Need to promote monsters the right way? Who better to call on than Andy Samberg?
The comedian, who has appeared on shows like Saturday Night Live and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is part of a new promotion with mixi to help push its smash mobile game, Monster Strike. Eight new commercials featuring Samberg and his monstrous company were released on the company’s official product site and its YouTube channel. Plus, viewers are invited to get in on the fun.
In these humorous ads, Samberg plays a coach whose job involves bringing people together to play Monster Strike, only to test them for distractions, including everything from pizza-related texts to parents reading texts. Of course, the game maintains their undivided attention, making Samberg and his programming buddy, Cthulhu, big successes.
The team at mixi is asking fans to vote for their favorite ads, which will earn them big rewards. By “Liking” videos, they can unlock rewards within Monster Strike. For example, after the videos cumulatively reached 1,000 Likes, a five-Orb bonus (in-game currency) was awarded, and many more are waiting to be unlocked.
That’s not all. One lucky participant will be picked at random and provided with a pizza party, complete with a food truck that will deliver lunch to that person’s school, office or other affiliated organization.
The campaign is running through next Monday, so viewers still have plenty of time to check out the videos and vote for their favorites in the hopes of winning prizes.
Monster Strike is available now for iOS and Android.
As the May launch date for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End approaches, video game developer, Naughty Dog has the bittersweet task of bringing their award-winning franchise to a satisfying end. In a five-part series of developer diary videos, key players in the Uncharted series, from programmers to character actors, share what it means to have worked on the project—and how it feels to say goodbye to Nathan Drake.
“You’re with this character for years,” reflects creative director Neil Druckmann,”and you’re with this world for years, and you go home on the weekends and you’re eating dinner with your family and you’re thinking about those characters and that world and it’s such a part of you that to walk away is very hard.”
Since the first game in 2007, Uncharted has sold over 21 million copies worldwide and has been recognized with numerous honors, including over 50 Game of the Year awards for Uncharted 2. Nathan Drake is now one of the most iconic adventure heroes in the gaming world.
When a franchise is this successful, it’s hard to imagine that any developer would want to walk away; but Naughty Dog realizes that our wise-cracking treasure hunter isn’t getting any younger, and it shows in his character design.
As the first in the franchise to launch on PlayStation 4, fans will get to see more detail than in graphics alone. Uncharted 4 promises to be the most intimate look at Nathan Drake’s motivations to date, as conveyed in PlayStation’s Man Behind the Treasure TV spot. The Naughty Dog team was greatly influenced by their experience creating The Last of Us, which was far more emotional of a subject matter than they were used to. This newfound knowledge, together with what they hope to be a fitting conclusion to Nathan Drake’s adventure, is what shapes the upcoming game. Fans need not worry about losing that grand sense of adventure, however, as Teagan Morrison, Naughty Dog’s technical director explains:
“Uncharted 4, as a result, is gonna be the best balance of of bombastic and over-the-top and exciting adventure, and these smaller moments—these small, intimate moments that end up meaning just as much—that end up sticking with us just as long.”
Uncharted has been a memorable journey for developers, actors and fans alike, and Naughty Dog hopes to end the series on a high, if not emotional note.
“As you play through the series,” says lead artist, Tate Mosesian, “you do sort of develop an affinity for the characters and an understanding of what motivates them and I hope that this game kinda brings that all to a nice crescendo. I hope that people cry when they play it; I hope that they laugh when they play it.”
Uncharted 4 is scheduled to launch exclusively on PlayStation 4 May 10, 2016.
Virtual reality has officially become a competitive market, with the HTC Vive launching today while the Oculus Rift has been shipping its pre-orders since last week. But understandably, some are still unsure about virtual reality technology and what it can do. Well, Vive’s publishing partner, Valve, has just the solution.
Valve has released a series of videos on its Steam VR website that demonstrate some of the amazing things virtual reality technology can do. These include everything from petting a robotic dog, to turning a room into a star-filled galaxy, or making your way across the Arizona desert while shooting zombies. Additionally, the site showcases all the fantastic features the HTC Vive has to offer, like Roomscale, which can track movements across a 15×15 ft room.
