Lego world 2012
Last week might as well have been the most important week of the year for LEGO fans in and around Copenhagen. From Thursday until Sunday, 16 truckloads of bricks were spread in Bella Centre, Scandinavia’s biggest exhibition and conference centre. Both the LEGO company and their fan builders were present to show their most spectacular creations. Pirates, space ships, knights… you name it.
Like last year, there was no way we were going to miss out on that. Jef took some pictures for your enjoyment.
January in games
If you’ve been following our Gaming Updates on Slideshare, you know that we strive to give you the freshest news from the gaming industry every month. But the industry’s changing faster than ever before and we want to bring you the most relevant gaming news as fast as possible. That’s why our dedicated Twitter channel will be our central gaming hub from now on. On top of that we’ll be giving you a distilled version of the most important news right here on Advance.dk.
Here’s our first ’editor’s pick’:
Become a Kinect developer
When your new big-selling toy gets hacked, most companies would start panicking. But sometimes it’s better to take a step back, relax, see the benefits and open up to the crowd. Which is exactly what Microsoft did when people started using their Kinect motion control sensor for everything but the Xbox games it came with. From motion-controlled robots to 3D vizualization tools, it’s been a very fruitful year for Kinect hackers.
But if it is up to Microsoft, 2012 is going to be an even better year. With the launch of Kinect Accelerator they will give ten ‘developers’ the chance to turn their hack into a startup. This chance comes in the form of mentorship, office space, $20,000 in funding and other resources. At the end of the ride participants will have an opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives, media and industry influentials.
So if you are a hacker who is willing to relocate to Seattle or Washington, this is your chance! You have until February 8. Better get your hands dirty soon!
Video game sales down
Last holiday season wasn’t a very good one for the American games market. Sales for December were down a brutal 21 percent compared with last year, according to an NPD research report. Still leaving the industry with a revenue of almosy $4 billion. But games weren’t the biggest losers. With a 28 and 27 percent drop, hardware and accessories sales went down even more. Is everyone waiting for a new Xbox or PlayStation to come out?
Over a 12 month period, the picture is a little less dark, but still quite gray. Video games went down 8 percent compared with 2010, and contradictory to popular belief, the digital market didn’t escape. In-game purchases, extra content, subscriptions and the likes went down 2 percent. Still generating a bit more than $16 billion. Time to buy more virtual swords and cupcakes people!
PlayStation Vita’s augmented reality tricks
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Advance goes solo
Last week we announced to the industry press and our clients that Advance and Wasabi were going separate ways. The partnership – established five years ago – made sense at the time. Advance got access to first-rate digital competences and the then newly established Wasabi benefited from access to an established client list.
But, over time, it became increasingly clear that the partnership had served its purpose. Over the years our digital knowhow has grown to the point that digital is no longer a separate ‘thing’ in the way we work. It’s integral to almost everything we do for our clients and, thanks to a mix of training and sensible hiring, we now have the right skills in-house.
As part of the separation, we’ll be taking on four Wasabi employees, giving us an even stronger digital core.
Faber profiled in Politiken
The evergreen Christian Faber was the subject of a lovely profile in Politiken’s Careers section earlier this week. It’s a must-read for Bionicle fans but it doesn’t seem to exist online so I can’t link to it alas.
The idiot box
Kim fashioned this striking idiot box and made it available to the agency. Henceforth, anyone caught saying anything particularly idiotic spends five minutes inside.
Santa’s not so little helper
We held our annual family Christmas party last week. Santa was a bit short-handed so he called for some serious back-up.
Movemberers
Here they are in all their hirsute glory – the Advance Movemberers. Spectacular ‘taches guys (and gal).
Hyper Island – the movie
We put together a little film to document our time at Hyper Island:
Advertising’s glory days
A shot from the archives… Claus and Christian (second and third from left) in the States for a LEGO shoot back in 1995.
#faber25 & #birgitte20
Friday was a special day at the agency as we celebrated Christian Faber’s 25th and Birgitte Røn’s 20th agency anniversaries. We set up the screen in the canteen with a Twitterfall and circulated the #faber25 and #birgitte20 hashtags to give people a way to send their congratulations to Christian and Birgitte throughout the day.
In the afternoon, we had wine, tapas and speeches and LEGO presented Christian with some special gifts – a Bionicle mask made by an avid fan from the US and a custom-built Bionicle figure with Christian’s face! They’d also gathered in tributes from Bionicle fans and employees who’d worked on a franchise that Christian has played such a key role in building over the years. Here’s some pics from what was a lovely afternoon:
