Creative Traction » Online Worlds

DICE 2010: The future of gaming

Duane Brown — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:10:10 +0000

Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular “Facebook Games” era.

Xbox 360 Games – E3 2010 – Guitar Hero 5

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Social Web Workshop with Bar Camp co-founder Chris Messina

Duane Brown — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:05:05 +0000

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Social Web Workshop with Bar Camp co-founder Chris Messina. It’s the first full day conference I’ve been to since getting back in the freelance game in August. It was great to connect and meet other people I’ve not had the opportunity to meet this past summer.

What I really loved about the event was that I felt like I learned something real and that I could use with a few current clients as well as future clients. A good chunk of the day was spend with Chris lecturing and the last two hours had us break into groups and apply what we learned, which I think was really where the learning launched off into outer space for me. A few of the key highlights from the day were:

Trends & Strategy

The change in the web from being just a place for data into a more people centric web
Increased in broadband brings new opportunities like 280Slides or Hulu.
A lot of firms working on the same problems means a great opportunity for standardization
A lot more future looking firms are building web app vs native apps (think Gmail for mobile phones)

Identity

Better filter + user agents are helping people navigate the web
Data is fast becoming your capital online. But not just your photos or video but the comments and relations you’ve build on the networks as well
This one is a little far reaching but the idea you can have multiple identities within one social network. i.e. If you are on Facebook, you can decide the content your high school friends, business contacts and your post high school friends see by picking different identities. Flickr & Facebook are trying to do this but we are not quite there yet.

Building Blocks

Having list or To Dos lets people know what they have to do when they sign up for your service. Linked In does a good job with this using the completion bar on your profile
Avoid duplication of accounts
Use OpenID, Facebook Connect or Google Connect to have users sign up so they don’t need to create another profile somewhere. Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success — By The Numbers

As I mentioned above. We broke out into groups for the last couple hours and this is what we came up with for Porter Airlines:

Port Airlines Social Ideas 2009

After working on this great mini-project yesterday. I kinda want to go in there and pitch Porter Airlines now.

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Digital distribution in video games

Duane Brown — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:04:14 +0000

Opportunity in the digital distribution business of video games. Yesterday an interview with Randy Pitchford from Gearbox went live on MaximumPC:

“Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve,” Pitchford said. “I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.”

“…really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.”

Those two lines really sum up how Randy feels about Steam in his interview with MaximumPC. There has always been talk for years that EB Games or Walmart would come out with a competing offering but that has never materialized.

However, there is a great opportunity for a company established or a new venture to bring a true competitor to market that isn’t owned by a current publisher or developer within the gamin industry. Kinda like what Apply did with iTunes & iPod but maybe not owning the market so fast as they have. Just last night news broke from the up coming London Games Conference that..

“Digital distribution will outstrip traditional retail sales within three years and 40 per cent of companies within the games sector are unprepared for the rate at which this shift will take place, according to speakers at the upcoming London Games Conference.” (article)

If the above quote is wrong and the market is only 20-25% in 3 years, that’s still a large market share for someome like Valve to own outsie of the PlayStation store, Xbox Live Arcade and the Nintendo Wii store transactions. We are always looking for ways to make more money in our industry and not only have client work be our source of income. If I had the capital this would be one area I would look into more and research.

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The Digital Gamer: All Grown Up?

Duane Brown — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:36:56 +0000

Nintendo Wii - Mario Kart - Digital Gamers

On Monday the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog posted The Grown-Up Gamer. As a digital marketer and gamer I decided to check out the article. I thought it would provide me with some new knowledge or bring a unique perspective to the search game. However, the article mainly focused on how gamers are mostly 25 – 54 and that as marketers we shouldn’t be ignoring this target group by just advertising to kids.

