nexon

Shooting the boss (and getting paid for it)

To thank him for letting them spend the last two hours of their workweek playing video games on the company dime, Kevin Grinnell's employees often single him out and shoot him in the head.

To be fair, the employees at Grinnell Computers aren't firing real weapons at their boss but are instead releasing the stresses of their week in a multiplayer online game known as Combat Arms.

Most Fridays for the last couple of months, the six employees of the Beaumont, Texas-based company have been encouraged to spend from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. blasting away … Read more

Nexon and 7-Eleven promote in-game Slurpees

Free-to-play online-game company Nexon, and ubiquitous convenience retailer 7-Eleven are giving away virtual-prize codes for Nexon games. The prizes range from free in-game Slurpees (in case your warrior in Mabinogi gets thirsty) to actual physical goods, including 7-Eleven hats.

This is an interesting experiment in borderless marketing, straddling physical and virtual worlds, and adding in the oddity of 7-Eleven's enormous presence. I suspect that if this even remotely works, we'll start to see a lot more cross-culture attempts at branding across physical and virtual properties.

Consider, for example, a site like Wine.com making a deal with a … Read more