Let's play a little game: Name as many famous game designers as you can, as quickly as you can. OK, time. Who'd you come up with? Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, Will Wright, John Romero, American McGee? Furor and Tigole, if you're into those kinds of games?

Independent games are fertile ground for marketers and advertisers. Yet distribution channels are limited for existing games. Often, the game was born of a hobby or personal project, and the creator doesn't have the means or knowledge to get his game into traditional distribution vectors. These games, many of which are incredibly novel and make up for the lack of production value with ingenuity, are begging for sponsorship.

"Halo 3"'s launch will probably end up one of the most extensively marketed events of the decade, with the incredible Microsoft hype machine drawing in brands from Mountain Dew to Comcast cable to promote the launch of the capstone of its banner franchise (other than Windows, of course). The first week of the release saw $300 million in sales and over 40 million hours spent on Xbox Live. Even though many reviewers pointed out that the franchise is no longer as innovative as it was when it first launched, it can't be disputed that "Halo 3" is a monster success.

Two market forces are colliding -- media, converging to a single digital platform; and casual gaming. Eventually, the two are going to hit.

"Lair" is a very cool concept for a game (you ride a dragon around, wreaking havoc and fighting other dragon riders), with gorgeous graphics, which was totally ruined by its utterly baffling control scheme, which made the game so frustrating to play that it totally tanked its reviews.

In-game advertising is projected to grow like wildfire, from $77 million in 2006 to nearly one billion by 2011. What I would like to know is, where is this 1,000% growth coming from?

For video games, there is a real-world concern that is often overlooked: the environment. In all these virtual worlds being created, where are the compact fluorescents and hybrid cars? Is global warming really only an analog concern, with digital denizens not to be bothered?

One of the big strengths of television as a medium for advertising is that people often get really emotionally involved in the lives of the people, real or imaginary, there depicted. Unfortunately, this kind of involvement is pretty rare in video games -- that is, until this month's launch of "Bioshock," which set a new standard in intense, emotionally charged games.

Come ye hither and listen to a tale, a tale of gods and monsters, of secret agents and interplanetary conflict. I speak of the ages of the console wars...

Video game designers know how to engage people better than movie producers. It takes an engaging film to keep people in their seats for two hours, but it takes an altogether different sort of engagement to keep people playing a game for 15 hours, 20 hours, or even longer. It's no coincidence, then, that a major part Microsoft's enormously successful and engaging ad campaign for "Halo" has been created by former video game designers: The ARG architects of 42 Entertainment.