Top Games Buzzing On Social Media

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Editor’s Note: [a]list daily is happy to introduce a new regular feature from social media trends tracker Starcount, looking at top games by month based on online buzz.  For information on their methodology, refer to the description and link at the end of the article.

By Starcount

September was a golden month for games. The latest Grand Theft Auto dropped to universal acclaim, with some suggesting that Rockstar’s latest release in their open-world crime series may just be the best game of all time.

The issue of best football games also continued to rage on with the release of the latest edition of both the FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer series. EA’s FIFA was received better by the critics, as the popular trend for realism in video games seemingly winning out when it comes to the beautiful game.

But how did the games perform on social media Well, as ever, the web has been a buzz of gaming activity, with trailers for new games hitting YouTube, Instagram videos of shenanigans on some of the month’s top releases and helpful gamers giving out walkthroughs and tips on Twitter. Starcount rounded up the top 10 most popular games using their unique social media stats, and we’ve given them to you in a handy countdown chart.

10. NEED FOR SPEED 

Need For Speed had 200,000 YouTube views and was talked about nearly 50,000 times this month. Screenshots of upcoming Need For Speed: Rivals got fans of racing games everywhere excited about the November release which sees the franchise make it’s debut on the Xbox One.

 

9. HITMAN

Hitman has gained 130,000 new Facebook fans and more and 45,000 YouTube views in September as rumours continued to surface surrounding the next instalment of the series, Hitman 6.

 

8. RESIDENT EVIL

Cap com’s acclaimed survival horror franchise, Resident Evil, is the eighth most popular game in the world this month after more than 300,000 people were talking about the series on Facebook.

 

7. MINECRAFT

September saw the immensely popular building block game, Minecraft, gain 200,000 fans on Facebook after the Ordnance Survey created an accurate map of the United Kingdom into the game! One spokesperson said “we think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data.”

 

6. ASSASSIN’S CREED

The gaming community is gearing up for another scintillating instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series — this time with a pirate theme. This month the franchise has gained 50,000 new fans on Facebook and had it’s new Multiplayer Gameplay Trailer viewed more than 80,000 times.

 

5. BATTLEFIELD 

Just as FIFA has competition, so does Call of Duty. Battlefield provides a more realistic, gritty experience, and is clearly very popular with you guys — you watched Battlefield videos more than 7 million times!

 

4. PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER

While FIFA may still be the most popular, Pro Evo is hot on its heels. The game’s YouTube channel was viewed over 2.4 million times in September, and should provide very real competition for FIFA 14 over the next few weeks.

 

3. FIFA

The world’s no.1 football game is in at 3. The series is talked about almost constantly on Facebook, with over 270,000 engaging with the game, from screenshots of victories to punishments for losses, FIFA is still your favourite when it comes to the beautiful game.

 

2. CALL OF DUTY

The Call of Duty franchise continues to be incredibly popular, and with next addition “Ghosts” recently unveiled and set to be released in November, the series is your second most popular game this month, with over 11.5 million views on YouTube.

 

1. GRAND THEFT AUTO V

Controversial series GTA is the most popular game across social media at the moment, with over a million of you talking about it on Facebook. The fifth instalment in the series was released last month to rave reviews with the game achieving a rating of 9.9 on IMDB.

 

How will things look next month Will Grand Theft Auto be able to hold onto its crown as the most socially popular video game in the world, or will it be replaced by the winner of the latest shoot-em-up shoot-out as Call of Duty: Ghosts goes up against Battlefield 4 in the battle of the autumn FPS releases.

Or will the landscape change entirely as the latest generation of consoles are unleashed, with both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 expected out in November? We’ll check back in next month with the results.

For methodology, Starcount uses 12 global networks including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Chinese networks Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, analyzing the behavior of 1.5 billion users. The firm has a unique algorithm that creates a “Starscore” for each game, which it then uses to rank the most popular games on social media in a given period of time. 

For more information, check out how Starcount tallies their “Starscore.” 

Twitter’s Numbers Speak For Themselves

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Twitter is on track for some major growth, and could very well be the social network with the highest engagement rates in the near future. With 21 percent of the world’s population now using Twitter on at least a monthly basis, it can be hard to make sense of this engagement and potential reach. How important are hashtags? Who are the world’s most major influencers? Luckily we have just the infographic for you:

 

For more on Twitter’s international growth, read our last look on the subject here.

