Entries from April 2009 ↓

• Trip Hawkins of Digital Chocolate is having great success on iPhone. Four out of five games they have published have been number one in the App Store chart, competing against 8,000 other games. This is no accident and it is not because the games are brilliant, it is because Trip understands marketing. There is a very low barrier of entry to iPhone gaming, so lots of people are developing for it. Unfortunately developing the best game in the world will get you zero sales without some sort of marketing. Which means that the big differentiator of iPhone games is how good their marketing is. And for the vast majority of them it is abysmal, which is giving Trip a clear run.
• Trip also says that the iPhone is “freaking out Sony and Nintendo”. It would be strange if it isn’t. I bet it is freaking out Nokia and Microsoft too. And it all comes down to Steve Jobs and his marketing genius. The iPod is not the best MP3 player and it is a long way from being the best value for money. But Steve Jobs made it a small object of desire. Once a phone was incorporated and it was given some decent processing power it was common sense to download applications as was pointed out on this blog. Now the iPod is so entrenched that the would be competitors will only catch up by making a step change in their offering to convincingly put it ahead. And none of them currently seem to have the gumption to do this. But of the four my money would be on Nintendo as the most likely to achieve this.
• Wii sales slowing down, especially in Japan. Inevitably, Nintendo have run through nearly all their own IP on this platform and the third party stuff is mostly dismal. Across the three home consoles we have a potentially really boring year ahead as most of the exciting stuff has been done and the platform holders look towards the next generation. Let’s hope that the HD consoles introduce gesture interfaces to liven things up.
• Excellent game addiction article. OK so it is not as bad a drug addiction or gambling addiction, but there are still some people who are vulnerable and we need to learn to recognise this. If we don’t understand this issue then eventually the Jack Thompson’s and Keith Vaz’s of the world will use it as a stick to beat us with.
• Pirate Bay founders found guilty. Already there is lots of whingeing and moaning on the interweb about this decision. But let’s face it Pirate Bay was 99.99% used for stealing. So the thieves can complain all they want. Film and music are in a terrible position where that have zero protection against thieves and it is destroying their industries. Gaming is lucky in that interactivity and connectivity both give lots of technical opportunities for protection, consoles serve as anti piracy dongles and we have an array of business models that bypass piracy. So, as an industry, we can still make a living and still pay the developers to do all the hard work making content.
• Nokia profits plunge more than 90%. Quite simply they have dropped the ball. iPhone has proved just how badly. Nokia saw off Motorola and Ericsson, but they were tech companies with weak marketing. Now they are going to be up against Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo and maybe even Sony (if they get their act together). Nokia need a major overhaul of their whole business philosophy and, because they have been historically so successful, they are going to find it very, very difficult. They are still a massive company churning out mountains of product, but increasingly they look like a supertanker heading for the rocks.
• EA ship illegal weapons to the press. In this case brass knuckles in support of Godfather II. And now they want them back. One would like to think that this is marketing genius and that they knew they could create a big, cheap, edgy marketing splash with the whole episode. But there is the equal possibility that it was a complete faux pas and that EA’s marketing department dropped themselves into this unwittingly. You can decide for yourself which you think it is.
• Microsoft (accidentally) admit to Halo going mobile in this recruitment ad. Could this be the harbinger of Zune finally getting the phone capabilities that it has been crying out for? Zune is a really great product that has been left behind by the market. Microsoft are not stupid and know what needs to be done. Add some processing power, make it into a phone, connect it to Live and stick some AAA exclusive content on it. Job done.

It is a very simple fact of life that the thing that most people are interested in is other people. Just look at the mass obsession over Princess Diana or Jade Goody. And as marketeers we can take advantage of this interest to get our messages communicated more easily to the people we want to reach.

I know about this because I have done it a number of times. At Imagine in Liverpool with David Lawson, Mark Butler, John Gibson and Ian Weatherburn. But most of all with Eugene Evans, who even got invited to No 10 Downing Street to meet Margaret Thatcher. Then at Codemasters with the Darling brothers, who got to meet the Queen as a result and with the Oliver twins. It is interesting that the Darling boys were in business with their father Jim for 20 years, but I didn’t make him famous. When the government came to hand out honours the boys both got CBEs and Jim got nothing.

The master of building and using fame in the British game industry is Peter Molyneux (he has an OBE, can you begin to see the connection here?) who has been relentless at self promotion for a long time. It has made him a lot of money and sold a lot of games so you can’t knock him for it.

The thing about being famous is that you transcend the industry so you reach a whole level of new and different media. Also you become a respected voice and your name appears in the strangest of places. Just as Jade Goody’s has in this article.

