The Road Ahead For Games

At GameStop Expo, a panel of industry insiders gathered to look at the future of gaming. Veteran journalist John Gaudiosi moderated the panel, which included Mark Rein, VP Epic Games; Julie Uhrman, CEO of Ouya; and Eric Oria, director of marketing for GameStop. The panelists didn’t agree on everything, which made for a lively discussion.

“It’s well past its time for the transition to more powerful consoles,” said Rein. “There’s explosive growth in mobile. It feels like a really good time to be a game developer. You can build games of all sizes and weights and find the audience that’s interested in them on the platforms that they have.” He added, “I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the re-explosion — not like it ever really went anywhere — of PC gaming. We’re seeing great PC games on Steam and other platforms, and the bespoke free-to-play games like World of Tanks and League of Legends.”

Oria is impressed with the quality of the games being shown for PS4 and Xbox One, as well as the latest games for the Xbox 360 and PS3. “I can’t imagine where it’s going to be three or four years from now once developers have mastered these new systems,” Oria said.

Julie Uhrman had a somewhat different take. “My existence on this panel shows the future of gaming is changing, and the future is here,” Uhrman said. “Devices are getting more powerful, game creators are coming from everywhere, and I think every single person is a gamer. Those lines and definitions between what a hard core gamer is and a casual gamer really don’t exist any more because we’re playing on every single platform. In the future we’re not even going to recognize what gaming is — I’m not even sure the word console is going to be a part of it. The future of gaming is freedom for the creators and a great experience for gamers.”

“As a committed graphics whore, I’ll tell you both their answers are right, ” said Rein. “On one tangent we’re going to see amazing new experiences and visuals. Then there’s this whole explosion of the independent developer. Even PlayStation and Xbox are making a big deal about giving developers access. Some of what next-gen is the ability to get experiences that weren’t economical to bring to you from big huge companies, or were too crazy for those companies.”

Rein also gave a nod to the increasing capabilities of browser-based games. “I think now with HTML 5 you’re going to see the ability for us to bring last-generation, say Xbox 360/PS3, console experiences directly to web browsers without any risks or nonsense. Over time I think the PC will continue to make it easier and easier to get games you couldn’t get before.”

Uhrman points out that it’s not all about the graphics. “I think what’s getting lost in all that is the idea that games are just supposed to be fun,” Uhrman said. “Whether it’s a deep, immersive story, or it’s incredibly action-oriented, or it’s visually appealing, games at the end of the day whether you’re spending $60 or trying it out for free they absolutely have to be fun.”

What are the opportunities with the increasing power of smartphones and tablets, and how will they co-exist with consoles “I’m not a big fan of companion apps,” said Rein. “I want the apps themselves. I don’t want something that talks to Halo on my iPad — I want Halo on my iPad. I think that’s inevitable, the power of these devices is increasing so quickly that sooner or later you’re going to be able to deliver really awesome next-gen experiences. I think we we kicked it off on the iPhone 4 with Infinity Blade. The latsest XCom title on iPad is really, really good.”

Gaudiosi brought up the hybrid model between disc-based content and digital content, which sparked some commentary. “I don’t think disc-based is going to go away,” said Rein. “I have Time-Warner cable and I have a 30 GB cap. The problem is as we get the next-generation, and both systems have Blu-ray discs, and now the games creep up in size, it’s going to get expensive to download four of those games a month. We’ll see a lot of improvements and add-ons coming in all the time through digital.”

It’s not all rosy, though, and Rein is worried about one possible future.”It would really suck if the biggest amount of money in the system went to Internet providers,” Rein said. “If they started metering Internet service to homes in the United States, we’d be fucked. I am definitely in the camp of being worried about what the cable companies are going to do to consumers in the long term.”

Now This Is A View To A Kill

LG is introducing its new Ultra HDTV featuring 4K resolution, and to show just how real the image appears, the company set up this little gem of a prank. Job seekers show up for an interview, but the view out the “window” is not what it seems.  It would have been no fun to be the job seekers in this situation, considering how nerve wracking the process alone can be.

Adweek called the ad “evil and sadistic.”  The general consensus seems to be that it’s yet another case of “prankvertising” and not real.

An ‘Urning’ Experience

The development team at Alien Trap has been hard at work on a new side-scrolling action game called Apotheon. The game uses an art style drawn from classical Greek pottery combined with original gameplay elements with surprisingly good results. Apotheon features original Greek weaponry as well as beautiful level design, which you can check out for yourself in the video below.

Apotheon will release sometime in the next six months through PC/Steam.