Source: Social Media Today {link no longer active}

How Walmart Wins At Social Media

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For Walmart, interactions with customers on social media have proven to be a pivotal of their marketing efforts. The company recently announced impressive stats when it comes to return on investment. Speaking at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, Walmart marketing chief Stephen Quinn put it this way, “It’s very staggering. It is so intense on Black Friday. It’s almost like a mission control center for Walmart at that point.”

A year ago, Walmart completed an audience audit, taking a deeper look at those who interact with Walmart and influencers. From this, they formulated a winning strategy to make social an effective marketing and brand reputation vehicle.

Walmart has enjoyed 60,000 daily interactions on social media across 7 dedicated social handles and claims a stunning 10x ROI. With 31 million Facebook fans, more than any other brand on the network, it is no surprise that on Black Friday last year, Walmart received comments at a rate of 42 per minute.

“We have ROI that’s really strong. And, it’s transforming our organization. This level of engagement we now have with customers is changing a whole bunch of other aspects of our marketing,” said Quinn.

So who is handling Walmart’s social and what makes them so effective? Behind every great retail brand is one equally great marketing team. Walmart’s 20 person marketing team handles the main @Walmart account, using it as a vehicle to push out promotions. By splitting the main Walmart account from sub-accounts, they have effectively created a reputation barrier, a great tactic for large brands with multiple departments. In addition to the marketing team, there are 4 other people who operate the feeds to respond to issues and general reputation management.

Whether or not the people who interact with Walmart read them or not, the company has a page on their site listing their social media guidelines. The page clearly outlines what Walmart will and won’t interact with and their goals for responding to users and creating a dialogue.

Compared to other brands, Walmart tends to see a slightly lower amount of positive sentiment, but an amount of negative sentiment that is in league with competitors like Target and Sears.

“As is true with any segment of life or brand, no matter what we do, there are those who will never like us. It can stem from our business model to anything else we do, and that’s where your size and scale works against you. You can do 99 percent of your job right, but that one experience can lead a person to not like a brand. We’re trying to look for those conversations where we can insert ourselves and set the record straight,” said Chat Mitchell, Walmart’s senior director of digital communications, in speaking to Digiday.

Walmart is very straightforward about their methods in responding to criticism on social media. As it is impossible to handle a volume of 60,000 interactions daily and respond to each, they have utilised data to benefit them, filtering through these missives to identify important ones to reach. The social team responds selectively, pinpointing the tweets where they will most likely make a difference by responding.

 

 

“Best case scenario, we’re able to engage, share some content and change hearts and minds,” said Mitchell. “Worst case, we’re able to have an open dialogue and then move on, agreeing to disagree.”

Source: Digiday

‘Battlefield 4’ Virtual Boot Camp

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EA has launched an online boot camp experience that sets the stage for its upcoming shooter Battlefield 4 with a slick and intense presentation.  The wow factor starts at first sight, where guns are blazing, glass is breaking – the attention to graphic detail is acute.

The site then guides users’ experience based on whether they’ve chosen single player or multiplayer.  Once they’ve decided what to check out, users are given tantalizing glimpses at storylines, gameplay, gadgets, squad details and locations. The boot camp is a bold way to pre-empt users to pre-order the game.

You can see it all for yourself here.

 

A Tale Of Two Screens

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Going to the movie theater usually entails being briefed on turning your cell phone off. The latest Disney experiment wants you to defy basic etiquette by bringing your iPad into the picture with a fully-synced second screen movie experience. Second Screen Live: The Little Mermaid appears to be the next natural step in the gamification of well, everything.

The special showing was brought to just 16 theaters in Southern California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia and Kansas for a month-long run which began Sept. 20. Beforehand, participants were required to download a 641 MB app compatible only with the iPad.

The app uses the iPad’s microphone to sync with the interactive elements of the movie with games that are fun and appropriate for all ages. The games begin to roll in before the credits do. The audience forms groups that compete to score the most points before the movie’s end. The games are usually titled after the character that appears on the film screen. At choice moments, the movie will pause so the audience can get a full gaming experience without distracting too much from the film.

The interactive elements aren’t just limited to games, too. The movie’s songs are given special precedence with “crab-e-ole,” which is, you guessed it- lyrics on the screen for the audience to sing along with. This element is particularly great because of its potential for adding an educational component to the experience.

