The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Announced

CD Projekt Red has announced that they are working on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, confirming rumors that the game was the next big title to be coming from the Polish developer. The company says this will be their final Witcher game and will combine “CD Projekt Red’s trademark decision-based storytelling flair with a living open world larger than any other in modern RPG history.”

“The captivating and non-linear story of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt takes place in a rich, truly open-world environment,” said Adam Badowski, head of the studio. “A world which is thrilling to explore, full of daring adventures, momentous quests, memorable characters, and unique monsters. Players will freely travel through woods, lakes, mountains, cities and villages. Each region is inhabited by distinct populations with their own customs, legends and problems.  The world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is 30 times bigger than The Witcher 2.”

“Imagine playing a dark fantasy game with the same great non-linear story as in the previous Witcher titles, but now told in a world you can explore freely with no artificial boundaries. The war-ravaged world is so huge that to reach farther places you will need to ride a horse or sail a boat to get there. A world where your choices have truly epic consequences,” adds Badowski. “From the development side, this goal is extremely demanding. Our team had to make significant design changes and our tech had to be rebuilt. But we believe that this will lead to a completely new level of non-linearity and a whole new, richer gaming experience. As a gamer, I would love to play this kind of RPG, and I think this is what many players are waiting for. This is our dream come true at CD Projekt Red, and we hope it will be the same for you!”

http://www.youtube.com/v/EQ2sYz9_WnE {video listed as “private”}

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be an open world game built using the REDengine 4. It is planned for a 2014 release on “all high-end platforms.”

“People may ask if this is really going to be the last Witcher game. Yes, it is. Why? Because we believe that we should end the series on a high note. Technology has progressed to where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined. This will be the ultimate fantasy RPG experience, and while we’re hardly out of stories to tell, we believe it’s time for us to look to new worlds and new horizons to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can create,” Badowski continued. “For all of those who have never experienced the adventures of Geralt before, this will be their last chance. The game will be accessible all players–those who are fans of the series and those who just love RPGs–thanks to availability on all major high-end platforms and an introduction designed to smoothly introduce all those who visit the world of the Witcher for the first time.”

 

J.J. Abrams Working With Valve On A Movie

During the keynote for the 2013 DICE Summit, Valve president and co-founder Gabe Newell and Bad Robot Productions president and founder J.J. Abrams together delivered a presentation called “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?” The keynote demonstrated that both had mutual respect for their work in their own respective fields.

Most intriguingly Abrams announced he and Valve are working together to create either a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie. The prolific producer has a lot on his hands right now, with Star Trek Into Darkness coming out May 2013 and a Star Wars movie to concern himself with after that.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Footage In North Korean Video

According to reports, North Korea released a video on its official YouTube page depicting a “dream” of uniting Korea and destroying the U.S. Notable to the gaming sphere, the video includes images taken from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

The subtitles for the video read in part, “Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing. It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire started by itself.”While the original video went offline after a complaint by Activision (and appears to have been removed completely by the North Korean government) there are still copies of the video on YouTube. Watch the above embedded video to see the whole bizarre display, which includes an instrumental version of the 1985 charity single We Are The World.

Source: BBC.co.uk

Samsung, Chillingo Found 100% Indie

Chillingo has announced a new partnership with Samsung in the form of a portal called 100% Indie. From the day the site launches on March 4, developers will receive 100 percent revenue until September 3, then 90 percent until March 3, 2014, 80 percent revenue until March 3, 2015, and after that receive 70 percent of the revenue.

“Among the exciting things that 100% Indie will offer is a brand new way to connect with industry leader Samsung and earn unparalleled revenue share opportunities,” wrote Chillingo founders Joe Wee and Chris Byatte. “100 percent Indie allows developers to tap into the phenomenal growth that Samsung is experiencing. Publishing games on Samsung Apps through this initiative will provide developers with the most competitive pre-negotiated revenue share in the industry. Developers who join the program in the first six months will receive 100 percent revenue for their title, and are guaranteed higher than standard revenue share rates until March 2015.”

