MIMA - Live Blogging: Advergaming: Architecting F-U-N Online - Bret Hummel

So Bret's from Ham in the Fridge based in Minneapolis. I guess he wants to own his own sandwich shop someday.

They build online games for clients, including Comedy Central's Adult Swim.

Games should be fun and can be viral and sticky. Create products where the people while laugh and talk about you around the water cooler. You can't really evaluate fun until your 75% into the process.

Plan for flexibility and make adjustments on the fly.

I know our MiniMed division of Medtronic has some games that have been created for kids with diabetes. I haven't seen these, so I can't comment how how Fun they are.

Identify the dials, user controls (keyboard & mouse), point systems for leaderboards, things that assist the player, things that work against the player, game over.

Do you have 5 minutes to kill yourself? That would suck, don't think I'd want to play that game. Not too much of a laugh from the audience regarding that, but I thought it was really funny. 5 minutes to kill yourself.

Examples, showing a game from Cartoon Network.

One Squirrelly Squarial. One big gaming screen. Bret's son (Cole) is playing the game. Referring to the dials and both the things that are working for and against the player.

Demonstrating how when you change the controls the game changes.