All these games are either available now or are coming to the Steam VR store. The galaxy-based experience, Irrational Exuberance, is free-to-play. Others, like The Blu, cancost $9.99 or more, but they provide enthralling experiences that make exceptional use of the Vive’s technology.
The HTC Vive, priced at $799, comes with a handful of downloadable games that include Fantastic Contraption, Job Simulator and Tilt Brush, but Valve wants consumers to know that there’s a whole world of experiences waiting for them in Steam VR. The store isn’t limited to Vive users, as plenty of games also support the Oculus Rift.
There are times when you want the prestige that comes with wearing luxury clothing brands, and others when you want the confidence and self-expression lifestyle brands have to offer. However, it looks like the two are soon becoming one and the same.
Retail analyst for Fung Global Retail, Deborah Weinswig, explained on Forbes how particular lifestyle brands, like aspirational brand Lululemon Athletica for example, are providing consumers with something of a luxury experience. Lululemon has managed to break records with its fourth-quarter earnings, making revenues around $704.3 million—a nearly 17 percent year-over-year increase from 2014.
“Retail outperformers tend to be polarized, positioned at either the high-end or the low-end, while middle-market retailers tend to be squeezed by rising interest rates and increasing standards at the budget retailers,” Weinswig notes. “At the upper end of retail, one particular sector is winning: lifestyle brands.”
The “Weinswig Hourglass Model,” using data from Fung Global Retail and Technology, compares high-end brands to the not-so-high ones, spanning from Neiman Marcus to Dollar Stores.
“They [lifestyle brands] have a premium, aspirational brand identity that suggests a certain quality of lifestyle,” Weinswig explained. “They are often younger brands, rather than heritage luxury brands. The brands have distinct design characteristics that consumers like to be recognized as wearing or owning.” She also noted several brands that were taking advantage of lifestyle needs, including Ted Baker, Sweaty Betty, Under Armor athletic gear, Fitbit, Supreme and even Apple. She noted that each of these companies were “strong performers” over the past few years, with strong financial results.
Another breakdown looked at the four key components that make lifestyle branding so effective:
Vertical integration
Category diversification
Distinct designs
Premium positioning
All of these tie in together for overall success, indicating that brands can really take off with the right design and promotional push.
“What sets the most successful lifestyle brands apart is that they tend to offer a distinct experience, largely because they own and operate their own stores, along with wholesaling through third-party retailers,” Weinswig concluded. “This allows them to control the retail experience and provide the customer with a singular, concrete brand image—something of symbolic value to the customer.” She also noted that Lululemon, alongside Bandier and Nike, have a done great job showcasing not only style, but also health consciousness and wellness, with consumers heavily in pursuit.
Today marks the official launch of the HTC Vive, and a strong library of games and experiences to go with it. One game in particular, The Gallery: Call of the Starseed, stands out with both its beauty and ambition. Inspired by ’80s fantasy movies, not only is The Gallery a puzzle adventure game that is designed to take advantage of full-room motion tracking, but developer Cloudhead Games intends to make it an episodic series. That makes Call of the Starseed the start of an ongoing virtual reality adventure, filled with mystery.
Mike Wilson, narrative director at Cloudhead Games, talked to [a]listdaily about bringing fantasy to life using the HTC Vive (other VR platforms will eventually be supported), traveling to all-new worlds, and always preparing for what the future might hold for The Gallery.
What is The Gallery: Call of the Starseed about?
The Gallery: Call of the Starseed is a fantasy adventure VR game that lets you escape to another world and become a hero in search of your lost sister. Call of the Starseed is full of intricate details, clever puzzles, quirky characters and mystery. Along the way, you will be assisted by a helpful yet unhinged Professor who may harbor ulterior motives of his own. You will search for your sister, Elsie, and this journey will lead you to a cosmic machine which wields incredible power and will test your will against the forces of a shadowy figure who resides within it. The Gallery is a game, yes, but it is also an experience.
The Gallery is said to be inspired by dark ’80s fantasy films. What are some of the biggest influences, and how did they impact the story?
