PlayScreen Poker Doubles Down With Billboards

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Online and mobile ads provide a great, frictionless way for people to download and play online and mobile games. However, there’s still something to be said for old fashioned outdoor advertising. PlayScreen thought so, and recently put up some billboards leaving Los Vegas and for those heading back to California and elsewhere. We talked with William Volk CCO PlayScreen about the marketing campaign and so much more.

Give some background on your history in the gaming industry.

In the age of the dinosaurs I worked for Avalon Hill in the Year of Our Lord 1979. The first game I ever wrote was Conflict 2500 that came out for Apple II, Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. Voyager I is a 3D FPS ahead of its time. It had a map that only showed you what you explored, and had randomly generated levels. It used some assembly and some basic. You could make more money in those days per hour than you could now!

William Volk

Then I worked for Rising Star for a few years, then I worked for the Mac and I did Pyramid of Peril. I was at Activision for eight years as Vice President of Technology; I green-lit and produced Manhole, the first CD-ROM game. Bobby Kotick knew me from the Amiga days and I was probably the only senior person to stay on after he bought the company. There’s also Return to Zork and people are still complaining about the puzzles in that to this today. We made an unfair, ridiculous game – we had puzzles that were so crazy, you could break the game without even knowing it. It was literally cracking us up while we were doing it.

Double Fine is trying to bring the genre back with their new Kickstarter.

It warms my heart what Double Fine is working on. My answer on why adventure games went away is that they were too expensive and everyone wanted to do FPS. Anyway, I eventually I did some educational games for Lightspan for educators who wanted to try and have kids learn fractions. The whole project was over a million dollars and it ended up on the PlayStation. That company went public in early 2000 and the stock market crashed, especially for tech companies. Then I started dabbling in mobile. I met Sherri when she was working on a project for James Cameron. We worked on a big social mobile game at Bonus Mobile Entertainment called The Dozens inspired by the Wayans Brothers card game in the middle of the decade that worked on multiple platforms. We worked at mynumo, not a game company at first, but we started getting more mobile games; from 2007 to 2008 we were supported by those games we made.

Now Sherri made a poker game for AOL in the mid 90s and I was made the CCO. First title we did at PlayScreen was with Bocce Ball, and it succeeded because it was simple. If you want to learn why something does well, look at Draw Something compared to Ngmoco’s Doodle This; while ngmoco’s game had more features, OMGPOP made their game more accessible. Poker took a long time to come out but we always had in mind to do that.

Tell me about how PlayScreen Poker differentiates itself in the mobile poker game market.

It’s a beautiful looking product, and it has things like a practice mode even when you don’t have an online connection. But the thing that’s coming out is the ability to connect with people and make the game yours. How do you measure being the best poker player Against your own friends, and that’s what the game will let you do.

What metrics can you talk about with PlayScreen Poker so far?

We’re about the ninth top title in the App Store. In the past we’ve gotten up to the level of Zynga poker but we’re waiting for the revision of our product and then we’re going to push it with more innovative advertising.

We have thousands of players per day and hundreds of thousands of downloads, but that’s not important. We have players that play the most, the whales. These are interesting players and they’re playing for a lot of times and they’re playing long times. Players wagered 18,000 chips apiece on April 9 but generally it’s in the thousands.

Talk to me about the billboard promotion you had recently.

We understand the iPhone marketing channels. We do video ads and incentive ads, but what you want are good users. We were spending all most ten times as much on online advertising as we are now with billboards. There are four full sized billboards – it’s not like it’s driven a huge number of users, but it’s driven people who play a lot. Statistically, we had one of our historic highs recently; the number nine category in poker and eight in free games.

We did on the way back from Vegas because people are going to Los Angeles and San Diego, their minds are on going back to work, and this helps them bring their minds back to Vegas, where they were having fun. We have more people playing the games a lot and Sunday in particular was a large day for wagering. We were driving people that were interested in poker. It’s not so much who you bring in, especially for social games, a lot of it is how players are attached to the game.

Right now we’re close to releasing a new version with PlayScreen Poker 2 and PlayScreen Poker 2 HD for the Retina display, we were trying to be where everyone was and we wanted to figure out what the players wanted to do. We’ve rewarded people who want to play with us. PlayScreen Poker 2 is about people who want to engage with other players . We make it easy to set up games with your friends. We’ve done a lot of engagement and we’ll let people earn chips by watching ads.

It must be a challenge to try and go up against the Zynga’s of the world.

I’m quoted as saying that Zynga made the casual game market really work. We think they’re a great company to work against. For us, we’ve unleashed achievements across our titles. We’re improving chats and invites and so that players know when their friends show up. It pushes us to make the best product we can.

