Engage Digital Wrap-Up For The Week Of March 19, 2011

By On March 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Engage Digital Wrap-Up for the week of March 19, 2011. The Wrap-Up is where Engage Digital spotlights stories that we didn’t get to cover individually, but still make for interesting reading about the business of user engagement.

3D Ford Campaign Is In Your Hands: Ford of Britain has launched its Grand C-Max car with an augmented reality campaign that lets users interact with virtual 3D models of the car.
A ‘Madness’ Market Tips & Tip-Offs: The New York Post profiles StarStreet, a fantasy sports game where players buy and trade virtual shares of popular athletes. The site also offers a March Madness market themes around college teams.
Angry Birds Dev Rovio Plans Stock Market Jump: Mobile game developer Rovio is planning to seek an IPO in New York in the future, though the company did not disclose a timetable or any specific plans. Rovio believes an IPO in the US would help extend its international reach.
APB: Reloaded Dev Reveals Sign-Up Targets: GamersFirst COO Bjorn Book-Larsson that the relaunched APB would need only a few thousand concurrent players to be profitable. The closed beta has received over 150,000 sign-ups.
Apple iOS 4.3 Upgrade Causes Problems For Layar: After the update to iOS 4.3, some images and icons on Layar display incorrectly, due to changes in APIs.
Augmented Reality Ad Puts You With Angels In London Station: Unilever-owned brand Lynx, known as Axe in the US, ran an augmented reality campaign in London’s Victoria station on March 5. Augmented reality markers were placed around the station that caused patrons to appear to be interacting with 3D virtual angel characters when they viewed a giant display screen’s footage of the station platforms.
BioWare Releases Dragon Age Legends On Facebook: BioWare officially launched its Dragon Age Legends social game on Facebook this week, roughly a week after the launch of Dragon Age 2 for PC and consoles.
Damn, That’s A Big Virtual Mario: Users have begun printing out larger versions of Nintendo’s augmented reality markers for the 3DS, which causes the system to display proportionately larger virtual objects.
Dutch Firm Eccky Grows A New Virtual Game World For Kids: Eckky has already launched its popular virtual world on Dutch social network Hyves and plans to launch on Facebook in Dutch and English. The virtual world has acquired 165,000 monthly active users based purely on Dutch world-of-mouth. The virtual world is targeted at kids who can explore a 2D environment, chat, and buy virtual goods.
Facebook’s Discover New Games Module Shows Users What Their Friends Play: After taking numerous viral channels away from Facebook developers, Facebook is adding a new one called the “Discover New Games” module that displays to a user what their friends are playing. Developers have requested new viral channels from Facebook ever since the old ones were disabled.
Free iPhone Game Zombie Farm Will Generate “Double Digit Millions” This Year From In-App Purchases: Playforge’s freemium iOS game Zombie Farm is generating “double digit millions” in revenue this year from users buying virtual goods through in-app purchases. Less than 10% of users generate all sales and less than 3% of users are big spenders.
Giant 3DS AR Cards Coming To Club Nintendo: Nintendo plans to offer official extra-large augmented reality marker cards for the 3DS as part of its Club Nintendo customer loyalty program. One of the virtual objects the cards can generate is a life-sized version of a user’s Mii avatar.
GMA New Media Creates ‘Augmented Reality’ For Magazine: GMA Media has collaborates with BMW and Top Gear Phillippines to launch an augmented reality campaign to promote BWM’s new X3 sports utility vehicle. The 3D objects are being produced by GMA subsidiary NMI.
IAC Elects Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner To Expanded Board: Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner has joined the board of directors of Zwinky parent company IAC.
Just In Time For March Madness, BigDoor Lands AccuScore: Gamification service BigDoor has partnered with sports-forecasting site AccuScore. Together the companies are launching MySportsIQ, a sports-themed social game.
News Corp Aims To Build Own Social Gaming Business: News Corp has plans to develop its own social gaming business, centered around its IGN and Making Sun properties rather than its ailing MySpace social network. News Corp says it wants to develop its own business rather than acquire an existing company like Zynga.
Ngmoco’s We Rule Logs 3 Billion Minutes Of Gameplay In One Year: Ngmoco’s We Rule mobile social game has been downloaded over 13 million times and its users have logged 3 billion minutes of gameplay since the game launched on iOS last year.
One Wish For A Million Robux: Teen Seth Deesub has asked the Make-A-Wish Foundation to grant him 1 million Robux in the virtual world Roblox.
Playfish, Mercy Corps Raising Money For Japanese Aid: Playfish is partnering with Mercy Corps to raise money for survivors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami through charity virtual goods sales.
Red Bull’s Augmented Reality App Lets You Design Your Own Track: Red Bull has launched a promotional augmented reality racing game that lets users design their own tracks by arranging cans of Red Bull in the real world.
Star.me Makes The Web Messier, More Fun: Ze Frank says that his Star.me social game is an attempt to revive the gaudy kitsch that once characterized personal Webpages on the Internet, in response to the popularity of more minimalist social sites like Twitter and Facebook. Star.me is developed in HTML5. The service is still in beta, but more invites may go out after the site adds new futures next week.
Stardoll Begins Countdown To 100M Members: Virtual world Stardoll says that it’s close to acquiring its 100 millionth registered user.
The 10 Most Innovative Companies In Gaming: Fast Company lists Zynga, Apple, Facebook, Rovio, SCVNGR, and Nexon among the 10 most innovative companies currently active in the gaming industry.
Tourism Ireland Launches Facebook Game, Ireland Town: Tourism Ireland has launched its own promotional social game, Ireland Town, on St. Patrick’s Day. The game will appear on ten of Ireland’s tourism players.
Wooga Becomes Fifth Top Social Game Developer On Facebook: Wooga has leapfrogged over rivals to become the fifth largest social game developer on Facebook, with over 18 million MAU across all games.
World Of Tanks Launching In North America, Europe On April 12: Wargaming.net is launching is freemium MMO World of Tanks in North America and Europe on April 12.
Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The Pokemon Of Social Games: Teens Josh Buckley and Tyler Diaz have founded mobile social game MinoMonsters, a Pokemon-like game for iOS. The game launched last week and amassed 25,000 users in a week. The game is also available on Facebook.
Zynga Players Raise $1 Million For Japan Relief: Earlier this week, Zynga announced that its charity virtual goods have raised over $1 million for the Red Cross, earmarked to go to survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.