Source: EA.com

Epic Music On Eight Floppy Drives

People have found ways to turn out music on all sorts of things, including floppy disc drives! Here are a few of the highlights for things like the themes to James Bond, Skyrim, and Game of Thrones but the musician who did this has done many more.

 

Exclusive: Angry Birds – Momentum And The Right Trajectory

By Meelad Sadat

Rover’s presentation at [a]list summit New York started with the trailer for the Hoth level update to Angry Birds Star Wars, where Imperial AT-AT Walkers comically slip on ice, and eventually one struggling AT-AT has all four legs go under it. It turns out that was Rovio’s quiet homage to Disney, mimicking Bambi, and put in the video to commemorate how Disney picked up the Star Wars license.  It’s the kind of smart thinking when it comes to showing off the Angry Birds brand that put Rovio on the map.

In some respects, Rovio has made the map when it comes to taking an original mobile game IP, making it successful, and turning it into a global phenomenon. How they did it was the topic of a fireside chat between Rovio senior VP of brand marketing Ville Heijari and [a]list’s Steve Fowler.

Rovio is still widely known as a mobile game maker in the game industry, but hearing Heijari give their history in about 90 seconds, it’s clear the company has grown way beyond that moniker.  It’s an entertainment company, deriving more and more of its revenue from licensing the Angry Birds brand.  In 2011, it said it drew more than 30 percent of revenues for Angry Birds from licensing, toys, merchandise, everything but selling games.

Just yesterday, the company announced plans to create its own Angry Birds cartoon, with co-founder Mikael Hed telling Wall Street Journal, “The content itself is the channel.  We have become the channel.”

It’s a rare piece of entertainment that can galvanize enough of a following to turn one piece of IP into the foundation for a global entertainment company, but Angry Birds has done just that for Rovio.  Three guys left college in Finland in 2003 to start the company, seeing how more and more people were playing mobile games but with few quality experiences out there.  They originally made games in Java.  Smartphones changed their strategy.

Rovio marketing heads Peter Vesterbacka and Ville Heijari

“There was the indication for us that the potential is there,” said Heijari.  “Google or Apple would say they activated 250,000 more phones.  We’d say that’s 250,000 more people we need to have.”

“The idea was to make more engaging games for mobile,” he added.

Over the next six years, Rovio grew from three to twelve people, all developers.  In 2009, it released Angry Birds.  Today, the company has 540 people on staff.  Less than half — only 220 people — are in game development.  Outside of its Finland headquarters it has offices in Sweden, China, New York and Los Angeles, and it’s looking to expand to Tokyo and Korea.  Only two of those locations, Finland and Sweden, are game studios.

It’s surprising to hear Heijari say that initial reaction to Angry Birds in Finland, where it first hit the iPhone App Store, was “lukewarm.”

“The characters are not interesting, sound design is boring, everything is average,” Heijari said of the first sentiments Rovio received about the game.

That makes the story of how Rovio embraced this brand that much more interesting.  Seeing initial reaction, the company immediately turned to grassroots PR with a territory by territory approach. They went after regional press and game forums to start to get people interested in it, first encouraging they play it then finding ways to keep them talking about it.

From there, according to Heijari, it was the game’s fun, polished experience that made it take off.  They made Angry Birds number one in the iPhone App Store store in Finland first, then Sweden, then other European countries.  Their big prize was UK, what Heijari calls the “turning point.”  Once it showed up among top apps on UK charts, Apple started to take notice.  By that point it was about three months after launch.

“You have to have the goods to share,” said Heijari.  “There has to be that magic X factor so whoever plays it gets hooked.”

And once Apple takes notice, he added, “The product has to be ready, really polished.”

Heijari shares an anecdote as the moment when Rovio knew they had something stellar on their hands.  Co-founder Niklas Hed went to a dinner party and handed the game to a friend’s mother, who was hosting.  Several hours later they found her still playing the game instead of cooking dinner.

As early success metrics for Angry Birds, Heijari says Rovio looked at retention first and foremost.  Despite the game being paid they wanted people to keep playing, so they released level updates.  They initially wanted to charge for new levels but decided giving it away to keep people engaged with it was more important.

