Quit smoking, start gaming

Electronic Arts` casual gaming destination Pogo.com celebrates National Smoke-Free Day with a special Kick the Habit programme to help players quit smoking while playing games, explains Welt Online.

The 13.9 million unique monthly visitors on Pogo.com have access to several features of the Kick the Habit campaign, including: Special Kick the Habit game nights, Kick the Habit game rooms, and Kick the Habit e-cards

"We have a very passionate and supportive community on Pogo," said Beatrice Spaine, VP of marketing for Pogo. "From rooms for players to gather and talk about their experiences to e-cards to help players get support from family and friends, we wanted to give players the tools and community support to aid in kicking the smoking habit."

It`s getting harder to escape the reach of advertising, even when you escape reality through gaming, according to Business Journal.

AOL says it is re-launching its Games.com online video game portal and will use it as a way to increase advertising, including planting ads within the video games themselves.

The re-launched site will offer advertisers "deep, in-game integration", said Greg Mills, AOL`s director of games. He said an example of the concept is a recent ad campaign for Kimberly Clark`s Cottonelle toilet paper brand. The campaign included Cottonelle logos on the backs of playing cards in some of its online Solitaire games.

In its "Top Ten Security Predictions for 2008", McAfee foresees the growth of virtualisation opening up a huge attack surface, explains ARNNet.

Password-stealing Trojans have emerged as a new type of threat to millions of online game players. "Virtual objects in games are worth money," Schmugar notes. "It`s lower risk than targeting a bank."

To McAfee, the spread of virtualisation into the enterprise widens the potential attack surface. "You`re opening up the exposure plane," Marcus argues. According to McAfee, attackers can do everything they did before in a traditional computing environment and more.