7-Eleven, looking to capitalize on Facebook’s social gaming users,  recently launched a major partnership with Zynga, the popular social gaming company. The promotion is in conjunction with the wildly popular games Farmville, MafiaWars, & YoVille. Farmville alone boasts 10% of US Facebook users playing their game & 20% of worldwide users. Zynga also claims that 80% of registered users are playing at least one of these three games daily.

The reach of this promotion is potentially huge for 7-Eleven as players of these games are known to be rabid about collecting special items to gain an advantage over the friends they are playing against.

The concept is simple, purchase a branded item in one of the 7,000 stores in the US get a special item to use with the games. If you collect enough items, 9 to be exact, you would be able to collect an uber item, one for each game. To get credit for the purchase all you have to do is go to the 7-Eleven site “Buy. Earn. Play“, enter your code, and you’ll receive your special item plus a “punch” in your card toward the uber gift. If you purchase a Zynga branded 7-Eleven gift card you’ll get two “punches”. There is also an option to text your code from your mobile phone.

The one problem that I ran into while taking a look at this promotion was that I had to turn on the Instant Personalization feature within my Facebook account before I could poke around on the 7-Eleven site. I’m sure that Farmville users will have no problem allowing this feature access to gather the prizes but with all of the privacy concerns that Facebook has been facing a few might opt to not take advantage of this promotion.

Farmville specific gifts:

For all you Xbox Live gamers out there get ready for some social media to integrate with the dashboard. Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm will, according to Major Nelson, be rolled out to everyone on November 17.

The update also includes a new Zune video area that picks up where the Xbox Video Marketplace left off, adding the ability to stream a number of purchases instantly instead of having to wait for them to download.

Keep in mind if you’re an Xbox Live user under age 18, you won’t be able to access the new features at launch because of a current lack of parental controls on the new services. But Microsoft is working on building out those controls, so Twitter (Twitter), Facebook (Facebook) and last.fm should become available to teen Xbox 360 users within a few weeks.

Here’s the rundown of the new features from the Xbox site.

Here’s a clever way to promote a first person shooter game. Sony Computer Entertainment has a game for the Playstation 3 called Killzone 2 and to promote it they’ve created a web version that interacts with your browser while you surf the web.

Essentially, once you’ve registered and downloaded the special browser toolbar from the Killzone 2 site and then signed on, the Killzone 2 enemies (called Helghasts) will randomly drop into your page and start blasting away at you. It’s now your job, using your mouse as your weapon, “to rid the world of Helghast scum.” Simple as that.

There are a few ways to play Killzone 2 using your browser. You can sign on to play as a single person, whereas occasionally a graphic lights up on the toolbar that says you are under attack and a gaggle of Helghasts show up, or you can join a squad and fight as a team online. If you join a squad, as soon as a member of your squad is under attack you’ll automatically be tossed into their battle. The graphics are pretty cool as well as the page you are on, say Facebook or Youtube, will begin to look like a battle has been fought there with splatters and bullet hits.

There could be many uses for this type of interactive browser technology that doesn’t always have to be about shooting and blowing things up. But, for the occasional mental vacay, the game is a nice diversion if you’re staring at a computer screen all day.

In the short span of time that the iPhone has been around, it has become the go-to platform for inventive small game developers to show off their coding and design chops and compete against the big boys.

Bob Clagett and Jonathan Forby of BFG Interactive are tossing their game building hats in the crowded iPhone app ring with an interactive puzzle game called “Flu Fighter.”

The idea is the gamer is a hot-shot doctor who must detect and eradicate level after level of viruses using anti-virus capsules. One cool feature of “Flu Fighter” is the head-to-head feature that allows gamers using a local WiFi connection to play against each other.

Clagett and Forby took the time from their busy schedules to talk about developing Flu Fighter, why designing for the iPhone is so rewarding and their love for Nintendo’s Dr. Mario.

Q: How long have you both been at BFG Interactive and what are your jobs?

Clagett: Since its beginning June 2006. I’m VP and Senior Developer.

Forby: A year and a half. I’m a Web Designer.

Q: Where did you get the idea for Flu Fighter?

Clagett: We both have always loved the old Dr. Mario game and just wanted to be able to play it on the iPhone. So we thought we’d make our own version that was similar to the original. Since then, we’ve come up with lots of additions that we plan to add down the road. That will really make it stand out as a different game. Keep an eye out for those.

Q: How long did it take to create and build?

Clagett: We worked on it for about six months. All late nights and weekends, anywhere we could find the free time.

Q: Is this the first game you have built?

Clagett: This is the first iPhone game for both of us. I’ve built several flash games over the years, but that’s a different class of game development really.

Q: What attracts you both to the iPhone platform for a game?

