Warner Bros. And Nvidia Launch ‘Batman’ Promo

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Nvidia is ready to give away Batman to those who take part in an upcoming promotion for its processors.

The deal with WB Games will see Nvidia giving away a free digital copy of its upcoming action game Batman: Arkham Origins to anyone who purchases a GTX 600 or GTX 700 series graphics card by January 31, 2014. The game will also implement exclusive Nvidia-based features, like the TXAA anti-aliasing and PhysX.

“The Batman: Arkham games are visually stunning and it’s great that we are able to continue building upon the amazing graphics with Batman: Arkham Origins,” Warner’s senior VP of production and development, Samantha Ryan, stated. “With Nvidia’s continued support, we are able to deliver an incredibly immersive gameplay experience.”

Batman: Arkham Origins releases on October 25.

Source: MCV

‘Warcraft’ Movie Filming In February?

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We’ve seen a lot of video game-based films over the past few years, but one based on World of Warcraft could definitely generate some excitement, especially amongst the rabid hardcore fan base. According to a recent tweet from a production database company, we may not be waiting too long.

This tweet indicates that Legendary Pictures has locked in a date for filming after setting up offices at Canadian Motion Picture Park in Vancouver, British Columbia. It states that filming is likely to start as soon as January 13.

Duncan Jones is currently tapped to direct the film, taking the place of Sam Raimi who was originally on the project. No word yet on who’s been cast for the film, but we’re likely to know more over the next few months as the film prepares to enter production.

Source: Polygon

Facebook Tests Trending Topics

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It’s been two months since Facebook began rolling out Twitter-like hashtags, and now the company is experimenting with new ways to make them effective for users and marketers.

The social network ramped up tests for its “trending” topic section last week in the News Feed of its website. The functionality, similar to rival Twitter’s “trends box”, showcases topics, including hashtags that are currently popular on the site.

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the test last Friday to Wall Street Journal,“We are running a small test of a unit on News Feed,” she said. “Right now it only available to a small percentage of US users and it is still in the early stages of development.”

The test marks Facebook’s next big step to becoming the dominant destination for live, real-time conversations online.

“It is a critical battleground: The company that becomes the top hub for chatter around news events and TV shows will have a key advantage in wooing advertisers — especially as brands consider spending more money on mobile and desktop ads instead of television ads,” said the Wall Street Journal.

For users on desktop browsers, trending topics are located on the upper-right corner in a user’s News Feed, a very prominent piece of real estate for advertisers on the site. And like Twitter, Facebook’s trending section will reflect popular hashtags and topics that are generating a lot of buzz. For example, Facebook’s algorithm would group all public posts and conversations mentioning #MLK and “Martin Luther,” under one topic in the trending section, such as “Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Facebook said it will disclose more details if it decides to release the feature more broadly.

Source: The Wall Street Journal 

Xbox Co-Founder Warns Publishers May Vanish

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The impending arrival of a new console generation has been eventful, with rapidly changing Xbox One policies after a chilly initial reception from games media and consumers. This swift, responsive change was unlike the Microsoft of old. The [a] list daily sat down with Xbox project co-founder and Microsoft veteran Ed Fries recently to talk about where the game industry is headed, and what he thinks of Microsoft’s swift policy changes.

“I was impressed,” said Fries. “I was concerned that they wouldn’t change, and I was impressed that they did change, and changed quickly. They clearly are responsive to feedback, and I think that’s great.” Just the fact of changing that quickly is a necessary thing in the market these days, Fries believes. “We all make products for customers, and it’s important that we listen to our customers when they have things to say to us. It’s a lot more true than it was in the old days. If you think about games, we used to spend three years making games and stick them in a box, and people liked them or they didn’t like them.”

“Now it’s much more direct feedback from customers,” Fries continued. “We test things a lot, see what’s working and what isn’t working and the launch is the beginning of the process. I’m talking more about free-to-play games now — you’re basically developing it with your customers. We have a much more interactive relationship with our customers. If people aren’t happy they let you know, and they can cause trouble for you. I think it’s important for companies to be customer-focused and be known as companies that listen.”

