These Are The Game Trailers Of The Week: Jan. 16

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Grey Goo – Launch Trailer

This launch trailer is 2:30 chock full of epic CGI. These people are being attacked by a gooey, ruthless enemy, and I want to know why. This RTS features three races fighting over control of resources, which is very similar to how Starcraft is set up. When that is the case, you have to show why your game deserves the attention of the consumer; this came in the form of a massive CG trailer. I have no idea what the game mechanics are like, or if it’s even good at all, but the point of a trailer is to sell the game, and this certainly has selling power.

The Sims 4 – Outdoor Adventures Expansion Trailer

Let the Sims expansions begin! With its tumultuous launch behind it, The Sims 4 takes its first steps out of the neighborhood and into the wild yonder with Outdoor Adventures, the first of (assumedly) many “game packs” to be dropped for the iconic EA franchise. Dubbed an ‘entirely new product line for The Sims franchise”, this and other game packs will include a combination of new items and activities for your Sims to enjoy. While it’s unclear whether full-fledged expansions are on the way, EA and Maxis have promised plenty of free game updates on top of these paid game packs. The future of pretending to live other people’s lives are upon us, and it costs $19.99 a pop.

Puzzle and Dragons  – Super Mario Edition Teaser Trailer

This rare occurrence of Nintendo loaning out their flagship franchise to a third party developer means two things: it’s only a matter of time until Mario starts coming to mobile, and both companies are going to make a ton of money out of it. GungHo Online Entertainment is lauded as the leading mobile developer in Japan, and this time they’re flexing their chops on the 3DS mashing up Mario with the Puzzle and Dragons franchise. This shows a willingness to collaborate among the big players in the Japanese gaming market, along with the fact that Nintendo is willing to expand their horizons in order to stay at the top of their game. Besides, when is more Mario ever a bad thing

YouTube Will Air Its Own Super Bowl Halftime Show

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By: Sahil Patel

Those who aren’t interested in watching Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz during this year’s “Super Bowl Halftime Show” will have the chance to go online and watch some of YouTube’s biggest stars instead.*

YouTube plans to put on its own halftime show during the year’s biggest television event. It will be hosted by Harley Morenstein, the main guy behind the popular YouTube cooking series “Epic Meal Time.” Morenstein is a member of Collective Digital Studio, which will be producing the program in partnership with YouTube. More than 20 YouTube stars and musicians — some of whom are also affiliated with CDS — will appear during the show, including Freddie Wong, Toby Turner, and Rhett and Link.

Running during the game and filmed at YouTube Space LA, YouTube’s show will feature musical performances and stunts, as well as fake ads created by the online stars. Wong’s ad, for instance, will be a parody of ‘90s-style ads for sugary drinks, one that devolves into something much darker, according to Bloomberg.

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This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

Vimeo and Maker Studios’ Exclusivity Deal

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There’s no question that YouTube is a juggernaut when it comes to creating superstars with original content in all sorts of genres, from gaming to entertainment. But this week, Vimeo has made a deal that could see some of the talent coming its way.

The company has formed an alliance with Disney’s Maker Studios, which will bring over a number of formidable talents that will create exclusive video-on-demand content for its channel.

Through the deal, Maker will provide Vimeo with access to its 55,000 creators for distributed content, which will then be put on its video-on-demand platform. In addition, Vimeo will also pay out of pocket for original content from several talents at Maker, which will be released through exclusivity windows throughout this year, according to Variety.

“Thus far, YouTube creators have been monetizing through ads,” said Greg Clayman, general manager of Vimeo Audience Networks. “This lets Maker go to their creators to choose to window content, or distribute original content, in addition free, ad-supported video.”

Maker is no stranger to housing content away from YouTube, as it previously formed its own Maker.tv channel. But this opens up a whole new venue for the team. “Maker is always excited to create original programs that reach audiences across platforms, and Vimeo will be a great partner to distribute new ideas,” said Maker chief strategy officer Courtney Holt.

No projects have been confirmed with Maker just yet, nor any of its individual creators, but Vimeo is hard at work figuring out what to do with it. “It’s a fabulous talent pool to work with,” said Clayman. “Maker has tremendous reach in terms of promoting content, across their network.”

The deal also provides a little more leisure with exclusivity than the previously announced plan with the Vessel service, which came last year. “We’re not saying, ‘Hey, put your content here three days in advance and we’ll charge X,'” explained Clayman. With that, the team hasn’t ruled out the possibility of subscription channels, which would be owned and run by content owners over at Maker.

This should be good news for Vimeo, and provide some strong content as YouTube prepares its own possible subscription services sometime this year.

Why Brands Need To Read This Teen’s Take On Social Media

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With the vast number of social networks and messaging services available today, it’s very easy to get lost amongst the crowd, losing important perspective in the process.

A new editorial by University of Texas at Austin undergraduate Andrew Watts breaks down a number of such services, all while including his thoughts and opinions on each as a Net-savvy teenager.

