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Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, recently announced to The Daily Telegraph that he wants Zynga to become a verb.

"I want people to ‘Zynga’ each other and for the word to become completely aligned with gaming."

This is quite a big shift from where he's been and where gaming has been traditionally. Like record labels, gaming brands have had a tough time trying to create strong parent brands, only Rockstar and EA have managed to do it.

It's likely that many of the million of Farmville players don't even know Zynga is behind the game and even if they do, they aren't likely to substitute Zynga for Farmville anytime soon.

It's also somewhat arrogant to believe that Zynga will eclipse all other gaming brands in other categories and seems unlikely that the brand will dominate the social gaming sphere for ever.

However, stranger things have happened and maybe Pincus is planning an advertising onslaught with a global television campaign supported by online takeovers, spectacular billboards and events. Who knows? But Zynga's going to have to do something radical, if it wants that verb status.


Posted by Ed Cotton The world of video games has become dominated by the hyper-saturated, the fast-paced and the graphically intense. Story lines have come back, but graphics still rule.

Just because it's the norm, doesn't mean there isn't room for experimentation and the opportunity to transform the experience.

That's what the Danish designers of Limbo have done with a game that defies the current category stereotypes. Instead of being hyper-colored, fast- paced with intensely realistic graphics, it's minimal, low-fi and black and white.

Despite it's lack of expected category charms, it's getting rave reviews- a series of consistent 100 scores on Metacritic, for example.

More of the game can be seen here.



It's a great example of creators who take a risk go with their intuition and create something truly original. Sure, it might not sell in Madden like quantities, but it contributes to the genre and judging from the review, leaves players wanting more. 

Posted by Ed Cotton The Beatles are one of the strongest and most enduring brands in the world. Without having the benefit of new material, the only way of staying relevant is to support each shift in technology. From remastered CDs through to staged performance of their songs with Cirque Du Soleil, The Beatles have manged to stay connected to the times.

The Beatles on Rockband is one of the most anticipated software releases of the year and will doubltless be a huge global hit for the 09 holidays.

Here's the E3 trailer
 


Posted by Ed Cotton The popular consensus on gaming is that it's an unproductive waste of time, with little productive or human value.

Jane McGonigal has a great argument that provides lots of evidence to the contrary suggesting that gaming is already make huge strides in helping to solve real human issues, to bring sociability to the world and to solve giant problems.

It seems to suggest the people who are engaged in creating traditionally popular gaming experiences could put their skills to use in new and potentially more interesting ways.


Posted by Ed Cotton Rockband and Guitar Hero have changed the face of video games. Now we have some stats from the folks at Guitar Hero that show the impact of the new title- Guitar Hero 3.

- $1billion in sales in a 26 month period- the first video game to reach $1 billion in sales

- 25,000 songs created and posted in the first 10 days

- 141,000 songs posted to date

- 600,000 community members

- 15-843% growth in the music sales for artists featured in the game

For years, no one could make a good music game and the whole genre was in disarray. However, fast forward to today with the impact of great user interfaces and co-operation from the music industry and you have a whole new world.


Posted by Ed Cotton Spore is the latest game created by Wil Wright, the brain behind Sim City and The Sims. It let's people create their own creatures and evolve them over time. Using simple creature creator tool sets, users get to decide how they want their creatures to look, feel, behave and evolve.



Could Wil Wright and EA's Spore be the latest research tool to help understand human behavior?

The latest issue of Seed, suggests it could.

"It's the potential Spore has to evolve over current and future interactions into a massive dataset of billions of human interactions and decisions that may make the game a target for scientific research rather than a reflection of it."

They already men prefer conquest through blood and aggression and women prefer non-aggressive methods which often involve singing and dancing, this is not especially surprising and seems perfectly obvious, but it's just the tip of the iceberg of data.

The game even in the test phase has an incredible level of participation. It took only 18 days for the Spore community to match the 1.6 million species on Earth. It took just 22 hours to generate 100,000 creatures.

As of the end of September, the game had sold around 1 million units, but more impressive are the 39 million creatures that have been created to date.

Seed Magazine confirms that EA has a massively powerful research tool in its hands, but it remains unclear if they are just going to keep it for themselves or make it public.


Posted by Ed Cotton