So here are some tools:

• Press releases. Just about every press release has a quote in, Rob Uncle is delighted with the deal: “We are going to make a lot of money here”.  This will not work to make him famous. To make him famous he needs to say something startling: “This game will cause the rotation of the world to stop at 9AM GMT tomorrow”. Or, and this is much better, the press release needs to be about him: “Ace programmer George Eek simulates Kylie Minogue with artificial intelligence breakthrough”. If you keep your ear to the ground in your organisation and keep your creativity switched on you will soon come up with suitable stories.
• Interviews. These are great for lazy journalists and excellent for getting your messages over. Hence the eternal popularity of the TV chat show. In our industry we are always dealing with secrets so people love to read interviews to see if they can get enough information to double guess such stuff. So it is worth promoting people for being interviewed all the time, everyone wins.
• Articles. Perfection, your would be famous person gets their message over in their own words. And each time they do it they accumulate more fame. This humble little blog you are reading has brought me more fame than 30 years of working in home computers and video games in fairly high profile positions.
• Public speaking. A lot of people are shy of doing this. No need, treat it as if you are talking to one person, but revel in the power of getting your message over in the most immediate and personal way to key audiences. GDC and E3 are typical events where you can become famous in half an hour. Look at how the arch marketeer, Steve Jobs, uses public speaking as one of his main marketing tools. And look at how Microsoft use it in breadth and depth in their organisation to get their messages over.
• Videos. I cannot begin to over emphasise just how important videos have become in marketing. And most marketeers are well behind the curve of what is happening in the real world. Videos become a lot more interesting when you put people in them, so once again you can build fame. Any marketeer in an international publisher should have no problem in getting literally millions of views for a video. That is a lot of influence.
• Publicist. Max Clifford in the UK is perhaps the most well known, but there are plenty more. These people use their press contacts to carefully build and manage your fame. They know what can and what can’t be done. And the best of them are brilliant at their job.

In all this don’t forget the message. It has to be interesting enough to catch and hold people’s attention whilst at the same time getting your key marketing messages across. Most importantly, go and do it. Our industry is lagging well behind in creating our own celebrities to represent what we do. If we did more of this we would be taken a lot more seriously in the world. And it is one of the easiest forms of marketing to do.

• Mail get in a froth about a video game again. If this was a book or a film they wouldn’t bother, but because they totally misunderstand interactive media they write this stuff which is mainly a diatribe of their prejudices. How about this: ‘Even worse, it could end up in the hands of a fanatical young Muslim and incite him to consider some form of retaliation or retribution. He could use it to get worked up and want to really “finish the game”.
• Three out of the top five iPhone Apps are games. No surprise there. And number one is Tap Tap Revenge with 32% of users downloading it, which is nearly 5 million downloads. Another fact for industry professionals to put on their shaving/makeup mirror as a daily reminder of what is really happening in this business.
• Wii is the least used current generation console with the Sony Playstation PS3 the second least used and the Microsoft Xbox 360 used most. Makes total sense with the Wii being mainly a casual use toy. Then of the two core HD consoles the 360 has more and better games as well as a vastly superior online service in Live, so it is bound to be used more.
• Wii manufacturing costs down 45% since launch. And with it recently being outsold by the Playstation PS3 in Japan a price drop could be on the cards there. This is less likely in America due to the drop in the value of the dollar. In effect the Americans have already had a price reduction in Yen terms. In the UK our currency, Sterling, has collapsed due to totally inept mismanagement of the economy by our Labour government. So we have had a far bigger Wii price reduction in Yen terms so are even less likely to see a drop in the Sterling price for one.
• Goodbye Blockbuster? It is easier to steal a CD or film online than it is to rent it. And games are moving to online distribution at speed because of the secondhand problem, amongst other issues. So the whole rationale for the existence of a company like Blockbusters is rapidly disappearing.
  
• Swedish anti piracy law reduces internet traffic by a third. It is amazing that the number one use for the internet is stealing. I bet Tim Berners Lee didn’t predict that.
• Netbook sales doubling year on year and could soon overtake notebooks. It is the only sector of the PC industry that is booming in the recession. And the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor will soon be competing with the Intel Atom to further drive the market.
• Sony PSP 2 to be unveiled at E3? More specification revealed. Looks like iPhone+ and could be more of Sony starting to get their act together.
  