Wait! Gamers aren’t kids anymore..? This can’t seriously pass as news worthy in 2009. Its great that Neilson’s did the study and Yahoo felt like posting it but the Entertainment Software Association has been posting this type of demographic information year over year for as long as I can remember. Just look at their industry facts page:

Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).
Sixty-five percent of American households play computer or video games.
The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 13 years.
In 2008, 26 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999

Major newspapers around the world, The Economist and Business Week are covering the industry as more people move towards gaming as their chosen form of entertainment. With the added benefit of games like Halo & Grand Theft Auto and campaigns like I love Bees having brought video games and interactive entertainment into the mainstream even more. The average age of a gamer should not be considered news. If you are in marketing and you don’t know this. Then I believe you’ve been living under a rock of the last 6+ years.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user World of Oddy.

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Interview with Nikolas Badminton from Blast Radius – Part 2

Duane Brown — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:16:31 +0000

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with Nik from Blast Radius in part 1 of our interview. This week I finish the interview were we talk about social media and how its integrating with client projects. We also dabble in what’s the difference between bought media, owned media and earned media. Lastly, we go over what he sees as the next major trend over the next couple years. Video games is going to be a huge part of this trend.

With the introduction of social media, are more clients talking with you guys about it for their projects?
We’re finding that every client talks to us about social media as part of their digital marketing strategy. This wasn’t the case 3 or 4 years ago but is totally the case today. Analysis by The Aberdeen Group found that 63% of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year. So a lot of our clients want to be where everyone else is whether that is on Facebook or Twitter. Everyone at Blast Radius look at media in three ways:

Bought or ‘rented’ media – BIG TV campaigns, print, press – the old bastions of traditional marketing
Owned media – web-sites that not only deliver game information but provide original (produced) content regularly,
Earned media – the social and community platforms that the VG companies are not in control of but can interact with and influence through providing social events and discourse

Rented media raises awareness and can drive consumers to Owned media where they find out more, get engaged, consume, generate and push content out to Earned media where it is consumed and drives other consumers back to the Owned media – and the cycle continues. However, we’re finding a few challenges lie in the monetization and measurement of value of social media. That’s one of the big areas I’m working on with clients at Blast Radius.

What do you see as a major trend in the next couple years?
A lot of our clients and the industry as a whole is moving towards average revenue per user (ARPU) based relationship with their customers. Instead of seeing a game for $60 and having that one transaction, we are going to see a lot more publisher move towards selling that game unit + downloadable content (DLC) and eventually to a full subscription-based model enhanced with micro-transactions for premium upgrades and virtual goods. The idea being that this will increase the ARPU for the publisher and the customer will get a better experience out of the game. Some of the news and interviews in the industry are pointing towards this:

John Riccitiello – EA had this interview:
“There is a longer-term transition from a disk-based model for retail sales to an “average revenue per user” model. Five to seven years from now, investors will look at EA as how we have 100 million customers where we have an ARPU relationship that amounts to so many dollars a month…The ARPU model is a better margin business for us. It’s less cyclical. It’s a better business.”

Activision solidified their relationship with MASSIVE last year to include in-game advertising on 18 Xbox 360 and PC titles

THQ and MASSIVE are getting together:
“Dynamic, in-game advertising not only offers publishers new revenue opportunities, but when done properly creates added realism that can actually enhance game play,” said Kelly Flock, executive vice president of worldwide publishing, THQ.”

Playstation Home has some really good stats since launch.
• 4 million who still regularly use the service, an average of 55 minutes per session is surprisingly high.
• By January 2009 they had generated $1m in revenues from virtual goods sales since it’s launch on December 11th 2008

Only last week MindArk’s MMO Entropia Universe has been granted a license by the Swedish Government to conduct legal banking activities. More big changes are coming for video games and how we market and sell them digital and that’s only going to make the business more competitive and fun.

Thoughts?
It was great to chat with Nikolas Badmintonand something I hope to continue as we move into 2009. If you want to reach Nik at Blast Radius, you can do so here. What do you see as a big trend over the next 2 or 3 years?

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The Changing Demographic and Our Future [Video Game Marketing]

Duane Brown — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:13:12 +0000

Ad Age had an article today, Making Marketing as Creative as Its Games, talking with Brad Jakeman, Activision’s chief creative officer. He talked about the changing demographics in video games and how it’s not just about the 14 year old in their moms basement.