On Facebook

  • Facebook is seen as “dead” to Watts and his peers, like “something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can’t really leave.”
  • Watts is careful to point out, however, that Facebook’s ubiquity (if you don’t have Facebook, that’s even more weird and annoying”) and extremely popular Messenger app keep it in his demographic’s relatively good graces.

On Instagram

  • Watts names Instagram as the most important social network for his age group, calling it the “most used” network as time is spent on Facebook, but the lion’s share of content is actually posted to Instagram.
  • Watts portrays Instagram as less annoying than Facebook, in part because his friends do not post “10000 times a day”; perhaps most importantly, he notes there are no links on Instagram, meaning he is not “being constantly spammed by the same advertisement, horrible gossip news article, or Buzzfeed listicle”.

On Twitter

  • Most teenagers, Watts explains, “do not understand the point” of Twitter.
  • Aside from a few groups of people using it to complain about school, Watts says, there are not many reasons to use it.
  • Yik Yak, on the other hand, is mentioned as an extremely popular short update-sharing service, likely on account of its anonymity.

On Snapchat and Tumblr

  • Snapchat and Tumblr are given special mention by Watts as sorts of judgement-free zones lending themselves to less stress than Facebook or Twitter thanks to a lack of follower counts in Snapchat’s case and anonymity on Tumblr.
  • Watts sees both as being particularly “alluring” on the strength of these factors and their ease of use.

 

Twitter’s New Revenue-Generating Measures Set To Autoplay

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Twitter is looking to follow in the footsteps of Facebook and other leading social networks with a number of initiatives designed to monetize their service, reports indicate.

The bite-sized update-sharing service is considering deploying autoplay previews for promoted videos when they appear in a user’s feed, allowing a user to click to play the entire video after the six-second preview concludes if they desire. Twitter executives are reportedly planning on drawing advertisers in by charging only when a user clicks to watch the entire video, creating a product seen as combining the best of what Facebook and YouTube currently offer for marketers.

Promoted videos were first tested by Twitter back in August; at the time, the company said advertisers would be charged per view, and that users would have to manually click to watch a video.

Twitter’s second order of revenue-generating business is a move to sell in-stream ads to other publishers’ tweet-powered apps and websites.

Twitter executives explained the initiative to media buyers at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show; though they haven’t revealed which publishers they’ll be partnered with to start, ESPN’s SportsCenter app and Flipboard were showcased.

The social network’s endgame, according to company sources, is to earn the right to boast possession of “the largest daily audience online.” Though they have a ways to go to give Facebook a run for their money on that front, Twitter appears to be laying solid groundwork toward realizing that goal.

Influencer Brand Deals: The New Celebrity Endorsements?

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The age of social media has given rise to a unique class of new celebrities, each rising to fame in ways impossible before sites like YouTube, Vine, and Instagram existed. Brands eager to remain relevant have co-opted these social stars’ followings for sponsored content, hoping to drive sales from a new generation of consumers.

Now, as their one-off influencer campaigns rack up great engagement figures, some brands are considering signing Internet celebrities to long-term endorsement deals.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, emboldened by a holiday campaign featuring a dozen such influencers that generated well over 27 million impressions, is considering bringing those same faces back from a year-long campaign instead of finding new social stars. “It’s not just one and done — it’s a relationship that we’ve developed with social media influencers,” said Dick’s senior digital director Jay Basnight.

Old Navy, on the other hand, is taking a different tack to its influencer campaigns.

Instead of using the same cast of social stars they’d used for a summer campaign, the Gap-owned clothing chain brought a new roster of Vine influencers on board for a winter promotion that brought them 6,600 Vine followers and 84,000 engagements.

Taylor Bux, Old Navy director of digital and social, said the company used new stars so as to make their spots look like something more organic than simple paid placement. “We don’t want to be overly disruptive, so we’re not pushing a commercial message first.”

Skeptics worry whether influencers have the same sort of staying power traditional celebrities command, as they are known for rising and falling with the increasingly fickle tastes of their mobile-first audiences. “The speed at which these influencers are rising and falling is very quick,” stated Upshot senior vice president of interactive marketing and analytics Dan Swartz.

It’s clear that influencers, as obvious of a successor to traditional celebrities as they may seem to be, still stand in reasonably uncharted territory. If Dick’s gambit pays off, other brands might follow, paving the way for groundbreaking new endorsement deals.

CREATIVE: The Week’s Top Trailers Have Arrived

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PlayStation Now – Debut Trailer

Sony has finally laid down their subscription plan for PlayStation Now, a giant library of PS3 titles ripe and ready for unlimited streaming. For either $20/month or $45 every three, you can enjoy more than 100 titles that have graced the PS4’s older brother.

This pricing announcement comes on the heels of EA partnering exclusively with Xbox for EA Access, a subscription-based library of digitally streaming Electronic Arts titles. Currently this service costs only $5 per month, but the collection is much smaller than PlayStation Now’s.