We wanted to create an edgy, dark experience, all the while assuring the player that they will always be safe, a trait we loved in ’80s fantasy films. As a team, we all love movies such as The Goonies and the beloved Labyrinth. They’re scary films, but at the same time, tender and reassuring. That reassurance is what we want the player to feel while playing The Gallery. As the story arc progresses, you will get a sense of this push and pull; the give and take between skirting the edge of danger, and reassurance. The feeling of nostalgia that we try to evoke also serves to make you feel at home in a very unfamiliar environment.
What convinced you to develop the game for HTC Vive at launch?
We were developing for the Vive before it was even called the Vive—using surrogate motion-control technology and aiming for a standing VR experience. Our view of VR is that, at its best, it can transport you from your living room to another place. It can truly be other-worldly. Virtual reality can transport you to a magical place, that you have (until now) only seen in your imagination. To achieve this transportative effect, we believe that the more realistic movement and input the player has, the better.
In what ways does full-room motion tracking play into the experience?
Lighthouse tracking allows the player to truly explore a new space. That physicality transcends a purely seated experience and convinces your brain that you are somewhere special. You see something that interests you? Walk over to that object, pick it up, examine it, use that item and then discard it by dropping it. These actions are so human and fundamental that it takes very little to decipher between your intent and your actions. Meaning, there is no longer an abstract action in between your desires and your actions in room scale; you simply behave like a human would in that space. Beyond this innate ability to interact with the game world, lighthouse tracking allows for a fidelity that is currently unmatched, and that precise tracking is directly tied to the deepest levels of immersion possible in VR.
Why was The Gallery created as an episodic game? How does the format enhance the experience?
The Gallery was turned into an episodic release for a few reasons: one, episodic releases allow us to create a denser storyline. We are counting on the player to explore as much as they would like to discover the narrative in The Gallery. We want to cut up these chunks of exploration as to not fatigue the player.
Two, it gave us the time to really nail the detail in the story and in the art. Look anywhere around you in The Gallery, and you’ll see layers of detail that silently pull you further into the fantasy. Virtual reality simply requires more development time than a normal release.
Three, we are now able to create a product that evolves with the medium. We will learn from what the audiences responded to in previous episodes, and what other experiences are bringing to the table. We can then use this hindsight to build our future episodes into more engaging, technologically advanced, experiences that we would not have been privy to if we were a single-release game. To put it bluntly, The Gallery aims to be the latest and greatest in VR tech, and to do that, we need a tighter dev cycle.
How do you promote a game that is both episodic and made for an emerging technology like VR?
The same way you would with any other episodic game: you make the experience worth coming back to. We will prove, with each episode of The Gallery, that we are not settling for what we have accomplished, but are constantly striving for the next-best experience.
What has been the most important thing to keep in mind while developing and promoting The Gallery?
The newness of the medium. There’s a lot that’s going on for a user in VR, and right now the landscape is a totally foreign frontier. The VR landscape can be a bit overwhelming, with so many tech choices, and ideas of what VR should mean to the consumer. The Gallery was intentionally designed to just let users explore at their own pace, and to take in the experience at their individual comfort level. Most players come out of The Gallery with this “VR-shock” look on their face—a somewhat dazed, somewhat confused look which expresses so perfectly what we wanted them to feel. ‘Where did I just go?’—that look is what we love to see.
Facebook rolled out Instant Articles in May of last year as a way for publishers put content in Facebook’s News Feed so users don’t have to click out and wait for websites to load. This was especially important for mobile devices, where heading to external websites can be slow and often annoying, leading users to switch away from that process all too often. Initially, Instant Articles were limited to a few major publishers, and over time Facebook has gradually increased the access. Now the Instant Articles program will be opened up to all publishers on April 12 at Facebook’s F8 conference, and many new features have been added. Marketers—if you haven’t looked at Instant Articles yet, it’s time you did.
Instant Articles, touted by Facebook as “a new way for publishers to create fast, interactive stories on Facebook,” has been judged a success by publishers and Facebook alike.
The impact of Instant Articles on marketers will be seen in several areas, and it’s expected that giving the general public access to the feature could be huge. The expansion of usage will no doubt be followed by changes as Facebook finds out how Instant Articles is used by millions, and what additional features the masses desire. Still, we can predict certain ways that Instant Articles can be of benefit to marketers.
