‘Nerve’ VR App Dares You To Play

In the movie Nerve, which stars Emma Roberts and Dave Franco, participants are put into one of two categories: Watchers or Players. Players participate in a series of ever more daring and stunts while the growing audience of Watchers follow along. While Nerve is great as a summer movie thriller, it also happens to be perfect for a VR app experience.

Lionsgate Entertainment partnered with SilVR Thread to develop Nerve – Do You Dare, a promotional virtual reality app that can be experienced on mobile platforms such as Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR. Similar to the film, users can choose to be either Watchers or Players. Watchers are offered a collection of videos where characters perform dares such as eating crickets. However, the app’s biggest draw is in its virtual reality scenarios available to Players. These experiences, recreated using scenes from the movie, range from walking across an aluminum ladder bridge across two buildings or riding a skateboard while hanging on to a rope tied to a police car. In short, the app provides all the thrills of being in Nerve without the risks to life or limb.

Nerve Front Screen

David Edwards, vice president of digital marketing at Lionsgate Entertainment, and Tai Crosby, founder and CEO of SilVR Thread, talk to [a]listdaily about putting together the promotion and how VR gets audiences to theaters.

How did the partnership to create virtual reality experience featuring Nerve come together, and how did Lionsgate work with SilVR to create the app?

Crosby: When we first met with Lionsgate, it was immediately evident that this was the perfect technology for this project. SilVR Thread could deliver for Lionsgate a true first-person POV (point-of-view) immersion to align with a film that has you on the edge of your seat. Lionsgate drove app development while SilVR Thread focused on creating VR experiences that made users feel they were part of the film.

What made Nerve the ideal movie for this kind of project?

Edwards: Nerve is about how social media and mobile tech impacts our world, as “Players” and “Watchers” engage in a high-stakes online game of truth or dare. The immersive environment you get with VR provides an incredible opportunity for us to let the audience actually experience for themselves the thrill of the high-risk dares from the movie. Plus, the filmmakers were enthusiastic about using VR for promotion and offered extensive production support.

Crosby: Nerve features spine-chilling action dares, and the best way to highlight them is to allow fans to experience the dares not only as they were presented in the scene, but more specifically through the shoes of the action star. SilVR Thread POV VR lets users live out the scene within the body of the star, creating a deeper connection so it that feels very real, and it doesn’t get much more adrenaline pumping than Nerve.  We love the concept of the film and had a blast working with the Lionsgate team.

What are some of the dares audiences can look forward to?

Crosby: Our most popular dare has been skateboarding while roped to the back of a moving cop car. The other two thrilling dares are ones where the characters cross a ladder suspended between two windows sills of high-rise NYC apartment buildings—in one of the dares, the character succeeds, and in the other, the character fails. It’s pretty intense and fun to experience with a full 360 perspective.

Nerve App Ladder

How do you feel VR helps get audiences to theaters?

Edwards: Ultimately, the Nerve VR experience drives awareness and interest in the film.

Crosby: As VR gradually enters the mainstream, it is proving itself to be a tremendous compliment to traditional film. No other medium allows fans to experience fictional worlds in the same way.  Fans are getting immersed as if they were there—and in this particular case, getting to experience moments from the film through the shoes of their favorite star.

Will Lionsgate develop VR experiences to promote all its movies in the future?

Edwards: This is our fourth promotional VR experience for a film release. We find them to be very effective when there is a strong thematic alliance that lends itself organically to VR, which is the case with Nerve.

With both mobile VR and premium headsets out, what do you see as the future of VR technology?

Crosby: VR headsets are bound to become significantly sleeker, less bulky, and more naturally fit for our faces. But just as hardware advancements will play a significant role in encouraging participation in the medium, fantastic content is critical in facilitating that push.

Do you think that, with Google Daydream coming out this year, an experience like this could become even more interactive?

Crosby: It certainly offers to bring some new features and opportunities to this space once it’s available. But right now, we’re focused on working with our content partners to bring our work to Gear VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

What is the most challenging part of putting together a VR promotion such as this one?

Edwards: While VR is still in nascent stages, it’s becoming more accessible every day. We worked closely with our VR developer and our filmmakers to produce high-quality, stereoscopic 360 content. Headsets are also becoming more prevalent, so to ensure that we could provide the Nerve VR experience to as many people as possible, we turned to Google Cardboard and we utilized 360-degree video playback on Facebook and YouTube.

Crosby: When you are working alongside a blockbuster film production like this, there are so many pieces that are coming together at the same time, so that kept us on our toes. And we wanted the VR experience to be really seamless with just the right imagery from the film.

Nerve We Dare You

How Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ Turned Marketing On Its Head

It’s been nearly a month since Stranger Things debuted on Netflix—more than ample time for the curious to binge watch and demand a Season Two. In just the first week after its release in the US, Stranger Things leaped over Orange is the New Black as the most popular digital original series with over three times the audience demand of the former top digital original. In the arts and entertainment category, Stranger Things is the most searched not only in the US, but globally as well.

Unlike many shows or blockbuster films, the hype leading up to Stranger Things was small, but effective. The lack of hype, but quality of content, created an “upside down” marketing phenomenon in which consumers sold the show to other consumers. Even horror author Stephen King is singing the show’s praises, and not just because he’s an obvious influence.

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Set in the 1980’s, the supernatural thriller pays homage to popular media from the same era, with government conspiracies, missing children and the creepy unexplained. It has been compared to the works of Stephen King, John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg, shows like Twin Peaks and The X-Files and even the video game Silent Hill.

Although consumer-to-consumer marketing had a huge role in the success of the new franchise, a large part of the show’s success can be attributed to creative marketing efforts by Netflix, as well. One such activation included a successful partnership with the livestreaming site Twitch on July 14. The activation consisted of a four-hour live broadcast ending with eight minutes of the first Stranger Things episode. “Twitch Plays Haunted Basement,” which took place in the now-infamous basement from the show, offered an interactive experience in which fans in the Twitch chat voted on what happened next.

