Lionsgate’s sci-fi action movie Gamer had an $11.2 million fourth place this past weekend, with a mostly male, mostly under-25 audience contributing to the final tally.
Co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, also co-directors on the movie Crank, were responsible for helming the Gerard Butler movie, and while it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it does lend some insight into how Hollywood looks at gamers.
From Kotaku:
[Hated the] Stereotypes: Furries. Check. Obese wheelchair-bound gamer. Check. Teenage violence-loving shooter fan. Check. While Gamer offers a fascinating take on the beginnings of a dystopian future, it doesn’t really explore how those changes are reflected in the people who play these new, life-altering games. Instead of creating a new character set for this intriguing timeline, Gamer falls back on the classic stereotypes of what people think gamers are. Not taking the time to fully explore the impact of future games and how they might alter humanity is one of the movie’s biggest missed opportunities.
Is the disconnect between the reality of today s video game consumers and the way they re portrayed in movies such as Gamer still too vast, or is this blogger being hypersensitive to the portrayal? And does this affect the movie’s overall marketing by more negative word of mouth
Microsoft continues to tease the Halo fan with its Halo 3 ODST marketing, giving the brand some big screen treatment in a short, two-and-a-half minute commercial that s making its way onto YouTube and gaming blogs over the past week.
If you haven t seen it, check out the extended short film Microsoft just released below and see if that isn t the perfect way to get gamers psyched for their new Halo adventure later this month.
Today’s AFK is a simple video with a short take on The Beatles: Rock Band from a true fan s perspective, but it s also a reminder that there is an audience beyond the average gamer that is, in this example, a Beatles fan first, a video game player second.
These videos are what game makers and marketers dream of coming out at a decent clip to keep brand awareness out there for a good long time to come.
This piece comes to us from Peter Moore, current president of EA Sports, but better known to hardcore gamers as the face behind the Dreamcast launch that had its ten-year anniversary yesterday. In this piece, Moore waxes poetic about the marketing behind the console’s launch and the unfortunate demise that would occur just 18 months later. Reprinted with permission of EA, originally on It’s In The Game.
EA Sports president and former president of Sega during the Dreamcast launch Peter Moore.
9.9.99: Ten Years Later
I trust my employers here at EA will allow me the indulgence of reminiscence and nostalgia on this day, 09/09/09, the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Dreamcast here in North America. It certainly doesn’t feel like a decade has gone by since this innovative console ushered in the era of online gaming, albeit through a 56K modem, and thus changed the face of interactive entertainment forever. The memories of course are bittersweet – we all know how this movie ended – but I was fortunate to have worked at that time with some of the most amazingly dedicated individuals, all of whom were galvanized around a single goal : prove the naysayers wrong, launch the console with a bang, get to a meaningful installed base within the first twelve months, and keep the momentum going in the face of the upcoming stiff competition.
With the Dreamcast’s online capabilities, we coined a phrase “We’re taking gamers where gaming is going”. In our heart of hearts, we worried that we would not be there for the entire journey, but it was with great pride that with our Sega Sports games in particular, that we ushered in the era of connected interactive entertainment. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that the Dreamcast and it’s online network laid the ground for what we all take for granted today – online game play, linking innumerable gamers from around the world to play, compete and collaborate, as well as enabling new content to be delivered in addition to that which was delivered on the disc. As rudimentary as those first dial-up game play experiences were, we proved that it could be done, and that gamers were clamoring for competition that extended past whomever was sat next to you on the couch at the time.