“That worked remarkably well,” said Heijari.  “It contributed to word of mouth.”

When did the company start thinking of it as a brand?  According to Heijari, in some respects Angry Birds resonated as a piece of IP at Rovio before even becoming the game we know.  He said the earliest version was a brick-breaking game made in MS Paint.  It had little birds in it, and they would disappear with a poof and feathers flying when bricks near them were destroyed.  Nobody liked the game, but they took an immediate liking to the birds.

Once the game was a hit, their first hint at licensing potential came from a toy company.  New York-based Commonwealth Toys approached them because they had been looking for a property that could translate to plush toys.  They had researched kid’s TV and comic book licenses but didn’t find anything that fit the kind of toys they wanted to make.  Then they found Angry Birds.  Heijari says that jumpstarted their decision to move into licensing.  For Commonwealth, it was a goldmine.  Midway through last year the company said it was on track  to make $400 million on Angry Birds toys in 2012.

Heijari said about licensing considerations at Rovio, “It was business driven at first, but eventually we realized that if we can get Angry Birds t-shirts on the street it may help downloads.”

The drive to license never meant they gave up strict control of the brand.  Rovio now has 30 people internally working on consumer products, and that team is completely separate from marketing.  But that brand nurturing approach has saturated the entire company, from development to sales.

As an example of how their marketing approach has evolved, Heijari points to Angry Birds Space.  It was the first game the company launched with a well-planned, integrated campaign.  The PR announcement was accompanied by all-new assets that included game trailers, both those created by Rovio’s in-house animation team and a live action buzz-building video the company arranged with NASA.  It showed an astronaut in space demonstrating how physical objects – Angry Birds toys –  behave in an environment void of gravity.  The video was a hit, generating tens of millions of views.  It has nearly 22 million today on YouTube alone.  According to Heijari, it turned buzz for the game “to eleven.”

That video also underlines how Rovio now approaches marketing content.

“A lot of it is experimentation – what’s funny, what’s cool, what haven’t we done yet,” said Heijari, adding that the experimenting is done in-house.  “Does it move you?  Because if it moves you, then the fans will respond to it.”

Once Rovio releases marketing assets, the company stays on top of how they’re performing.  It uses social media to gauge fan response and tries to monitor, not own, the conversation in places like Facebook.  The ultimate goal is to have content shared, and that’s what the company continually evaluates.  Is it engaging people, are they sharing it, how much are they sharing on average?   If they’re not sharing it, is sentiment on social networks shedding light on why not? To hear how Heijari described it, it has all of the makings of an agile approach — test, learn, commit.

“Evaluate, then keep on doing the right thing,” said Heijari.

Being reactive is a good thing when it comes to content marketing.  Heijari shared a story of how suddenly people started baking Angry Birds cakes.  Rovio quickly decided to start featuring the cakes prominently on their social channels to keep people baking, trying to take it from something that might seem like a goofy one-off to give the impression that it’s a phenomenon.

Does Rovio worry about Angry Birds brand fatigue?

Kiddie park in Shanghai

“Oversaturation is definitely a concern.  There are markets where it’s really being exploited — Korea for instance, or Taiwan.  But in the U.S. and Europe, is it really that visible   I would say it’s not overexposed.  There are roughly 25,000 Angry Birds products out there, but you can’t go into a supermarket and see 15,000 Angry Birds products,” said Heijari

One of the more puzzling aspects of how Rovio has treated their flagship property is the lack of a true sequel.  The game has had iterations that obviously keep people playing, to the tune of 260 million active users today.  It has never had that requirement of what we consider a true entertainment franchise, putting a core “brand part 2” out in the marketplace.

“There was the feeling that Angry Birds 2 would kill off Angry Birds,” said Heijari.

Instead, Rovio focused on new game content, and eventually fresh variations such as Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Star Wars.  Heijari is quick to point out that these weren’t “re-skinnings” but iterations on the core game play that included “a lot of love.”

Going forward, Rovio is keen on introducing new IP.  A recent one is Amazing Alex, originally created as Casey’s Contraptions by SnappyTouch but now part of Rovio’s portfolio.  Heijari said Amazing Alex and future games in development are going to take Rovio beyond the Angry Birds moniker.