“As our team of Influencers played various games . . . in our 80’s-themed basement set, Twitch chat voted on creepy things to befall our unwitting victims—flying books, flickering lights, doors that would creak open to reveal sinister, singing, dead-eyed dolls only to slam shut at random, ringing phones that would jump off their cradles when you tried to touch them, and more,” Twitch representatives said in a statement.

Speaking of creepy, fans can explore the first floor of the infamous house in either virtual reality or 360-degree video. (Although viewers should be warned of spoilers, if you haven’t watched the show yet.)

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Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer have even considered an 8-bit video game version of the show, inspired by a plethora of fan art surfacing across the internet. During an interview with IGN, the brothers stated that they had been talking to Netflix about merchandising as well. While the show’s sudden popularity was a welcome surprise, the opportunity for additional marketing isn’t lost on the writers.

“We turned in the last visual effects shot, walked away and then reviews and then a week later, it was all on [Netflix] and everybody was watching it,” Ross Duffer said in the interview. “I remember waking up Friday morning to all these tweets of people that had finished the show already. It’s been a whirlwind for sure and I think it’s bizarre, but in the best way.”

Although Netflix has not officially renewed Stranger Things for a second season, a panel dedicated to the show was presented during TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour day during the last week of July, indicating that we haven’t seen the last of that little town in Indiana.

 

Why Patrón Partnered With Amazon’s Alexa To Create A Cocktail Lab

Stay-at-home bartenders and conquistadors of the cocktail, rejoice, because consuming tequila and making craft drinks is a whole lot cooler and digital now thanks to the creation of the Patrón Cocktail Lab.

The tequila maker has paired with Amazon’s smart speaker Echo to deliver over 150 cocktail recipes, as well as recommendations and tips ranging from perfect pairings for food to proper ways to shake and strain Mexico’s favorite spirit. Think of it as a tequila-specific robotic sommelier who mixes more than just a margarita through the Alexa app on Amazon Alexa and Amazon Echo.

In addition to housing recipes in an interactive cocktail recommendation site, Patrón is pioneering voice-enabled devices technology by becoming the first luxury spirit brand on the Amazon Alexa platform.

Lee Applbaum, Patrón’s global chief marketing officer, joined [a]listdaily to discuss how the tequila brand is becoming a digital tastemaker in a variety of platforms including social media and virtual reality.

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Why was the Patrón Cocktail Lab a smart next step for the company?

First let me set up some context for what we’re doing—we’re not a technology company. So this isn’t an endemic move; this is a means-to-an-end move. We’re very fortunate at Patrón because we have exceptional brand equity, really high brand awareness, a brand with a lot of caché and swagger. As a marketing organization, we’ve been spending a lot of our time to better tell authentic stories. We developed the Cocktail Lab as a very consumer-centric view of accessing different recipes, and voice had to be an important part of it. Echo and Alexa became an immediate way to showcase our interest in voice-driven engagement, but by no means is this the end of the story.

Why was Amazon Echo the perfect partner for this activation? What does their platform allow you to accomplish that others don’t?

I think Amazon has done a very nice job to quickly create an easy-to-use product for consumers. It’s a seamless process to engage with Alexa. The hardware is industry leading and the interface is simple. Amazon is so ubiquitous that I think they’ve gotten a lot of traction quickly. For us, it was a no-brainer in terms of our first foray into this platform. In terms of scale, obviously iOS and Siri have nearly 50 percent operating system share of market. Siri makes a lot of sense as well. By Apple’s own admission, there’s a lot of room for Siri to continue to enhance its functionality. We saw Amazon as a more mature platform to be able to jump into very quickly. There’s a lot of buzz around the platform right now. There’s that visible hardware component of Amazon Echo that we saw as an easy way for people to be able to engage with. Then there’s an entertaining side to Amazon Alexa. You’ve got this cool piece of hardware sitting on your desktop. For Patrón, it’s about useful engagement because we’re not trying to do this just for the entertainment aspect. We want it to be a fulfilling and educational, and ultimately, give consumers entertaining content. We’re a tequila brand, for goodness sake! We’re not solving the world’s problems.

Lee Applbaum
Lee Applbaum, Patrón’s global chief marketing officer

Why did Patrón decide that using consumer-aimed voice recognition services like Alexa is crucial to growing the brand profile?

I think we want to cohabitate with consumers. By that I mean we want to present our brand story, describe product attributes, or in this case, better communicate versatility in a way in which consumers want to engage with us, rather than forcing them to do it the way we wanted to. For us it was just a logical decision to say, ‘this is how consumers are engaging with content and we want to do it in the most seamless way possible.’ The other thing is, for us, innovation is a very important part of our DNA. Twenty-seven years ago, we created the ultra-premium tequila category—we didn’t create tequila. Innovation in marketing and technology is just an extension. It showcases our interest and our commitment.

What’s the plan to track visitation, engagement and measure overall success for Patrón Cocktail Lab?

Analytics are better used to shape the experience. We like to look at everything from where consumers spend their time, how much time they’re spending, where they’re abandoning. We don’t have the shopping cart path-to-purchase metrics that Amazon has. There isn’t a commerce-engaged function. We do expect that to come eventually, where a consumer could identify the cocktail they want, and then conceivably through Amazon’s shopping platform, buy the cocktail ingredients. That doesn’t exist today, so for us it’s really about being able to better understand the consumer’s migration through the Cocktail Lab to enhance functionality and better deliver recipes and solutions. That’s obviously the beauty of the digital ecosystem. For us, Echo is really the first step. Our vision, if we take a step back, the richer the data that we can get, the better that we can be a part of creating memorable experiences for consumers. It’s not just about selling more tequila—it’s about hoping to make more memorable experiences. It’s a matter of aggregating the data and having the algorithms on the back end that allow us to think, the recommendation engine, about how do we take all these inputs and give you back useful cocktails that make sense for you.

The Patrón Cocktail Lab campaign is supported with social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Patrón is largely considered to be the top Tequila brand on social. How do you separate yourselves from other competitive brands with your social platforms?