Fries was surprised that Microsoft is allowing World of Tanks on the Xbox 360 “Yes, and the indie publishing announcement surprised me as well,” Fires acknowledged. “I think, like a lot of people now, I’m waiting to see the details. I gave a talk last year about how the world of games is changing, and how it might be difficult for big parts of the industry to change along with it, for big publishers to change or for developers to change. I talked specifically about this issue, about free-to-play and about the barriers to consoles truly adopting free-to-play. I’m glad they’re heading that way.”

Adopting new business models is hard, and Fries understands the difficulties ahead. “The challenges with technology are often not guessing what the future’s going to be and then building it, it’s being in the right place at the right time with that technology,” Fries pointed out. “It’s very easy to be too early. You describe these as business issues, but maybe cultural is more to the point. It’s hard for these companies to change. You see that all the time — it’s the innovator’s dilemma.”

The future for the games industry is uncertain, and Fries sees the possibility of momentous changes. “Who knows if there’ll be big publishers in the future There don’t have to be,” Fries said. “Maybe the world of the future doesn’t look like that. Maybe it’s just lots of small developers, getting together and then breaking up into little teams all over the world, that’s where great games are going to come from. Big publishers were formed because games were really expensive, there were big distribution issues. Walmart didn’t want to deal with a hundred companies, they wanted to deal with four or five. A lot of those things changed with digital distribution. Maybe what we’ll see in the future isn’t like what we’ve seen in the past. What does that mean There are winners and losers all through that.”

Fries continued, “It’s not necessarily a better future for anyone. If you’re at a publisher, it’s ‘Oh, maybe my future is not so good.’ Even from a developer point of view, it might mean you get a hit and then you don’t get a hit again. Angry Birds this year, next year it’s Supercell, the year after it’s Mojang. It’s random little groups all over the place. Maybe that’s where the most creativity is going to come from. Customers will just pick and choose, as they always do, whatever’s hottest, most fun at that time. That’s a very different world we have to think about. Even as a developer, you invent something great — Call of Duty — you want to make Call of Duty five, six, and seven, you don’t want to have to put lightning in a bottle twice, three times. That may be the future we’re facing. We just have to accept that.”

The value is ultimately in the game, not in the publisher or developer. Fries noted “We’ve always liked to believe there’s developer brand equity — ‘I love Blizzard, everything that Blizzard makes I’m going to buy because I’m a Blizzard fan.’ The reality has always been it’s the game brands we really care about. ‘I like playing Candy Crush‘ and then you find Puzzle & Dragons, and you don’t even know who makes it.”

A Vision Of Marketing’s Future

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Hitfox Group founder Jan Beckers addressed Casual Connect on the future of marketing mobile and online games. Beckers has founded six companies that currently employ over 500 people, primarily involved in marketing and advertising mobile games. The HitFox Group currently works with over 180 game publishers and over 1000 media partners.

Beckers kicked off his talk by noting the evolution of games, from 2005 when browser games began to be popular,  to the growth of social games in 2007 through 2009, to then mobile games taking hold in a big way in 2010. Gamers were playing online and mobile games for the first time, and hadn’t really been exposed to many titles. “In early game marketing times untargeted banners, if you only bought your target cheap enough, worked rather well,” said Beckers. “That’s gone, of course.”

Today’s market is a very different story, Beckers said. “The good news is the market is still growing very fast and it will continue to grow,” said Beckers. “The problem today is the platforms are getting really crowded. There are so many developers out there competing for the same users. User acquisition became a bottleneck for everybody in the last few years. The advertising landscape became extremely complex.”

Beckers pointed out that there are many advertising models out there now, and that the market is beginning to enter a period of consolidation. “Game publishers will see more and more consolidation, with those getting out products to consumers with the smartest forms of advertising,” said Beckers. He outlined five of the key marketing trends that game publishers should keep an eye on in the coming years.

Strategic cross-promotion is important, and that means focusing on an audience and a genre of games rather than a platform to maximize the effectiveness of cross-promotion. “For the last few years, whenever there was a new platform coming out, such as social or mobile, it was rational to be a platform-focused player. That means a publisher considered themselves to be a mobile game publisher, a Facebook game publisher, or a browser game publisher.” When the platforms were all new, that made a lot of sense because the most critical knowledge was getting distribution and gameplay right on that platform. “Now the critical knowledge is of your audience and of a specific category of games, such as King with casual games,” said Beckers. “You must focus on a specific audience or genre in the future, and not so much on a specific platform. Every publisher will be a cross-platform publisher.” 