Sharing Their ‘Destiny’

Up until its official unveiling at E3 a couple of months ago, some folks were skeptical as to how Bungie’s latest game project, Destiny, would turn out. There’s no need to wonder any more as the gameplay definitely has that Halo-like aspect to it, with terrific graphics and great multiplayer events. The game has gotten an amazing reception over the past few months, prompting the developer to release a “thank you” video for its avid community. Of course this video also shows even more gameplay and encourages social media sharing by showcasing hashtags.

Destiny releases on PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in early 2014.

AmEx Adds Legitimacy To eSports

American Express is the first blue chip company to enter the eSports arena with sponsorship of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) and a new Riot Games credit card. Electronic Sports, or eSports, has been riding the success of Riot Games’ League of Legends over the past few years. Thanks in part to the explosion of live streaming through Twitch and the global appetite to watch pro gamers compete, and even practice, playing the world’s number one game, Riot has attracted a major sponsor in American Express. And more are sure to follow as the company has over 32 million active players.

For those who haven’t been following eSports, millions of gamers from around the globe tune in to watch big events like the recent LCS North American Regionals at PAX Prime and European Regionals at Gamescom. The winners from those events will compete for $2 million in cash at the LCS Season 3 World Championship in Los Angeles on October 4. Riot sold out 10,000 seats at the Staples Center in an hour and six minutes, and fans are already scalping tickets online as if it was a Los Angeles Kings Stanley Cup Final game.

2012 LCS World Championships in Los Angeles

“From an engagement perspective, Riot Games is a great partner because League of Legends isn’t just about these huge live events, it’s also about the time spent playing the game and watching others playing the game for research and strategies,” said Ian Swanson, vice president of Enterprise Growth at American Express. “We want to reach the male millennial audience on a consistent basis. These millions of gamers aren’t just watching things live on Twitch, but many times afterward to learn from the pros. And they’re also actively talking about it.”

Swanson comes from the video game industry. He founded in-game payment and optimization company Sometrics, which was acquired by AmEx in September 2011. As a result, he has watched League of Legends grow in size and scale and seen the engagement levels of 18 to 24 year old male gamers rise along with the game’s eSports success.

Reigning ‘League of Legends’ champs Taipei Assassins

Swanson said the engagement for League of Legends is phenomenal. Players will spend three or four hours playing the game and then another five hours strategizing on how to play better. The American Express Serve Prepaid Account League of Legends card extends that reach and allows players to connect to the game by earning Riot Points through everyday purchases. The U.S. Government has also kept an eye on eSports. Riot Games worked with the State Department to allow League of Legends eSports players from other countries to receive the same P-1A visa status as other sports’ athletes. Dustin Beck, vice president of eSports at Riot, said the biggest winners with this achievement are the athletes playing League of Legends because it’s now a viable career path for players to pursue their dreams and passions.

“It further legitimizes eSports,” said Swanson. “It certainly helps that our government is aware that these players are professional athletes just like baseball or football players. From a marketing perspective, our core focus was on demographics, reach and scale, and Riot checked the boxes on each.”

In addition to the prepaid card, American Express is a sponsor of LCS and the upcoming World Championship at Staples Center.

“American Express is also a US Open sponsor, what this means for eSports is that we’re stepping up and saying this is no longer niche,” explained Swanson. “This is a large audience that’s strategic to our goals as a company to reach. Just as you see American Express at the US Open or LA Kings hockey games at the Staples Center, you’ll see us at LCS.”

Swanson added that the Staples Center is iconic for championships for tier one sports, and to have eSports there and gamers playing underneath the banners and jerseys of the Kings, Lakers and Clippers shows that they’re legitimate.

“We showed a video from the LCS Season 2 championship game at USC Galen Center to a bunch of execs at American Express and they were shocked at the fans and how excited they were and how proud the athletes were when they won,” said Swanson. “We told them that Riot would sell out Staples Center in a day, and then we were able to go back and tell them they sold out in an hour, so it was clear we made the right choice.”

Beck said having AmEx on board breaks the traditional mode gamer categories that have been sponsors of eSports over the last decade. He said this deal also makes sense for players because it’s a value-add experience.

“We’re careful about the sponsors we do work with and AmEx has that quality bar and they can deliver on that,” said Beck. “These cards fill a lot of needs and connect to the game world with champions from the game. Moving forward, whether it’s team specific or player specific cards, we haven’t figured that out yet.”

Having a “AAA” blue chip sponsor will likely open more doors for Season 4, especially once footage spreads of a sold out Staples Center hosting a video game tournament.