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We’re very fortunate that we have a brand that is loved. We have a near 70 percent market share of ultra-premium tequila in the US. If you look at our numbers, they’re near incomparable in terms of brand affinity, awareness and attention. Part of that is consumers love our brand. They love to talk about our brand, share stories with us—there’s an organic interest with Patrón. Social gives us a way to syndicate those moments. Our interaction is the ability to help curate and re-share those moments that consumers may post. It’s amazing . . . we were virtually uninvolved with social three years ago when I arrived at the company. We had no social practice. We weren’t even on Twitter or Instagram. We had a nascent presence on Facebook, yet consumers were already engaging with us. We had a relatively easy task in that our job was just to jump in to the conversation, help curate it, but not force it. That’s how we sort of went from zero to hero.

How will you be further marketing the Patrón Cocktail Lab moving forward?

This isn’t an above-the-line, traditional media play. We’re not selling Amazon Echoes. We’re really talking about this broader idea of the versatility of tequila and the way of accessing that content through Cocktail Lab and Alexa. We see it as a very organic conversation. However, we do have a significant amount of social and digital media behind this, which makes sense given that this is a digital product. Globally, we’re the largest spirit in social media. We’re No. 1 on Twitter, and a top-five beer, wine or spirit brand on Facebook and Instagram. We have nearly five million consumers across our social media channels, which is huge when you think about age-gating for consumers over 21—and they’re highly engaged. Social media is a big piece of the marketing. There’s an incredible interest in our brand, incredible interest in the ultra-premium category, so creating easy ways for consumers, and engaging ways for consumers to interact with the content, is fabulous.

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Last year you launched “The Art of Patrón” virtual reality experience. What was your integrated marketing strategy for that specific brand implementation? What are some results you can share?

I think we were very thoughtful about VR and making sure we jumped in at the right time, and place. It had to do with technology and making sure the hardware was ready. We were quite early to the table. By Oculus’ own admission, we were the first to take live-action plus CGI and combine it, and do so in a very educational and entertaining way. It wasn’t just about some mind-blowing, cool experience. It was about an experience that told our brand story. For us, we have all the brand swagger in the world—it continues to be about telling our authentic story. We said ‘if we could get every consumer, or every bartender to see how Patrón was made, forget about 70 percent market share, we think we’d have 100 percent market share’ because it’s a really unique experience. The next closest thing for us is virtual reality. The one-on-one engagement with a bartender through VR, and educating them, is crucial because they’re the gatekeepers. For all of the marketing we might do—for us, better educating the gatekeepers with our brand is key. The ability for them to learn through VR is huge. It’s an amazing opportunity for them to engage with the hardware, and then to better engage with our brand. The results are difficult in terms of hard numbers, meaning ‘what did this do for sales? Or, what did this do for brand perception?’ Overwhelmingly, anecdotally, we see at all of these events, the takeaway that consumers have is that ‘wow’ factor. More importantly, consumers are walking away with this ‘a-ha’ moment about our brand. That’s the moment for us when we know the job is done. I have zero concern about the longer-term ROI in terms of brand perception, and ultimately sales. They’re on the back end of everything that we’re doing. I have zero concern about that.

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How does using immersive experiences best position Patrón’s marketing efforts moving forward? Are you looking at testing out new platforms?

This is just the beginning and we’re working to build out capabilities with things like iOS and Siri, Cortana, and obviously, continue to expand with Echo and Alexa. This is our first foray into it. I think Amazon has rapidly built an amazing base with the hardware and software, which is why we launched with it. Today, it’s a very useful and engaging experience. Tomorrow, we see things like aggregating different kind of inputs like the menu, weather and schedule for a more enriching engagement. That is unquestionably where we’re headed. We’re not an entertainment company, but clearly opportunities exist where you could see platforms like augmented reality becoming much more important for brands like ours. The ability to do a guided tasting, where you’re tasting tequilas, and through AR, getting the brand story, or the production story behind each of the different glasses you’re tasting, is great. We’re not out to prove how dazzling VR, or AR, or voice command is. What we want to do is find useful ways for technology to enable consumers to engage with the brand. I think those are some fascinating things. It provides a halo for our brand, and we’re going to continue to do that.

Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan

Hall Of Famer Dennis ‘Thresh’ Fong Believes ESports In Olympics Are Inevitable

Dennis “Thresh” Fong was inducted into the eSports Hall of Fame during a ceremony at QuakeCon 2016 in Dallas on Saturday, August 6. Thresh is considered the first pro gamer, having risen to the top of the competition in Doom and Quake in the ‘90s long before Twitch and livestreaming were invented. He earned over $100,000 a year playing games through endorsements during the days of LAN tournaments in hotel ball rooms.

“It’s an honor to be selected,” Fong said. “For the guys that were early in eSports like Heaton and myself and others to come, the question is: how will we be remembered? League of Legends has a champion named Thresh named after me, but 99 percent of people I run into online playing Overwatch ask if I play League; they think I named myself after the champion and not the other way around. It’s cool to have others have pay tribute to the fact I made a tiny mark in the gaming world. And my contributions will be remembered.”

Thresh is known for his deliberate, control-based play style, where he would typically starve opponents of resources rather than rely on pure aim. His style of play led him to numerous victories, none more famous than the Red Annihilation Quake tournament in Dallas, where his first place prize was John Carmack’s custom modified Ferrari 328 GTS.

Fong's Ferrari

“The new generation who plays Dota, Dota 2, League, Overwatch or CS:GO aren’t familiar with history,” Fong said. “Even CS:GO players may not be familiar with Headon if he didn’t own and manage a team. I won the Ferrari in the late ‘90s and the vast majority of people today don’t know it.”

One reason is because there’s not much video that exists of Fong in his prime. Fong said one regret he has from competing in the early days was there aren’t a lot of recordings of the thousands of matches and tournaments he competed in.

“There are probably 5 or 10 demo recordings of me floating out there,” Fong said. “I have regrets that I didn’t record and share because I’d have an archive of how I played. That’s one of the biggest reasons I started Plays.tv—a service that makes it easy for people to record. People ask me what gaming was like, what the skills were like back then, and there’s not a whole lot to look back to. If Plays.tv existed back then, I would definitely have used it.”

