Draw Something – Hits 20 Million Downloads & Generates 6-Figures a day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insane growth numbers surfacing on the latest and very addictive social game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit of a “seize the day lesson” to us all in digital agency land. If I had a dollar for every app / social game that I have pitched or said I was going to make…..

 

Reference link:

http://www.businessinsider.com/omg-5-week-old-app-draw-something-hits-20-million-downloads-and-generates-6-figures-per-day-2012-3

Unboxing the Parrot AR Drone

We love unboxing gadgets! …and the AR Drone from Parrot is GREAT fun. The Drone is controlled via an iPhone app which works by tilting your phone to steer whilst viewing a live video feed through a camera mounted in the Drone. It’s a truly usable Augmented Reality device.

 

How to buy in Australia: We ordered it from Amazon.com. It took 3 days to be delivered to Sydney from the US and cost just under $350.00 AUD including delivery.

So here it is the unboxing through to a test flight…

 
Amazon delivers it in a HUGE box…

Slightly smaller, but still big box inside…

The Drone is neatly packed surrounded by protective cardboard.

No unwrapping necessary. It pops straight out. Nothing to assamble.

Battery, battery pack and stickers for the external shell.

It comes with the outdoor shell, and adaptors for Au, UK, US, EU.

Below: Unboxed looking at home in the studio…

Below: @bradyohalloran takes an instagram photo of the AR Drone:

Below: Flight Test: This a video taken from the Drone’s camera in the studio.

Below: We do like the idea of attaching a GoPro camera to the Drone to attain HD video – here’s a nice clip of someone flying the drone pretty high… (you can unlock the altitude sensor in the iphone app allowing you to go up as hi as the wifi lets you).

Below: The Promo Vid for the AR Drone.

Things you should know before you buy:

You get one battery that lasts for about 15 mins flying time.
Charger comes with four adaptors incl AUS, UK, US, EU.
You need an iphone or ipod touch to control it.
You don’t need a wifi network (the Drone creates one).
It takes about 5-10 mins to get to grips with the controls.
You need a seperate app to record video.
Onboard Video is 15fps
There is a secondary camera on the bottom of the Drone.
You need 2 of them to have a virtual dogfight.
It’s much bigger than it looks.
It’s a lot of fun.

Kitty criminal – the viral story of CatBinLady

“I was walking home from work and saw this cat wander out in front of me. I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly thought it would be funny to put it in the wheelie bin, which was right beside me.”

Happens to the best of us, eh? This is how 45 year old Mary Bale from Coventry in the UK described the bizarre lapse of judgement that has catapulted her to global interweb fame in the space of a few days.

Lola the cat’s owner, Darryl Mann, heard her piteous yowling inside the wheelie bin outside his home fifteen hours later. Unluckily for Mrs Bale, her random act of kitty cruelty was captured on Darryl’s security cameras and promptly uploaded to YouTube by his wife, Stephanie. It wasn’t long before the resourcefulness of crowds tracked her down, and now she’s news from the Washington Post to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Her name, address, manager’s phone number have been posted online; there are at least 8 Facebook pages denouncing her villainy (not counting ‘Death to Mary Bale’, removed by Facebook). The Sun newspaper in the UK has published a Flash whack-a-mole game (renamed Whack-cat-woman) allowing users to smack Mary’s wicked head as it pops out of wheelie bins.

Back on YouTube there’s a video entitled ‘Cruel Cat Dumps Woman In Bin (Revenge of Cat)’ in which the tables are turned – a man in a Sylvester the Cat suit dumps an old lady in a wheelie bin.

Mary’s even got a fake twitter account in her name, CatBinLady, which has her tweeting pathological random acts of weirdness as she goes through her day: “Just kicked the head off next door’s gnome. For a joke. Who’s laughing now though? Not me. Not me.”

In short – she’s gone VIRAL! In just days.

While notorious Mary is barricaded at home, pilloried by the world’s media, menaced by crowds outside her house and expecting to lose her job, you’ll be pleased to hear that Lola has recovered from her ordeal purrrfectly.

Amnesia wins BEST IN SHOW at W3 Awards

Kick a Migrant has won BEST in SHOW at W3 – the highest accolade possible at the international W3 awards. These are fairly tough awards to win – we’ve only managed a couple of Silver in the past. Ironic that we should win for a mock AD brief posed to us by AdNews. Does show that when you take risks they occasionally pay off.

Kick a migrant has seen 1,690,091 games played with a $0 media spend

 

http://www.w3award.com/webapp/winners/show/best/3

Friend Magnet. Ninemsn Instant Win Web Messenger Promotion.

