Matmi is continuning it’s work with good cause campaigns. We have just finished a game for Envirofone to promote mobile phone recycling.

The game is called Battlefones. Do battle with the toughest fones ever to grow legs and fight. This classic arcade fighting clone is fast and furious, with special moves to use and master, clever enemies and customiseable character costumes! It will take all your skills and timing to fight your way past the 6 enemies including “Big Pink Bunny” and “Corporal Punishment”, Bring it on!

It allows users to see that that can get paid for recycling their old phones. A worthy cause and a great fun game.

You may also remember that we made a game for Asda to promote recycing called Landfill Bill

Launching a game on Friday the 13th could be a bad omen, but it’s Comic Relief day and Matmi has been helping with that as well. Our mutli-award winning Comic Relief – Let it Flow game from 2007 is the only viral game to re-appear back on the Comic Relief site. It has been so succesful that they did not need us to make another one this year, so we are a victim of our own success!

Here are the stats:

Comic Relief’s Digital Challenge to “Spread the most red” online was issued a month before Red Nose Day 2007.

Three entries – all online games with the potential to spread virally as per the Challenge – were short listed:

- “Match the icons” by iconmatch

- “RedLead” by TAMBA Internet.

- “Let It Flow” by Matmi.

All the games went forward into a special category in the NMA Effectiveness Awards 2007 which TAMBA won (which really pleased me!)

2 years on latest stats: RedLead played 4.5 million times and an infrequent visitor in the worldwide Viral Chart.

Let It Flow played 24.5 million times, never out of the worldwide Viral Chart (#3 today), and 10% click thrus to the Red Nose Day website.

So the winner is?

So what? For Comic Relief…..

1. Comic Relief has gained huge Opportunities To See, not just around Red Nose Day events, but crucially, in between Red Nose Days as well.

2. Brand awareness has been maintained between events as well.

3. The charity has gained a lot of PR off the campaign, the individual games and the awards the games have won (NMA Effectiveness Award for TAMBA, five nominations and a highly commended including a BIMA and Golden Award of Montreux for Let It Flow).

So what in general?

1. Be aware that viral campaigns have a very long shelf life. This is great for return on investment and for supporting key messages, but make sure the content is high quality or the campaign can detract from your brand.

2. In casual games, people interact directly with the brand – a more influential experience than passively watching an advert – and they generate PR and award win opportunities for the brand.

3. Casual games can be updated dynamically so that every online copy gets a consistent refresh. Every update increased the overall return.

4. When we’re all feeling the pinch, casual games can be a very effective and cost effective tactic to include in online campaigns, eg – the game “Escape the Fear” for Lily Allen’s new single and album was instrumental in both debuting at No.1 in the UK charts and multiple iTunes charts worldwide.

We like to do positive things at Matmi. Maybe we can do something for you.

I think you’ll remember our game Ho Ho Ho Yellow Snow http://www.matmi.com/games/HoHoHoYellowSnow/. Well today we released a game for Orange based in the snow.

Not quite the same craziness as the famous Matmi game, this new game we have just released is for Orange in Switzerland. It’s called ‘Snowball Slalom’.

It is a great game to promote Orange, their music packages (Xtreme) and a music festival called Caprices. In the game you operate a snowball that is rolling down the mountain, you must steer the ball and avoid obstacles whilst also picking up your friends (by running them over!). It is a simple game that is very playable and rather nice. You can play single player or play as a team. Team players can win various prizes.

Play now http://www.orangemusic.ch/game/

Well, it’s been a tough few weeks. We have just released ITV’s new online game-show ‘The Colour of Money’ featuring Chris Tarrant and Millie Cole. ITV asked us to produce this so that contestants watching the show on TV could see if they could do better and take part in the game online.

It has been a great success. As soon as the show finished thousands of people jumped online to have a go, at one point nearly 4000 people were playing the game at the same time.
As we wanted to make the online version as similar as we could to the TV show, we used streaming video / audio of Chris Tarrant and Millie Cole throughout, so that users would feel as if they were on the show. To add to this user involvement we decided to take UGC (User Generated Content) to a new level and allowed users to use web cams so they could see themselves in the show and the winners celebration videos are also recorded and put on the scoreboard. I think this is the first time this has been ever done and it seems that the users are loving it. We have some fantastic video celebrations of worthy contestants. Users can also use a microphone to control the game if they wish.

At the end of the TV show there is a call to action for users to play the online version of the game. The footage of the online game is of our chief designer Hamish winning a game, so finally Hamish has his wish has gets himself on prime-time television every Saturday night. Will viewer figures go up with Hamish at the end of the show?

It has been a great experience producing this game. When I was a kid I loved Tizwaz (showing my age!), I never imagined one day we would be writing a script for Chris Tarrant!

Patricia Wagstaff, Director of ITV Digital Productions, said “We were asked to deliver a game that was as nerve jangling and compelling as the TV show. We are delighted with the game Matmi has created and feel it really captures the atmosphere and tension experienced by the contestants playing for big money.”

I think I agree. If you like the TV show, you’ll love our online game.

Play now http://www.itv.com/colour