Why EA Never Developed On Dreamcast
Over the years, I have been asked many times whether EA’s decision not to develop and publish games for the Dreamcast was a major contributing factor in its early demise. That we will never know. But it is hard to argue with EA’s rationale at the time and the ultimate outcome – get in position for the impending arrival of the Playstation 2, deploying all resources against the newest version of Sony’s already wildly successful video game platform. You can’t argue with the results. EA came out of the blocks strongly in support of the PS2, and enjoyed tremendous success throughout the key years of that console’s life cycle. If there was one irony to come out of this, it was necessity of investment in a sports label to bolster the Dreamcast lineup. Conventional wisdom in that period was that the first party should have a sports brand (Playstation had 989 Sports and Xbox would have XSN), and the Dreamcast was no exception. Thus was born Sega Sports 2K – named after the Y2K phenomenon that had us all paranoid that our computers were about to burst into flames on 01/01/00…
It’s Thinking: Marketing The Dreamcast
And what a launch line up we had. 18 titles was probably 3 or 4 too many, but we had all genres covered, featuring classics such as Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, NFL 2k and Ready 2 Rumble. All were brought to glorious 3-D life through the Power VR graphics chip. The “biggest 24 hours in retail entertainment history” occurred on 9/9/99, with day one sales totaling just under $98m.
To support this outstanding portfolio of games, and the need to explode out of the blocks at launch with the console, we knew we needed a disruptive, attention-grabbing campaign that would get gamers talking and drive anticipation. Thus was born the “It’s Thinking” campaign, where we urged you to “Not think out loud, it might hear you” informed you that “Outsmarting it will only make it smarter” and warned you that “You know it’s alive. Worse. It knows it’s alive.”
Quirky and slightly dark, the ads generated more PR than the media spend – always the metric of a successful campaign…The media plan came to a crescendo on launch night as we debuted “Apocalypse” during the MTV VMA’s, still ten years later one of the more dramatic and lavishly-produced video game commercials. My eternal thanks will go to the teams at Foote, Cone and Belding, our advertising agency at the time, and Access Communications, the PR agency who were in our corner for every round of this enthralling and exhilarating fight.
The Final Days
Allow me this forum to correct one misconception about the final days of the Dreamcast. As we emerged from the Christmas selling season of 2000 and collated the sales data in the following January, it was evident that we were falling short of the critical mass target we had set ourselves for continued investment (read: ongoing losses) in the hardware business. Sega of Japan had rightly set sales goals for the North American market for that critical period, and as strong as our numbers were, they fell short of where we needed to be to continue. The decision was made, from Japan, to pull the plug and begin the transition to becoming a multi-platform third party developer and publisher. We at SOA, while disappointed, were in full agreement that this was the only real course of action, and it was with a heavy heart that I hosted the conference call on January 31, 2001, announcing that Sega was ceasing manufacturing of the Dreamcast console. The call on the decision was made by SOJ. The conference call to announce the decision was conducted by SOA.
Many saw the Dreamcast as a spectacular failure, a last-gasp effort by a once-powerful player in the industry to remain relevant (and solvent). If measured by longevity and the ultimate financial outcome, they were right. But the Dreamcast had a profound and lasting impact on the world of video games. Isao Okawa, the Chairman of Sega Enterprises and the driving force behind the Dreamcast, tragically passed away two months after that fateful January conference call. He had a vision that a game console, combined with the power of the internet, could bring people together in ways that were previously unimaginable. He didn’t live to see that vision come to fruition, and his beloved Dreamcast couldn’t survive to play a role in the powerful world of connected gaming we all enjoy today, but it certainly lit the spark, and that we should never forget . . .
Thank you to EA and Peter Moore for allowing us to reprint this insightful look at the marketing and history of the Dreamcast. You can read Moore’s official blog It’s In The Game by clicking here.
Rockstar Games is releasing Beaterator, a new PSP game that allows you to become the DJ with beats and music provided in part by music producer-extraordinaire Timbaland. Cool concept, but we wonder if it translates in their latest trailer, embedded below.