Gaming has the three vast technical superiorities of interactivity, non linearity and connectivity. Yet still people are making films and writing books, despite them being outdated media. So why do the public continue to be  prepared to put up with this? Here are a few very inter-related reasons:

• Suspending disbelief. This is the total immersion that a good movie or a good book gives you. True belief in the events as they unfold. This is an art to achieve and sometimes the movie industry fails. For instance using great plots and acting the original StarWars trilogy (episodes 4 to 6) were believable when being watched. However the subsequent episode 1 had you laughing at the improbability and studying the CGI.
• Multi dimensional characters. This is an immense failing of games. Virtually all game characters are very simple and one dimensional. Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid being possibly about as good as we have achieved thus far. Hollywood gives us vastly complex characters as a matter of course, so do books.
• Emotional involvement. Many millions of people have cried or laughed out loud at the movies or watching television or reading books. Video games are miles behind. They are not crafted sufficiently well to engage powerful emotions as a matter of course. The movie industry employs masses of gag writers just to insert humour, something we would do well to learn from.
• Handling adult themes in an adult manner. Especially sex. Books and films are full of it as a normal part of human behaviour. The video game industry is a bit like the Taliband, lots of violence but don’t involve the women in anything meaningful. Maybe too many of us are too geeky to have the life skills necessary to get it right.
• Story lines and plots. Video games are very caught up in the skills/tasks/rewards cycle and so often fail to create a great overall context that progresses. Books and films do not have this mechanism so rely far more on the quality of the underlying plot. We can learn from this because the game mechanism combined with a good plot has already resulted in some of the best output from our industry.
• Creative talent / technical talent. A big one this. The movie industry has masses of highly skilled and creative people at every level. Screenplay writers, sound, directors, cameramen, stunt men, special effects, lighting etc etc. The very best are still far more likely to be attracted to movies than they are to video games. This is changing with the upcoming generation but we still have a massive skills gap to cross.
• Graphics resolution. When you watch a movie it is real people (usually) having their images caught by camera as they act. We have a lot of difficulty achieving this level of visual reality in gaming. We will one day, but not just yet.
• Heritage. This is important. Written fiction has hundreds of years of tradition and writers stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. The movie industry is around 100 years old, so they know what they are doing. They have evolved and learned their lessons. Whilst commercial video games have been with us for about 30 years most of that time has been as a niche entertainment media. It is only recently that we have got our act together sufficiently to go mass market. So a lot of time we don’t really know what we are doing. Look at all the shovelware on the Wii or all the failed MMOs, for instance.
• Commentators and critics. This is immensely important with creative output. It is only from critical input from experts that you can learn and progress. Books and film both have a vast and sophisticated critical industry. Just listen to how often they are mentioned on the radio as one small example. Video gaming is still in the dark ages here, we desperately need far more and far better critical journalism to help us improve what we do.

Of course the video game industry will get there eventually and non interactive media will decline into being a sideshow. It was always strange expecting humans to be passive receivers of activities imposed upon them, which is what films, books and TV are. If you work in the industry there is still massive scope to gain competitive advantage by looking at the above list and applying the lessons contained within.

• Video games can improve contrast sensitivity in adult eyesight. Yet another way in which video games are good for you. In fact video games have been found to be so beneficial in so many ways that I am amazed that someone hasn’t made a definitive list.
• Windows 7 to have multi touch screen. This is a big jump in PC capabilities and the first major PC interface update since the mouse arrived. Of massive importance to gaming. Interestingly Microsoft have a user interface evangelist, Chris Bernard. He has an interesting job.
• V.Tech update the V.Smile game console with the new V.Motion, which has a gesture interface. With platform proliferation it is getting difficult to keep up with how many different ways video games can be delivered these days. Even some SCUBA diving computers have video games on them to make decompression stops less boring.
• Xbox sells over a million units in Japan. A year ago nobody would have believed that this was possible. And Microsoft have done it with the simplest of tactics, giving the customer what the customer wants. Something Sony seem to have forgotten.
• World of Warcraft exceeds 8.5 billion quests and is running at 16 million quests per day. Another factoid to put on your makeup/shaving mirror. To remind you every day about just what can be achieved with a video game.
• Sony Playstation PS2 cut to $99, announced on April fool’s day. This is a really great attack on Nintendo and the Wii, you wonder why they didn’t do it sooner. Maybe Sony are getting their act together again, let’s hope so. They have been missed.
• Lots of rumours and speculation that OnLive will be bought by someone. Maybe Microsoft or Google. Makes lots of sense. Onlive can make a quick killing on the tech without doing all the hard graft to make it a global reality. The buyer gets a leg up into what I have repeatedly said is the future of gaming platforms.
• Greenpeace are April fools with this story. A desperate attempt at self publicity. Again. If a company does not co-operate with Greenpeace it doesn’t make them less green. It makes them more sensible.