The eSports Hall of Fame was founded by ESL and is dedicated to preserving the rich history of competitive video games. Inductees are selected through a nomination and voting process overseen by experts within each game community.

“History, in general, is interesting, whether learning from past mistakes or where things came from,” Fong said. “What is accepted as standard today like the WASD key configuration or rocket jumping or bunny hopping or resource control in an FPS and not being reliant solely on aim, has history. When you understand the back story of champion names in League it adds context to the world and makes you appreciate more. History does the same thing. ESports has blown up in the past few years, but it’s been around forever.”

After retiring from competitive Quake, Thresh founded GX Media, which built the popular web portal, gamers.com, and co-founded Xfire, an online gaming instant message client that was acquired by Viacom in 2006 for $102 million. He is currently the CEO of the gameplay sharing service Plays.tv and Raptr, Inc., a gaming-focused software development company.

“ESports is what got me interested in technology, computers and the internet, which all were pretty new in those days,” Fong said. “Gaming is the top reason why I’m still involved in internet-related tech and businesses today. Most of the products and technology I started was for me to solve my own frustrations. As most people know, I was making six figures when I was 17 years old as a pro gamer. I used a lot of that money to start my first company. That gave me freedom to pursue my own passion. And it happened to be a space that I loved.”

Fong also believes the mental and emotional part of gaming, which is required when you practice as much as pro gamers do, also helped him transition to business.

“You need to compartmentalize emotions so you can perform,” Fong said. “Part of my skill was being able to put myself in the other person’s shoes and see the game through their eyes in real-time, which is why they called me ‘Thresh ESP.’ I could predict what other people were going to do. That skill translates well to most people’s lives, and certainly mine. In a social setting to have emotional intelligence, and in business for partnership or marketing to users, it naturally applies to business.”

It’s fitting that Fong was inducted into the eSports Hall of Fame the same weekend that id Software revealed additional details about Quake Champions, the modern day incarnation of the game he played so well.

Quake Champions looks fantastic, but I haven’t played it yet,” Fong said. “Folks who are into arena style duel games could care less about graphics. The game is going to be determined by how crisp it is and how it feels. The original Quake games has that crisp feeling, which is important. I’m excited to see another duel eSport emerge. We’ll see if the fans flock to it.”

Fong believes Quake Champions could be just what eSports needs.

“Some people tell me they’re getting a little fatigued with MOBA-style games,” Fong said. “And a lot of people pinged me after Quake Champions was announced. Most of the eSports games today are team-based, which is fine and great, but for first-person shooters, typically it’s a bit harder to follow as a spectator if it’s a team-based game. It’s harder to cast and to give context on what everyone is doing. Pure 1-on-1-style eSports in a game like Quake is easy to understand. It could be a really good change of pace, and a good thing for eSports.”

With the focus of the world on Rio 2016 today, and the Olympic Committee adding new sports like skateboarding to the Tokyo 2020 games, Fong believes that eSports becoming an Olympic sport is inevitable.

“It’s going to happen,” Fong said. “The question is just when, and how long is it going to take? Is it a legitimate sport? Curling is an Olympic sport. Why in the world should a virtual sport that fills stadiums, and has tens of millions of viewers watching the finals, not be in the Olympics? The Olympics is also about money and prestige, not just about sport. When you look at the young global fan base eSports has today, they’re going to find a way to make it happen at some point.”

GamesBeat 2016: Everything We Learned

Miss GamesBeat? We’ve got the low-down.

 AR/VR Is Officially “A Thing” . . . Once You Get A Taste Of It

An entire day of GamesBeat was devoted to the realm of augmented and virtual reality—from the implications of virtual reality in entertainment to early discussions about monetization in the space, the excitement and curiosity surrounding it was tangible.

Kicking off the event with a keynote from Oculus’ Jason Rubin, who discussed the company’s role in the second wave of VR.

“There was always this distance with a TV that was a little bit frustrating,” said Rubin when talking about his initial interest in VR. Since then, it’s come a long way, becoming a more robust technology delivering on the immersive experience it promised.

“This is the time where filmmakers, game-makers, experience-makers and whatnot will be able to take people and transport them into other places,” he said, emphasizing the usefulness of the medium across every point in the entertainment industry. What’s more—when developers have had a taste of what VR has to offer, according to Rubin, they stay dedicated to creating these experiences.

“Literally every single [developer] we’ve worked with is coming back to VR,” he said. “After they finish a title, they’re not leaving VR.”

While major game developers have been relatively tepid about going all-in with VR, the same cannot be said for Hollywood, which has been actively exploring the medium.

“It’s cliché at this point, but the minute you strap [a device] on, you realize that this is a thing. It is a medium that is here to stay,” said Lionsgate’s Peter Levin. The company has been exploring exploring virtual reality, both by adapting existing IPs like John Wick and building from the ground up for the medium with “12 to 15” total projects. Of course, this experimentation with VR also extends to how Lionsgate approaches marketing.

“We have a big initiative based with our marketing and promotional vehicles with some of our biggest IPs,” said Levin. “What a great way to bring attention to a nascent market like VR.”

Pokémon GO Is Just The Beginning—There’s More To Finesse With AR

The sensation of Pokémon GO was not lost on the attendees at GamesBeat this year and inevitably if the conversation veered into augmented reality, you can be sure it also involved Niantic Labs’ runaway hit as well.

“I think that it’s not the be-all and end-all of augmented reality yet. There’s a lot more you can do on that front,” said Dean Takahashi, lead writer at GamesBeat to [a]listdaily. “If they could improve the gameplay to make it a little more interesting to hardcore gamers and casual gamers alike, then it could be one of the games that could be closer to being something like the Citizen Kane of augmented reality.”

While the game has certainly reached phenomenon-status, for many, the critiques of the game experience shows just how much work there is still to be done with the medium.

Pokémon GO shows us that if the experience is magical and worthwhile, people go through a lot of hassles,“ said Tom Sanocki, CEO of Limitless VR, to [a]listdaily.