Big data is the new holy grail for marketers. “The sophisticated advertisers are tracking nearly everything, and then they re-target only toward profitable groups of users,” said Beckers. Beyond that, the market is moving toward higher quality traffic, transitioning from CPM (the cost per one thousand impressions) to CPC (cost per click) to CPI (cost per install) and now towards ROI-optimized CPI. “Developers will pay out for users who complete a certain level,” said Beckers. “Pay more for quality traffic to get payers instead of only the players.”

Smart content integration is on the rise in the last few years, said Beckers. “Avoiding banners that look like banners, but providing actual value by integrating games in lists and by doing so you can reach out to classic media and new game media.” This way you get your games distributed in many blogs as well as being reviewed and mentioned, Beckers noted.

Finally, Beckers noted the importance of product. “In the long run marketing is helpful, but it’s about product, product, and the product,” said Beckers. Users are becoming educated and they know good games from bad games. “The product will do more and more of the marketing,” Becker contends. In an uninformed market, marketing wins, which is what happened in the early days of online, social and mobile games. Now as the market is becoming well-informed, marketing will help and it has to be done right — but game quality is essential if you want to maximize sales. “It’s very much about developing the best products in the future,” said Beckers. “I would recommend following the good examples of publishers that became cross-platform publishers but then stayed to one very precise target group. If you do the best product within the niche, that’s likely to pay out.”

On Ouya’s Bad Taste

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Ouya has been looking for ways to create some buzz around its Android-powered $99 console, which was introduced in July to mixed reviews and unremarkable sales. So you might think posting a company-created ad on its YouTube site might generate some enthusiasm. Perhaps, if fans liked it, the video would go viral and get a lot of people to notice Ouya.

Ouya posted a video Wednesday night to its YouTube channel, a 30-second animated bit featuring a gamer projectile vomiting in dismay over standard console games. The response was rapid and overwhelmingly negative, so Ouya quickly pulled the ad. Ouya has confirmed that this ad was in fact put out by the console manufacturer, but it was only meant to “get feedback” from users rather than stay a permanent installation. The company explained this in a statement to Eurogamer, where it added: “We are experimenting with animated content and posted this video briefly to get feedback from our community. Stay tuned for our official video!”

The [a]list daily reached out to some industry veterans in PR and marketing to get some reactions to the video, and thoughts on how Ouya should proceed with its marketing and PR for the console. It’s an extraordinarily difficult time for marketing a new console, with all of the money and attention being lavished on new consoles from Sony and Microsoft – just ask Nintendo.Scott Steinberg, head of video game consulting firm TechSavvy, offers some straightforward advice to Ouya. “Ouya’s best strategy at this point is to acknowledge, explain, address and apologize for the issue. As a company, it needs to acknowledge that there’s a disconnect, explain how the issue occurred, address viewers’ concerns, and apologize for the mistake,” said Steinberg. “Once done, the business can begin moving forward and adapting messaging to be more user-friendly. Simply ignoring the problem won’t make it go away – however, once confronted, so long as it’s dealt with in a professional manner that acknowledges audiences’ opinions and takes their voice to heart (including showing steps the company is taking to address these concerns) both customers and the company should be able to move on.”A marketing executive who’s been in the game industry for many years wonders about the way the ad is targeted. “This doesn’t appear to be part of a market research test. The ad is pretty much done, other than perhaps an end slate and call to action. BUY NOW!,” said the exec. “It completely misses the consumer benefit part of the proposition and relies solely on gamers’ “disgust” over bad and remade games that aren’t different from their predecessors. It would be interesting to hear from them what their approval process will be to ensure that this sort of thing never happens on their platform.”The exec went on to get specific about the response to the ad and its content. “Everyone is talking about a bad ad and there’s nothing in it that sets Ouya apart from the competition. They’re using words like amateur, crass, gross, disgusting . . . nothing that you’d want your brand associated with. They could have talked about their $99 price point, their Android operating system, their FREE games that will never burn your wallet, their appeal to the common man…anything.”From a PR standpoint, Ouya’s ad may not be all bad news. “Anytime people are talking about you, people are talking about you. So that’s good, right ” said a veteran PR executive who has dealt with a wide range of games with a variety of publishers. “Particularly when everyone is mostly talking about your two competitors (to be kind), who are about to outspend in marketing the entire net worth of your company by a factor of 10X.”“It’s interesting watching the indignation and scorn that the online world has heaped on the promo and speaks volumes to why Ouya was “testing” the video with their audience instead of rolling it out wide. It’s really not much worse than most of the nonsense that Cartoon Network puts on its channel after 10 PM and is almost charming in its clear lack of demographic connection and understanding. Also, the Internet loves to hate things.”There’s nothing like some examples from the history of video game advertising to put Ouya’s ad into perspective. “The spot itself reminds me of 90’s-era game advertising (especially the stuff that came out of the UK), where ads were taken to controversial eXXXtremes in order to seem “authentic” or grab the attention of the mysterious gamer but really just came across as eye-rolling, Poochie-style cultural whiffs,” said the PR exec, citing numerous examples. “Does it fall flat Absolutely. But this also explains why it wasn’t front and center on Ouya’s website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, Twitter account, Vine, Vimeo, Instagram, etc.”“I am a bit perplexed by this spot since Ouya has seemed really on top of their messaging for most of their short history — everything about their Kickstarter was well done and still serves as a model for running a campaign on that platform, Sony and MS are just now climbing onto the indie bandwagon that Ouya clearly recognized and embraced much earlier and the price point of the hardware indicates that they both recognize their strengths and weaknesses,” continued the PR exec. “Granted, the polish is off the apple a bit since the boxes have begun landing in people’s laps and the realization is setting in that $99 isn’t going to buy you something with the same quality of design or software catalog as a system from Sony or Microsoft.”“Sometimes a bit of disruptive marketing is exactly what a product needs to remain relevant or resurface in the public eye. It must be hard for the Ouya crew to break through the XboxOne and PS4 noise right now, so they’re probably testing several different methods of doing so. It’s unfortunate that an asset that was not fully vetted or ready for primetime managed to get out in the wild, but people occasionally need reminders that there are no secrets on the Internet.”

