The Mike Abundo Effect

Every year since 2006, Philippine game publisher Level Up holds a big offline event they call Level Up Live. I scoffed at its first iteration. The thing came out one year after Microsoft’s Live brand, making it look like an offline poser attempt to emulate online cool by slapping on a Web 2.0 buzzword. I figured it would go the way of E3 — bloated and irrelevant fluff doomed to collapse.

Level Up Live 2007, however, surprised me by offering something more than fluff. Read the rest of this entry »

Props to the Obama campaign for knowing where media is going. Senator Barack Obama appears on a campaign billboard in the Electronic Arts racing game Burnout Paradise for the Xbox 360.

Google launched AdSense for Games last week, and now Obama’s putting political ads in virtual worlds. Game advertising has truly come into its own.