Last but not least: A guest at the Gamehotel

This much should be clear to everyone by now: "gaming" is no longer just an evil that puts a strain on the parent-child relationship. What computer games are capable of today and in which areas of the huge gaming world the most exciting developments can currently be observed were discussed at the Gamehotel Congress in Zurich at the end of last week. What the American Impact Games co-founder Eric Brown understands by "news games" and how he uses the "Play The News" tool developed by his company to transform current news reports into small, contextual "games" was discussed with him in advance by Werbewoche (see "Playing with the news"). However, a number of other presentations and votes also provided exciting information. For example, a Microsoft representative on the panel talked about the very slow but steady development of in-game advertising. If advertising is used in line with the character and look of a game, it is very welcome by consumers, he said. Furthermore, when the special console gaming platform XBox Live was launched, it was discovered that gamers were not interested in playing with complete strangers from all over the world. They want to compete with people they know, said the Microsoft man, pointing to the incredible success of community platforms such as Facebook and Myspace. Finally, the American game developer Chris Hecker gave some insights into the topic of "user-generated content" at an incredible pace and showed how much time and imagination a very large number of gamers are now actively involved in their favorite games - the last example was the title "Spore", co-developed by Hecker, in which you can create your own game character. An exciting world.