Nissan Revs Into ESports

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Editor’s note: Veteran entertainment journalist John Gaudiosi is now a regular contributor to [a]list daily.

This past weekend saw record livestreams on Twitch thanks to Valve Software’s The International 3 and its $2.8 million prize pool and Blizzard Entertainment’s World Championship Series (WCS) Season 2 Regional Finals. Twitch reported 4.5 million unique viewers in one day on August 11. Over 550 million minutes were watched this past weekend with an average viewing time of over two hours per viewer. These types of numbers are finally attracting mainstream brands. On the heels of American Express launching a Riot Games League of Legends debit card comes Nissan’s first foray into eSports.

Nissan has partnered with Team Curse League of Legends players for an online campaign to promote the Versa Note through the Your Door To More social video contest, encouraging gamers to create short videos for the chance to win a $1,000 Amazon gift card and have their video appear in a Nissan commercial. Team Curse pro gamers are using their own massive social media outreach to spread the word on this promotion virally.

According to Donovan Duncan, vice president of marketing at Curse, the Web giant is doing over a billion page views per month and has 40 million uniques worldwide on comScore.

“We are reaching on average 10 million viewers on streams each month,” said Duncan. “We also reach about 600,000 people through various social media channels. We’ll clear over $20 million in revenue this year.”

It’s these types of numbers that caught the attention of Nissan’s advertising agency, Chiat/Day. Baker Lambert, senior strategist at the agency, is a big fan of eSports, having watched many StarCraft II and League of Legends matches.

“We chose to connect with e-sports because the yourdoortomore.com campaign lives 100 percent online, and since eSports isn’t broadcast on TV or any other medium (yet), eSports fans are 100 percent online,” said Lambert. “The demographic fits very closely with the demographic we were trying to reach with this campaign, and partnering with eSports also provided us a lot of ‘bang for the buck’ in terms of cost per impression than most other mediums. So, when we stepped back and looked at it — it was finding the right audience in the right place at the right time — and it made perfect sense to be a part of that.”

Duncan believes this Nissan deal goes a long way in legitimizing the sport. Millions of people are watching these matches. The involvement of a company like Nissan means companies outside of the industry are starting to take notice.

“As more and more of these companies start to get involved, eSports will become as mainstream and sought-after as the NFL in terms of organizations that companies want to be associated with,” said Duncan. “Our players have a lot of fans, and unlike other professional sports teams our players have a lot of online interaction with their fans through livestreaming. Our audience is very engaged, so partnering with our team opens up the opportunity for advertisers to interact with the user on a very personal level through our athletes.”

