UK Trade Office Puts F2P Games On Notice

BY

The UK’s Office of Fair Trading has a message to game developers – tone down the high-pressure monetization techniques, or else.

The OFT recently began an investigation earlier this year looking into apps and games aimed at children. After 38 different games were looked over, the office managed to come up with a list of eight “principles” for developers to follow.

“This is a new and innovative industry that has grown very rapidly in recent years, but it needs to ensure it is treating consumers fairly and that children are protected,” said Cavendish Elithorn, executive director of the OFT.

“The way the sector has worked with us since we launched our investigation is encouraging, and we’ve already seen some positive changes to its practices. These principles provide a clear benchmark for how games makers should be operating. Once they are finalized, we will expect the industry to follow them, or risk enforcement action.

“This is a global industry so we’re also sharing our principles with our enforcement partners worldwide with the goal of achieving some common international standards.”

Such apps that use heavy practices of monetization include the above-pictured Where’s My Water 2, a free-to-play game that requires users to either wait for more energy to play rounds, or pay a fee to unlock additional energy.

Source: GamesIndustry International

‘Clash of Clans’ Coming To Android

BY

Clash of Clans has been making waves since its debut on iOS devices some time ago, with the developer Supercell generating a huge amount of business as a result — at least $2.4 million per day.

Now, the company is finally bringing the popular Clash game to Android. In fact, it’s technically available now, though not as a full release. Clash of Clans is running as a limited beta on Android, and one that isn’t released to the public just yet.

The beta should launch soon, and will no doubt bring Supercell a new source of revenue that will continue its success. Analysts have been calling for the company to create an Android version to take advantage of the huge opportunity in Asia and other regions for top Android games.

Source: The Next Web

‘Mortal Kombat: Legacy 2’ Gets On-Demand Treatment

BY

Director Kevin Tancharoen said that he would make his next direct-to-Internet Mortal Kombat: Legacy series bigger and better than the first. Thanks to Machinima, he’s keeping his word.

The Internet video distributor has released the entire second season of Mortal Kombat: Legacy for viewing all at once, with all nine episodes of the Warner Bros.-produced series available for viewing in one shot. This follows a similar business strategy that Netflix has with its original series, making all the episodes of a season available instead of just one episode per week.

Each episode runs about 10 minutes long, and focuses on the actual Mortal Kombat tournament this time around, similar to the basis of the original arcade games from the 1990’s. Fans are sure to love it, as they did the original season of Legacy, which also aired online before finding more success on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Source: AllThingsD

 

Apple Patents Digital Autographs

BY

A new Apple invention has made its way into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, one that allows an author or artist to digitally sign their name to an ebook or other digital content such as a game.

While some people prefer to have a physical book signed by their favorite author – not to mention the feel of a real book compared to a digital one – this process will allow them to store a personal signature on any digital content.

Apple provided an example of how the app will work, which you can see above. It basically comes with an ebook download with a specifically set-aside page for autographs, which can then be stored into cloud storage through the app.

First filed in 2012, the process is still in the development stage, with no set date for release. More technical details can be found at the link below.

Source: Apple Insider

PlayStation 4 Bundles Coming To Europe

BY

Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe wants to make sure its users have a lot of options when it comes to picking up a new PlayStation 4 system later this year.

Along with the base model, the company has confirmed that it’s also planning a new bundle for the system, one that will sell for the same €499 price as the Xbox One. It’ll include the system, DualShock 4 controller and hook-ups, along with an additional controller and a copy of the first-person shooting game Killzone: Shadow Fall, which is on track for a day-one release alongside the system.

“I can officially confirm that the answer is yes, (Sony will bring the bundle to the UK),” said SCEE’s Fergal Gara. “It’ll be similarly benchmarked in euro equivalent. PlayStation 4 is €349 and €399, so it will be the same equivalent.

“It will be no more than a tenner either way (of the Xbox One €429 UK price), depending on what conversion rate we use on the given day.”

Currently, there are no plans to bring the bundle to the U.S. market, though the main system will still launch on these shores November 15.

Source: IGN

No, iOS 7 Update Is Not Waterproof

BY

With the release of the new iOS 7 operating system for iPads and iPhones last week, many users couldn’t wait to take advantage of its many new features. Unfortunately, some took one a little too literally.

A fake ad, seen above, indicated that updating to iOS 7 would make your device waterproof, stating, “In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry.”

Unfortunately, a few owners may have decided to try this out, and as a result, damaged their phones. It was a fabrication created through the pranksters at 4chan. It’s not entirely clear if anyone really did damage their phone because of this pseudo-ad — let’s hope no one did.

Repeat: the iPhone is not waterproof, no matter what operating system it’s running on.

Source: Adweek

Dyson’s Flying Machines

BY

Dyson, a company that specializes in making parts for vacuums and fans, has decided to try something a little different for its next project – flying machines.

The company recently challenged employees to build remote-controlled drones from vacuum parts, ones that could complete a custom-built obstacle course. Indeed, many employees were up to the task, even if some of the models were, well, less than successful.

