Weekly Round-Up For August 29

BY

Editorial Note: We will be off on Monday and return Tuesday on our usual schedule.

Busy week Sometimes you don’t have time to get to everything and we understand that. We’ve highlighted our most read stories this week for you to catch up on while you’re attending to your Labor Day festivities.

5 Super Powerful Lessons ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is Teaching Hollywood: Our most popular story this week, Starlight Runner Entertainment’s CEO Jeff Gomez breaks down and delves into important takeaways from an unlikely movie hit.

SuperData July 2014: US Digital Sales Rise: We always look forward to the SuperData report each month, but this one was particularly special as it shows just how deep we are into publishers’ transition into digital.

New Apples Are Ripe for Gaming: It remains to be seen what exactly will be announced from Apple, but they’ve officially said they’ll be unveiling what’s in store on Sept. 9th. One thing’s for sure: the impact on gaming.

Why Helsinki Is a Hotbed For Hit Games: Our own John Gaudiosi talks to Seriously co-founder Petri Jarvilaehto as the new company is set to release its first mobile game, Best Fiends.

Emerging Market Trends On The Rise: Mary Meeker doing her thing.

The Lowdown on Gen Z: As with other generations before, Gen Z is a bit of a different creature than the millennial… and accounts for more than a quarter fo the U.S. population. This infographic will explain everything.

 

 

 

Why PAX Events Are Valued By Marketers

BY

This weekend, thousands of gamers and fans will converge upon Seattle to experience the Penny Arcade Expo Prime event (PAX Prime for short), which will take place over the Labor Day weekend. Companies will also be in attendance, hosting panels and giving players the opportunity to go hands-on with upcoming titles, such as Super Smash Bros. and Evolve.

So why are these events such a huge draw for marketers? There are several reasons involved:

First off, the shows sell out every year. Whenever PAX badges go on sale, they’re gone within minutes, and people actually purchase sold ones on eBay in the hopes of attending the event. That shows the popularity behind said event, and anyone who’s anyone in game development would be wise to attend to get their attention.

Secondly, big companies enjoy attending the event. Microsoft is a big part of PAX every year, and Nintendo has become more and more involved with each passing year. It’s also a great place for third-party companies such as 2K Games and Ubisoft, who go all-out to promote their upcoming games while drawing in community members with special events.

The PAX events are also an ideal spot for developers of “indie” titles to get attention to their games, as most of the time they’re shut out of other events like the Electronic Entertainment Expo, since those are reserved for larger companies and projects. PAX Prime enables them to communicate with gamers directly, without having to worry about some form of middle man.

Finally, the event is simply “by gamers, for gamers,” so it allows marketers to really draw on their audience without having to figure out what “makes them tick,” so to speak. It really brings in the “hardcore” factor of players, as well as families who want to check out what’s around the corner for the system or handheld they just purchased.

In all, everyone who’s involved with PAX Prime wins, and even though attempting to get badges is a lot of work, the end result is an event that benefits all involved. Including marketers.

Source: PAX

Crowdfunding’s Stretch Goals

BY

Crowdfunding for games, through KickStarter or other means, has gone from a curiosity to an accepted means of acquiring funding for game development. In a sign of just how far crowdfunding has come, recently Chris Robert’s Star Citizen reached the milestone of $50 million raised from individuals, and the game has already blazed past $51 million on its way to new heights. Where is this business model headed The [a]listdaily turned to an expert to gain some insight.

Jon Kimmich

Jon Kimmich is the founder and CEO of Software Illuminati, providing strategic and tactical insight to creative software developers, and a contributor and editor of The Crowdfunding Bible. The [a]listdaily spoke with Kimmich about crowdfunding and its future.

[a]listdaily: Crowdfunding for games as come a long way in the last couple of years. There have been great successes, some failures, and an explosion in the number of game projects seeking funding in this way. Do you think crowdfunding for games has proven itself to be a a viable means of funding a game project for many creators, or is it best considered only by a small set of developers who meet certain criteria? If so, what would those criteria be?

Jon Kimmich: Absolutely, crowd funding is a viable way for an independent studio to pay for some (perhaps all) of its development cost. Even of a AAA game such as Elite or Star Citizen. And the good news for developers is that even those cases where teams failed to deliver, or engaged in outright fraud, that has not “poisoned the well” for others. A year ago, this was a big concern among some of the early successful KickStarter campaigns, as they had to adjust schedules, or change how products would be parceled out for sale, “Is my being late, or my change in what I promised, going to ruin things for everybody else.” So far, that hasn’t happened.