According to Lambert, the campaign, which runs through August 19, has seen more engagement from the gaming community and eSports than from any other source.

“Nissan is an innovative brand, so it makes sense that they would be one of the first mainstream advertisers to try this up-and-coming format,” said Lambert. “This campaign and the success it has had so far has raised a lot of eyebrows in the industry, and has really demonstrated how much potential exists using this medium. We feel like there is nothing but growth potential for partnerships between mainstream brands and eSports.”

Lambert said the huge numbers League of Legends is amassing won over the agency. They chose Team Curse over other teams because of the professionalism of the pros.

“There are certainly other eSports teams out there grabbing a lot of views, but they aren’t necessarily portraying the kind of image you would want to align a brand with. After talking with team captain, Brandon ‘Saintvicious’ DiMarco, I was impressed with his professionalism, commitment, and business savvy and I knew that this was a team that had the organization, professionalism, and talent needed for a viable partnership.”

“By utilizing influential celebrities in the gaming world, Nissan is realizing the power that streaming and eSports can have on fan interactions with their brands,” said Nathan Lindberg vice president of sales at Curse. “We’re excited to be the first eSports organization to introduce this to an automobile company in North America.”

Duncan added that livestreaming has really taken the place of conventional TV and media for a lot of the people who watch it. Some of Curse’s streamers are reaching 50,000 people concurrently for hours at a time. It’s changing their lifestyle and the way they consume content. This also opens up a unique opportunity for advertisers, who get a direct feed into a highly engaged and attentive consumer audience.

“If someone wants to watch a game of League of Legends, their only option is to watch it online; that makes eSports an especially viable option for campaigns requiring online engagement,” said Lambert.

Steve Arhancet, director of eSports at Curse added, “Nissan is a blue chip company and their participation in the industry is yet another indication of the tremendous maturity of the league and its abilities to attract large brand sponsors.”

With livestreaming numbers continuing to grow with each big eSports event, and more events happening around the globe on a regular basis, these types of opportunities for mainstream brands will continue. Nissan has also been able to tap into Team Curse and the livestream of practice games, which is unique to eSports and allows fans to watch their favorite players practice every day. This literally opens up daily connections with a huge fan base.

The Indie Revolution

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The landscape for independent game developers has seen a massive change in the last few years. The rise of online games, downloadable PC games, games in a browser, social and mobile games brought new opportunities for small developers to create games. Developers could attract a paying audience without the necessity of building a huge amount of capital for inventory creation, distribution and sales. Finding money for game development has an important new option with crowdfunding from sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.

This revolution had largely bypassed consoles until a few years ago, when Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and now Nintendo’s eShop began allowing smaller games a chance to appear. There were plenty of restrictions, though, and it was not an inexpensive, easy process like putting mobile games in the App Store or Google Play. Now consoles are fully joining the indie revolution, with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all making it easier for smaller developers to publish titles on consoles.

InXile Entertainment was quick to take advantage of the Kickstarter revolution, and now is eyeing the possibilities for consoles in the future. Wasteland II has been delayed by six weeks, but the beta will release on the original schedule. It’s quite a feat for any game developer for a project of this size and scope. The [a] list daily sat down with InXile CEO Brian Fargo, long-time veteran of the industry, to discuss the pending arrival of Wasteland II and the changing game market.

Fargo wants to create a great RPG in the classic tradition, and from the appearance of the software in its current form he’s succeeding. “I want to make it unbelievable,” said Fargo. “I want to show that you can make an unbelievable game without a publisher.” Fargo’s lined up a top-flight team of writers and designers (including the team from the original Wasteland) along with experienced programmers and artists using Unity to build a game that looks like a very worthy successor to the original RPG.

The focus is on quality, according to Fargo. “Here’s the great thing. If I take money from a publisher, what do they want at the end of the day They want to make a profit,” Fargo points out. “If I take money from my neighbors, friends, and family, they want their money back, and probably a small profit. If I take it from a VC, they want to make a profit. Money from crowdsourcing They just want a good game. It’s the most pure form of financing you can get. Universally, people say, take your time, get it right. We’ve waited 20 years, don’t worry about it. You know what a relief that is. ”

That’s not what you typically hear from publishers, who are usually focused on getting the game to market as quickly as possible. “If I’m in a situation where I’m humping to get paid, and I’m worried about my guys . . .  fifty percent of my brainpower is fighting with someone and trying to get paid, and every milestone is like a hostage negotiation . . . I don’t think you make as good a game,” Fargo said.