Brands like “Guitar Hero” and Wii are elevating this entire category outside the 14-year-old boys’ bedrooms. The games [have moved] from a solitary activity to a social activity.

Absolutely. When brands like “Guitar Hero” and “Call of Duty” reach a kind of mass scale, then they also drive toward a mass-marketing approach. But more important than that, it drives to a segment-marketing approach. It’s important for us to continue to fulfill the product and advertising to our core user — call them the hard-core user — and at the same time address a new segment, like family. It would be a mistake to say the marketing moves entirely to embrace mass-marketing vehicles, because it’s important that there’s something in the brand for everyone.

I think both of these statements echo the point that more changes are coming for both video games and marketing. However, I don’t think it’s just going to be in the living room. One of the major pushes in the last year has been around micro-transactions. Micro-transactions are huge in South Korea and other parts of Asian but are only now starting to take off in North & South American.

Micro-transactions will take off more as mcommerce, sponsored microtransactions and society using their iPhones, Blackberry’s and other mobile devices for everything becomes more of a reality. When we look to the future, it’s not just about Twitter, Facebook and sponsoring PAX but it’ll also be about getting in from of the next two generations using micro-transactions whether they are in MMOs, casual games or social games on Facebook. As my generations grows up this is going be a fantastic opportunty for marketrs who know about it. You can also read when VentureBeat had a talk with Gareth Davis and how this one area of marketing and gaming is changing.

VentureBeat Source [Joystiq]

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Having Different Touch Points is Key to Growth Online

Duane Brown — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:59:50 +0000

Last week I wrote about Google’s local business center and promoted the post a bit on my Twitter account. I left it at that and went on with keeping my goals for this year. However, a funny thing happened in the last week.

I had someone I went to high school with contact me on Twitter and reach out for help with using Google’s local business center. I’ve also gotten a phone call and an e-mail from two different people interesting in working for my company. Now I don’t think this can all be attributed to Google’s local business center but I think this points to the importance of having many touch points out there on the Internet.

Brand Love

Different people are going to find your website in different ways and the more touch points you’ve out there driving traffic to your site, the better of you’ll be in the long run. Maybe you’ll have a website, a Twitter account, a Facebook page or an account for a community forum that many of your customers user.

David Armano who is the VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass has a great post on touch points; Infinite Touch Points. It doesn’t matter which touch points you use as long as you know that your target markets uses theam as well. You’ve to remember to fish where the fish are online.

One other key to remember when creating all of your touch points is that you’ve to maintain them. Quality is way more important then quantity at the end of the day. So go out there and create your touch points and let people connect with you and your website.

Image is from David Armano’s blog, You can find the image at this post.

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How Mainstream is Second Life Really? [One Year Later]

Duane Brown — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:02:02 +0000

Last year I wrote a great post about Second Life. Having a new professor bring up gaming and virtual worlds was great. We rarely get to discuss these things in class, which I feel is a shame at time. I was glad to see and heard my professor understands that gaming is important. I admit he had trouble around the whole MMO and how to say it. However, he understood the value that gaming brings to the entertainmnet and business world.

We even got to talking about Anshe Chung from Second Life as well as gold farmers and World of Warcraft. People seemed shocked that she was able to a gain such a large fortune. In the end, not much has changed. At this point you ether have or have not heard of Second Life, which may not be a bad thing.

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Google, Rockstar and Yahoo…

Duane Brown — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:05:52 +0000

It’s been a crazy week leading up to E3. This week has been all about Google’s Lively , Rockstar Games potential ban on their Bully: Scholarship Edition game. Then you’ve Yahoo, Microsoft’s new love interest, shacking things up as the team with Double Fusion and NeoEdge Networks.

I really want to check out more of Google’s Lively and look at the potential that is containted within. Has anyone tried Lively yet?

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The Blue Book: Virtual Worlds

Duane Brown — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:35:58 +0000

Over the weekend The Blue Book for virtual worlds launched. The book is free to download and should be required reading for anyone wanting to get into virtual worlds. You always want to pick the best virtual world or social network that is going to fit your brand. At the same time a report released this weekend said that 184 million was invested into virtual worlds in Q1 of 2008.

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