Eden Games has developed a game for Atari that takes in game advertising to a new level: in-store shopping while in the game. IGA will release the simultaneous-play game in September. In the game, Test Drive Unlimited, players, while driving around Hawaii in a selection of 100 customizable cars by Lamborghini, Feffari and Mercedes Benz, can stop and go into Ben Sherman and Marc Ecko stores and try on the fashion brands' clothing. The game will also interact with another game, Massively Open Online Racing.
IGA Worldwide CEO Justin Townsend says the company's Radial Network will track how often, when and where gamers are exposed to in-game ads.
- Shaun Irving is traveling across Spain in a truck he converted into a giant camera. He's taking pictures for a project with *S,C,P,F, a WPP agency. The images will be displayed at the PHotoEspana photographic festival in June.
- The 47th international Clio Awards announced three ads selected as its 2006 Hall of Fame inductees: "Bear" for John West, from Leo Burnett, London; "Whassup?" on behalf of Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser brand, from DDB Worldwide, Chicago; and "Turkey (High Dive)" and "China (Tree)" for FOX Sports Network, by Cliff Freeman & Partners, New York.
- It seems sex does sex for Unilever's Axe. Axe deodorant is now the leading brand in the category.
- OnRequest Images has released a new product which can measure the impact imagery has on brand equity.
- Adverblog doesn't like the new Lonely Planet advergame and thinks it's too similar to the previously released Virgin "Exercise Your Muscle" game.
 European high speed rail operator Eurostar has teamed with producer's of this summer's Tom Hank's film, The Da Vinci Code to create Join the Quest, a multi-lingual online treasure hunt game, created by space, de-construct, Stream, TBWA\London and TBWA Brussels. The game has 15 puzzles spread across a virtual Europe which must be solved to qualify as a final five contestant. At the end of the Quest, five finalists will be brought to London for a one-night stay at Claridge's Hotel before travelling by Eurostar to Paris. Once in Paris, they'll stay at the Ritz Hotel and take part in a Grand Final, where the winning code-cracker will be named. Prizes range from Sony PSP consoles to Eurostar tickets to a grand prize which includes free travel on Eurostar for the winner and a friend for the rest of their life, accommodations at the Ritz and Claridge for five years, 180,000 euros to spend inLondon and paris, 10,000 euros to spend at the Galleries Lafayette in paris, 10,000 euros to spend at Harrods in London and other specialized prizes.
Sarah Gim who writes for Joystiq attended the gaming conference E3 this week and caught Paris Hilton's appearance to promote her new Gameloft Paris Hilton Jewel Jam mobile game. Gim gives us the story on clueless PR reps, uninformed press, Hilton's need for 100 feet of clear space around her, the LAPD and Hilton's bubble-headed intelligence expressed by simple "Hello's" and Thank you's." Not to mention her screwing up the name of her own product during her intro. Anyway...
Considering our amazingly short attention span and simplistic mindset, here's an online game we can spend some serious time with. In fact, it's perfect for those who love Pavlovian-like response/reward simplicity. It's a game for Pepsi Japan in which you become a running man who must punch his way through ice block walls. Click at the right time, and the punch breaks through the ice. Click at the wrong time and you do a body slam into the wall. We made our way through about eight walls before figuring we'd better get back to work. Give it a go here.
Aap Global, the company that created the technology behind elevator handrail advertising, is now licensing the technology to partners internationally.
MySpace is now part of the PointRoll Include program. We're not sure how all those teens will take to the company's Fatboy, BadBoy, TomBoy, PaperBoy and TowelBoy expand-o-banners creeping all over their pages.
We're not quite sure how but this game, Maconomy X, is supposed to induce creatives into filling out their times sheets.
Doubleclick has released a new white paper, Best Practices for Optimizing Web Advertising Effectiveness, that aims to share help marketers improve their online advertising efforts.
OK, this online game is so totally for engineering geeks. But, that's the whole point because it's for GlobalSpec, a specialized search engine and information resource for engineers. We took one look at the game and didn't even try to play. We're sure it's good but we got an F in college physics so we've already had our fair share of shame.
Kansas City Agency Sullivan Higdon & Sink, home to the American Copywriter podcast's John January and Tug McTighe, has launched a fun Cinco (Sinko...get it?) de Mayo pinata game in which you can whack the agency's sheep mascot. You can play the game in any one of four rooms; the kitchen, the lobby, the living room and the ice ball lounge (whatever that is). Have at it because we couldn't seem to manage an effective sheep whack.
mtvU and Reebok Human Rights Foundation sponsored a Darfur Digital Activist contest in which students created and voted for the best games created to create awareness the genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. The game illustrates the difficulties people must endure sumply to gain food and water while militia kill, rape and pillage. The winning game was released today.
To promote the launch of the American Dad DVD, Fuel Industries, for Fox Home Video, has created an advergame that pits American Dad against Family Guy Kung Fu-style. Visitors can play as six characters (Peter, Lois and Stewie from Family Guy, Stan, Klaus and Roger from American Dad) with two more to be introduced soon. Special moves include Peter lighting his farts on fire and vomitting, Lois decaptitating people, and Roger bitch-slaps people. Also, there are nine different playing environments. The game boss is Ryu from Street Fighter 2. Soon he'll become one of the fighting characters as well. While we suck at gaming, we still like the tons of different ways you can play this game and the sheer weirdness of it.
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