Fargo believes there is still more to learn about bringing games to market through the crowdfunding process. “The process was already much more sophisticated on Torment than it was on Wasteland,” Fargo points out. “Whatever worked six months ago might not work today. Who’s to say if I did the exact same Torment campaign today I’d get the same amount of money There’s an emotional component to it. To me it’s all about timing, and what your messaging is at the time. I bet you I would arrive at some different kinds of conclusions if I was doing it today.”

The console market is something that Fargo plans to think about after Wasteland II has shipped. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo are all saying that indies are more important to them, but the details still haven’t been fully revealed. “It’s been happening, and I’ve heard from Microsoft,” Fargo said. He recalls how it used to be when dealing with Microsoft. “I used to want to publish directly on the Xbox, and it was ‘OK, how many retail SKUs are you going to put out ‘ I always felt there was there this huge disconnect — why do I have to put products on a retail shelf in order to be on XBLA ”

Now the situation is completely different. “You’re hearing Microsoft reaching out, they’re saying ‘Hey, we want you on the machine,’ they’re making the calls,” Fargo said. “You can use the hardware as a development kit, making it more accessible, because indies can’t afford to buy [development kits]. It used to be that if you shipped on Sony first you could never be on the Xbox. Now they’re like ‘Well, we’re flexible, maybe there’s features…’ There’s a different dialog there.

“They’ve come full circle in a matter of ninety days on every part of it, including the ability to be on the platform at all. Sony was already there. They go one step further with their Dev Pub fund, where they actually give developers money upon delivery of a game. You’re actually hearing executives at both those companies — and Nintendo, I should say — talk about why indies are important. Someone called it the Cambrian explosion of creativity, I love that phrase.”

Fargo pointed out that digital distribution has led to games that can be improved over time incrementally, a big change from the past. “In the PC world, even in tablets, you can ship things that are unfinished, refine it and make it right. In the console business there were no policies that allowed that to happen. So there were whole types of games and experiences that you wouldn’t have gotten to do,” said Fargo.

“You look at DOTA 2, Minecraft, League of Legends — how much better have they gotten over time because of that iteration cycle You didn’t get that on console before. You look at DOTA 2 in its present state, it would have been a virtual impossibility to have nailed that on day one. So you have to have that cycle. You get a better game if you allow that to happen.”

“We don’t imagine that we ship a game and it’s over the next day. Those days are over,” Fargo said. “How scary would it be to go back ten years ago when we would make a game like Fallout, and you would just work on it, you wouldn’t show anybody anything, and then you’d just ship it and keep your fingers crossed that you nailed the right things. We’ll look back on those days and say ‘Those were the crazy old days!’

Marketing Wasteland II is not something Fargo is planning for, particularly. “I’m not worried about it,” Fargo said. “Word of mouth will carry the day. There’ll be enough initial people that will respond positively towards it. Shadowrun‘s a good example, I don’t know where they are now but they were number one or two in the Steam store for a week solid. I think word of mouth’s the most important thing — these days, it’s everything. We’re all pretty jaded from advertising.”

Piracy, Pricing, And Used Games

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The games industry’s pet peeve for decades was piracy. The issue dominated discussions at industry conferences. Countless hours were spent creating and enabling various forms of copy protection. Industry studies claimed billions of dollars in lost sales due to pirated copies, though the amounts were always speculative. The issue has become less critical, being replaced in prominence by the issue of used games and how that represents lost revenue for publishers and developers.

Piracy and DRM is still an issue in certain quarters. Certainly DRM can cause a fierce reaction on the part of consumers. Look no further than the furor over Sim City’s requirement for an online connection, or the original Xbox One requirement to check in with Microsoft every day. Yet for many companies, worrying about DRM or piracy is a thing of the past. Rather, piracy has become a desirable means of product distribution — when your game is free-to-play, you want as many copies as possible in the hands of players.