Forza Horizon 2 – G-Shock Car Pack Trailer

Forget the cars, let’s take a moment to appreciate how darn good this game looks. Whatever gameplay issues exist aside, Forza Horizon 2 promises us two things: there will be a ton of authentic cars, and the landscapes of the French Riviera and beyond will take your breath away.

Okay, back to the cars. With an eclectic mix of classic and new, road and all-terrain, there’s a vehicle for everyone in this $4.99 expansion. I’m having dreams about tearing that Subaru BRAT through some amber waves of grain. Fantastic, wonderful dreams. When an car website calls your game “the closest you’ll get to living your car fantasy”, you’re doing something right.

Dying Light – New Year’s Resolutions Trailer

New year’s resolutions go a bit differently in the infected city of Harran. Instead of trying to get in shape or getting in better touch with old friends, the characters of Dying Light are more concerned with petty things like “not being eaten alive” and “escaping that hell hole of a zombie town”.

Produced here at Ayzenberg, this video comes as part of a series of clips lovingly named “Dying Highlights”: a social video campaign showing off the many features of Dying Light in user friendly, easy to digest video form. Gosh, this game looks bloody awesome.

SpongeBob HeroPants – Debut Trailer

Bonus trailer, because this is too good/weird to not show off. Spongebob and friends come to 3DS, Vita, and Xbox 360. Most random combination ever You’ve obviously never watched Spongebob before.  

Instagram Is The Fastest-Growing Social Network, But Pinterest Isn’t Far Behind

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The Pew Internet Research Project has just released its survey findings conducted in September of 2014 about the proliferation and popularity of major social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.

Facebook has held firm at its spot as the most-used social network, but for the past year, has had stagnant user growth. That doesn’t mean that social networks have reached their peak, however. In the meantime, every other social network has made big gains in wrangling new users into their midst. The fastest-growing social networks Instagram with Pinterest breathing down its neck by just one percentage point.

Facebook user engagement has been growing even though its userbase has not. According to Pew, 70 percent of Facebook users visit and engage on the site daily, and a high 45 percent actually use it several times a day. Instagram engagement rates are close Facebook’s for being a relatively new platform. Nearly half of Instagram users engage daily.

Pinterest, although growing memberships quickly has a lower daily usage than its counterparts. The platform sees 17 percent of its userbase daily and continues to appeal less for men (13 percent) than women (42 percent).

Should Facebook Be Worried About Its Core App?

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Facebook’s lofty push to introduce Messenger as a standalone app seems like an unqualified success at first glance, as ComScore‘s mobile app data report for November 2014 shows Messenger with a staggering 69 percent reach amongst all American smartphone users.

The news is clear: People love Facebook‘s messaging service. That love, however, appears to come at the expense of the Facebook core app’s market share.

A Pew Research Center report released today shows Facebook in first place amongst all social networks in the United States, but with significantly slowed growth relative to years past. Meanwhile, 52 percent of online adults use two or more social networks, up from 42 percent a year earlier, allowing competitors like LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter to grow at their expense.

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram appears to be doing well to blunt public perception that the social giant has lost its “cool” factor with younger consumers, as Instagram is still extremely popular with young adults; 49 percent of all 18-29 year old Internet users say they use it at least once a day.

The migration away from Facebook’s core app likely stems in large part from their decision to require smartphone users to download Messenger if they wanted to continue using chat, a move that compelled many to abandon the core app entirely even as they embraced Messenger as a standalone app.
The challenge for Facebook now, it would seem, is whether they can compel Americans to have the same sort of enduring relationship with Messenger that Japanese audiences have with Line or Chinese consumers have with Tencent’s QQ. If they are successful, Facebook — Messenger and all — might become a bigger hit with users and engagement-enamored marketers than ever before.

Marriott’s Content Studio Gets Right To Work On Its First Short Film

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The Marriott Content Studio is just getting started– it’s only been around for 3 months so far– but the studio has begun to create film now, too. Two Bellmen is the latest effort from the content studio and is a short film set at the JW Marriott LA LIVE hotel that is only just getting under production now, but will certainly dole out the thrills. The film is about an art heist at the hotel and features stunt doubles from Spider-Man and How I Met Your Mother.

Marriott’s creative division is led by David Beebe, VP of creative, who formerly worked at Disney-ABC.

“Our strategy on the highest level is built on the three Cs,” Beebe said to Digiday. “Creating content that entertains, informs and provides value to people, building a community with the people by doing content right over and over again, and eventually driving commerce from that community.”

Recently, Marriott had teamed with Oculus Rift to create a VR campaign that gave visitors an immersive travel experience extending the brand into interesting and exciting creative endeavors.

“For us, it’s all about relationships — we look at how we are changing people’s perceptions about our brand and building relationships. Really, here’s a brand that gets it, that realizes the way to build those relationships is to give content of value. A lot of brands talk about doing it, but it takes a lot of time and requires a shift in thinking.”