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Labs, talked about how the game is going to continue the march forward with making it less oriented around your phone, getting users to interact more naturally with their environment.

“I’m looking forward to the launch of the Pokémon Go Plus,” said Hanke. “That will give players the chance to play the game without looking at their phone all the time. They’ll get to look at the world around them.”

As time goes on, Hanke sees wearables and augmented reality becoming more seamless experience.

“I see a progression of wearables that get more sleek and sexy over time. It’s not binary where you don’t have AR one day and then do have it the next.”

Storytelling Can Help Push ESports Into The Mainstream

ESports is on track to becoming a $1 billion dollar industry this year. With that kind of money and the audience numbers it touts, the level of interest in eSports is a bit feverish from the outside looking in.

“It’s really been kind of this thing that grew on its own very organically, and therefore very tough from a discovery point of view for people who are not seeking out the content,” said Activision Media Networks VP, Mike Sepso at the event. “So it’s a huge audience, but it’s a very tapped in audience. It’s a very big niche.”

From those who are actively working to put eSports in front of the mainstream audience and change the public perception of the industry, there is loads more to be done. The next step? Storytelling.

For Peter Moore, EA’s chief of competitive gaming, what traditional TV does particularly well is telling the stories behind the athlete, whether they are competing in the Olympics or in the NBA. They make us care about who we are watching by using the powerful device of storytelling.

“We’ve got to make people care about competitive gamers,” he said. “They can’t be seen as nerdy, Doritos-chomping, Mountain Dew-guzzling recluses in their mom’s basement.”

How This Virtual Reality Music Company Could Help Artists And Brands

TheWaveVR used this year’s Game Developers Conference to host a live demo of its music virtual reality experience, which allows a DJ to play live music in an evolving colorful virtual reality landscape. It’s like a rave inside your headset. The company is demonstrating its technology at VRLA this weekend.

Now backed by a seed round of $2.5 million from KPCB, Rothenberg, RRE, Presence Capital and Joe Kraus (Google Ventures), the VR music platform is expanding its team and adding hip hop and pop music to its initial EDM focus.

“After we began showing the first demo of the experience, we generated so much interest from not only members in the tech and VR community, but also musicians and the music industry at large,” Adam Arrigo, CEO of TheWaveVR, said. “Artists are always looking for new ways to reach their fans, and in electronic music especially, technology can be this empowering force from both a revenue and creative standpoint. So our goal as a company is to use these resources to best serve both artists and their fans.”

The platform creates a VR venue where artists can perform live music by importing their tracks, customizing the visuals and sharing virtual shows. Everyone at the company is a musician, which was also the case at Arrigo’s previous company, Harmonix, makers of music games like Rock Band, Dance Central and Disney’s Fantasia.

 “We’re all inspired by how music has this incredible power of bringing people together—whether it’s for a concert, party or a video game,” Arrigo said. “My time working at Harmonix taught me the incredible social power music has, and how much room there is to innovate in the interactive music space.”

Co-worker Clarke Nordhauser (aka GRIMECRAFT) is a popular video game DJ who streams his shows on Twitch. He sets up his webcam feed alongside a music visualizer and has cultivated an impressive community of fans who tune in weekly, subscribe to his artist channel, and socialize with other fans. And he doesn’t have to leave his living room. He’s also found that a lot of the fans come to his shows -—and meet up with each other—in real life.

“We thought VR could take this experience to the next level in a ton of different ways,” Arrigo said. “Imagine being able to be co-present with those people in VR and attend multiple artists’ shows, flipping through them with the click of a button.”

TheWaveVR separates itself from the pack of early music VR experiences by creating an interactive platform set within a video game-style world, rather than employing 360-degree video. Arrigo said his platform adds a third dimension to how music experienced through interactivity. The first two dimensions are audio and video.

“We’re offering the ability to not only hear the music or watch a music video, but actually be inside the music and interact with it —and other people—in totally new ways,” Arrigo said. “For example, people love using glow sticks at shows. In TheWaveVR, you can paint your own light shows in 3D space, and collaborate with other attendees on creating custom visuals.”

Arrigo said the platform is being designed to generate revenue for music companies. Being able to host and attend shows from anywhere lowers the barrier of entry to engage with live music content.

“Think of all the fans who can’t see their favorite artists because of factors like physical location, age, cost or fear of large crowds,” Arrigo said. “There’s a huge amount of untapped revenue in serving these groups. Most importantly, we’re building the tools that let artists create this new type of content that is equal parts audio, visual and interactive.”

The platform will also open up opportunities for sponsorships and brands.

“We’ve discussed brand integrations and sponsorships as being a revenue opportunity for the future,” Arrigo said. “Right now we’re laser focused on creating the most engaging experience for music lovers.”

TheWaveVR is working directly with artists like Morgan Page, who has provided user feedback on what they need to perform their music in VR.

“We’ve found that being able to customize the visuals of the venue is equally as important as audio-related features, so we engaged David Wexler (Strangeloop), one of our advisors, to help us build out some of the visual features,” Arrigo. “We’re working with a select group of artists on developing the world’s first VR concert series, which we’ll be launching soon.”

The ‘Deus Ex’ Franchise Opens A Window To The Future

Many regard Deus Ex as a window into the future, but that window became a door this week with the Human by Design conference, hosted by Square Enix and CNN’s Courageous Studio at the Paley Center for Media in New York City. Inspired by the Deus Ex video game franchise, the convention featured panelists who spoke about futuristic themes that include cybernetics and the ethics of human augmentation. Not coincidentally, these are themes that are addressed in the Deus Ex series, with the highly anticipated Mankind Divided (the sequel to Human Revolution) releasing later this month.