DRM has become a non-issue for many games primarily because those games are tracking each individual user. It’s really another form of digital rights management, but it’s invisible to the user. For instance, League of Legends is free-to-play, and has no DRM in the usual sense. Anyone can download and play the game, or give a copy to a friend. The game, of course, tracks each individual player — and once you purchase a Champion or a skin, you can use that whenever you log in from any computer. What you can’t do is give that virtual item you purchased to your friend. Hello, that’s digital rights management in action.. the dreaded DRM that can put so many consumer knickers in a twist when implemented clumsily. Here, no one notices or complains — it just seems obvious and reasonable.

Similarly,used games are a common cause for complaint among developers and publishers, since a used game sale returns no revenue to the original developer. GameStop derives the majority of its profits from used games, which causes much teeth-gnashing amongst developers and publishers. Solutions are already being implemented, but it’s not solving the “problem” of used games per se — because that’s not the real problem. The problem is getting sufficient revenue from games for the publishers and developers to make a profit.

Pricing is constrained by consumer reluctance to pay more than $60 for games, especially when there’s no way to return a game if it turns out you don’t like it. That leads to consumers being cautious about what they buy, or buying a used game initially to reduce the amount of money at risk. Publishers would dearly love to raise prices for next-gen games, but you see no move afoot to do that. What you see instead is an increased amount of downloadable content (DLC) with many games even offering it on day one of a game’s availability.

Here we see one part of the solution at work, thanks to the reality of digital distribution. A publisher no longer has to include everything in a boxed product because bits can be sold online. New content can be created and sold to customers on a regular basis without the need to create physical product. The industry can go further, though.

Digital distribution sets pricing free. There’s actually a continuum of pricing options to be explored between free-to-play and $60 up front. Why not try $20, or $10, as an initial price Will Wright sees free-to-play as just another form of demo for many games. The question becomes how much demo you allow before charging for it, and that’s a marketing and design issue. When the boxed retail version of the game is seen as just another way to package and price the product, rather than the only version of the game that exists, many possibilities spring into being.

Digital pricing can be changed instantly, with no awkward price protection that’s required when you’re dealing with packages sent to retailers. Just look at Steam sales to see how discounting can drive amazing boosts in sales. Gabe Newell has reported increases of 3,000 percent or more in sales, with no effect on retail store sales as far as can be determined. Overall revenue from such sales can be much greater than the usual revenue for the game at a ‘normal’ price.

You could provide a $60 package that is sold at retail while still providing a basic game for download at $10, with DLC that adds up to $75 or $100. The $60 price then becomes a great bargain (that’s ‘anchor pricing‘ in action). Perhaps you could ‘window’ availability, similar to how movies appear in theaters, then after a month or three they appear on a premium cable service, then perhaps on Blu-ray and then streaming. A game might follow a similar strategy by splitting its content into various pieces or collections.

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are already looking at selling the full retail version of a game digitally, on the same day the game is first available in stores. It’s happening with some titles now on the 3DS, and next-generation consoles will see that as standard. Sure, not everyone has the bandwidth needed to make that an easy option, and boxed products will be a major part of game revenue for years. Still, the change is beginning, and we’ve only just begun to see the impact.

Ultimately, sitting around complaining about how some general industry issue like piracy or used games is a waste of time. Looking for an industry-wide solution is also generally unproductive. The best answer is to figure out a solution that your company can implement, and then implement it. That may not work for some other company , but let them figure out their own solutions. There’s not one right answer, but there are a variety of possible answers that will help to a greater or lesser degree. Focusing on solutions is going to benefit all of the industry in the long term.

Trion’s Rift With Traditional Marketing

BY

Trion Worlds has had an eventful year in 2013, with the introduction of the grand cross-media experiment Defiance, the Rift MMORPG going free-to-play, layoffs, closing the company’s San Diego studio to consolidate in Redwood City, and the return of former CCO Scott Hartsman to become CEO of Trion Worlds.

Trion Worlds SVP marketing Noah Maffitt

The [a]list daily sat down with Trion Worlds senior vice president of marketing Noah Maffitt to discuss the company’s approach to marketing. Maffitt comes from a diverse marketing background outside of the game industry, working as an e-commerce specialist at Office Depot and then managing Live Nation’s global digital business.

