EA Legend: New Ad Platform For EA Products

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Electronic Arts has announced that they are unveiling a new dynamic platform called EA Legend.  Designed to integrate insights across mobile, social, online and console games, the platform will be unveiled at this year’s Advertising Week in New York City on October 4 at 4 PM.

“EA increased its worldwide audience reach by 30 percent this year across its mobile, social, online and console products. Combining that major jump in reach with the launch of EA Legend puts us in perfect position to compete directly for ad dollars that have traditionally gone to TV,” said Dave Madden, Senior Vice President of Global Media Solutions at Electronic Arts. “EA Legend gives us an edge by providing marketers with actionable insights across all of our platforms and a complete view into how their campaigns are driving engagement with consumers.”

“EA and nPario’s collaboration around EA Legend revolutionizes how advertisers can leverage their data,” said Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of nPario. “EA has some of the most premium and engaged audiences in the world, and nPario’s Data Management Platform allows EA to deliver audience and performance insights across multiple platforms at an infinite scale.”

Online Developers Warn About MAU Inflation

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Spreading out to new regions can result in a higher number of new players quickly. However, player count from certain regions of Asia is not as lucrative as certain other parts of the world, for a variety of reasons.

“Asia is not our highest priority,” said Gerhard Florin, chairman of InnoGames and former European exec for Electronic Arts. “It’s good for reach and to have lots of MAUs and DAUs, especially if I go to the Philippines, but I’ll never make any money there. They are huge Facebook markets but deliver extremely small revenues. We’re more interested in the revenue making than the millions of people inflating our servers but never paying anything. The balance needs to be kept.”

“We’ve had a pretty terrible time, like most developers, in South East Asia – Indonesia, Malaysia, India. These regions only inflate your numbers and they muddy the water on the analytics side because you’ll see an influx of 20,000 people, but right away we know that most of them are not going to come back the next day,” added A Bit Lucky CEO Frederic Descamps. “And most of them have a pretty terrible connection so they’re not going to enjoy the game. And they absolutely do not monetize. To put it more bluntly in our case, we are targeting North America and Europe because those are the audiences that retain the best and monetize the best. So in some ways we’re not spending any efforts to market in those other regions.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

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BioWare: ‘Adapt Or Die’

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BioWare is now a huge division of EA, housing multiple prominent IPs and having seven offices worldwide. However, Bioware founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka say that their size is no excuse for complacency.

“If we weren’t adaptable we’d be dead. Like right now you will die if you’re not adaptable,” said Zeschuk. “The opportunities are greater than ever. Even when there’s flux, that’s when opportunity occurs, and if you’re one of those people that grab that opportunity then that’s a great place to be.”

The pair pointed towards their recent efforts in social and free-to-play gaming between Wrath Of Heroes and Dragon Age: Legends on Facebook. “The thing about all the different business models on new platforms is they’re not a threat if you approach them in terms of a unified experience for consumers. We look at it as an IP universe,” said Muzyka. “Luckily Bioware and EA are changing really rapidly to accommodate the new industry. I mean, look at The Sims Social, on track to be the number one social game. Who would’ve have predicted that a few years ago, that EA, a traditional publisher, would do that ”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

7-Eleven Adds More Fun To Lunch

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7-Eleven is pushing their selection of lunch items, and to compliment that they have a series of fun activities running alongside lunch. The “LARP” video does a particularly good job of parodying the hobby it brings up, since live-action role-playing practically parodies itself.

The Hunt For The Hash Tag Killer Is On

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Fans of the USA Network series Psych are invited to help Gus and Shawn catch a killer as part of a new social media game. The hunt for the #HashTagKiller (HTK) unfolds over seven weeks leading up to and beyond the Season 6 premiere on October 12. Created in conjunction with Psych‘s writers and executive producers, the HTK murder mystery — based at HashTagKiller.com — features original videos with the series’ stars and interactive crime scene photos that ask players to pull a Shawn and spot out-of-place items and clues, all in the name of finding the killer. “Psych-Os” can send and receive messages with Shawn and Gus, and earn points to ascend a Leader Board by unlocking bonus games and solving weekly puzzles and challenges. Fans can join in at any time, and even continue on in the event they could become HTK’s latest victim.

BioWare Says ‘Value Proposition’ Of Old Republic Warrants Subscription

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Recently, SOE President John Smedley asserted that Star Wars: The Old Republic would be the last high profile MMO to utilize a subscription model. BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are confident in the subscription model going forward.

“Those are very kind words in a way,” said Zeschuk. “It’s interesting – I think there will always be a place for premium content at a premium price and that’s one of the differences. Free to play is very much about trial, about ‘Hey, I don’t know what this is, I don’t have confidence that it’s any good, but I’m willing to take a look at it,’ versus ‘I know this is good, from a trusted source, and it’s the biggest license in the world.’ So it’s a different value proposition.”

“There’s more competition for entertainment dollars now than ever before from social and play for free, and all sorts of entertainment, which I think is actually really healthy from an entertainment industry perspective,” added Muzyka. “But I agree with Greg that there’s a space for a certain number of premium products that are subscription based or whatever the premium pricing model is. But they have to merit it, they have to earn that from a consumer trust perspective and delivering and exceeding expectations. I think The Old Republic is definitely in that triple-A premium category. That’s the feedback reading from the players and data testing.”

Source: IndustryGamers

Uncharted 3 Developers Impressed By Movie Producers

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Director Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist) was recently named as the director to the Uncharted movie and he’s said all the right things about appealing to fans of the games. While the movie is being produced outside of the purview of Naughty Dog, creative director Amy Hennig has been in regular contact with the film’s producers.

“The producers of the movie project have a lot of integrity, and they are keen to make the kind of film fans of Uncharted want to see made,” said Uncharted 3 co-lead designer Richard Lemarchand. “We’ve been impressed at Naughty Dog with the level of interest they’ve shown in talking to us and to Amy [Hennig, creative director] in particular in order to get it right. The attachment of Neil Burger to the project is a very good sign in that regard.”

“I’ve always been very excited about it,” Lemarchand continued. “I’m interested in this concept of transmedia, perhaps because of the kind of media environment I grew up in, that we all grew up in. I’m a big Doctor Who and Star Wars fan. You have the primary thing, which is the TV show or the movies, but then you extend your enjoyment by re-experiencing those story worlds through these other channels. We’re all big fans of film. We had to study on the techniques of cinema very diligently to be able to make these games. So yeah, I remain excited about the future of the Uncharted feature film.”

Source: Eurogamer

Star Wars: The Old Republic Early Access First Come, First Served

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While Star Wars: The Old Republic will be releasing officially on December 20, one of the perks of pre-ordering will be the ability to play early. However, this promotional measure will work differently depending on when people pre-ordered the game.

“While we understand all of you want to be in Early Game Access on Day One, part of the point of a head start program like this one is to allow us to gradually ramp up the population of our servers so that on launch day, the general play experience is as pleasant as possible,” said senior community manager Stephen Reid. “While we’re going to be allowing a lot of people into Early Game Access at regular intervals, we cannot allow everyone who pre-orders in at once. That would defeat the point of a gradual head start.”

“The next obvious question is ‘I pre-ordered on Day X, when do I get access ‘ While we cannot answer that for everyone, I will say (as I did in July) that those who pre-ordered early will be getting Early Game Access, well, earliest,” added Reid. “At this point we still have pre-orders available and therefore, anyone who pre-orders will still gain Early Game Access, but as they’re redeeming their code later, they’ll get Early Game Access later. As I’ve said before the difference between ‘early’ and ‘later’ should be a matter of days, not weeks.”

Source: swtor.com