“Our participation will hopefully help legitimize eSports and help bring in other brands and other sponsors,” said Swanson. “The real testament goes to the players and quality of the game Riot has produced. We’re almost on the ground floor of eSports. In the next two to five years this thing is going to be much bigger than it is. And it’s already tens of millions of people watching around the world.”

Beck admits that the company is leaps and bounds ahead of where they thought they’d be in the eSports arena.

“All we can do is guarantee fans we have a focus on delivering high-quality, engaging experiences and that’s our first and foremost attribute,” said Beck. “We’re going to start doing more global experiences with fans. We have five distinct leagues in China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and we just launched in countries like Brazil, Russia and Turkey. It’s a unique situation where we have a global sport that is tough to benchmark outside of any sport except maybe FIFA or the Olympics.”

And it’s also unique in that most mainstream companies, which are struggling to connect with millennials, have yet to capitalize on this gaming audience. American Express is the first, but certainly won’t be the last.

Global App Market Less US-Centric

The USA is the home to many great social and gaming apps for tablets and mobile devices, but it isn’t dominating like it used to.

A report from the mobile analytics firm Flurry shows that the numbers for US control of the mobile app market has slipped over the past couple of years. In 2011 and 2012, the US held a steady 45 percent of the market, compared to 55 percent with the rest of the world. However, in 2013, there was a huge change, with only 36 percent of the market for the United States, and 64 percent for the rest of the world.

However, in terms of weighted percentage of active apps (taking into account total time spent with the apps), the United States remains firmly in the lead . . . though it has slipped a little. In 2011, it had a 75 percent hold on this market, and in 2012, it rose a point to 76 percent. This year, though, it’s only at 70 percent – a small slip, but still a significant one.

Source: TechCrunch

Autodesk Takes Aim At Indies

Autodesk’s entry into the indie developer market last month with 3D modeling and animation tool Maya LT may have surprised some observers who are familiar with the company’s array of powerful professional tools that typically cost thousands of dollars. The [a]list daily spoke with Greg Castle, senior marketing manager at Autodesk, about the company’s initiative to address this growing market.

“At Autodesk traditionally we have provided the tools for the big boys, for people like Cameron to develop Avatar and Epic to create Gears of War,” Castle said. “With the changing of the industry, so too we must change. With the influx of indie development, more accessible tools, more accessible platforms, it’s important we provide tools for this new demographic.”

This was really a marketing-driven product development effort, seeing the needs of the market and modifying an existing product to suit that. “You’re spot on there,” said Castle. “We wanted to get out a product in fairly quick order to address this need. The plan for the product in the long term is a focused product on adding in features that are specific to indie development.”

The prospect of a fast-growing indie market drove Autodesk to study and work with smaller developers “in order to see what parts of our tools they’re most interested in and what their needs really are,” said Castle. “The two main things we discovered are that indie developers are only using a small segment of the power of our tools, and that our tools are just too expensive for a lot of them to afford.”

Autodesk then went through the process of figuring out what features of the tools were most important to smaller developers and what price points they’re most comfortable with. The effort showed that the general needs of indie game developers are similar across platforms, from mobile to Facebook to PC and console. “People want maximum reach for their games, and they’re trying to develop games that are accessible on all platforms,” said Castle.

The end result, Maya LT, is specifically targeting smaller developers. “We looked at all our tools and tried to determine which tools indie developers would be most interested in,” said Castle. “Game developers are predominantly using the renderers of game engines, so they don’t need a tool to doing rendering. The viewport in Maya can be used to preview assets.” That saves time for developers building assets, enabling them to check their work without the need to create a new build of the game.

Of course, the pricing of the software is a critical issue. Indie developers won’t even consider the typical pricing structures for Autodesk’s professional packages, which can run thousands of dollars per seat. When you’re working on a mobile game, that’s a dealbreaker for a small team scraping by. Pricing is also an issue for independent artists or small studios that provide art under contract to developers. Autodesk put a lot of thought into the pricing options for Maya LT.

“We created a flexible pricing plan, with two options,” Castle explained. “The rental plan works out to be $50 per month, with quarterly or annual licenses available that can bring the price down to about $35 per month. For perpetual, the price is $795 and then the product is yours.” You can try out the product on a rental basis and see if it works for your development process, and then purchase the product outright. “We believe a bunch of people will do exactly that,” said Castle. “The amount of indie developers who are outsourcing is huge,” Castle noted. “For freelancers to be able to bill back the cost of the software is something I think they’re going to like.”

