If you haven’t seen Avatar yet then you owe it to yourself to correct this omission as soon as possible. Avatar is a hugely significant jump in what constitutes human culture and its ramifications will impact heavily on the future of all entertainment media worldwide. Gaming will be influenced enormously.
Obviously Avatar is a global release. If you are not global then you will be out performed by competitors that are. Only global sales can bring in the returns necessary to fund the huge investments.
Avatar is a technical tour de force. Real film footage seamlessly integrates with motion capture, CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) and, my favourite, true facial expressions on the CGI characters. Humans communicate emotion using an array of facial muscles which are in continual movement. Previous CGI attempts (Gollum, Jar Jar Binks) to replicate this have been less than convincing, making a mouth wider is not a realistic smile. Avatar got round this by continuously recording the actors’ faces during motion capture and then merging the footage of the expressions into the CGI. There are lessons here for the game industry as we continually strive towards realistic representation.
Another lesson of Avatar is that it is new and original IP. This is not Jaws 47, or whatever. Avatar is part one of a planned trilogy. The second and third parts will obviously be easier to make as all the groundwork is done. However as old IPs become tired we need a constant pipeline of new IPs to serve to the public. Whilst some, like Hornblower, Biggles and Poirot are strong enough to survive many iterations, most reach their sell by date much earlier. Console gaming has been very weak for new IP, especially from third party publishers. We really do need to allow creativity and imagination to flower and Avatar can be held up as a superb example of how successful this can be.
Then there is 3D. The temptation is to use 3D to create spectacular effects. The problem with this is that it reduces the audiences’ sense of immersion. Avatar, very cleverly, does the opposite and uses 3D to increase the sense of immersion. It is an immense success and surely sets a benchmark for the future of 3D in screen based entertainment. 3D is set to become the norm for films, television and gaming. A whole new age has just opened up.
Of course the success of Avatar is not just down to artistic merit. As I have pointed out on here marketing is three times more important than game quality. So it will come as no surprise that Murdoch invested $150 million into the marketing of Avatar, for a total spend of $450 million in bringing this film to its public. There is no point in making fabulous IP if you don’t communicate effectively with your potential customers.
The overall effect of this (and very much more that went into Avatar) is to create a must see event. The force of compulsion to see this film is immense, making it a significant collective human experience. Also, like the original Star Wars trilogy, it will support repeated viewings and will enter into the human psyche. Video games are still a long way from doing this.
The most striking thing is that Sony, which once owned the console market now only have a total 25% market share across their three platforms. Playstation PS2 game sales have collapsed from 8% of the market to just 2%. And 2% is exactly what the PSP did for both years. As you would expect after the price cut, and more importantly the marketing activity that went with it, PS3 game market share is up, by 4%, from 15% to 19%. Hardly stellar but a move in the right direction after all the PS3 disasters.
And the big winner, as anyone could have predicted, is Microsoft and its solitary platform in the market, the Xbox 360. In the year its market share of software sales went from 28% to 37%, a massive 9% rise. This makes it by far the most successful platform for game sales, overtaking the Wii.
In fact Microsoft is selling nearly twice as much dollars worth of games for the Xbox 360 as Sony is for the PS3, an enormous advantage. This is the true measure of the success of the Microsoft Xbox 360.
I am not going to apologise for writing about Android so much. Smartphones are set to become the most used computing devices on earth, easily outpacing personal computers and game consoles. Pretty soon they will be selling a billion handsets a year as Moore’s Law kicks in and they replace dumb handsets. And Android, despite Google’s traditional lacklustre marketing, looks well set to become the leading software standard, with handsets being made for it by many companies.
But now Google has issued its upcoming Nexus One handset to its staff. It is manufactured by HTC in Taiwan and Google intend to sell it direct to customers, which should make it very price competitive.
So the war against iPhone will be waged by Android on many fronts. It will be the gaming platform story of 2010.