Do you feel like advertising can be a differentiator for mobile titles these days?

There’s 22,000 new apps every week. You have to be better than the rest. The quality of games has gotten so high. The NES age, which I remember because I got to work then, during the whole era there was 700 games total and now there’s thousands games every day. It used to be you bid in Kyoto for your cart allocation, but now something like Tiny Wings can come out of nowhere and do great. So any differentiator is key.

Where are you hoping to take PlayScreen Poker in the future?

PlayScreen has a logo with IClops and you should see something with him soon. We have an amazing word game and strategy game coming and the new bocce game that you’ll see more about very soon.

Thanks, William.

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Brand Opportunies Beyond Publishers

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For a long time, there was singular sort of game that brands would have to go publishers to make into a retail. It’s because everything, whether it was a blockbuster movie or a soft-drink mascot, was going to come out in some sort of physical format. Digital has changed many things now, and it’s also opened up different avenues for brands to get messaging out. We talked with Patrick Sweeney, head of Reed Smith’s Video Game Practice and a member of the Video Game Bar Association’s board, about this new trend.

Talk to me about this approach by brands to directly produce games and potentially bypass game publishers – should publishers be worried?

In some cases, yes . . . These are potential revenue-generating opportunities that publishers may not have a chance to profit from. But, realistically, a lot of publishers would not have wanted to invest in many of these projects anyway. That being said, this is symptomatic of a larger issue that should be concerning to some. Regardless of whether the game is brand-based, the ability to bring a game to market without a publisher ought to be concerning to many publishers.

Why bypass publishers?

I think every brand is going to have a different perspective, but the major factor is the relatively lower production cost and barrier to entry to reach the consumer. Games like these are not $50 million investments and there is not the risk of dealing with a warehouse full of inventory. Independent games have to manage the process with digital platforms, but its a much different level of commitment.

The Sour Patch Kids game split things a little bit – Kraft managed development through a client of mine (Beefy Media), but they didn’t completely bypass the traditional publisher. There was still an important role for Capcom on the marketing side. It’s not accurate to say that a publisher has no value in a situation like this . . . they just have a different value proposition for this type of opportunity.

Why are things like Facebook games increasingly popular in your opinion for brands?

I think it’s a similar thought process. The barrier to entry for Facebook games is lower – you can get wide exposure to a mainstream audience for a lower production cost. And you don’t NEED a publisher to launch a game on Facebook. Because of the lower amount of development time, it’s easier for the brand to wrap its arms around the development process and the cost associated with it. It appears less daunting and easier to put together for an entity that may not have a lot of game development experience.

Social games can also be more directly reactive to consumer reactions and demands. How does that factor into these opportunities?

You’re exactly right. Social games can iterate quickly based on consumer feedback. It’s not like a traditional boxed product, where that content is static.

What else about mobile and social game opportunities are appealing to a brand?

The shorter development time is attractive. Showtime might say, “The next season of Dexter in 9 months . . . it would be great if we had a game associated with the launch.” Well, of course, you can’t launch a console game in that time (at least not a good one), but it’s likely that you can do something on Facebook. So if a licensor hasn’t been thinking far enough ahead, there still may be an opportunity for some game based on the brand.

It seems like many brands are retreating from the AAA games field. Take something like Hunger Games – a decade ago, that would have gotten a PS2 game, now it’s just on Facebook.

I don’t think that the brands are retreating. I think the publishers are. The brand likely would welcome a large license fee for a big AAA console release. Publishers are not going to take the risk on just ANY license. But I think the top end licenses will always have an opportunity to partner with publishers. There’s some licenses/brands where a AAA cross-platform commitment is justified, whether it be Spider-Man, Batman or the sports leagues or whatever the next mass-appeal franchise may be. But it’s at this next level of license that I think publishers have retreated from the AAA-level of investment. Not to single out Dexter (it’s one of my favorite shows). But, it’s unlikely that there’s a good console, AAA publishing opportunity out there today. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a different games avenue for that license.

It also means more opportunities for independent developers.

Absolutely . . . and not just for the developers. I think that new ways to bring games to market (whether branded or otherwise) is great for the industry in general. For example, Beefy Media was helping Kraft to craft the Sour Patch Kids games. Developers like Icarus studios and Three Rings found an opportunity to develop the Dexter and Dr. Who games, respectively. It goes beyond developers. Companies like [a]list games that are working on marketing campaigns for mobile and social games as well as tech/middleware companies like Havok all benefit from having more potential customers. All of a sudden, there’s an ecosystem of marketers.

