As we have covered in the pages of MIN this year, interactive gaming can be a cash cow to media brands that find ways to embrace the fun. Arcades at sites like RD.com, AARP.org and others garner tremendous traffic, stickiness, loyalty and attractive ad inventory. But finding ways to leverage a magazine brand itself into game play is a bit more elsuive. Among hard core and even casual game players, licensed properties have a poor reputation as quick knock-offs that use tired old game play slapped onto a media brand.

National Geographic tries to move beyond mere licensing in opening a dedicated games division this week. Led by SVP Paul Levine and former Take-Two game executive Chris Mate, it sounds as if this project has some vision behind it, and some gaming credibility. The group is partnering with Sony and Namco Bandai, which will publish and distribute games on the Playstation platforms, Nintendo Wii and DS, as well as the PC and mobile.

The mission for National Geographic Games (NGG) is to design titles that advance ecological themes and the NG properties. The initial titles give us a taste of what to expect. A Flash-based PC title “Herod’s Lost Tomb” was made in-house and leverages NG’s December 2008 issue on the topic and the cable channel’s focus on King Heord. A “Sudoku Traveler: China” title comes in December along with several other titles.

Clearly NGG is serious about this project, in that they have game ideas in place and plan to hit all the major platforms. It is not unprecedented. Media brands looking for good examples should check out the games areas of Nickelodeon. Virtually every show, special and on-air property has a gaming extension at Nick. In their advanced view, gaming is a natural publishing extension of the characters and concepts they created elsewhere. The curious thing about gaming is that publishers are just now learning how to make interactive play a part of their brand experience. Funny. Online users have been making it a core part of their onlne experience all along.

Just in case beleagured media companies thought the great recession of 2009 was picking on their houses only, news from the young-upstarts world suggests that the best and the brightest of Web 2.0 may be set for a fall in this downturn, too. VC investments in social media and the Web’s collaborative powers (a.k.a. Web 2.0) dropped 47% in Q3, according to VentureBeat. Only $220 million went into next-gen startups, down from a peak of over $500 million in late 2007. Investment hasn’t fallen off a cliff, since current levels match 2006 VC interest, but other sources report that money is starting to divert into clean tech and biotech companies in Silicon Valley. One has to wonder if media simply has become toxic for investors, given the absence of clear models to profitability in the digital realm and audience fragmentation patterns that few companies have addressed convincingly.

As if to underscore the problem, one of the poster children of Web 2.0 technologies, BitTorrent, seems to be devolving into an emblem of what went wrong with a lot of second wave startups. NewTeeVee reports that the peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing tech innovator is losing one of its founders, Ashwin Navin as he starts a Valley incubator. Meanwhile, the inventor of the widely used but poorly monetized technology, Bram Cohen remains, but with the relatively new CEO Douglas Walker has also resigned, according to paidcontent.org.  Like many second-wave tech start-ups, BitTorrent rifled through several business models, from B2B tech infrastructure to consumer-facing media download service to its current iteration as a games distributor. Herein lies the tragedy of Web 2.0 plans we may see played out again and again. Tech geniuses created wonderful toys that no one knew how to control or discipline into businesses. As social media, widget and streaming media plays all chase the same dwindling ad dollar in the coming months, expect to see a similar scenario played out.

Tech site TechCrunch has a depressing but necessary Layoff Tracker charting the impact of the downturn on Silicon Valley, Alley, and the whole new medi shebang. By its current count, 108 companies have laid off 38,538 workers. The number seem inflated by a number of non-tech inclusions. For instance, the tally tosses in all 600 of the Time Inc. layoffs as well as the 32 from Conde Nast and Portfolio. Surely most of these losses involve the print side. We know that Portfolio is keeping a small crew to maintain the Web brand, for instance, and it is unclear how much commitment media companies will maintain in their online strategies through the expected prolonged downturn.

But the Layoff Tracker makes interesting reading. The carnage doesn’t seem to be passing over any sector. Online video see Heavy, 60Frames, and Revision3 all shaving off staff. Online advertising cuts started with a 40% clip at Adbrite, but it extends to mighty Razorfish (the biggest media buyer of all) as well. Even game companies like Electronic Arts and WildTangent pulling back even as the prospects for both retail and online casual games looks promising.

At trade show OMMA Mobile, Virgin Mobile’s Ron Faris, Director, Brand Development and Partnerships suggested that any digital business that relies on advertising as its sole revenue model should expect some dark days. One legendary search marketing pro told me his agency is scrambling to play good offense by reminding clients that a downturn is no time to decrease budgets in their most efficient media buys — online.