From the makers of Prize Rush (Ninemsn and Amnesia) – you can now use your Messenger login to win amazing instant double prizes with our new game (Friend Magnet) whilst you chat with your mates. The best bit – If you win a prize – YOUR MATE WINS THE SAME THING :)))

Use the Magnet (below) to try to hook up the prize you want… Very easy to play.

A pretty cool physics engine, and to our knowledge the first time someone has used the official web messenger API to build a game like this… kinda cool? Good luck!

http://friendmagnet.com.au

BTW: Here’s the 15 sec TV Ad for Friend Magnet:

(TVC produced by Amnesia)

Sony and Nintendo’s unexpected challenger; Super Monkey Ball Sells 300,000 copies on iPhone

In the eleven hundredth iPhone post of the day… Fair enough, we’re all pretty sick of hearing about what this miracle device can do. Short of curing cancer there’s not much the little bugger can’t cope with; heck, maybe it can cure cancer if someone builds a Folding@home application (FoldingOnPhone?) for distribution via the AppStore… (The uninitiated can read about Folding@home here.)

As cool as all the technology is, what’s ultimately more important for us digital marketing folk is the viability of the platform when it comes to content distribution (both in pay-for and free categories). Sega’s Super Monkey Ball has just hit the 300,000 mark which, at AUD $12.99 a pop, is a considerable lump of change. It’s enough to make Sony and Nintendo sit up and take notice, particularly as their respective platforms (PSP and Nintendo DS) rely predominantly on physical media for content distribution. Sega US’s President Simon Jeffery agrees. “That’s a substantial business. It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform.”

The phone may not have the controls required for traditional gaming but the quality and responsiveness of the touch screen and accelerometer could do for the mobile games space what the Wii has done for console gaming around the world.

So how do we take advantage of this? As iPhone and iPod touch sales continue to rise, distribution of free, engaging, branded content is an obvious winning formula. Carling’s iPint application is catching on like wildfire and given the size and scale of the application the development overheads would have been low. Investing in development for a platform owned and operated by one company might be a little uncomfortable but these days, shifting focus away from Apple in the digital landscape isn’t a wise move: Apple has proved that, technology aside, the iPhone is a viable distribution platform.

Watch this space.

New Braintrain site launches

Well I know this is a bit of a plug but we are all very proud of this site.

Today we launched the 3rd evolution of the Lipton Braintrain site. It is packed full of new games a new ranking system and the ability to challenge your friends through Facebook as well (here).

There is also a mobile site which is worth while a visit if you have a couple of spare minutes.

Check it out at: http://www.braintrain.com.au

Mini Games Australia

Mini Games is Amnesia’s original games site.

Here you’ll find our favourite global online flash games,
plus a show case of our own work.

Check out this weeks featured game. It just so happens that it’s one of ours!

Participate in our monthly poll or check out some game related cool stuff.

 

http://www.minigames.com.au/

Vice Does the Douche

I usually get my quick fix at Viceland. Comments such as

and

really give me the giggles. (I usually end up in foetal position laughing till I can no longer breathe when I see them with their accompanying snapshots.)

HAHA, funny funny now read on…

3D web game for Axe (Lynx) Dark Temptation campaign in Brazil

http://www.axe.com.br/dark

This is a great looking game. Somewhat reminicent of GTA-style gameplay (except you control a chocolate man rather than a hardened criminal, and you’re being chased by girls instead of thugs with uzis…) Unfortunately its potential is crippled by the immense file size (just shy of 10MB – all loaded upfront). Nevertheless, the graphics, animation and gameplay are all very well executed and the integration between Flash and Unity is seamless. It’s definitely worth checking out if you don’t mind waiting for a long time. Also requires the Unity Player plugin (get it here if you don’t have it already).

FYI – Being a Brazilian site, the game is in Portuguese. “Jogar Agora” means “Play Now”. The gameplay isn’t too hard to figure out, even if you can’t read the instructions.

3 GIRLS 2 CANS – The Game.

3 Girls 2 Cans – A game not to be confused with a viral video on YouTube with an uncannily similar sounding name. The idea is to combine two girls to create a 3rd ULTIMATE GIRL. We’ve bottled up all our favourite fast play viral ingredients (which means games don’t last too long) so run around and go for the big score and #1 Rank.

Your ‘circle of influence’ will attract anything that moves! – BEHOLD the power of combining Lynx fragrances to make a killer third fragrance!
 