And it is inevitable, firstly because human nature has us as playful, social animals. Secondly because of the connectivity and interactivity of gaming. And thirdly because of the fundamental game mechanism of being rewarded for using skills or assets to solve a problem.
From a game industry perspective the obvious course of action is to maximise the social networking potential of every game and to ensure that your IP is earning its keep on the big social networking sites. Also you need to stay on the ball, this is an area where changes and progress are rapid.
Smartphones are going to put more processing power in the hands of more people than computers and game consoles put together. And it is going to happen very quickly indeed. A very high percentage of non smartphone owners in the west will upgrade with their next handset change, by which I mean within two years. So in this timeframe hundreds of millions of these phones will be made and brought into use. This will put ARM ahead of Intel in the microprocessor wars. And it will put smartphones well ahead of dedicated portable gaming devices like the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS.
I favour Android to come out on top. Many already think that it has the best system software and being open source it will get better, faster. Anyone can make an Android handset so most manufacturers are doing that. In fact many are making several different models. The few phones that are available so far are the calm before the storm. Acer alone has 8 to 10 new Android phone models for launch in 2010. Other manufacturers with handsets include HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, Garmin-Asus, Dell, even Google themselves.
With so many manufacturers competing with each other on price and features consumers should get a better handset. The only fly in the ointment is Google’s legendary marketing ineptitude, Gameloft has said it’s reducing Android game development. “Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products” according to Gameloft’s FD, Alexandre de Rochefort, Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza says the Android platform has no decent central marketing strategy.
Apple, on the other hand, are a marketing company to their very roots, so they are not going to roll over and let Android have its own way. Apple have a multi threaded strategy to try and maintain their impetus. Firstly they are going to do what they did with iPod and offer multiple products in a range, with differing features and benefits. Amongst these will be a tablet device with an OLED screen. Secondly they are going through far more vendors. Initially they offered 2 year market exclusives to establish the brand, now they are giving it to many retailers including the massive UK retailer, Tescos. Thirdly they are rolling out into more territories. And fourth they are following a marketing strategy that revolves around the apps as they try and entrench the trendy utility of the device.
What is for sure is that if you are in the gaming industry you need to have a very well sorted smartphone strategy. You need to have your brands on these devices. Some will do this as promotional marketing material for their other platforms, others as commercial products. What I can see is a return to the age where a game may have more than one publisher across the different platforms. A publisher of casual PC games, for instance, may allow another specialist publisher to handle the mobile versions and maybe another to handle the online c0nsole versions. This is good for the brand and good for the publishers.
The inspiration for this piece came from this article in The Times: A man who hacked into accounts to steal virtual characters and their possessions on one of the world’s biggest multi-player online game has been arrested…..Police believe that password details were obtained through a so-called phishing scam where a fake internet page tricks people into handing over their personal information……. “Our first and only concern is protecting our player community as we know the high value players place on their unique accounts,” said Mark Gerhard, chief executive of Jagex Games, the Cambridge-based company that launched RuneScape in 2001.
This is so sad to see. In the 30 years that it has been going the commercial video game industry has lived in a world of innocence. Developers and publishers were legitimate businesses that sought only to entertain their customers. And game players bought games to be entertained. But now, sadly, this has changed. Three trends have brought a lot of unsavoury people and behaviour to gaming and there are three reasons. Firstly it is now big business, there is a lot of money around so a scam that takes just a small percentage can be very lucrative. Secondly the industry is now global, criminals can be in completely different countries to where they commit their crimes. And thirdly we are all online, everyone has access to everyone.
So what are the dangers:
People who are after your money. This can take lots of forms. From phishing, as in the above example, to people set up gold farming scams. You now really need to have your guard up all the time and be very vigilant about what you do and what information you give people.
Unacceptable online behaviour. Cyber bullying is an very real fact of life and it happens a lot in online games. In fact bullying is a lot more common online than in the real world and it can be very nasty indeed. This is because the online environment is de-humanised, people behave as if they are not relating to other humans, the veneer of civilisation can very quickly disappear.