Independently-funded games might not be good for all companies, but it’s definitely good for the industry as a whole. This goes above and beyond branded games. Traditional Publishers all recognize that things are changing. They all have to adjust and each approach it differently. Some companies will adjust through acquisition of mobile/social companies. Some will phase out of retail console and gradually change their portfolio of release.

The ability to publish and develop games without the traditional publishers is opening up new opportunities for commercializing content. This is not just limited to brands/licenses, but I think that brands are certainly taking advantage of this new world. I expect it to continue.

Patrick, thanks.

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DFC Intelligence Talks Free-To-Play Rise

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DFC Intelligence recently predicted that over the next five years, the free-to-play social/browser market will grow from $3.2 billion in 2011 to $7.5 billion in 2016. F2P games on social networks are expected to grow 173 percent from 2011 to 2016, reaching $6 billion. North America has been a leader at providing social network F2P games with 36 percent share of revenue in 2011.

Those are startling numbers are a sign of where the focus of the video gaming industry will be heading over the next decade and beyond. We talked with David Cole, President of DFC Intelligence, to find out what the situation with free-to-play social/browser games is and how it will play out.

What do you see driving the growth for social and browser games over the next five years, will it be what’s elevated it recently or will it be a new trend?

I think what is really driving the growth in U.S. is Facebook and Zynga; in other markets like Europe it is driven outside of Facebook. Bigpoint was able to build their own social network completely independent of Facebook. Granted, they’re targeting very different audiences, with Bigpoint going after traditional gamers that might play World of Warcraft. Zynga hasn’t really driven that in the U.S.; Zynga has targeted the casual game industry, those playing games on Pogo and they really found a new model to attract those type of gamers. There’s an audience of core gamers that play consoles on PC, but for browser games, it’s a click of a button and you’re in. For PS3 and Xbox 360 you have to wait sometimes five minutes to get into the game, between turning it on and waiting for a patch to download – with the social and browser games, they work instantly. They also work on a variety of platforms, and a PC is becoming a global necessity whereas a video game console system is really a luxury. In an emerging market, people might have a low-end PC and these games work on those sorts of systems. Having a common platform that reaches masses is key.

Originally, many of the free-to-play games coming to the U.S. were from Korea and most only managed a modest amount of success. Do you think that games better suited to the Western tastes have helped raise the profile of the free-to-play space?

Really it comes down to the simplicity. The problem with many of those Asian games is that they were targeting the more sophisticated gamers, and you had all the same barriers to access. They were basically like full retail games and they were very complex, so the audience was limited. These browser and social games can reach a huge audience. Nexon is doing very well with their products, but if you look at their audience compared to Zynga, it’s two completely different audiences. These things aren’t mutually exclusive, you have to look at the audiences. Someone’s who’s going to play an Xbox 360 game is different than a CityVille gamer; there’s some cross-over but it’s a diversion. For larger client based games, there’s some hassle in downloading and getting started. Those games are going after the WoW audience whereas the browser games have tapped into a new audience.

Do you think that social game companies will try to diversify away from Facebook if they can afford to?

I think the successful ones have to. And when you’re talking about Facebook, you’re talking about Zynga. There’s been some success stories, and Zynga’s very strong there, but that’s only about 20 percent of the worldwide market and it’s key reaching that other 80 percent that aren’t as active on Facebook as the North American audience. Facebook is going to be really saturated and there’s an opportunity to do what Bigpoint has done. What you want is multiple games, different sorts of games, making what you have its own social network, that is probably the biggest growth opportunity for companies that aren’t Zynga.

Where do you see mobile’s role in the expansion of social/browser games?

Clearly, you look now at what social companies are doing, they are looking to do mobile and smartphones versions of their products. It’s good so that you can keep up with your game on the road; I look at it as an added feature for these games. There’s been a lot of misinformation about the mobile game market and numbers that are flat out wrong, however. The revenue of a mobile game is usually a fraction of a hit free-to-play game on PC. If you’re launching a mobile game you have to think that you’re competing with all these other apps and dedicated mobile games. So I think really it becomes a major issue for anyone developing a mobile application, they’re not just competing against other apps, they’re competing with sophisticated games designed for the platform.

What are the advertising opportunities for marketers with these sorts of games? Your report said Zynga spent about 6 times more in marketing in 2011 than it did in 2010, $234 million versus $38 million.

