Games
JamLegend is Free Online Guitar Hero!
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | Beta, Games, Music, WebApps | 1 Comment
Like Guitar Hero but wish you could play it at work without your boss catching you air-guitaring in the break room? Now you can with the recently opened beta online game JamLegend.com!
Pretty much it’s guitar hero meets the keyboard….even allowing you to change up which keys are assigned to which strings, enable or disable having to strum & it even gives you the option to disable 3+ note chords (for the weaksauce soft-rockers). They’ve come up with a way where you can use your keyboard (this is where a wireless keyboard is strongly suggested) similar to how you’d hold the console-version plastic guitars….though if you’re at work I would recommend you not playing in this fashion as it may draw unneeded attention from coworkers.
You can play against the computer, be auto-matched against another online player or even challenge other users and friends to duels/showdowns (A duel lets you take a high score and challenge a user to match or beat it, a showdown allows for real-time multiplayer matches). In addition to achievements there are levels, XP earned/lost as well as a rapidly growing list of songs. Want to hear the song you and your drunk friends recorded on the site? Not a problem – they’re actively seeking new material, all the artist has to do is fill out a short form agreeing to allow their material to appear on the site.
Already have a guitar controller and want to use it with JamLegend.com? No Problem! They’ve got a wiki with instructions for how to use your Wii, PS2/PS3 and even Xbox260 controllers with your computer….so if nosy bosses aren’t a problem feel free to rock away on your fake plastic guitars against other online players in a fight to top the charts as the JamLegend superstar!
Anyhow, there you go – the latest site to take up all the time I should be spending on writing new posts…Enjoy!
Amazon Plays Catch-up And Buys Video Game Producer Reflexive
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | Business, Games, Marketing, News | No Comments
Following in Google’s footsteps, Amazon just announced today that they have acquired Orange County based video game company Reflexive for an undisclosed sum (translation: a whole lot of dough). Does this mean we might see a new player in the online advertising market? Is Amazon going to make a move to try and compete with Google for contextual ads? With million of Amazon stores & affiliates out there, could a new CPC offering be right around the corner? I sure hope so.
Founded in 1997, Reflexive has produced fifteen games for the Xbox 360, PC and Mac not to mention offers flash based games through their Reflexive Arcade website. In 2005 the company won 3 awards at the 2005 Independent Games Festival for Fable of Souls and Wik.
Quoting the company founder Lars Brubaker in an article taken from the Reflexive website:
It means we’ll be able to expand our distribution network to include Amazon’s amazing distribution channel. With Amazon we will bring a huge new group of customers into play
Should be interesting to see what happens next.
Just Released: Google AdSense for Online Gaming
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 | Beta, Business, Games, Marketing, News, google | No Comments
Google just announced the release of Google AdSense for Online Gaming. It works pretty much the same as your pre-existing AdSense program, where you place video, image or text ads within your application/game and it displays contextually targeted advertising based on the surrounding content.
From the official Google AdSense blog:
You’ll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you’ll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information.
Now if you’re a budding flash developer, don’t go getting your hopes up just yet – in order to be eligible for this beta program your games must have a minimum of 500,000 “game plays” with at least 80% of the traffic originating from the US or UK. If you fit the mold, here’s a direct link to the application.
So far there are only three marketers listed as partners on the info page: Sprint, Sony Pictures and esurance. I’m sure it won’t be long before that list starts to grow, the publisher round-up is already full of major players in the online game realm: ArcadeTown, Konami, Armor Games, Boonty, Demand Media, Heavy Games, Grab.com, Mochimedia and cafe.com.
This move was inevitable for Google seeing how they recently acquired Adscape Media, a small in-game advertising startup based out of the San Francisco, CA area.
Surprisingly, they already have a “Success Story” listed on the about page for social networking game developer Playfish. These guys primarily produce games that you can add to your Facebook or MySpace profile, so it’s a ‘little’ deceiving in nature.
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