Paedophiles and other deviants looking for victims. Where better to find kids and build relationships with them than a video game? There have been quite a few reported instances of this sort of grooming but I am sure that it is just the tip of the iceberg. Our criminal justice system is well behind the curve here, technology has left them flat footed.
In game thieves. So you do a lot of work and/or pay a lot of money and you build up considerable in game assets. As in the real world there is envy and there are thieves. They look for any weakness in the game or any weakness in another player and they swoop. And this is not trivial, a player’s in game assets can be worth many thousands of dollars.
The game itself acting maliciously with your computer and what is on it. Virtually all online games put some software on your computer. It can be anything from a simple cookie to a huge proportion of the game. Mostly you (perhaps without realising it) download a client which manages the game within your machine. The problem is that these clients have access to everything else that is in your machine and everything that your machine does. And they do this, mainly to stop cheating and check for the use of bots. But they could just as easily take your credit card details, your email contacts, your Facebook login and all your other passwords etc. If you are using a work computer they could steal sensitive commercial information.
The game publisher doing unethical marketing. They could offer you in game rewards in return for your friends’ contact details then spam your friends. They could run a competition, once again in return for in game rewards, for the best online “review” resulting in praise spam for the game popping up in thousands of places all over the internet. This marketing costs the game publisher nothing but is an abuse of people’s trust and honesty.
Lack of an age policy and child protection. Buy a boxed game and it has an age rating. Go online and it can be the jungle. Games can expose people to all sorts of unsavoury antisocial behaviour. From profanity to discussions of all sorts of sexual perversions and the use of illegal drugs. This is OK for most adults but a developing child’s mind needs some protection. Yet many online games have, effectively, zero child protection.
Then there is behaviour that is unacceptable even to adults. Rabid racism, sexism and homophobia are rampant on the internet. There is no IQ test for logging on, so there is a huge amount of ignorant nastiness out there. Some of which, inevitably, finds its way into video games.
Malicious government online activity and cyberwarfare. We have seen the internet in two countries just about closed down by organised government attacks. Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. There is an ongoing cyber war between China and the USA known as Titan Rain. Online video games are the perfect mechanism for a government to gain access and control of literally millions of computers around the world.
Finally there are some people who take delight in acting maliciously. Even if it is only one in ten thousand it becomes a lot of people if you have millions of players. We see these malicious sociopaths at work with the creation of computer viruses. Inside a game they can and do wreak all sorts of havok.
When it comes to protecting yourself, your family and your computer from all of this there are some things you can do and some things the game publisher can do.
Be vigilant at all times. A game may be fun but that doesn’t mean that it is safe. Never take anything at face value unless you are very, very sure.
Investigate very thoroughly who you are letting onto your computer before you even look at a game. You are very vulnerable once you start playing so don’t even get into that situation until you have done the research. Google can tell you a lot. Typing in the name of the game followed with key words such as scam and spam can tell you a fair bit.
Total transparency. Don’t deal with anyone who doesn’t tell you about themselves. Their address, their key staff, their ownership. Electronic Arts and Activision tell you this stuff. Don’t go near anyone who doesn’t.
A clear child protection policy. If they haven’t got one then problems are inevitable, for adults as well as children.
24/7 moderation of the game with a simple mechanism for reporting bad behaviour and a response to complaints that is very rapid. This takes dozens of staff so is expensive to do. But you are paying for the game (even with “Free” games) and this is part of what the publisher should provide for your money.
An online security team. They will be looking for gold farmers and bots and they will also be looking for scammers. Done properly this costs millions every year. But it is necessary for your protection.
Open, uncensored discussion. All these games have forums which should enable a full and frank exchange of all the issues relating to the game. If the game owners are censoring discussions or banning legitimate topics it can only be because they have something to hide.
So play safe, have fun and don’t get paranoid. Whatever you do don’t show this article to Keith Vaz or Jack Thompson. They would burst blood vessels.
