675 million by 2012 in the United States, according to consumer research group Parks Associates.
Microsoft sees its early lead in the in-game advertising market as a strategic opportunity that fits well into the company's overall advertising strategy.
"Emerging media, like in-game advertising, is a huge component of our overall strategy," said Matthew Carr, senior director of Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions. "We're already in a leadership position here. And we see this as being where the future growth will be."
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Sony Computer Entertainment America has joined forces with ratings mogul Nielsen to develop a measurement system for the nascent in-game advertising industry, according to a joint release from the two companies on Monday.
Sony will now share its game network data from the PlayStation 3 console as well as the PlayStation Network (which encompasses its new virtual world, PlayStation Home). Nielsen will then combine this with its game usage data, which currently encompasses the activities of more than 12,000 U.S. households. Then, beginning this fall, Nielsen will begin tracking audience statistics and user activity through its GamePlay Metrics system, incorporating in-game advertising figures into the final product. Later this year, we'll see the first reports from this new project.
Nielsen, still best-known for its TV ratings, has been gradually expanding into newer forms of media. It's operated its NetRatings online metrics system for several years now, and first announced GamePlay Metrics last year. Earlier this summer, Nielsen expanded into tracking mobile media use.
In-game advertising is seen as a lucrative and untapped sector of the advertising industry; Microsoft and Google have both acquired in-game ad firms in the past two years, but it's nevertheless still getting off the ground. Sony and Nielsen's goal with the new in-game ad metrics is to help make it a more competitive field by providing some numbers for the oft-amorphous business.
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