Audience Growth is a key feature of Instant Articles, and one that’s already been seen by publishers. Gawker Media’s Nick Denton tweeted about the growth in Unique Viewers (UVs) after introducing Instant Articles, boosting UVs from 4 million per day to 4.7 million per day. Part of the audience growth comes from the fast loading of the articles, eliminating the lag associated with heading to an external web site. Users can click through to a publisher’s web site if they want, follow your site on Facebook, or share the article—all of which will increase a publisher’s reach.
Gawker Facebook Instant
Big Data is another useful part of Instant Articles, bringing you actionable intelligence that is not normally part of what a publisher gets from a web site. For instance, Facebook lets you know how far down an article is scrolled, an invaluable way to know just how engaging your articles are—and at what point they lose significant readership.
That sort of data can let you fine-tune content to reach desired objectives. Perhaps there’s no point in writing lengthier articles, so writers should be generating more different articles with fewer paragraphs in them. Or maybe the headlines are bringing in people, but the writing isn’t following up on the promise of the headline. In any case, additional data can help adjust the content strategy top better suit your marketing goals.
Monetization has been an area of concern for Instant Articles, with some publishers concerned about the strict rules for the number of ads within articles. Facebook requires that at least 350 words separate ads in articles, and overall ads cannot make up more than 15 percent of the total content. There are ad platforms that can help out by placing ads at optimal points within articles, such as CodeFuel.
However, Facebook understands that this is an issue for publishers and is taking steps to ameliorate concerns. “Ad tech company Polar is extending support for its platform to Instant Articles, which will enable its clients—among them The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Slate—to run native ads in their articles there, just as they do with display ads,” notes Digiday in an article on the subject.
“We’ve seen publishers’ feedback on Instant to be positive in terms of the user engagement and content,” said Polar CEO Kunal Gupta. “But there are a lot of questions around how they will monetize it, knowing they have less ad positions on Instant. Branded content is typically the highest margin format the publisher has. This lets them get their highest-value formats into this platform.”
One of the major changes to Instant Articles is in Facebook’s advertising policies, which will now enable publishers to place video ads into content they post on the platform, as well as adding one additional ad unit at the bottom of every Instant Article, which could increase ad impressions by more than 20 percent. “In our conversations with publishers, these changes popped up as the biggest steps we could take to make the biggest impact,” said Josh Roberts, Instant Articles product manager at Facebook.
The Wall Street Journalreported that Facebook, as it prepares to open Instant Articles to all publishers, is making these changes to help with monetization. “Publishers will soon be able to place both autoplay and user-initiated video ads within Instant Articles, and to include pre-roll advertising before any editorial video content they publish, Mr. Roberts said. Autoplay video ads must have their sound disabled, however,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “We care about user experience first and foremost, but we know this doesn’t work if publishers can’t monetize their content successfully,” said Roberts.
It’s important to note that publishers can either sell the ads themselves (and keep 100 percent of the revenue), or pass the ad slot on to Facebook to sell, whereupon the social network will keep 30 percent of whatever revenue it acquires from the sale of that slot. However, the downside for users experiencing these ads is that they can either be autoplay or user-initiated—and there’s no doubt that autoplay ads can be annoying, especially on a mobile device where it can run down your battery life. As usual, much will depend on the discretion and good sense of both publishers and advertisers not to let these issues get out of hand.
There may be more monetization news for Instant Articles in the future, Facebook hinted. The inclusion of sponsored content and the ability to allow publishers to collect email addresses are among changes being considered for Instant Articles as time passes.
Ultimately, the future of Instant Articles depends upon its adoption by publishers and the potentially huge adoption ahead as Facebook opens the platform to all. Brand recognition is a huge part of the value of Instant Articles for marketers, as they load automatically in the News Feed rather than requiring a click to access. The articles also keep all the elements you’ve chosen to include, like your brand logo, special fonts or colors, or other parts of the brand identity. The potential for increased impressions is huge if Instant Articles become as widespread as most observers think.
Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, for one, believes Facebook has the right stuff to make Instant Articles popular. “Who is best positioned in this world to target ads against categories of users?” Denton said, speaking to Re/code. “Who knows the most about those users? Who can supply the most relevant ads and in a way that doesn’t degrade the user experience?”
We’ll no doubt find out more about Instant Articles at Facebook’s F8 developer conference on April 12.
