Challenges Face Mobile Games And Mobile Ads

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Advertising is prevalent in mobile games, but effective advertising is much rarer. At GamesBeat, a panel talked about creating mobile ads ‘that don’t suck,’ in an acknowledgment of the widespread nature of the problem. The panel was sponsored by NativeX, which bills itself as the leading native mobile ad platform that has driven more than 1 billion app downloads since its founding in 2000. A variety of industry execs contributed their views on mobile game ads and how to improve them, as well as the general state of the mobile game industry. While the mobile game sector is booming, there are clearly major issues facing mobile games around advertising, discovery, and profitability.

Michael Pilawski, VP of mobile product management for NativeX, said that “A good ad is a combination of three different things: Great creative, the right medium, and the right budget. A lot of companies focus on the budget that they want to spend, but they don’t really allocate enough of that budget to creative. Really good creative can not only get people curious about the game, but maybe even pre-qualify them so they don’t download the game and see that it isn’t the game they want to play.”

Pilawski urged more effort into the strategy behind the ads. “Think about the message you are trying to achieve,” Pilawski said. “Are you trying to get them curious Are you trying to get them to play the game the next minute Are you trying to develop some sort of connection to get them to download the game in the future ”

Companies also need to consider placement and budget. “Not every game experience can be delivered in the same medium,” Pilaswski noted. “You have to be really strategic about your choices. Do you want to spend your budget all in a week, or do you want to spend it over two months You need to test, and it’s not going to happen in a day. If you’re trying to do it in a day, you’re just going to waste a lot of money advertising and getting low-quality users.”

Once your ad is launched, you need to refine it and improve it. “When you start off, you’re not going to get the perfect creative on day one,” said Vatsal Bhardwaj of game publisher Storm8. “You need to have the right process to come up with the creative and the right format and figure out how to test it. You also need to figure out when to surface it — right in the middle of a PvP game is the wrong time and place.”

Of course, finding the right target for the ad is critical. “Another key factor in doing ads in a game is really getting to know your audience,” said David Kim, the CEO of Animoca. “Right now, especially in the mobile space, it’s really a big blob of not focused, not targeted ads that really doesn’t mean much to 95 percent of the users.”

Advertising is a question that needs to be considered as part of your overall game publishing strategy, though. “Discovery costs are much higher than they used to be,” said Trip Hawkins, founder of EA and Digital Chocolate and now CEO of If You Can. “You can’t really afford to do marketing in the first place until you’ve perfected the metrics around monetization and lifetime value. Until you know it’s high enough that the advertising investment can be recouped, all the advertising you do is going to keep losing money.”

“If you’re launching a game and you have no clue who your audience will be, you probably shouldn’t be launching a game or even making a game,” agreed Pilawski. “Having some audience in mind, you really want to start testing very early. You don’t need to test in the App Store. You can test with twenty friends. You want to test all of your elements, including your headline.”

The discussion turned to the major problem with mobile games — the annoying fact that only a few games at the top make money, and vast numbers of mobile games don’t. “The only companies who can really sustain ad campaigns beyond an initial launch to blast your way up the charts are the ones who have figured out that they are monetizing well enough to continue to do it,” said Hawkins. “Any game listed in the Top Ten under Free in the App Store or Google Play Store, then you know it’s supported by a virtual goods economy that’s doing really well. Those are the companies that have cracked the code on how to monetize well. Any company that’s got more than one game in the Top 100 is in fact doing it with a little bit of consistency.”

“There’s a real issue with scalability in these app stores,” Hawkins continued. “Unless you’re hearing about a game through a friend or through a marketing campaign, you’re trying to discover it through the store. Well, there’s about a million apps in the store, and about ten apps fill up the first page of Free and any other lists you look at. It’s very hard to get on the list, and it’s not ever going to have more than ten things that fit on that little screen. It’s a big, big bottleneck, and it’s completely tilted the scale. It’s a winner-take-all situation. If you have one of these games that monetizes well, that belongs in the Top Ten, that’s where all the revenue is. Those games are setting all kinds of records for revenue levels, and then there’s a million apps losing money. And if they’re losing money they shouldn’t be running ad campaigns at all.”

Hawkins’ lengthy experience in the game industry, from founding Electronic Arts, 3DO, and Digital Chocolate to his new startup If You CanThe, gave him a perspective into the overall industry challenge. “The real thing the industry has to figure out is that early experimentation around finding your audience and figuring out who your competition is,” Hawkins said. “If your only claim to fame is that your game is fun, there are another million games that make exactly the same claim. Therefore, you have a problem with switching costs. The moment that there’s a glitch, or a moment of boredom or whatever, customers are going to drop that game and switch to something else. You’re going to end up with spectacular churn. Even if you had good initial engagement, you’re going to lose customers faster and that’s going to hurt you on lifetime value as well.”

“The industry as a whole is clearly struggling to turn virtual goods economies into a science — right now it’s more of an art form,” noted Hawkins.

IOS 7 As Designed In Microsoft Word

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Václav Krejcí, an Art Director at Prague Bistro hit upon something big when he saw an uncanny resemblance between clip art in Microsoft Word and the newly updated iOS 7. His video showing off his editing skills at break-neck speed has gotten 2.7 million hits so far and it’s easy to see why:

 

CEO: Nintendo Won’t Abandon 3D

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With its recently launched Nintendo 2DS handheld, consumers can now enjoy more current handheld games on the go without needing to view them in 3D. But does this mean Nintendo is shifting away from the original audience that purchased the earlier 3DS model for its visual superiority Hardly.