In terms of advertising, if you look at Zynga, they’ve moved far away from advertising and they’re doing offer-based deals. If you look at their bookings, they’re doing a lot of money on those deals with user payments. I think the opportunities for marketers are, if you create a F2P game and you get people involved and you’re really going with a a pure F2P game, the possibilities exist for you to really build a product that’s fun to play – there’s all sorts of opportunities. That’s where the opportunities are rather than advertising around games. It’s more about taking a strong brand that they want people to engage with and building something from the ground up.

How worrisome is the pernicious trend of game clones

It’s a big issue. There’s always been cloning in the casual games space. What it results in is you have games more as commodities and you have consumer fatigue. Then you have companies that don’t really care. What it causes is that they increase the development budget to make their products stand out. Really I think the focus in the report was, ‘how do you make money from these products’ but if costs double [to develop] it could mean that profits will go down. You’ll have to spend money on all facets to make money.

That’s a major highlight of the report. It’s no longer just throwing a game up there; if you look at Zynga and Bigpoint they’ve got huge development teams, you look at how Zynga’s marketing budget has increased. Bigpoint is able to use Battlestar Gallactica and that raises the bar for everybody and you have to put in a certain level of effort to compete.

Anything you’d care to conclude with about the report?

The most important thing from the report is that while people define the space as Facebook games, for us we look to it as games that are simple to play without having to install special software. Because of that I think the Zynga/Bigpoint model is the way to go – you try and take that audience and migrate them to a bunch of other gamers. Being able to migrate your audience is how to be successful in this business.

David, thanks.

To find out more about the report, please check out dfcint.com.

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[a]list Summit San Francisco Highlights

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The [a]list Summit that took place in San Francisco last week brought together marketers from many different game companies to exchange ideas on the state of the industry and how to connect to consumers. Pachter’s keynote address has already been covered in detail here. The subsequent sessions covered social gaming from several angles, including the core game audience, marketing techniques and social analytics.

Kicking off the discussion titled “The Social Core”, Kixeye VP of Marketing John Getze said their games do better than Zynga’s because, “the number of DAU we have as a percentage of MAU is a lot higher than Zynga. We strive to have a game that’s much more like a traditional PC game than an online game, and our level of ARPDAU is much higher.”

John Getze

In discussing the social game market and Zynga’s huge audience compared to the relatively tiny audiences of Kabam and Kixeye, Senior Director of Global Product Marketing Leo Olebe of Kabam put it succinctly: “Why does it matter if you’re talking 250 million over there and 2 million over here It’s how many people are playing, how many people are staying, and how many people are paying.”

The hardcore gamer is the customer target for both Kixeye and Kabam, but the size of that market is not something they’re entirely sure of. “More than 1 million, less than 300 million,” said Olebe, not narrowing the field very much.

Both Getze and Olebe agreed that user acquisition costs have risen, but they both insisted that cost is only one issue. “The other part of the equation is that you could spend a dollar to acquire someone who’s only going to give you 50 cents over the life of the product, or you could spend a million dollars and if that person winds up giving you 6 million bucks you’re doing all right,” said Olebe.

Getze spelled out how hard it is to get a foothold in the social game market: “When we launched Backyard Monsters we were looking at a 30 day break-even point on all of our spending because we had no money. Once you’ve established a ‘food court’ of different franchises it doesn’t matter if its pizza, or burritos, or burgers, they’re still eating; you’re looking at a network LTV (life time value) and that really helps with user acquisition. But it’s extremely challenging, given the cost of user acquisition, to come onto a platform now. The first game has to be a hit.” Getze noted that their customer acquisition costs are now around $1.50, which is double what it was in June of 2010.

The Ayzenberg Groups’ Keith Pape and EA’s Director of Online Marketing Tabitha Hayes took the stage next for the “Social Marketing” session. Scaling up social marketing efforts is difficult if you want to maintain quality interactions, Pape observed. Many challenges are part of the task facing social marketers, and Tabitha Hayes noted how she prepares for the inevitable bad events.

“Plan for the worst; don’t plan for the best. Seriously, plan for the worst,” said Pape. “S***’s gonna break, people are going to come to your office with guns… Then you’ll have a plan and you can optimize it every time. The good thing is, the worst gets better over time.”

Rebecca Markarian

Hayes advised that beyond those factors, meet things head on, and be authentic. Tell the users what you’re doing about their issue; if you don’t have the answers, tell them that you don’t have the answer right now but you’re working on it.

The final session was “Social Analytics”, with special attention on how to go about gathering and analyzing data. Rebecca Markarian, Executive Director of Social and Emerging Media at the Ayzenberg Group, discussed some best practices.

“Measuring sentiment is not easy; in fact in gaming it’s probably harder than any other space because any automatic sentiment tool that grades automatically will grade something like ‘that’s sick’ as a negative every single time, ” Markarain said. “So we hand grade every post that comes in . . . it’s time-consuming work but the data that comes out of it is valuable.”