If you love classic arcade games, you might recall Marble Madness, where you had to navigate a ball through a world of brain-teasing obstacles. More recent takes on the gameplay style include the Super Monkey Ball series, where players tilt the entire level around to get the ball (and the energetic monkey inside) to its goal. It’s a game style that never really goes out of fashion, and the developers at Lightning Rock (based out of Canberra, Australia) are looking to bring that sense of old-school nostalgia to virtual reality with the game Marble Mountain, which releases April 5 on Steam.
Designed for both normal monitors and high-end VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, Marble Mountain challenges players to guide a marble across gigantic, animated, 3D environments as if it were an Indiana Jones-style adventure.
Shannon Pickles, CEO of Lightning Rock, talked to [a]listdaily about bringing a little old-school gameplay to new technology, and how to avoid losing your marbles.
What inspired you to make a puzzle game for VR?
The company is basically a group of mates in our mid-thirties that grew up with a love and passion for playing computer games. One of the best experiences we all remembered from our childhood was playing Marble Madness, either on our Amigas or down in the local takeaway store on an arcade machine.
So, when we decided to move into making games ourselves it seemed a natural fit to try and see if we could take that classic retro arcade fun and blend it with modern graphics and technology.
The other real factor though is we really felt that more could be done with VR. Back when we started development the vast majority of VR demos coming out were limited to First Person Shooters or Simulators, and we felt there was definitely a market for third-person-view puzzle titles like Marble Mountain.
What convinced you to develop for Oculus VR and Vive, as opposed to mobile VR (Gear VR and Google Cardboard)?
To be honest we did try to make the game work at one stage on mobile devices, and it just didn’t work well. While still fun, the accelerometer controls couldn’t quite offer the gameplay feel we were after, and the limitations on the processing power of mobile devices meant we really couldn’t go with the art style and graphics we were looking for.
How does VR enhance the experience, compared to a normal monitor?
To me, the primary difference of VR from normal monitor play is just the elimination of your peripheral vision. You just don’t realize until you start playing in VR how much your awareness is split by having peripheral vision outside the monitor. All of a sudden, when that is taken away you are really just fully in the game, and it’s an amazing feeling. Everything seems more real and vibrant.
It also allows us to do some interesting things with our level design; for example we created a section of one level where the camera sits just outside of a waterfall, and to see the hidden alcove the player actually has to stretch their head forward and through the flowing water.
Have you used different approaches to promote Marble Mountain as a normal game, as opposed to as a VR game?
Not so much. However, we have been very lucky in that we have had an overwhelming amount of interest from media so far given the timing of VR. It is very important for us, however, that we make sure people know the game is in no way compromised for a non-VR player. I still personally really enjoy kicking back on the couch at home and playing the game through my Steam Link every now and then.
Now that the Oculus Rift has officially released, do you feel that there’s a rush to have games listed on the Oculus store? Or is Steam still the ideal platform for promoting and selling VR games?
I don’t feel there is a rush at all. Steam still has the vast majority of the games market share, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon. For us as well, Steam has the advantage that you can use it to play the game using Rift, Vive, PC, Mac, Linux with the single purchase. Don’t get me wrong, we will still look to use the Oculus store. I think the more options, choices and mediums players have for their purchases the better.
How quickly do you think we’ll see mass adoption of VR?
I suppose that depends on what you consider mass adoption. I think we have already seen a larger adoption of VR than at any other point when it’s been tried in the past, and I think the momentum has sufficiently built with enough large companies now on board that it’s not going away.
One of the key stages, is probably going to be the launch of PlayStation VR, given the large player base waiting there with compatible hardware. The next big step will be when Oculus and HTC figure out ways to lower their production costs while maintaining a reasonable level of quality for a lower market level entry option for consumers.
Social media continues to blossom across numerous channels like Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat—and when it comes to the number one platform for accessing them, mobile is king.
A new report from comScore titled 2016 U.S. Cross Platform Future In Focus provides a closer look at social media use and explains how accessible it has become on mobile.
As shown, the use of desktop computers for social media has dwindled over the past couple of years (from 33 percent, down to 21 percent), while smartphones have grown by 8 percent. In 2015, smartphone apps made up 61 percent of the time spent on social media. Tablets, meanwhile, are holding about steady, after seeing a small resurgence in 2014.