Drone-style quadcopters, ornthopters and other designs took the course on, some with better results than others. You can watch the devices in action and get an idea of how the experiments went.

Source: Fastcolabs

GameStop Sees Targeted Marketing On The Rise

BY

At the GameStop Expo recently the [a]list daily sat down with Mike Hogan, GameStop’s executive vice president of strategic business & brand development (and formerly the company’s chief marketing officer), to talk about what GameStop is seeing for game marketing this fall and beyond.

Of course, the big buzz right now at GameStop is a combination of new consoles and a wave of highly anticipated games for both existing and new consoles. “Obviously with the new consoles people are excited about Call of Duty, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed,” Hogan said. “Hopefully there will be something for everyone, or almost everyone. What probably excites me the most is the amount of new IP you’re seeing in the category. It could be Titanfall, it could be Watch_Dogs, it could be a number of things. Seeing companies investing tens of millions of dollars in new IP is a great sign of health. It means people are bullish.”

GameStop sees their buy-sell-trade model as a very important part of the strategy for the fall. “The number one reason fro not having reserved a new console is ‘I don’t have enough money,’” said Hogan. GameStop is intent on solving that problem by helping consumers unlock the billions of dollars of value they have in hardware and software that can be traded in for credit.

“We’re going to be very aggressive around value,” Hogan continued. “You can trade to get your console, and you can trade your smartphone or your iPad. Getting people to think about the electronics that you have around the house as currency that you can actually spend is a big thing. We’ve actually produced an ad that hasn’t run yet that has that message. This is a fall where we know there’s lots of things that people want, so if we make consoles affordable to millions more people than would otherwise buy them, that’s great for consumers and it’s great for us.”

The biggest change in marketing that Hogan sees is the transformation that data is causing. “Data is transforming everything,” Hogan said. “It’s the ability to take the data and attach it to an individual consumer. What you’re seeing is an evolution of the marketing mix. You’ll see more targeted media, you’ll see less mass media. You’ll see increased digital.”

What Hogan sees is this evolution taking place not just online, but at retail. “There’s a lot of targeted marketing that actually happens in the store,” Hogan explained. “If you come into the store and you’re a PowerUp member, I know who you are and what you’ve bought. It tells me things like the last five titles that you bought. Rather than saying ‘hey, we sell digital content’ I can say ‘we see you bought Madden, did you like the game Did you know there’s additional digital content ‘ Even in store what’s happening is customization of the experience.”

The overall trend for game marketing is an increase in spending. “From a development perspective, people are investing more and more in the category, and I think marketing goes hand in hand with that,” Hogan said. “There’s a lot of good indicators of that – we can look at Game Informer magazine, advertising there tends to be a good leading indicator. Not only do we see increased spend, but we see publishers doing the same thing we’re doing. They’re spending a lower percentage of their budget on traditional mass-media vehicles and more of it on targeted things, like programs at GameStop. We can touch the consumer at the point of sale, we’ve got people there that can make recommendations, we’ve got an email base with 25 million members, and so on.”

“There’s definitely more investment in the category, and they’re getting data,” Hogan continued. “Everybody’s getting smarter about saying I’m going to put my dollars where I get the biggest return. So dollars are are coming out of vehicles where you don’t have hard data to demonstrate impact, and they’re going into things where you can demonstrate impact.”

GameStop is giving its marketing partners more data, but of course there’s a level of caution there. “We never give individual consumer data,” said Hogan. “But in terms of a targeted program impact, being able to go to publishers and say we’re going to reach out to this group of people based on these criteria, absolutely. You can imagine for a Disney Infinity versus a Call of Duty you’re talking a radically different market you’re going after. The ability to slice and dice that is a pretty big deal.”

Speaking of that Hogan doesn’t view the competition between Disney Infinity and Skylanders as a bad thing. “They’re both going to win and that’s good for the category,” said Hogan. “If you remember Guitar Hero and Rock Band, these were new things that took the category to a group of consumers that hadn’t been as involved before. Obviously Activision was first out of the chute with Skylanders, and what Disney is doing is a recognition of the legitimacy of that category. Toys in that age target audience is doing well. I would say you’ll see even more entries into that category.”

US Trails In Per Capita Ad Spend

BY

To all the Don Draper wannabes out there, make your next drink a double. The US no longer rules the roost in at least one ad spend category. A recent estimate of per capita advertising spending by eMarketer ranks the US fourth, topped by Norway and the UK respectively in the number three and number two spots. Who’s number one Well crikey, that goes to Australia.

eMarketer found that advertisers in Australia spent a whopping 44 percent more per person on average than what the US spends. In fact, the top three spenders including UK and Norway were neck to neck in terms of dollars allocated, while the US and remaining countries in the lower two-thirds of the list trailed well behind.

The figures can be misleading. Statista, which charted eMarketer’s findings, points out that the US is still considered the world’s biggest advertising market in total dollars spent. Together with Canada, which ranked fifth in per capita spending, the North American market accounts for nearly 39 percent of the global ad market. Despite seemingly dominating eMarketer’s list, Western Europe accounts for 24 percent, trailing even Asia Pacific which accounts for just under 29 percent.