Autodesk is committed to the task of opening up this market segment, and they understand that developing the market and refining the software is something will take time. “This market segment is super important, we want to support it as much as we can, and they have very specific needs,” Castle pointed out. “Why not create a product that is just for these guys There will be more frequent releases with Maya LT than with regular Maya. This isn’t a short-term play.”

Accordingly, Autodesk will be patient with its marketing of Maya LT. “We don’t want to go and just spend millions of dollars and get the word out to everybody in the world,” Castle said. “We’re taking a more measured approach to our marketing and letting it spread in a more organic way. We want to make sure that the messaging is right and the product is right. I would expect that the product and the messaging might morph slightly after the launch, when we see what customers want.”

That customer engagement is key to the future of the Maya LT. “Part of the plan is to be very engaged with customers,” said Castle. “We have a small team of people internally with different specialties who we’ve formed into a task force, to go out and constantly be interacting with customers. We plan on being very responsive to the customers.”

Autodesk realizes the difficulty of finding indies and informing them of the product, given that indies are all over the world with no one gathering place. “We definitely see that as a challenge, especially with the worldwide dispersion and how strong it is in different areas,” Castle agreed. “I think leveraging the community for word-of-mouth marketing and getting them all onboard and comfortable is really going to be paramount to our success.”

The challenge is similar to marketing an MMO, where you have to convince not just a single person to try it but you need to get an entire group using it. “That’s an interesting analogy, and I agree,” said Castle. “There is definitely a strong sense of that in tool usage. Art houses do identify with the tool they use a lot of the time.”

More Xbox One On Day One

Microsoft has already gone through its first round of Day One Edition systems for the Xbox One launch on November 22nd, but that isn’t stopping the company from prepping a few more for release.

Corporate president Yusuf Mehdi stated that additional units are now available for pre-order through various retailers. “We’ve been very fortunate and we’re very humbled by the amazing interest by our fans on Xbox One. So much so that we’re actually at this point sold out of Xbox One in pretty much all major retailers around the globe,” he said. “But because of the great progress that we’ve made by moving to full production and because of the demand we’ve seen, we’ve found a way to create a few more Day One SKU’s.”

“If you’re lucky and you’re up on your retail website this afternoon, you’ll be able to get your Day One SKU,” he concluded.

Retailers include the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, Amazon and GameStop, among others.

Source: Gamespot

Momentum For PlayStation Vita

The PlayStation Vita hasn’t exactly gotten off to the greatest of starts in the year and a half it’s been on the market, but it could very well see an upswing in the months ahead.

The system has seen a huge sales boost in the United Kingdom, with a 100 percent increase over the summer thanks to the Mega Pack – a collection of ten hit Vita games bundled onto an 8 GB memory card.

“Vita had a good summer, the Mega Pack is one of the things that has boosted performance by more than 100 percent,” said Sony’s UK boss Fergal Gara. “It’s now in growth year-on-year. And you’ve seen several pieces of news at Gamescom which will only help. So that means we can feel optimistic.”

“The process of trying to drive costs down on Vita has happened just as it’s lining up to be a fantastic companion to PS4. Our optimism around Vita is growing.”

One of the bigger games for the system, the first-person shooter Killzone: Mercenary, launches this Tuesday.

Source: MCV

Pitch A Startup At DMW Games NY

Digital Media Wire is preparing to put on their next games conference, taking place September 17 in New York City.  In addition to a daylong agenda looking at various game industry issues, much of it focused on digital games, the event will give game startups a chance to make their pitch to panel of big investment firms.

DMW is accepting entries from startups by email at ned@digitalmediawire.com.  Finalists whose pitches make it past the first round will then have the opportunity to make their presentation during Games Startup Pitch Day, which takes place the same day as the games conference on September 17.  Participating investors are Rogers Venture Partners, Raptor Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Time Warner Investments, Siemer Ventures, and Signia Venture Partners.  The panel is also hearing pitches from video technology startups on September 18 – that’s likely why Comcast and Time Warner are there.

Conference organizers also recently announced speaker and panelist additions including award-winning game designer Greg Costikyan from Disney Playdom and Giordano Contestabile,  VP of product management and revenue at newly formed digital game publisher Tilting Point.  The [a]list daily also has a presence at the show.  Chris Younger, who heads up strategy for [a]list daily publisher Ayzenberg, is moderating the Game Marketing Leadership Roundtable with Peter Gollan, head of global marketing, games group at Fiksu, Cara Scharf, president and founder of Fearless Media, JonMichael Bukosky, CEO of FragD Media, Sandy Diep, VP of advertising at BitTorrent, and Jill Braff, formerly EVP of digital commerce at HSN.

DMW Games NY web site has more information on the conference agenda and the startup pitch contest.