The report also reveals that approximately one in five minutes of all digital media time (about 19 percent) is spent on social sites or with social media apps, which exceeds all the other categories in the report. About 80 percent of that usage comes from mobile devices.
Furthermore, thereport indicates that services like Snapchat, Instagram, Vine and Tumblr seem to have a much younger audience than others, with Snapchat in the lead—76 percent of its users being between the ages of 18-to-34, which could be something that marketers may want to take advantage of.
Other takeaways include:
Consumers made more significant use of their mobile devices when it came to both shopping and purchase activity.
Digital is just about the top advertising medium, even with the rise of ad blocking.
Print publishers are finding growth in the digital field with advertising, making proper use of mobile in an effort to reach out to a bigger audience.
Digital media usage continues to grow, reaching nearly 50 percent within all digital media time spent. Smartphone app usage is a big factor in this.
Mobile is still seeing a spectacular rise, and even publishers that aren’t normally associated with mobile games are starting to get onboard. Nintendo struck gold with its recent release of Miitomo, and Sony is set to release several PlayStation games through a newly created subsidiary. Now Capcom, famous for hit franchises such as Street Fighter and Monster Hunter, is joining in the action. The company recently announced a reorganization of its mobile business under a new name, Capcom Mobile Co.
The goal of this new subsidiary will be to release games exclusively for smartphones, especially ones based on popular Capcom licenses such as Mega Man, Sengoku Basara and Monster Hunter. These games are expected to debut sometime before March 2017, along with two currently unannounced titles.
“With international economic growth and the explosive spread of smartphones as a backdrop, the mobile games market is expected to rapidly grow: from $27.5 billion in 2015 to $37.4 billion in 2019 globally,” the company explained in the announcement. “Mobile content is a driver of growth in the game market as well as an important factor in Capcom’s growth strategy.”
Capcom has also noted that it will “continue to maximize revenues by proactively releasing popular IP in the high-growth mobile games market.” Beeline Interactive, a company devoted to developing mobile games like the free-to-play title The Smurfs’ Village, is also taking part in the deal.
This isn’t the first time that the company has dabbled in the mobile market, as it has released Mega Man, Street Fighter and others in the past. However, this provides a renewed focus on the market, with a strategy to develop games specifically for mobile instead of porting them over from other platforms.
Free-to-play mobile game developers are always striving to catch those whales who will spend big money on in-app purchases. But how much can a game make? A new report by Slice Intelligence reveals that players generally like to spend an average of $87 on in-app purchases. That’s only $5 behind what console and PC players pay, including for downloadable content.
However, some games are bigger draws than others—a lot bigger. “The mobile game with the largest average in-app spend is Game of War, where players spend an average of $550 to ensure their army conquers the competition. What do Game of War gamers buy? Crates of gold, with the average item price hovering at $52, the company said.
Other notable games that have high in-app spending per player include Summoners War ($272.41), Big Fish Casino: Free Slots ($232.67), Castle Clash ($202.26) and Brave Frontier ($156.20).
That adds up to a lot of big business for mobile developers. Minecraft, which is at the bottom of the list, brings in $6.50 per player. That’s still significant revenue, considering how there are millions of people playing it.
Slice also discusses “whales” in the free-to-play market, which comprises 10 percent of players, but makes up 90 percent of overall sales. “Further listening to the statistical sonar reveals that the top one percent, the ‘white whales,’ of mobile gamers account for an astonishing 58 percent of the mobile gaming revenue from in-app purchases,” the company noted. “This trend doesn’t occur among traditional games, where roughly 28 percent of the audience accounts for 90 percent of game sales.”
As shown in the chart, mobile game spending almost matches with the traditional game industry, with about $86.50 on average compared to $91.58. It’s very likely mobile spending could surpass traditional games in about a year or two.
The report also shows how consumers are spread across three different categories:
43 percent of gamers only buy mobile games.
37.8 percent only purchase traditional console and PC games.
19.2 percent buy games for mobile, console and PC platforms.
What is The Gallery: Call of the Starseed about?
What inspired you to make a puzzle game for VR?