Disney’s movie is just part of an industry-wide effort to bring people back to the theater in a time when the movie industry might be in trouble. The Second Screen Live experience might reinvigorate the movie experience by making it special again. Marketers are facing the challenge of making the movie-going experience attractive to the next generation. Bringing another screen into the equation feels like the natural next step, a move that is in line with our evolving love for mobile devices. For now, Disney is continuing with bringing back classics to the big screen.

The Little Mermaid experiment has been quite successful, with 97 percent of the audience of the audience being positive and receptive. Possibly due to the great response, The Nightmare Before Christmas is now slated to come to theaters this year second screen-style.

If the idea proves lucrative, it follows that bringing in the second screen might be just as engaging for adults as it is for kids. Potential for live-tweeting, quizzes and more are there. It might also be used to extend the usual theatrical run for popular films and encourage people to see a movie again, with the added second screen benefit.

While much of the audience was positive,Taylor Casti, a writer for Mashable who experienced the second screen showing firsthand had some critiques.

“Some moviegoers meeting Ariel and friends for the first time will find it hard to focus on the movie, with a new game every minute or two. Many games require an individual’s full attention, for instance, when players quickly pop bubbles or tilt the iPad to catch Ariel’s treasures in a chest.”

She noted that as a repeat-watcher of The Little Mermaid, there were some key moments that new viewers may have missed due to the distraction. Moments such as when King Triton destroys Ariel’s treasure collection and the first time Ariel meets Eric. Still, Casti observed that the addition of the second screen transformed the movie from a linear narrative to non-linear because of the emphasis on characters.

Dave Hollis, Disney’s head of theatrical distribution made a point of saying that while second screen might be effective and interactive, they are not looking to implement it with every film.

“This is absolutely not an idea that you bring any device to any movie at any time. At Disney we have extraordinary reverence for the traditional moviegoing experience to be free from light, chatter and phones,” said Hollis in speaking to the LA Times {link no longer active}.

Other critics might be those parents who try to limit the number of screens their children encounter, an effort that has been backed up by a study that says that increased screen time correlates with depression in children.

A researcher from UCLA’s Children’s Digital Media Center, Yalda Uhls, said her primary issue with second screen comes from a storytelling perspective.”It’s really important to engage children in storytelling and it’s already hard to do that today when there are so many different distractions and stimulations everywhere.”

You can see for yourself if the experience disengages you from the storyline:

 

Source: Mashable

Change The Channel, Using Twitter

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In an announcement on a blog post Wednesday, Comcast Xfinity subscribers can record or even watch NBCUniversal TV shows with a button than will be embedded in tweets.

It comes from a project called “See It” that is a partnership between Comcast, NBCUniversal and Twitter to bring social media and TV viewing together in one experience. The partnership is also an advertising partnership, coinciding at Twitter’s filing for an IPO.

Before a partnership had ever been imagined, Twitter has had a hand in the social TV experience, with users having conversations with each other about their favorite shows, attracting the attentions of Nielsen to track these conversations.

Source: Information Week

Facebook Simplifies Ad Buys

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Anyone who has had the pleasure of purchasing an ad on Facebook knows the process kind of felt like operating in the dark. That changed for the better on Tuesday when Facebook made good on a promise made last June to simplify and streamline media buys on the social net. The changes bring campaign objectives comes to the fore, with added guidance from Facebook on how to best reach attain those objectives.

The Ads Manager and Power Editor utilities have a newly streamlined interface that makes the procedure easy. You no longer have to choose your ad options first and then realign your campaign’s optimization methods, a system that was overly complicated and felt clunky. The guesswork is gone.

In addition, the new system will allow you to operate up to 5 different ads at the same time, using multiple images. Much like Facebook’s Insights, you’ll also be able to see which of those images are performing better than others. Marketers will also be able to tailor the message of their ad to where the ad appears, whether it is on mobile Newsfeed, desktop Newsfeed or the ad column.

Facebook released a blog detailing their improvements to the system, including an easier way to track the impact of your ads by seeing their conversion value.

