Entries from September 2007 ↓

When it has luminaries like Michael Grade (executive chairman of ITV) in charge. Just what was he thinking about when he said that video games exist in a ‘moral vacuum’ compared to television drama? Does he know anything about video games? Obviously not. Does he watch the execrable output of modern television? Obviously not. And his company just rewarded him with £6 millions worth of shares!!

Even Coronation Street, a soap opera broadcast in family viewing prime time, contains all sorts of moral turpitude and serves as a very poor role model for modern society. These days they think that it has to be nasty to get the ratings. And without the ratings they lose even more advertising revenue.

Grade made his inane comments in reply to John Riccitiello speech to the Royal Television Society’s Convention where the EA chief executive had told television’s top people that games are no more violent  than TV programmes, adding that games were ‘unfairly demonised’ by the media for their violence.

We in the games industry know that Riccitiello is right. Only about 5% of games are rated 18+. And we have a rating system, which TV doesn’t. And current generation consoles have parental blocking, which TV doesn’t. Yet TV mainlines on the drug of violence. From children’s cartoons, through prime time soaps to late night gritty dramas we are bombarded with mindless violence. The lowest common denominator. A sad reflection on our society.

And the TV industry get away with this grim content almost totally without criticism. Whilst the Daily Mail and their ilk regularly parade their Pavlovian reactions and bigoted ignorance on the subject of games.

The truth is that Grade has to paint games black because he is fighting a rearguard action. And losing. TV is dying a slow death. Increasingly people want to do better things with their time than vegitate on the couch. And computer games are amongst those better things. So to Grade computer games are the enemy. Which is why he says such silly things.

Yet he is sitting on a mountain of IP that could be used to create great interactive entertainment. If he were to put serious money and effort into making games he could realise a lot more potential for making profit than TV is going to have. I am sure that many of us could tell him exactly how to go about it.

So do you get infuriated with the ignorance about gaming? Or do you think they are the devil’s spawn? Do you think that TV executives ought to learn how to do better things with their IP? Post your comments below.

During world war one the allies wanted to know what was happening inside Germany. What people were thinking and doing. The effect of the war on them and the routine of their lives. The allies could have recruited a lot of spies but instead they had a far better and more effective idea. What they did was to obtain every possible local newspaper from across Germany and then analyse their content.

This mechanism used the editors of the newspapers firstly as unsuspecting spies and secondly as low level analysts. It works like this, the editor has only so much space to fill and only so much time to fill it yet he has access to enough potential content to fill it several times over. So he works as a filter deciding what goes into the newspaper and what doesn’t. This filtering process did the allies job for them because the content of the paper told them what was currently of importance to the German population.

You can take advantage of this mechanism when marketing computer games. Just like the world war two newspaper every game periodical has finite space and finite time to fill it yet they have enough potential content to fill it several times over. Each journalist has only so much time to gather material and then so much time to write content. So if you take a journalist’s time it follows that you have the space in his periodical. As simple as that.

You see it very widely in other industries. Car manufacturers launch new models in exotic places and fly the journalists in. They know that with travel time they can take a week out of a journalist’s schedule and they know that this guarantees them a quarter of that journalist’s output for the month.

This was precisely the mechanism I used at Codemasters. Regularly flying in batches of journalists from our European territories to visit sunny Southam. And they always said yes. It was a free overseas trip and the chance to see a games company from the inside and pick up all sorts of knowledge and information. When they got back they wrote up lovely multi page features. But in reality they had no option about this because we had used up their time and so there was nothing else that they could write. It also deprived our competition of those pages.

We were also after the holy grail of selling more of our games in America. This is a rock on which many British game companies have foundered. So I tried to institute a mechanism of flying over an American journalist a month to visit us. With travel this gave us about a week of their valuable time. And there was no shortage of journalists wanting to come. And we tried it and it worked. But the powers that be preferred to spend (waste) their money on TV advertising. And we continued to fail in America.

On a slightly different tack this is an excellent article on marketing computer games from a journalist’s perspective. It should be essential reading for everyone involved in marketing in this industry.

So have I wasted bandwidth stating the obvious? Or are all the world’s game journalists suddenly going to find themselves invited on trips to exotic places (me! me! me!)? Post your comments below.

I like this , a lot. Several of my repeated points on this blog answered in one go. Metaplace relies on user generated content. It combines social networking with gaming. And it is an MMO without the need for swords and sorcery. I just wish I had shares in it. Or even that I was marketing it!