The Deus Ex designers pride themselves on creating a science fiction world that is fantastic yet seemingly plausible. There’s no greater evidence of this than with some of the promotional trailers for Human Revolution, which showcased cybernetic limbs from a fictional company. The ads were so convincing that people began calling Eidos Montreal to ask about purchasing the prosthetics. That’s what led to a partnership between Square Enix and Open Bionics to develop a prosthetic arm inspired by the game’s main character, Adam Jensen. A prototype of the arm, controlled using the Razer Stargazer camera, was on display at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the San Diego Comic Con and at Human by Design to promote the game. Additionally, the co-founders of Open Bionics (Joel Gibbard and  Samantha Payne) presented at the convention with Cathrine Disney (pictured above), who wore a working model of the prosthetic.

Human by Design was livestreamed on Twitch, and the convention inspired an Amazon Prime documentary that discusses the themes of cybernetics and human augmentation. Combined with other cross branding, such as the Deus Ex clothing line from Musterbrand, books and other media, and the franchise could go from providing a glimpse of the future to helping to shape it.

Jon Grant, senior manager of product marketing at Square Enix, and Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, executive art director on Deus Ex franchise and presenter at Human by Design, spoke to [a]listdaily from the convention about bridging the gap between video games and reality. Jacques-Belletête worked with Open Bionics to design the real life arm, and both he and Grant enthusiastically look forward to our Deus Ex-inspired transhuman future.

What led to the partnership to host Human by Design?

Grant: Everyone who is working on Deus Ex at Eidos Montreal and Square Enix—we’ve always been trying to bring the themes of the game to live in the most unique ways possible. Keeping that in mind, we had an opportunity to work with CNN [Courageous Studio] to bring together this conference and talk about things in a way we knew our fans would love. For people who weren’t aware of the game, we knew that they would also find it interesting.

How important is it for the Deus Ex franchise to be translated from video games to the real-world?

Grant: I don’t know how important it is for video games as a whole, but for Deus Ex, it certainly is. We have a game that many have credited for predicting the future. Although that may not be entirely the case, we certainly have a game that touches on real life technology and asks real life ethical questions. For us, it was critical, when putting together a marketing plan, to make sure we tapped into the conversation of what’s happening now in the area of technology, augmentation and bionics, and we’re happy we did.

Jacques-Belletête: Funnily enough, I don’t think it’s important for the game. We never thought this would happen. It’s amazing that it has happened, and as I said on stage, this is surreal. For games, it rationally isn’t important. Creating video games that have real meaning and deal with real issues [that] start bleeding off into reality—I think this could be very important and it could move certain things forward, like what we’re doing with Open Bionics.

Many regard Deus Ex as a window to the future. How will Mankind Divided continue to push that perception forward?

Grant: Human Revolution is about the golden era of augmentation, and Mankind Divided picks up the pieces from where Human Revolution ends. If you look at what we’re doing here with this conference, we’re here to say, “Hey, this technology exists. It’s time that we come together and bring it to the mainstream conversation because there will come a point when we do need to discuss the ethics of bionics and human augmentation.” That’s what Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is about.

How does it feel, with the partnership with Open Bionics, to have Deus Ex be part of the first video game-inspired prosthetic device?

Grant: It feels incredibly rewarding to see our platform, our game, in the real-world and to see how much the people who have had the opportunity to wear these arms benefit from it and how it makes them feel.

Do you think future Deus Ex games will be designed with elements that translate more easily into real life?

Grant: I don’t know that we’d go out of our way, when designing the game, to do that. But I do believe that as long as Deus Ex exists, we will always bring the key themes to life in any way we can. We strongly feel that people who play our game and people that play video games as a whole are opening their imaginations, and they’re seeing things that maybe can’t be done in the real-world. But as a result, they’re becoming the future innovators and thinkers. They’re getting their ideas from popular culture, superheroes and video games, and they’re becoming many of the people we’re seeing here today at the Human by Design conference.

How would you describe the aesthetics of Deus Ex?

Jacques-Belletête: I like to say that it’s like a graphic novel, in terms of its overall signature. It doesn’t look like photorealism, and we never aim for that. It was to create a highly credible world that looks like there’s something artificial about it.

I think that in sci-fi, especially in Hollywood, you watch movies like Star Trek and look at how they’re showing a sci-fi city—and it looks like sci-fi from the ’80s or early ’90s. Current day contemporary architecture are already way beyond that. I think sometimes we’re not informed by the proper stuff. You don’t need to imagine what the future of architecture is going to be. The craziest projects of today already look like unbelievable science fiction stuff.

The cybernetics are inspired by a lot of real life stuff. We get informed by how things are manufactured in real life and how industrial design functions.

Human X Design Conference, August 3, 2016.
Photo credit: Courageous

Deus Ex has a number of different real-world brands, including clothing, books and now a prosthetic arm. Do you expect this kind of cross branding to grow?

Grant: Because of our relationship with Open Bionics, we’ve done the designs for these arms, but they’re open source. Anyone with a 3D printer can download those files and print an arm. So, yes. Not only do I expect it to continue to grow, it’s already out there.

How does it feel to see the Deus Ex world come to life with the clothing line and prosthetic arm?

Jacques-Belletête: It’s pretty surreal. The clothing line is a little more run-of-the-mill, and I don’t mean that what Musterbrand (the company that made the clothes) did is run-of-the-mill. What I mean is that we’re used to making developer team t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and stuff like that. Even though what we did with Musterbrand is eons ahead of doing dev t-shirts, it was not a huge stretch of the imagination that some the garments that we had in the game could be made quite closely in real life.

The real prosthetics that work and function—to be in cooperation with a company that does these things and see them for real for Adam’s arm—it’s crazy to be part of that. To work with them, and understand their process, is already crazy. Add the fact that they’re making them based on our creations—that’s when it starts being very surreal, and something I never thought would happen.

Any thoughts on making Deus Ex into a VR game?

Jacques-Belletête: Sure, I think about it all the time, but that doesn’t mean anything. Any AAA development studio that tells you that they don’t have VR dev kits is blatantly lying to you. Yes, we have them, and we’ve played with them and tried a few things. We already announced that we’re providing—with the benchmark tool for the PC version of Mankind Divided—a little VR museum. You’re going to be able to walk into some of the environments of Mankind Divided. There’s no gameplay; it’s going to be a view mode with walking and looking.

