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According to a number of rumors this morning, Google is about to acquire the well-known game development company Valve. Valve is best known for its Half-Life games and Steam, a content distribution platform which it uses to sell and distribute PC games from various developers with the help of a desktop client. Currently, Steam distributes close to 440 games and has over 15 million active users. We assume that Google is mostly interested in the technology behind Steam and no so much in the distribution or game development business of Valve.

Blizzard Entertainment, owners of World of Warcraft, announced this morning that the game now has more than 10 million paying subscribers around the world. Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month.

That's a huge number and one that I honestly think signals that with sufficient value delivered, consumers will still pay for software. This might be an anomaly of historic proportions, too, though.

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) have become an incredibly powerful viral marketing and audience engagement tool over the last couple of years. However, the elements of a successful ARG remain a mystery to most people. Some of the most successful ARGs that I have participated in over the past few years were the I love bees campaign for Halo 2, the Iris campaign for Halo 3, the political dystopia campaign, for NIN's Year Zero, and most recently the Harvey Dent political campaign for the upcoming The Dark Knight movie.