If this works then it will just destroy the social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook because it does so much more and gives the user a vastly richer experience. Likewise the MMO people should come flocking because it is so refreshingly different and they can make it into whatever they want it to be. The online platform holders, Sony and Microsoft, should be jumping into this with both feet. It is a killer ap. Likewise Apple who could do fantastic things with Metaplace and their iPod/iPhone platforms.

I really think that this will be seen as a significant event in the history of gaming. What do you think?  

DFC Intelligence say that the worldwide videogame and interactive entertainment industry turns over about $33 billion per annum and that this will rise to $47 billion by 2009, which is over 40% increase in just two years.  Their biggest predicted growth area is online followed by mobile.

Looking at what is happening in the market this looks entirely feasible. If the market goes the way that it could then the growth might be even greater.

Online casual gaming for bored housewives and young children is a great phenomenon and I instigated Codemasters’ move there several years ago. Xbox live and Sony Home will both grow far more than 40% over the next two years and MMORPGs still have to grow out of their swords and sorcery roots. But yes, online overall will grow massively over the next two years and has the potential (as I have said repeatedly) to grow even faster and be a more compelling entertainment if more social networking is integrated into the gaming.

Mobile is going to grow on three fronts. Firstly the DS is just going to become more and more massively massive, such a must have purchase that nothing can stop it from becoming the best selling dedicated electronic gaming machine ever. Secondly Nokia may possibly get their act together at last. We know that they want to, they just don’t seem to have what it takes. If they do it could rival the DS. Then there is Apple and their softly, softly approach with the iPod/iPhone. If they get serious and press the go button it will release a great potential. As they want to make a lot of money there is no reason for them not to. Notice that the PSP doesn’t come into this. Quite rightly.

Where I strongly disagree with DFC is their analysis of the home console situation. They see the Wii as number one through 2008 with the PS3 competing with it in 2009 (but ahead on software revenue) and the 360 coming a distant third.

I see the Wii as being unassailable throughout this generation. They are providing great entertainment for normal people and so hugely expanding the market. They are also very strong in every market worldwide. The attach rate will go up as more great entertainment for normal people is released. Buy Konami shares now because Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party is going to do a Brain Age. The Wii is going where no console has gone before in terms of demographics and it is changing the market forever.

Microsoft are going to come second. Over Sony they have substantial first mover and retail price advantages and a big online lead. Most of all they have truly realised the advantage of unique content and have invested massively in it, to the point where the 360 is a must have purchase for any keen gamer. Also to the point where they seem to have overdone it! Their lineup of exclusive AAA blockbusters going into Q4 this year seem destined to take sales off each other. I cannot see Microsoft being able to make enough 360 consoles to keep up with the resultant demand over the next four months. After that they will be so far ahead that Sony will be unable to ever catch up. The only fly in the ointment is Japan. But this is a case of softly, softly. I would love a job in the Microsoft team trying to crack this market.

As for the PS3, I can see no compelling reason for anyone wanting to buy one. Sony have shot themselves in both feet repeatedly. They have lost a lot of the goodwill of the development and publishing community and their offering of games (which is what it is all about) is never going to catch up with the 360. They are going to come third by a long way in America and Europe and coming second in Japan will not make up for this.

Obviously DFC have far more analytic resources at their disposal than I do. So the balance of probabilities is that they will be closer to what happens than I am. But what do you think? Use the comments function to give us your predictions. Or even just to criticise mine.

One year, to support the Colin McRae Rally game, I had the idea of making a very small number of replica helmets to give away as competition prizes. Colin was happy to go along with the idea as long as I made an extra one for him. So I contacted our European offices and they were up for the idea, which gave me a production run of just 6 helmets (Colin, UK, Benelux, Spain, Germany, France).

The first thing was to buy the helmets. These were the exact make, model and size as Colin’s real helmet (iirc they were Sparco, from Italy). Then we had to ship them to the artist in Europe (iirc Holland) who had handpainted Colin’s original helmet and who painted all six of these identically. Then they were shipped to Colin in Scotland (he was living in Switzerland at the time) for him to sign on his next visit there. Then they were shipped back to Southam and thence shipped to the individual countries. So it took a while and a fair bit of logistics.

But it was worth it. The end result was gorgeous. A genuine hand painted race helmet signed by a great race driver. When they came back to the office after signing I took a look at them and would have liked one for myself.