Deus Ex may end up shaping the future of cybernetic augmentation. What are your thoughts on that?

Grant: Just sitting here today and listening to all these experts at Human by Design, and working with Deus Ex as long as I have, I can imagine that future. Especially with prosthetics and the work the Open Bionics is doing. That future is closer than we think, and it might actually be here. If Deus Ex has a role in inspiring it, then I guess what they say about the franchise is true. We do have a way of predicting the future.

What do you think it is about the Deus Ex franchise that wins over so many fans around the world?

Jacques-Belletête: I think that good science fiction is a tool to speak about human subjects and themes that are happening now or in the past. They [fans] relate to this. You’re in an artificial world, but you’re experiencing something that you kind of know is plausible or is true, and there’s something attractive about that. I also think that the visuals help, and so does the character. I think the team has developed, in Adam Jensen, an iconic character, which is a hard thing to do. There’s no magic recipe for that.

It’s a game with a great story, and it’s one where you can experiment, try different things, and get different outcomes. You can play a scene, and I can play the same scene, and we’ll have two different experiences. That when you start realizing, when you play, that it’s pretty powerful.

Toyota Rocks Lollapalooza With Snapchat Activation

The 25th annual Lallapalooza music festival rocked Chicago last weekend, and Toyota treated music fans to a special treat. An exclusive, pop-up concert was accessible only to Lollapalooza festival-goers who used Toyota’s limited-time “golden ticket” Snapchat geo-filter. Toyota’s “25th Hour” surprise concert featured performances by Grammy-nominated recording artist, Leon Bridges and Outkast rapper, Big Boi.

“What better way to celebrate Lollapalooza’s 25th year than by adding an extra hour of music with an amazing talent like Leon Bridges,” said Florence Drakton, social media marketing manager for Toyota. “We used Snapchat filters in a unique way to invite guests to our pop-up concert—ones who share Toyota’s same passion for music.”

Toyota’s interactive on-site activation marks the first instance of a Snapchat geo-filter being used to qualify entrance for an event. The private concert, hosted at Venue SIX10 and featuring a fleet of Toyotas for safe rides home was all part of The Toyota Music experience—an interactive engagement featuring an array of vehicles, activities and a music stage for live performances.

Toyota Snapchat

Toyota also featured an interactive installation as part of an ongoing partnership with VH1 Save the Music. The art piece invites festival-goers and artists to write what music means to them. Those who participated during the festival were able to share via social media using #ToyotaGiving to show their support. At the end of the festival run, grants were presented to three schools in the Chicago area.

Lollapalooza is the fifth installment of the 2016 Toyota Music experience. The interactive on-site activation first launched at the Stagecoach festival in April and continued at the Country 500, Sasquatch and Firefly Music festivals, leading up to Lollapalooza this past weekend. It will culminate at the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience in New Orleans in October.

Nintendo And Sega: Relevance Through Nostalgia

If you can sing the Nintendo cereal jingle or can’t say “Sega” without yelling it, chances are you grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. Few video game publishers have stood the test of time like these two, and there’s good reason for it. Many of those with fond memories of crushing blocks with Mario or collecting rings with Sonic now have children of their own, and want to share those experiences with the next generation. While both companies have seen their ups and downs, it doesn’t appear that Nintendo or Sega will be disappearing any time soon, thanks in part to feelings of consumer nostalgia.

Nintendo has continued to innovate since the golden days of Super Mario Brothers, introducing new games, new consoles and expanding into the lucrative mobile gaming market. However, the main driver for its most successful franchises is nostalgia for brands like Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon. Case in point—the infamous moment when Nintendo announced The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess during its E3 2004 press conference: a standing ovation, thunderous applause and rumors of grown men bursting into tears. During E3 2016, Nintendo devoted its entire 30,000 square foot booth to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild—a fully-immersive experience that allowed fans to explore the world of Hyrule. By stirring nostalgia in the press, Nintendo knew that positive messages would be relayed to fans abroad.

Nintendo nostalgia

Pokémon GO combined powerful nostalgia, brand recognition and accessibility to create a worldwide phenomenon—fulfilling the childhood wishes of those who wanted to go out and catch ’em all. The craze has resulted in a surge of demand for Pokémon toys, so Nintendo plans to explore merchandising as a focused revenue stream.

“We are now expanding how we leverage Nintendo IP in various ways beyond our traditional use of them predominantly within the dedicated video game platform business,” Tatsumi Kimishima, the company’s president, wrote in a message to investors.

Nintendo also unveiled the mini NES, a contained unit pre-packaged with 30 classic titles. The unit looks exactly like the Nintendo from childhood, which in itself could result in a nostalgia-driven buy.

“We wanted to give fans of all ages the opportunity to revisit Nintendo’s original system and rediscover why they fell in love with Nintendo in the first place,” said Nintendo of America president and COO, Reggie Fils-Aimé. “The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition is ideal for anyone who remembers playing the NES, or who wants to pass on those nostalgic memories to the next generation of gamers.”

sonic-25th

Sega, although no longer in the console business, is still very active in the world of video games. Celebrating 25 years of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega hosted a party at the San Diego Comic-Con, during which two new Sonic games were announced. Ivo Gerscovich, chief brand officer for Sonic the Hedgehog and senior vice president for Sega of America told [a]listdaily that they brought some extra nostalgia to the event, recreating a classic TV commercial moment. “[We surprised] the over 1,500 people at the [SDCC] party and spontaneously recorded the “SEEEGGAAAAA!!!!” audio cue using their voices,” Gerscovich said.

In April, Sega launched Genesis & Mega Drive Classics Hub, a community where people can find and share user-generated content, on Steam. Sega fans can upload ROM hacks of classic Sega games that come with custom, modded features. In its first month, Sega sold over 350,000 copies of classic Sega Mega Drive and Sega Genesis games on Steam worldwide.

“350,000 sales is a phenomenal achievement for content which is over 20 years old,” said James Schall, Sega Europe’s director of digital distribution. “It shows that there’s still a huge following out for the Sega Mega Drive and Genesis, reinvigorated by the fantastic community of modders out there uploading great content.”