CEO Satoru Iwata stated that while the 2DS will get the company’s full support, it’s not ready to abandon 3D by any means. “Generally speaking, it takes approximately one and a half years before we can bring a new hardware system onto the market, and we already realized beforehand that it would be difficult to maximize the sales potential of Nintendo 3DS without an entry-level product ready in time for the release of a new Pokémon title,” he explained to his investors. “Because we already knew that the range of price options for Nintendo 3DS was not sufficient in light of the highly appreciated yen at the time, we had been preparing for this launch.”

Even with the shift to a 2D-related handheld – and one all ages can use – 3D remains on the table. “We are offering such an option in order to further propel the popularity of the Nintendo 3DS platform in the overseas markets. Nintendo 2DS is, however, simply one of the options for consumers and we will continue to offer the existing Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo 3DS XL platforms in the overseas markets, and we are not saying that we will abandon 3D or cease to make new propositions in 3D.”

Keep in mind that Nintendo is releasing a new model of the 3DS XL, based upon its upcoming game The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Both the system and handheld arrive in the U.S. market on November 22.

Source: Shacknews

 

Korean Lawmakers Call Games ‘Poison’

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Despite the huge popularity of gaming in South Korea, not everyone is pleased by how widespread they’ve become.

A few legislators in the country have stated during a public hearing last week that they plan to push forward a plan that would classify online games as a “poison,” attempting to subsequently tax the industry up to one percent of its sales. These funds would be turned around to create a fund to pay for the treatment of online addiction. Considering it’s an $8 billion dollar a year industry, that’s quite a bit.

K-IDEA, a trade association within the industry, has responded, stating that the bill could be the death of Korea’s gaming industry, with other individual companies also joining in the cause. 80,000 signatures have already been gathered against the bill by the online team at Nexon.

Note that only a few legislators are supporting the bill at the moment. Others, including Korean president Park Geun-hye, still see the gaming industry as one of the most important in South Korea, and wishes for support, rather than the rebranding as “poison.”

Source: GamesInAsia

Feel The Sound With Woojer

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If you’re looking for a way to really get that feeling of being immersed in sound, Woojer has the answer for you: A silent, wearable woofer. This matchbox-sized device transforms any audio signal into silent, harmonic tactile sensation that can be felt throughout the body. The Kickstarter campaign for the device launches today, with delivery scheduled for the spring of 2014.

“We spent the past two years optimizing Woojer’s technology to ensure a fully immersive experience, and are now launching on Kickstarter to fund production, which means backers will be the first to experience and own a Woojer,” said Dr. Neal Naimer, who is responsible for product development at Woojer.

The plug-and-play device clips onto your clothing in one or more places and convinces the brain that the entire body is experiencing high acoustic sound via perceptual inference. Woojer’s technology transforms any audio signal into harmonic tactile sensation that traverses through the skeleton and nervous system to the brain, thereby allowing users to literally feel the sound.

“At present, personal audio experiences are based solely on hearing. As a consequence, virtually all the rich low frequency sensation is lost. Woojer captures all the lost low frequency sensation and literally allows you to feel the sound. It’s like having your own portable movie theater, or being at a rock concert. Imagine the implications for video gaming and other multimedia experiences. The experience is so engaging, and so totally immersive, users tend to lower the audio levels, thus making it safer for your hearing,” said Mor Efrati, the inventor of Woojer.

PocketStation, The Next Generation

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It’s been rumored for some time, but today, Sony made its arrival official – the PocketStation is back. Well, an app for it on the PlayStation Vita, anyway.

Sony has launched its new PocketStation app on the Japanese PlayStation Store this week, enabling users to use the features on a virtual version of the screened memory card device for the original PlayStation.

Users can play a number of games within the app, including Mega Man and Final Fantasy, as well as other nifty features that came with the original device. It’s currently being offered free of charge to all PlayStation Plus subscribers, and more features are detailed in the trailer below.

No word yet if the app will make its way to the U.S. or European markets.

Source: Shacknews

 

‘Indie’ Xbox Devs Get Unity

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Microsoft has been opening up to indie game developers, looking to expand its Xbox One game library with a number of unique offerings while keeping Sony from getting an advantage with indies.

As part of the support for its recently introduced ID@Xbox self-publishing program for the system, Microsoft  has announced that it has partnered with engine firm Unity to provide an Xbox One add-on at no cost to all developers within the program. This will kick off starting next year.

“We talked internally at ID@Xbox about ways we could help developers for Xbox One. Many developers we talk to are using Unity today to get up and running quickly, and to be able to harness the power of hardware and realize their creative visions without spending tons of time on technology development. We thought about paying for some developers’ Unity licenses but the more we talked about it, the more we felt paying for some developers’ licenses and not others just didn’t feel right,” said ID@Xbox director Chris Charla.

“…we want to make sure the dev who’s working away in Omaha, or Coventry, or Chiba will have the same shot to realize their vision on Xbox One as one of my developer friends we hang out with in Seattle or at a trade show like GDC or Gamescom,” he continued. “Because at the end of the day, we want gamers to pick the hits. That’s what Xbox One is all about: One games store, the best discovery tools on console, and a powerful, equal playing field for all games, from developers big and small.”

The program will support all of Xbox One’s features, including Kinect, SmartGlass, and the impulse triggers on its new controller.

Source: GamesIndustry International