The ultimate value of all of these analytics is this: “At the end of the day, being able to go into the C-suite and say ‘We can prove this makes money’ is going to be a huge benefit to getting more budgets for all of us to do social media,” Markarain concluded.

 

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Exclusive: Seamus Blackley [a]list Summit Keynote Part 2

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Here’s part two of Xbox co-creator and digital game company founder Innovative Leisure Seamus Blackley’s closing keynote at Ayzenberg Group’s [a]list summit 2012 Los Angeles. Here, he discusses how lessons from the way game developers learned to deal with their passionate fanbase are now relevant to the way game marketers communicate with their audience.

Castlevania Sequel Teased By Konami

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Konami has been teasing a new Castlevania at their Facebook page. They have a gothic looking image with the URL TheDragonReturns.com, the Dragon being an ancient nickname for Dracula.

On the website itself, there’s an image of the a doorway with a date right above it for Konami’s pre-E3 press conference. While hints point to a Lords of Shadow sequel, it is also believed tha a 3DS title named Mirror of Fate will also be unveiled.

Source: Facebook.com/konami

Metro: Last Light – Enter The Metro

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This Metro: Last Light film, titled Enter the Metro, details what happened in the moments before the world ended. There’s also an insightful making of video providing some next extra details of the filming in Kiev.

Sega Enters Ron Gilbert’s Cave

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Sega has announced a publishing deal with Double Fine for Ron Gilbert’s new title called The Cave. The game will have a digital release on both PC and consoles in early 2013.

“The concept of The Cave has been bouncing around in my head for many, many years, and then the little voices that tell me to do things said it was time to make the game,” said Ron Gilbert. “I’m thrilled to be working with amazingly talented folks at Double Fine and ecstatic that the team at Sega believes in adventure games and quirky ideas.”

“As Sega continues to expand our digital gaming catalog, we’ve put a lot of effort into finding truly original experiences we can help bring to life,” added Haruki Satomi, Senior Vice President of Digital Business at Sega. “Both Ron and the team at Double Fine are experienced and deeply creative, and we value the chance to work with them on The Cave.”

Google Play Adds In-App Subscriptions

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In-app Billing has been available on Google Play for roughly a year, giving developers alternate ways to finance their apps. Today, 23 of the 24 top-grossing apps in Google Play use In-app Billing, and the total revenue generated from in-app purchases exceeds revenue from traditional app purchases.

“We’re now taking In-app Billing further by adding another important business model — subscriptions,” said Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, Product Manager on the Google Play team. “Starting today, developers can use In-app Billing to sell monthly or annual subscriptions from inside of their apps. All subscriptions are auto-renewing, for every app and game and every type of subscription product. Developers just set the price and billing interval and Google Play manages the purchase transactions for them, just as it does for other in-app products and app purchases.”

“For users, Google Play provides a familiar and convenient purchase experience, highlighting subscription details such as price and billing interval before continuing with purchases,” he added. “After the transaction, Google Play manages recurring billing and keeps users informed of new charges, sending them an email with each renewal. At any time, users can visit My Apps in the Play Store app to view their subscriptions and cancel any subscription as needed.

There will also be options for developers to monetize premium dynamic content such as journals and magazines and also sell access to bundled products, game levels, music and video content, value-added services, or any other digital content. They’re also integrating HTTP-based publisher API through which enterprise-scale backend servers can validate or cancel subscriptions, allowing developers to extend access from their Android apps to their web properties, based on subscriptions that are purchased on Google Play.

“In the coming days, several developers will be launching apps with Google Play subscriptions and we expect many more to follow,” noted Elbouchikhi. “Glu Mobile is launching updated versions of its top Android titles, including Frontline Commando, offering subscriptions through custom VIP currency packages. “We’re using Google Play subscriptions to offer consumers a compelling value and a single currency which they can use across Glu’s most popular titles” says Niccolo de Masi, CEO of Glu. “We’re excited to bring these capabilities to our Android users and we believe that Google Play subscriptions will fuel further growth in our business.”

“If you’re a developer, you can get started with subscriptions right away by reading the In-app Billing documentation and downloading the updated sample app. If you are already using in-app billing, you’ll find that adding support for subscriptions is straightforward and involves only minor changes to your code,” he added. “You can publish your updated apps and subscription products as soon as you are ready. We’ve already rolled out client support to most Android devices worldwide, so any user with Google Play 3.5 or higher installed can buy subscriptions starting today.”

Source: Android-developers.blogspot.com