Although not released by Sega, three classic Disney Sega Genesis titles—AlladinThe Lion King and The Jungle Book are now available on GOG.com, a 16-bit blast from the past that capitalizes on those Sega Genesis platformer marathons.

Consumers trust what they know, and research shows that emotional connections result in stronger brand loyalty. Analytics firm, Gallup, reports that economic decision making is 70 percent emotional and 30 percent rational. Consumers with strong emotional connections to retailers will visit their stores 32 percent more often and spend 46 percent more money than those without emotional bonds.

A brand doesn’t have to be from your childhood to get you “right in the feels,” but as these two brands show, it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Softgames CEO: Messaging Apps Are The New Gaming Platforms

The games industry has expanded to $100 billion in annual revenue, not just through steady growth, but through the explosive rise of new gaming platforms. We’ve seen how new consoles can drive demand for games, but let’s not forget how Facebook gaming generated billions in revenue and created billion-dollar companies like Zynga before mobile games took over. Mobile games have grown to well over $30 billion in annual revenue this year, with more growth ahead. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are poised to become multi-billion dollar gaming markets over the next few years according to many analysts. Yet, there may be another game market growing right now that could be worth billions, and it’s a place where the biggest tech companies are placing very successful bets: messaging.

Alexander Krug
Alexander Krug, Softgames CEO and founder

“2016 is the year of messaging,” said Alexander Krug, CEO and founder of Softgames, talking to [a]listdaily. “Messaging is about to become the new platform, and chatbots are becoming the new apps.” Krug’s optimism for messaging is founded in observation of the patterns in technology over the past few decades, and some of the current numbers reflecting the state of the mobile game market.

“It may be hard to believe, but the golden era of apps is more or less over,” Krug states. “Sure, everybody’s using apps, and that will pretty much always be the case, but the app boom is more or less over. People are becoming more and more selective of the apps they are finding and downloading. The reality is that the average American is downloading zero apps a month. The reality is that just 1 percent of the developers out there get 94 percent of the revenue.”

It’s not that there isn’t money to be made in apps—in fact, there are billions of dollars in app revenue. However, most of that is going to very few publishers. Krug sees this as following the pattern of technologies introduced since the 1980s. We saw the PC in the early 1980’s, and applications were created for them, which rapidly grew into a substantial market. Eventually, the PC boom gave way to the internet age in the 1990s, and the browser started becoming the place where small developers could enter the market. That time saw both Flash games becoming popular as well as multiplayer online games gaining new prominence. The Facebook gaming era was the height of the browser-based market for games.

Then mobile came along in the mid-2000s, bringing with it the App Store, the Google Play Store, and the explosion of apps. Apple recently announced that developers made over $50 billion dollars from the App Store so far.

Despite the high revenue numbers, Krug sees the current rise of messaging apps, and the opening of them to developers, as a new market with tremendous potential for developers small and large as it booms.

“Messaging apps are showing explosive growth now,” Krug said. “Now almost 2 billion people use messaging services. There’s a massive opportunity out there. Messaging is the top app type in terms of usage. This is where chatbots come into play, as messaging apps become the new platform, subsuming the role of the mobile operating system. Instead of having an app for shipping, game, or whatever’s out there, you just have a messaging app and within it is a bot for a service or a game. Bots are the new apps, and the Bot Store is the new App Store.”

This isn’t just idle speculation. There are several examples of how important messaging apps can be to the success of games, including WeChat, Kakao, and Line. Those are the leading messaging apps for China, South Korea, and Japan, respectively, and their influence on game marketing and downloads in those countries is enormous. Developers create games specifically designed around these messaging apps. We have not seen this take place in the US, but it’s coming. Facebook has already enabled its enormously popular Messenger (with over 1 billion users) to work with developers, who are building chatbots to make it easy to shop, use services, and a wide variety of other functions. In a couple of months, iOS 10 will go live, bringing with it a massively upgraded iMessage app (also with over 1 billion users), which will also allow developers to build apps inside of it. That’s not even counting WhatsApp, Facebook’s other messaging app with over 1 billion users, nor all of the other messaging apps like Snapchat.

Chatting with bots
WeChat chatbot robot.

“Bots are very easy and cheap to build, it’s super easy to upgrade them, and they are built for specific cases,” said Krug. “From a user perspective, it’s an amazing thing. I don’t have to lose my comfort zone. I can just stay within Messenger or another messaging app. Plus they don’t have to download or install.” There are bots for shopping, news and a variety of services, like ordering an Uber ride. Right now, it’s mostly text-based, so it’s similar to the early days of the internet, Krug pointed out, but that’s changing fast.

“In China, they are further developed,” Krug said. You can see images of things you want to order, “like a mini web page.” Additionally, “smart messages like this are a way better experience for the user than just pure text. Bots in combination with smart messages enable the replication of virtually every website.”

“Bots can also be the starting point for a game,” Krug said. There are already strategy games, card games, and many other types of games in WeChat and other messaging services. “It’s [in its] very early days so far, with a very limited user experience, and very text-based. This reminds me of the early days of games on the C64. Bots are going to implement more pictures, and they are going to take over well-known mechanics from Facebook games. When you look back to the early days of Facebook gaming, they grew extremely fast. The growth opportunities are similarly strong, but probably even better.” You send out invitations to your friends, they click on it, and they start. What could be easier? It’s a marketer’s dream, with an acquisition process that’s about as frictionless as possible. There are no restrictions on virality as yet, so games can grow as fast as possible.

Games can be graphically animated, and the platform is evolving very quickly. “The combination of chatbots with HTML 5 gives us huge opportunities—everything is possible,” Krug said. Discovery is the biggest challenge for the messaging platform, but that’s true of games on nearly any platform. “How do you make money out of this? Advertising is possible. In-app purchases are possible since you can access the APIs for purchase within the messaging app.”

Krug’s final advice: “Instead of wasting hundreds of thousands on user acquisition to an unwilling audience, grab $10K and invest it in a bot and try to make your own experience and push this platform forward.”