 

Source: TechCrunch

‘Pause Less’ With Plantronics’ Gaming Headset

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Plantronics is launching the RIG Headset + Mixer, what it’s calling the first product in a new line developed specifically with gamers in mind. What sets the headset apart is a mixer that gives users fine control over one of two incoming and outgoing audio channels, for instance one with game audio and another for phone calls or music  To highlight the feature, Plantronics worked with Ayzenberg on an interactive site that demonstrates exactly how gamers can put the feature to practical use.

The RIG site is a nifty interactive product demo, and it manages to get its features across with some dramedy.  It’s about men who game, and the women who love them.  Gamers know all too well that the women in their lives have a knack for calling right when their session is in full swing.  With RIG, all it takes is a mood for multitasking to take that incoming call from your girlfriend or your mother.  Flick a button on the mixer and audio switches from game audio to an incoming call.  In the demo, the first call is your girlfriend and she wants to make dinner plans.  She wants Vegan.  You want BBQ.  She acquiesces because she’s awesome, and this is advertising.  The best part, you never stopped gaming, dodging bullets on your virtual battlefield while dodging bombs like Vegan food off of it.  Then your mother calls to say it’s her birthday this week.  I might have stopped gaming here, but the demo shows with RIG, you don’t have to.

One of the RIG mixer’s best features is that it not only lets users switch between audio sources but actually listen to both and control their volume individually.  This is great for listening to music but not having to sacrifice game audio or in-game chatting with your multiplayer pals. I guess that’s true even if they’re rattling on about their broken love life, like in the demo. If you have to listen to your buddy’s sob story, why not cue in some sweet acoustic guitar to go with it.

The RIG works with just about any device you might want to game, talk or listen to things on — PC, consoles, smartphones and tablets.  It retails for $129, and it should be on shelves at major retailers starting today.

“No other product in the gaming headset marketplace has been developed specifically for gaming while using a tablet or smartphone, and we’re thrilled that gamers around the world can start connecting their game life and real life, starting today,” states Plantronics gaming products director Chuck Frizelle in the RIG’s launch press release.

Look for an upcoming exclusive interview with Frizelle and Dorothy Ferguson, Plantronics director of product marketing, looking at the launch of the RIG and how it represents Plantronics’ renewed focus on gaming products.

Microsoft’s Game Changer For Marketers

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Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Vice President of Marketing and Strategy outlined how the Xbox One could literally be a game changer for advertisers come November 22, when the platform launches in many markets around the world. At the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing Conference, Mehdi said he thinks the platform has potential to up the ante for marketers by furthering the “gamification” of advertising, and spur people to look for high production values just like the Xbox One will offer.

“We are trying to bridge some of the world between online and offline. That’s a little bit of a holy grail in terms of how you understand the consumer in that 360 degrees of their life. We have a pretty unique position at Microsoft because of what we do with digital, as well as more and more with television because of Xbox. It’s early days, but we’re starting to put that together in more of a unifying way, and hopefully at some point we can start to offer that to advertisers broadly,” said Mehdi.

After the speech, marketers in the audience had some misconceptions about what information the Xbox One could possibly provide advertisers, mainly with the Xbox One’s Kinect functionality. An advanced motion sensor, the Kinect could ostensibly be used to track the biometric responses of users and to determine whether or not they are paying attention to the ads. The new Kinect will be able to recognize up to 6 voices in a room, detect skeletal movement, respond to voice commands and track heart rates.

Microsoft’s Larry Hryb was quick to clear up this speculation over Twitter {link no longer active} in saying that Microsoft will not collect information to share or sell.

“You are fully in control of your personal data. Your privacy is important to us,” Hryb posted.

If the Kinect could ever be used to collect data on users who are compliant, the device would be a huge boon for marketers who would no doubt want access. The Xbox One could also spur users to ask more of their advertising as an experience that could bring mobile, TV and gaming together.

Source: AdAge  {link no longer active}

Twitter Global Growth Outpaces U.S.

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Twitter’s growth, both domestically and internationally has come as no surprise to users of the popular social network. What is surprising however, is how much more popular the social network is abroad. In the span of three short years, Twitter’s U.S. accounts have increased by 39 million users, but increased by a staggering 149 million users in the rest of the world.

Twitter popularity appears to have happened in tangent with the proliferation of mobile devices. Cell phones and Twitter have always gone hand in hand. A study was recently released that says there are almost as many mobile subscriptions as there are people on the planet.

Source: Mashable