People crave community. We are social creatures. Today, we are social networking creatures. We do loads of things communally. We edit content communally on Wikipedia and we play multiplayer online role-playing games with a global community of “friends”. One of the most fascinating talks I attended last winter was at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (read prior FanTrust blog coverage here) -- on the topic of How Wikipedia is Like a Multiplayer Game: it is addictive to its core community, has its own system of guilds and includes a crazy cast of real-life ...

Business models for virtual worlds and casual games are converging. As I mentioned in the blog “Money, Money, Money, Money”, players of the virtual worlds Second Life and Habbo Hotel are encouraged at every turn to purchase virtual goods in order to pimp their islands and their bedrooms. In Nexon's Maple Story, fans can purchase Minicooper cars for their avatar to drive. In the first few months, Nexon sold 120K cars for $10 each - $1.2 million in sales. ...

What is the changing face of gamers? If yesterday’s sweet spot used to be the geeky, single, 18-34 year old male with disposable income who played increasingly complex games on average 30-hours per week, then today’s demographic looks like the polar opposite: grandmotherly pensioners and pre-tweens snacking on casual portal games. From the very old to the very young, these “bookend” generations are changing the face of gaming and the business models at its core. There are all kinds of strange signs that gaming is changing. With the recent release of ...

Here’s a shout-out to our friends at Capcom, an entertainment company that functions at the cross-roads where “Fans” and “Trust” meet. This weekend, Capcom did a stealth relaunch of Capcom Unity’s community destination. Talking exclusively to FanTrust, Capcom Corporate Officer/ Vice-President - Strategic Planning & Business Development Christian Svensson said, “The feedback is largely positive. No other video game publisher has gone this far synching up fan activity.” Designed to let fans take their Capcom ID on the road, play across multiple devices and communicate across multiple user accounts, the new community hub has been in the ...

Video-game creators target boomers and female players Andy Ivens - The Province In the wildly successful new video game Grand Theft Auto IV, the player, when not shooting people or jacking a car, can fiddle with the car radio, where the range of stations includes National Public Radio. It's clear evidence the video-game market is expanding its targeted demographics, Catherine Warren, president of Vancouver-based FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, told a session of the Vancouver International Game Summit yesterday. "Seniors are an important new demographic -- the aging baby boomer with the high disposable income, affinity for technology," Warren told The Province. Today's retirees are keen on ...