Sources: eMarketer and Statista

PopCap’s Powerhouse Property

BY

If becoming EA’s biggest mobile game launch in history less than a week after release isn’t enough of a testament to the popularity of Plants vs. Zombies 2, a controversy stirred up in the press this week seals it. EA head of labels Frank Gibeau is alleged to have said in a closed door meeting that Apple gave EA “a truckload of money” to delay the game’s release on Android. That’s according to a report in Giant Bomb, and both EA and Apple have stepped forward to vehemently deny the claim.

The allegations are EA’s to deal with. For PopCap, it’s really just another sign that the game maker has struck franchise gold. In mid-August, Plants vs. Zombies 2 set the record for an EA mobile game launch with 16 million downloads after only five days in the iOS App Store. Earlier this month, PopCap updated the figure to 25 million downloads. The original game in the series is widely regarded as one of the first major hits for iPhone games. Yet by comparison, Plants vs. Zombies sold about 300,000 units in the first nine days after launching on iOS, generating about $1 million in sales with its $3.99 price point.

PopCap took their sweet time with the sequel by digital game development standards, and not surprisingly made a big change by forgoing the premium pricing model to bring it out as a free-to-play game. According to Tony Leamer, franchise business director at PopCap , children would come up to their booths at trade shows to give them guff about taking too long with it. Now, with PvZ 2 a critical and commercial success, a console game on the horizon, and a growing drive to expand the IP into merchandise and other forms of entertainment, it feels like PopCap is sitting on a billion dollar franchise.

We had a chance to talk with Leamer to reflect on the sequel’s success, which had to have surpassed expectations at PopCap and EA. It’s hard to believe anyone would have the gall to forecast a record breaking launch at a publisher with EA’s legacy. Leamer also gave us a glimpse about what’s ahead for the franchise.

“Building Plants vs. Zombies as an entertainment brand is a huge focus for us,” Leamer told us. “It starts with great games, we can never lose focus on creating amazing game experiences. Any game experience that has the Plants vs. Zombies name on it is going to be something we need to be proud of and excited about, so it starts with that. You’ve seen the first forays into developing this as a broader entertainment brand as we move towards merchandising, so you’re seeing the first iterations of that.”

No, you can’t click on this.  But you can find it on PopCap’s site

But he added, “We’re not going to just slap the Plants vs. Zombies logo on every single kind product and just get it out there. We really want stuff that we think fits well with the brand, is going to resonate with fans and reflect the brand well. And then as we move to elevate the Plants vs. Zombies status as an entertainment brand, there are lots of opportunities out there in other media that transcends games where we’re having lots of discussions. Lots of fun stuff on the horizon, that’s very much a focus for us going forward.”

The decision to make the game free to play was apparently an easy one for PopCap. Outside of obvious changes in the mobile game market and challenges with premium pricing in app stores, the game maker saw it as an opportunity to grow the franchise even beyond its massive fan base. There aren’t exact figures readily available on lifetime sales of the first PvZ, but PopCap had labeled it as their biggest hit ever even before releasing the iPhone version, an impressive feat given a library of hits that include Peggle, Zuma and Bejeweled. PvZ ultimately released on nearly ten platforms, expanding beyond its PC and iOS debuts to Android, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and handheld consoles Nintendo DS and PlayStation Vita.

For the first game, PopCap and EA undertook a campaign to promote it unlike anything seen before for a digital game franchise. Rovio usually gets credited for being a pioneer in mobile game branding for making Angry Birds into a global entertainment brand, but PvZ set the bar first. ([a]list daily publisher Ayzenberg has an extensive case study on the first game’s branding campaign.) In one respect, PvZ’s campaign could be seen as a traditional game launch, given that it was based on driving a one-time purchase with a set price point during its release window. The approach with the free-to-play sequel is based on broader brand building strategy, going back to how PopCap and EA see long tail monetization for PvZ in growing the fan base and the franchise.

Leamer and his moneymakers

Leamer explained the thinking: “As far as taking [PvZ 2] free to play, that’s something that we’ve absolutely embraced. The reason we went in that direction is our ability to reach the biggest audience is in the free to play space. When you remove that purchase barrier, our ability to get the game in the hands of as many people as possible goes way up.”

On the game side of things, PopCap’s most interesting product in the pipeline for the property is Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, a first person shooter headed to PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Xbox One in spring of next year. The game made a great impression at E3 this past summer, earning ten best of show awards according to PopCap. As for PvZ 2 expanding into other platforms, the recent controversy with Apple and Android aside, Leamer painted it as a calculated inevitability.

“If you look at the way PopCap develops games, we start with one platform and get it right,” Leamer said. “With this game we started with mobile, and specifically iOS. That’s only the beginning. As you saw with Plants vs. Zombies, the first game came out on PC first. It wasn’t even on mobile until almost a year later. The approach we’re taking with PvZ 2 is similar, where we want to get it right on the first platform, make sure we’re delivering a great experience. But could we see this experience extending to lots of other platforms going forward? Absolutely.”