Clagett: Unique controls, constant connectivity, accelerometer access and the fact that I ALWAYS have it with me.

Forby: It’s easier for smaller developers to create what they want [with iPhone] and reach more users, but that can also be a bad thing, depending on quality.

Q: What did you each bring to the process?

Clagett: Well, we both collaborated the entire time on functionality and usability. We were constantly bouncing ideas and re-evaluating. I handled all of the software development and coding.

Forby: I helped with the planning process and designed all the graphics and animation support.

Q: What’s the best part of building a game?

Clagett: Being finished with it. The process is really cool, because for me, as a programmer, it’s just problem solving. So you’re constantly bouncing from one problem to the next. But completing it and hearing how much people enjoy playing it is really awesome!

Forby: Watching your friends play it.  It doesn’t feel real until you see someone else playing it.

Q: Do you both have any plans for building more games?

Clagett: We’ve definitely got more plans. How those plans actually pan out is up in the air. We’ll definitely have something else out this year, as well as continuing updates to Flu Fighter.

Forby: If this one is well received, I’m sure we’ll have the incentive to make more.

Q: What is your all time favorite game and why?

Clagett: Just one? How about two? I think I’m going to have to go with Super Mario Brothers and Dr. Mario, both on the NES. Those games still hold up in playability even though they’re 20 years old.

Forby: I wasn’t much of a gamer as a kid, but I have fond memories of playing Super Mario Brothers a lot with friends. That would have to be it, though Dr. Mario is pretty close.

Flu Fighter is available for download on iTunes.

Artist Christopher Locke explores current technology as fossils of the future:

Ludustatarium temperosony

Commonly referred to as (”Playstation controller” or “Dual Shock”)

First seen in the mid-1990’s, this Ludustatarium has been found throughout the world. Similar in origin and function to the Dominaludus Nintendicus, the Ludustatarium is obviously a more complex evolution of the form.

Got a good iPhone game idea? Do you know how to code? Well, the stakes are potentially getting richer for you if you do.

Ethan Nicholas, developer of a tank artillery game called iShoot, told Wired.com he quit his job the day his app rose to No. 1 in the App Store, earning him $37,000 in a single day.

“I’m not going to be a millionaire in the next month, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen at the end of the year,” he said in a phone interview. “If it weren’t for taxes I would be a millionaire right now.”

There are now upwards of 20,000 apps for the iPhone, so rising above the din is getting harder to say the least. What makes this feat by Nicholas so interesting is how he was able to get people to buy his game. So far, the real moneymakers were established game companies who could afford to market their games, not folks sitting around in their pajamas coding in their spare time.  When Nicholas first released iShoot in October, it moved some units, but nothing big, so in January he created and released a free version of the game called iShoot Lite and, voila! 2.4 million users downloaded it. Inside the free version he planted advertising for the $3 version, which was more robust, as would be expected and 320,000 iPhone gamers bought it.

Not bad. You do the math.

[via Wired]

The Web opens up so many possibilities when it comes to video and engaging an audience with interactive features. And for those folks uploading videos to YouTube, there are some creative approaches that can be taken with its annotations feature. Typically, I spot annotations being used as notes within videos on YouTube. But a new video makes use of the feature in a unique way, incorporating embedded URLs that take viewers to another video in the series.

The videos essentially become an interactive “photo hunt” style game, where you find what’s different between two photos and click on it. There are 30 levels in the game, with each level being a new video.

The creator, Joe Sabia, says it’s the first game of its kind on YouTube. But there are sure to be other content creators taking note and it’s probably just a matter of time before we see some unique product placements in videos like these. If Sabia’s initial traffic is any indicator, viewers are digging the ability to be part of something online, as opposed to being passive and just watching a video unfold.

Round the world sailing is brutal. The people who put to the sea in small boats to pit themselves and their crafts against wind and wave are a very special breed. Every three years, serious sailors gather in Europe in order to race their vessels around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race (it was formerly called the Whitbread Round The World Race, Volvo took over sponsorship in 2001). There is no cash prize. The winner gets a nice trophy and the pride of winning. The current race began on October 11, 2008, in Alicante, Spain, and for nine months the teams will race in a series of legs around the world and hopefully all will end up safely in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The teams will sail over 37,000 nautical miles of the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Kochi, Singapore, Qingdao, around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg and Stockholm.Each of the seven entries has a sailing team of 11 professional crew, and the race requires their utmost skills, physical endurance and competitive spirit as they race day and night for more than 30 days at a time on some of the legs. They will each take on different jobs onboard the boat and on top of these sailing roles, there will be two sailors that have had medical training, as well as a sailmaker, an engineer and a media specialist.