The goal, he said, is to have fans recall their games as “developed by Rovio, not from the makers of Angry Birds.”

Super Bowl Reinforces How TV Can Feed Twitter

While the country debates whether the infamous Super Bowl blackout helped the 49ers rustle the Ravens’ feathers in the second half, the hiccup had one surefire effect. It drove hordes of people sitting in front of a TV set to take to Twitter. With tallies now in, more than 200,000 tweets were dedicated to the power outage alone on Super Bowl Sunday. But the blackout was just one example of how prevalent a force Twitter can be during televised events.  The social net had a record breaking night of 24.1 million tweets and generated 100,000-200,000 tweets per minute every time something memorable happened during the game.

It’s not out of the blue that Twitter acquired Bluefin Labs this week, a firm that provides audience data to advertisers, agencies and TV networks. Twitter nicely tied the affair together with its Super Bowl performance.

“As millions of people around the world experienced during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, Twitter is an amazing complement to live television viewing. We look forward to working with Bluefin and our partners in the television industry to make the experience of Twitter and television even better,” it said in a statement.

Having Bluefin under its wing is meant to help Twitter broaden its ad portfolio, and no-doubt some level of TV tie-ins is part of the strategy.  From a brand standpoint, there was already plenty of that on display during the Super Bowl. According to Marketing Land’s Matt McGee, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 Super Bowl TV spots. Facebook mustered four mentions, followed by one each for Instagram and YouTube. The love affair was two-way.  Consulting agency Whispr Group reported that ad-related tweets drove 30 percent of tweets deemed relevant to the Super Bowl.

It all seems like a testament to the effectiveness of the platform as a social net for simultaneous TV viewing.  It has few bells and whistles, but that simplicity allows for immediacy, acceptable brevity and, at times, forced wit that transcends cooked messaging. That’s what advertisers are catching on to, and it could be Twitter will have a strategy to monetize that by the next Super Bowl.

Source: CNET

Game Connection And [a]list Partner On Marketing Awards

Game Connection returns to the U.S. next month, and organizers are partnering with [a]list to launch programs aimed at marketers.  That includes the first North American edition of the Game Connection Marketing Awards with three new categories sponsored by [a]list daily.

Like their European counterpart, the awards will honor the best campaigns in broadcast, print, mobile, experiential, digital, public relations and social media.  The [a]list daily awards add categories recognizing the best overall campaign, best original content campaign, and the marketer of the year.  In addition, Game Connection will announce the best game marketing agency chosen from the entire field of submissions.

Award submissions are now open and free to enter.  The deadline to submit is February 15.

Game Connection’s partnership with [a]list also includes the addition of the [a]list summit marketing track to its regular agenda of speakers, workshops and deal-making sessions aimed at game publishers and independent developers.  The [a]list summit will add a day of speakers and panel sessions covering marketing trends and is open to those who register for Game Connection as well as general attendees.

The events are all part of Game Connection America 2013 taking place March 25-27, scheduled during GDC week and held at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.  [a]list daily will announce speaker and agenda updates as they become available.

Source: Game Connection {link no longer available}

The Great And Powerful Chrome Experiment

A new Chrome Experiment Find Your Way To Oz inspired by the upcoming feature film Oz The Great and Powerful brings together Disney’s unique storytelling tradition and the power of the web platform, allowing users to interact with the web in a completely new way.  The experience will take users through an interactive journey through a Kansas circus, which leads you to the land of Oz after you are swept up by a massive storm.”

 

The desktop version of “Find Your Way To Oz” uses many of the open web’s more advanced features like immersive graphics, rich 3D audio and camera based interactions where users can become circus characters or record their own mini-movies.

The experiment’s mobile web version also uses cutting-edge web technologies such as accelerated 3D transforms and sprite sheets as well as mobile hardware features like camera, multi-touch, gyroscope and accelerometer. Together they create an experience that can normally only be found in native apps.

To learn more about how this experiment was built, read the technical case study.