 
Avoid making “abominations” (Male / Female combos)!!!! YUK!

Make sure you check out www.lynxeffect.com.au – it’s really fab, honest, or PLAY THE GAME HERE:

Revisions coming very soon:
Over 50,000 gives you a password to view the ‘ultimate girl’.

CULTURAL REFERENCE:

Discuss your ranking, scores and cheats below…

Prize Rush – Win Instantly

March 3 2007 – Amnesia and NineMSN have re-launched Prize Rush. To win instantly answer questions, follow the clues and dig on the map of a million pixels. Luck works, but so does careful strategy!

This is version 3 – discover why it is so popular – play here at www.prizerush.com.au

Red pixels indicate where people have dug. Orange = winners!

Test Your Senses – Viral Screamer

Classic from the Vault http://testyoursenses.archive.amnesia.com.au/ we’ve just put this site back up for a bit of fun. There are plenty of screamers around these days (eg: scary maze). But we were quite happy with the ridiculous premise of a full senses test, something different. Stupid – but many people still fell for it at the time 🙂

So turn up your volume, sit in a dark room and TEST YOUR SENSES!!!

If anyone (evil enough) wants to film their friend being sucked in – please post video links here. We would love to see them 🙂

KICK A MIGRANT – VIRAL GAME

Kick a Migrant – THE VIRAL GAME. In November 2007, amnesia was the first digital agency (ever) to be invited to participate in the ADNEWS MOCK ADS.

THE BRIEF:HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE THE PERCEPTION OF MIGRANTS?Australians are suspicious of migrants and more of us than not believe our intake is too high. A common perception is that migrants steal jobs from hard-working Australians. Create an ad promoting immigration as being of benefit to the country’s economy and/or cultural heart.

OUR ANSWER:KICK A MIGRANT – A game based on the extremely popular Flight Sim X paper plane game, (developed late 2006 by amnesia and has now passed 200 Million games played).

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, play through and see what happens at the end…http://www.kickamigrant.com

UPDATE: WE DARE YOU to join the Facebook group… remember this is an experimental viral campaign – we ask, “Would you be willing to say you’ve ‘kicked a Migrant?'” JOIN NOW!

InstantAction pioneers near-console quality in-browser gaming

InstantAction and GarageGames are launching a service that enables users to play single- and multiplayer fully hardware accelerated games in-browser across both PC and Mac platforms. Seems a bit primitive at the moment as it’s still in development, but it’s set to go live (not sure if that’s beta or the real thing) in January ’08. Looks like a few Xbox Live Arcade titles are set to be included in the launch, as well as a team-based online first person shooter in the vein of Dynamix’ Starsiege: Tribes, plus a number of as-yet-unannouced titles from both major and indie developers.

http://www.instantaction.com/

Not much real info on the site yet, but there’s a Gamespot interview here that explains the system in greater detail.

Prize Rush – NineMSN. Win prizes by digging on a map…

Prize Rush – Win instantly. There are very few games like this online, especially this big. You don’t have to sign up – just start playing! All you have to do is answer 5 questions and dig on a map of 1 million pixels. Note: Prize Rush (version 3) is live again from March 3 2008. Details of the new version by Amnesia are here.

Don’t forget, you can ‘cheat’ using search (well actually it’s part of the gameplay).

http://www.prizerush.com.au

Pac-Man: The Text Adventure

I love those old Infocom text-adventures I uses to play on the PC “back in the day” –  before you kids had your fancy schmancy “graphics”.

I also love old arcade games, so imagine my excitement when I found Pac-Txt! Relive those old arcade memories without the expense and that weird smell… or graphics of any sort.

Cool multiplayer flash game

http://www.musicisyourweapon.co.uk/

Bash stuff in time with the music! 😀

The gameplay visuals are really immersive and well executed. It’s made by EA as a viral campaign for the Def Jam: Icon PS3/Xbox 360 game.

FYI – the multiplayer mode runs off a Java server app called SmartFoxServer – would be great to look into this for a future project.

The Making of ‘Get The Glass’

Following on from a post several months ago about a beautiful flash game for The California Milk Processor Board, here’s a series of photos and links to motion test videos showing the behind the scenes ‘making of’ process.  

Check out the full page here.

Rock, paper, scissors, gun, dynamite, nuke, lightning, devil…

Possible func spec for RPS3..?
http://www.umop.com/images/rps25_outcomes.jpg 

Slightly fewer outcomes but damn pretty:
http://www.pepsi.com.au/rps/