During the race the crews will experience life at the extreme: no fresh food is taken onboard so they live off freeze dried fare, they will experience temperature variations from -5 to +40 degrees Celsius and will only take one change of clothes. They will trust their lives to the boat and the skipper and experience hunger and sleep deprivation.

The race is the ultimate mix of world class sporting competition and on the edge adventure, a unique blend of onshore glamour with offshore drama and endurance.

It is undeniably the world’s premier global race and one of the most demanding team sporting events in the world.

Back in the sixties, Sir Francis Chichester circled the globe solo, making only one stop, in Sydney, Australia. After this great feat of sailing, the only thing left to do at that point was to circle the globe solo non-stop.

In 1968, The Sunday Times of London sponsored the first round the world solo sailing race. It was called the Golden Globe and it attracted a varied and eccentric group of sailors, with legends like Frenchman Bernard Moitessier and Sir Robin Knox-Johnson (who won) among the entrants. It was a controversial race, for the fact that many of the competitors did not even finish, and one entrant’s story, Donald Crowhurst, became the basis of books and films due to its tragic nature (there is a great documentary called Deep Water about Crowhurst).

Eventually, as the years passed, these around the world races took on a variety of forms with more commercial sponsorship attached. The big races were either crewed races that raced around the globe in stages or wild solo races that raced non-stop and unassisted through the southern ocean, like the Vendee Globe (there is a great book called Godforsaken Sea by Derek Lundy that chronicles this insane solo race). They are all incredibly hard and demand high levels of endurance to complete.

So, if you don’t have the time, money or the skills to take a few years off to prepare for and then race around the world’s oceans against the best sailors in the world, don’t fret, you can do it online with the Volvo Ocean Race Game. Just sign up, design your sails and name your boat (pick a good one because you can’t change the name of the boat once you are in the game, it’s bad luck, and sailors abhor bad luck) then set your course and off you go.

You are racing against others from all over the world so you do have to pay attention to where you are going. For instance, I ran aground in Vietnam one night (note my course correction below) when I was away for a day or so and not paying attention, but unlike real sailing, I just turned around and got back in the race.

Beware though, once you set sail, you’ll be checking in on your boat till June.

I’ve noticed a design trend in something that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s why I spend my sunny Saturdays inside working on my monitor tan, why I stay up until 2 a.m. on work nights and why I’ve incorporated “pwn” and “noob” into my everyday vocabulary. I’m speaking of every girlfriend’s source of hatred – video games. More specifically, video game manuals.??

Back in the day, video game manuals used to be full of ridiculous back-story, incredibly awesome typefaces and luscious four-color images of Mario performing his moves.

As of late however, video game publishers are pinching pennies by putting out wafer-thin manuals in black and white with hardly any content whatsoever. I’m all for streamlining things down to the bare essentials, but not when I’m dropping $60 on a DVD in a plastic case with a few strips of paper inside.

I want to know why I should care about the main character and why I’m a scantily clad vixen shooting zombies in the face even before I put the game in. I want to know about every weapon in the game and what its function is. I want pointers on how to complete the game. And, most importantly, I want it to come off with an incredible polish that makes me feel good about investing in this game even before I play it.

??Kudos go out to those that keep this tradition alive. Such as Gears of War 2, which even though it’s a sequel it still gives a back story on what happened between the two games. It’s four colors, 34 pages long and very well designed. Whereas the Call of Duty: World at War manual that’s gray on gray, 8 pages long and as an added inconvenience wastes a page by labeling it as “notes.”

??Anyways America, it’s time for me to go pwn some noobs in Call of Duty.

There are a few different schools of thought when it comes to profiting from older video games. Some companies, such as Sega and SNK, package 30–40 games together and release them at a discounted price on modern systems, while companies like Square-Enix repackage the games individually and port them to every conceivable system at or near full price. Occasionally when a company remakes a game they will include the original version as a bonus for finishing the game (as was the case with the remake of Metroid for the GameBoy Advance). PC game makers Valve have opted for a much different course.

Valve has released some of the most beloved PC games of all time, and to celebrate the release of their new high profile game Left 4 Dead, they are offering PC gamers an incredible deal. Through the digital distribution site Steam, gamers can purchase a copy of Left 4 Dead for $50, or they can purchase Valve’s entire 22-game catalog for $99 instead of the $234 retail price. Thanks to virtually no overhead with digital distribution, Valve can let gamers experience some of the most critically acclaimed games from the past decade (such as Half-Life and Portal) for less than the cost of a single new game.

From a personal perspective as a longtime gamer, this is a fantastic way to catch up on a lot of the more popular games from years past while not having to break the bank. It is nice to see a game company that is interested in rewarding fans by giving them a deal rather than gouging them by releasing slightly upgraded versions of single games at full price, like some other companies tend to do.