Jason and his friends are on their East Village stoop, PSP in hand and very visibly dancing the the blips and bloops coming out of the system’s tiny speaker. Jason is obviously very enthusiastic about the game, his well-coiffed hair spiking up even further to the sky as if it had come alive thanks to Beaterator, his black-rimmed glasses shining just a bit brighter. And it’s clear now to all watching that, no matter how cool the execution is, Jason is first and foremost an actor. If our marketing is supposed to lean towards the genuine, we’re worried that a trailer like this does more to tag the Beaterator brand as, at best, cheesy and, at worst, fake. What do you think?
GameStop has the S.V.E.R. soldier contractor for offer while Game Crazy is offering the Raven recruit — we’re not sure why, but Sony’s keeping the wraps on where you can pre-order to receive a Valor grunt.
Reserving the game via Amazon will grant you access to your very own S.V.E.R. “personal space” (read: apartment) in PlayStation Home. If you want the most alluring incentive, however, it’s back to GameStop for access to the public beta of MAG beginning October 10. (Qore subscribers will be let in on September 17.) Initially, the beta servers will only be online during specific play windows, but Sony has confirmed that they’ll be up-and-running 24/7 after November 9.
Sony is trying the pre-order stunts with their upcoming Ratchet and Clank sequel on PS3, and is an innovative way to get people into stores to pre-order those games. The trend has been increasing in recent months, and is something to keep in mind when starting a pre-order campaign, although you risk alienating stores by offering better items to larger chains (like Gamestop).
Dante’s Inferno is one of EA s biggest releases this year, and one of their new IPs that borrows an awful lot from the likes of God of War.
The Hell-themed game has had its share of marketing stunts as well, like giving away booth babes ( Dinner, booty, more. ) at San Diego Comic Con. So their latest is tame in comparison.
EA is partnering with Gamestop to offer a devilish $6.66 off the game if you pre-order today. Retail price is $59.99, so the savings is nice for gamers while giving a cheeky nod to the game’s theme.
The Rolling Stones’ former guitarist Bill Wyman has slammed music simulation video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, claiming they are causing fewer people to take up learning real instruments.
The criticism comes today (September 8) the eve of the release of ‘The Beatles: Rock Band’ computer game, which allows players to play along with the Liverpool legends’ back catalogue through their consoles.
“It encourages kids not to learn, that’s the trouble,” Wyman told BBC News. “It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument. I think it’s a pity so I’m not really keen on that kind of stuff.”
Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason shared in the sentiments, saying kids would be damn good at playing the guitar if they practiced a real instrument as much as they do the plastic ones.
The love affair with The Beatles: Rock Band is culminating in today s release of the game, but having these rockers slag off music games could put a slight damper on things.
Or does it? They may look like old luddites and jealous rockers, especially in context of the huge push given the game in recent months.
A new ad out of DDB takes a candid approach of having people discuss their experiences of getting it in the can. And in the can, we mean in the butt. No, no, we mean in the can, Bud Light Lime, in the can.
Crude ads are, of course, nothing new in the category that brought the world the “Swedish Bikini Team,” but they’ve been a bit scarce since Miller Brewing Co.’s bottom-scraping use of bikini-clad mudwrestlers in a 2003 “tastes great, less filling” brawl.
Controversy followed that commercial as protestors said the ad objectified women, so we can t imagine what kind of response this one will bring. DDB and Bud are keeping this online only, hoping it will generate some nice viral buzz for the Bud Light Lime brand.
Brighton-based usability company Vertical Slice claims to be able to predict videogame review scores.
Speaking exclusively to Eurogamer, director Graham McAllister said his techniques can “inform [companies] to make a better game”, pushing them closer to the “magic line” of 80 per cent.
“We just finished some research where we can start to predict a year in advance what the game is likely to get,” McAllister told us. “And obviously we get more accurate as time goes on.
Vertical Slice’s tests are based on looking at over 150 back issues of Edge magazine and seeing what factors traditionally impact a game s score.
If anything, seeing this predictive game score can help us determine whether or not a game’s perception is positive or negative at the time of test taking, and further insight can help impact a game s marketing plan by identifying which aspects of a title to focus on.