So there are a very small group of gamers around Europe who now own a great momento of Colin McRae which I am sure that they are treasuring.

Seems like an obvious question, but so much marketing is done by rote that many people forget.

Game player. This is the person who sits in front of the screen and plays your game. You have got to make him want to do this, because without him you don’t have a business.

Game retail buyer. This is often not the same person as the game player, which is a very important factor in the success of Take Two. The buyer will often be a parent of the player. So they may want their kid to be the coolest on the block, or the brightest. Or maybe they just want to shut the nagging brat up. Come December and all sorts of people, who would never ordinarily buy a game, are queuing up in game shops to buy gifts. So you can get sales by being featured in a housekeeping magazine!

Trade buyer. This is your immediate customer so he could well be the most valuable of all. Hence the incredible value of the trade press, which many underestimate. Your trade buyer must be kept very well informed and completely in the loop at all times. Never lose sight of this person and don’t just rely on your sales people to look after him. Sales people don’t have the same priorities as marketing people.

Employee. A lot of management guru type people say that it is more important to market internally than externally. (I was especially miffed when they dropped the internal newspaper at Codemasters after I was promoted away from communications). Certainly if you have the right people then you have everything else. Communications are of massive importance when recruiting and keeping the right people as well as getting the best out of them.

Shareholder. It is their company. They own it. So you may as well keep them in the loop and tell them what is going on. Especially as they have a vested interest in buying your products.

Wall Street/TheCity. Where the money comes from that pays for everything. These people don’t just want to know the financial, they want to know everything. So tell them.

Local Community.  These are the people you live and work among, the people from whom you recruit many of your staff. Make sure they know about you and that what they know is good.

Politician. At Codemasters I worked with the local MPs to help successfully get the law on conterfeiting changed in the UK, an example of what can be achieved. We photographed one MP and put his image into Operation Flashpoint which we then used as a story which ran very well. (btw my image is also in Operation Flashpoint)

Journalist. You want to reach these people as individual human beings as well as being a conduit to their audience. Journalists have preferences, views and opinions that come out in thousands of subtle ways that have influence. So nurture them.

Business partner. You think I am scraping the bottom of the barrel now but I am not. The people that your company has a day to day relationship with are very important. All your suppliers, whether it be outsourced graphics or stationery, want to know about you. So tell them.

We are really so lucky in games that the story we have to tell is just so sexy. So tell it. People really, really want to know.

So do you do all this, or do you just buy a few television slots and cross your fingers that you might be reaching someone worth spending all that money on? As ever post your views using comments.

Possibly not. The costs of developing and marketing a global gaming platform are in the billions of dollars. Playstation 3 looks like it will come a very lowly and unprofitable 3rd in this generation. So they are almost going to need to bet the whole company if they are going to go on to do PS4.

What went wrong? The main thing is that they didn’t have their eye on the ball of entertaining people. Instead they tried to use the PS3 as a Trojan horse to get Blu-ray into people’s homes and as a tool to allow them to escape from American processor manufacturers. And they expected the console buyers to pay for this.

Not only is the PS3 massively too expensive to make and for the market to pay for but it also had another technology related problem. It was too late. Everyone knew that Microsoft was after first to market advantage in this generation. Not only did Sony let them get away with it, they also had long additional delays forced upon them by all the new technology.

Then there is Nintendo. Currently making more profit than any computer game company has ever made before. In the whole of history. Their Wii sales are only limited by how many they can manufacture. If they made 3 million, 4 million a month they would sell them. And they make a profit on every one. So just about every console game developer and publisher in the world is rushing to throw resources at developing for it. And where are those resources coming from? You guessed it, from developing PS3 games.

So we have a virtuous circle with Nintendo, the more it succeeds the more games will be made for it so it will succeed even more. With Sony we have the opposite, the less it succeeds the fewer games will be made for it and so it will succeed even less.

Meanwhile Microsoft are cruising to second again, it has always taken them three generations of a product to win. And they are just about to play their joker. Releasing Halo 3 going into this holiday season is going to create massive demand. By all accounts Bungie have learned the lessons of Halo 2 and have made a blockbuster of game of the year proportions.

With demand so rampant for the Wii and 360 where will the money come from to buy expensive PS3s? It just isn’t going to happen. All that is keeping Sony in the market is the PS2, the PSP is fatally flawed as a platform and will just fade away, even in it’s new slimline form.

So is this just a gross exaggeration or do you detect a germ of truth? Let us know by using the comments.