When you contemplate the generous — some would say scandalous — tax breaks enjoyed by large companies, the benefiting brands you probably recall are multinational conglomerates like GE or “too big to fail” financial firms like Goldman Sachs.

But in addition to the kinds of brands that keep PR armies constantly marching in defense of their reputations, one sector that’s enjoyed extraordinary joy every April 15, according to the New York Times, is the gaming industry.

The Times focuses on Electronic Arts, which over the last five years paid $98 million in taxes – which sounds like a painful tax bill until you compute that if EA paid the full official US corporate tax rate of 35 percent, it would have shelled out $420 million on its $1.2 billion in profits.

Conspiracy theorists could claim that IRS agents are huge fans of EA’s Madden football game franchise, but the reality is that the company can take advantage of its three-headed brand identity: it’s a software-development brand, an entertainment brand, and an online retailing brand.Continue reading...

Bunchball, a leader in online gamification solutions, has just released two new plug-and-play apps built on their Nitro gamification platform that give brands influence over website navigation and content sharing. FanBox boosts website content consumption and engagement by rewarding users for tweeting, watching a video or sharing on Facebook, and GameBox increases daily visits, time on site and monetization by engaging consumers with social games like online poker.

“The scale of the audience accessible through gaming is simply staggering. In terms of potential reach, it rivals television as a medium,” writes Mashable in a recent article about "gamifying marketing."

We spoke with Rajat Paharia, Bunchball founder and CPO, about their simultaneous release of Nitro for Salesforce.com.Continue reading...

What do Coca-Cola and NASCAR have in common? Devoted, passionate fans, and a lot of brand synergies, which stands to reason given that Coke is the official soft drink of NASCAR.

The brands just teamed up for the “Coca-Cola NASCAR Trivia Game,” which generated over 500,000 total video views in June and nearly 20,000 “Likes” on Facebook.

Featured on the homepage of NASCAR.com and Yahoo.com, visitors were given multiple-choice questions from the last decade of the sport’s history, aided by NASCAR video highlights of memorable races and events. Players received points for each correct answer, redeemable for NASCAR Pit Shirts and DVDs.Continue reading...

Every other US business has suffered in the past few years. So why not video games?

Research firm NPD Group's data shows that even though Americans spent a whopping $1.85 billion "video game content" in the first quarter, total video game industry sales in the US fell to $995 million in June, 10% less than the previous June, as noted by CNET. The category includes hardware, software, and accessories. The software sector was the biggest area of loss, CNET observed, as it fell 12% to $469.5 million.

This is at least better than back in May, when the overall drop was 14% to $743.1 million from the previous May. According to CNET, May 2011 was “the worst month in nearly five years” for the US gaming industry.

Even so, Xbox continues to be the #1 console in the US. Microsoft reported selling approximately 507,000 Xbox 360 units in America in the month of June.Continue reading...

Google just introduced badges to spur readers to consumer more news online.

Now, in another sign that gaming is increasingly integrating with social media across all verticals, Badgeville, the social loyalty platform, just closed a $12 million round of financing.

Back in May, Badgeville CEO Kris Duggan told us, “Gamification is the how, and loyalty is the why. We’re the Salesforce.com of gamification.” 

To that end, its patent-pending Dynamic Game Engine and Widget Studio give businesses and marketers technology that increases consumer engagement and loyalty through configurable, real-time, social rewards and analytics. 

The Series B round is led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and El Dorado Ventures, and Norwest’s Tim Chang and Tom Peterson from El Dorado Ventures are both joining the board. 

“This investment comes at the heels of two consecutive seven-figure sales quarters, and 40 percent quarter over quarter growth,” said Duggan in a release.

We asked Duggan how he’ll use the new funding.Continue reading...

Zynga, the online gaming powerhouse behind some of the the most popular games on Facebook, including Mafia Wars and FarmVille, is looking to raise $1 billion dollars through its IPO filing today, which noted that its games have 148 million unique players

According to Bloomberg, it's the biggest IPO for a US web company since Google went public in 2004. Zynga may offer up to 10% of its shares at a valuation of $20 billion or more.

The company also just signed a deal to develop unique games for AT&T customers.

Century 21 recently made a major real estate investment of its own — in ngmoco’s We City, a mobile game that lets virtual developers build things on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. 

Throughout April, We City players could add three free Century 21-branded buildings — real estate office, modern home and skyscraper — and earn virtual “profits” to expand their cities and advance in the game. The results were impressive.Continue reading...

What way to engage customers works more than a giant billboard? A giant interactive billboard offering food, no less!

This isn't a human version of the GranataPet dogfood-dispensing billboard in Germany. This one's courtesy of McDonald's in Sweden, which has been engaging customers Stockholm with a game of classic Pong via a mobile app.Continue reading...