So why did Maffitt decide to dive into the game industry “If you look at the videogame industry and how dramatically it’s changing, there’s a lot of things that are being spun on their heads,” said Maffitt. “If you take the perspective that you follow your customers and find a way to deliver what they’re looking for, there’s still lots and lots of opportunity. Trion seemed uniquely positioned to me to take advantage of those trends. It’s small enough and nimble enough to quickly move around and follow the customers.”

Trion has undergone major changes this year, and one big one was the transition of the MMORPG Rift from subscription to free-to-play. “I’m actually very pleased with how the team has executed on it,” Maffitt said. “It was a planned transition that’s taken months and months to do. They’ve thought through all the little details very well. We actually saw our sales go up after we announced free-to-play, because we think we have a compelling package around that transition. Our player counts have gone way up, as well. All early signs are good.”

The shifts in business models don’t distress Maffitt. “The model has changed dramatically, but from my perspective this is nothing new,” Maffitt noted. “Musicians used to go on tour to promote a CD; now they give away CDs to promote the tour. There’s been ‘free-to-play’ in that industry for a long time. The same thing is happening with movies and TV ““ the models are all changing across all forms of entertainment. What’s happening here is shaking this industry quite a bit, but it’s actually a blueprint that exists out there. There are ways to follow a trail that’s already been worn in other parts of the entertainment industry.”

The changes in the industry have of necessity been reflected in marketing games. “Marketing is a lot more creative, and a lot more analytical. Being able to measure and understand impact, and change things up faster,” Maffitt pointed out. “The old model of making a really big bet, investing tens of millions of dollars in a big launch, that will still happen but I think it will be fewer and fewer titles that will really succeed in doing that. You’ll see a broader base of other titles that grow through a slow build and analytically rich marketing.”

“It’s part of the reason Trion was recruiting outside of the video game industry,” Maffitt continued. “It wasn’t a fluke I ended up in this role. It was Trion consciously saying ‘the old model isn’t as effective, it still can be effective but it’s a lot more risky.’ The thought was in recruiting from outside the industry let’s find some people who have high scale experience, who understand analytics, who understand customer experience and how to measure it, who understand driving profitability into each customer segment in terms of how we acquire and maintain those customers over time. It’s not just a one shot $59.995 retail opportunity any more. It’s an opportunity to engage over a much longer period of time.”

The Defiance transmedia game/TV show has been a years-long effort by Trion and Syfy to create synergies between the two media, and it is still evolving. “We’re figuring out what works and what doesn’t, we’re testing a lot of different things,” said Maffitt. “We’re testing different price points for the client, we’re testing different promotion around bit sales which is the in-game currency. You listen to the in-game chatter, but that can give you a lot of false signals. A few minority voices can lead the conversation in a way that isn’t really truthful or accurate. What we pay attention to is the real behavior, and we’re testing that all the time.”

The road ahead for Trion is going to be interesting, with the continued growth in mobile platforms and new consoles arriving. “We are absolutely interested in next-gen, and we’re fleshing out with partners what that would look like,” said Maffitt. “We’re one of the only companies that has a game experience tied in with a scripted video experience. As you think about exploiting capabilities of second screen, there’s lots of potential ways we could create a pretty interesting offering that ties all of those things together.”

Maffitt is still excited by what the game industry has to offer marketers. “This industry actually has what every other industry would kill for,” said Maffitt. “The biggest challenge is engagement. How do you get people to actually care about your product Because if they care about your product, they’re actually engaged with it, then you can activate on them. Social media without engagement is kind of stupid, but social media with engagement, you can do some really powerful things. How do you make peanut butter interesting on Facebook What’s incredible about this industry is the engagement is off the charts. That’s a massive, massive opportunity and I think it’s underexploited in this industry.”

“There’s a lot of distractions, there are a lot of great games out there,” said Maffitt. “The days of marketing getting everyone to the front door and saying your job is done are over. We need to get them through the front door, see what they do when they’re inside, and follow them through the experience to understand who’s dropping out and why. Traditional game marketing has been all about upfront awareness, and now it’s about lifetime customer value and understanding the full life cycle.”

“It’s a pretty saturated market out there, and the biggest challenge for the industry is how do you hold that engagement,” said Maffitt. “There’s a lot of talk about who will win on the next-gen platforms, and I’m less concerned about that. You need to be where the customers are, and they’re going to be on all platforms. It’s how do you develop a compelling experience that’s available where you want it and when you want it.”