In terms of who should use crowd funding, let’s be clear that it’s not for everybody. Teams that lack experience with marketing or promoting themselves or their games, should probably go a more traditional route. Many great development teams simply do not have salesmanship and retailing as core competencies. And if you harbor a fear that your concept or your prototype lacks appeal, finding out from a bitter and cynical Internet audience is not good for the ego or the soul.

[a]listdaily: Crowdfunding not only provides revenue, it opens the design and development process to the backers. Having seen both the closed and open development process now, would you always want to have an open process?

Jon Kimmich: Open development is not for everyone. If you’re used to having one producer from a publisher telling you what they think of your game, and why it needs to change, imaging having fifty thousand. Of which a few hundred are very vocal about the fact that, “you suck and should just kill yourself…” and want to hack your personal information and put it up on the Internet just to help the process along.

Most teams pursue design more for marketing and community development reasons than to try and impact the core game design. If a team lacks core capability in marketing, PR and community management, an open development process can be very taxing, both in terms of team bandwidth, and sometimes morale. Every project and every team will attract a certain amount of griefers and haters, because making you feel bad as a developer is the game they like to play. If your team has not dealt with that before, and you’ve not marshaled the “immune response”of your studios/games community to handle these sorts of folks, you may find it a pretty unpleasant experience.

[a]listdaily: Do you think crowdfunding of games will continue to grow and change, or has it reached a stable state?

Jon Kimmich: As with the F2P business model (of which crowd funding is one example) it’s very early days. There is still lots of room for innovation. But I would caution teams about trying to innovate in gameplay and in business model and in platform or genre all in the same game at the same time.

[a]listdaily: What types of games lend themselves to crowdfunding, and which don’t?

Jon Kimmich: It still remains the case that F2P games do not lend themselves to crowd funding. Why should the crowd pay in advance for something they will eventually get for free So F2P games generally raise less money, or fail entirely. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a heavily IAP (in-app purchase) driven game, but make sure that the initial value is there so that you can justify the initial “purchase price,” whatever it may be.

Generally speaking, games that target a core audience perform better, this applies to F2P games as well as crowd funding campaigns. Core games typically drive higher ARPUs (average revenue per user) than casual ones, and core games typically can raise more money than casual ones via crowd funding, likely for similar reasons of demographics, psychographics and engagement.

[a]listdaily: What’s the best advice you can give to anyone considering a crowdfunded game project?

Jon Kimmich: Know your capabilities and limits. Reach out to the successful teams and people who have run campaigns in the past, they are usually more than willing to give advice on what worked for them. Understand that crowd funding is first and foremost about marketing, PR and community development/management. If these things scare you, you will either need to augment your team with folks with demonstrated core competency in these areas; there are plenty of “consultants” (and publishers for that matter) out there promising to help — vet their references and previous campaigns first.

Lessons For Marketers From Alibaba’s Explosive Mobile Growth

BY

In case you missed it, Chinese internet giant Alibaba released its latest performance numbers yesterday. As if the threefold profit growth to $2 billion in the last quarter that ended June 30 was not enough to impress investors ahead of the company’s IPO, much of that growth is coming from mobile. Year-over-year, the value of goods sold on Alibaba’s marketplaces which come from mobile transactions have increased from 12 percent to nearly a third of total volume. “Our current focus is on increasing mobile (gross merchandise volume) and user engagement,” Alibaba said in the U.S. regulatory filings, according to Reuters.

Why this emphasis on mobile sales Just look at Facebook. When it went public, investors were worried about its ability to monetize its traffic, especially on smartphones and tablets and the stock initially got a lukewarm reaction. Today the stock is trading almost double its IPO level. One of the reasons investors point to is that mobile ad revenue now accounts for over 62 percent of Facebook’s total sales.

While Alibaba is a conglomerate that owns many different kinds of Internet businesses, it’s ability to monetize its overall mobile traffic is a good sign of its ability to thrive in a world where more and more of the world’s citizens are using mobile devices to access the Internet.

Analysts that the NYT have spoken to have suggested that the IPO might ultimately value the company at more than $150 billion, roughly around the same level as Amazon ($157 billion), a BIG IPO by any standards.

It’s not just investors that need to pay attention to how fast mobile revenues are growing, marketers also need to adjust their marketing strategies and tactics accordingly. If people are not just consuming media on their smartphones, but increasingly also shopping and spending money at this rate globally, any marketing plan that does not have mobile front-and-center is outdated.

 

Snacks Add Virtual Goods For A Tasty Promotion

BY

There’s been a long association between gaming and snack foods going back decades. When you’re in the fevered excitement of a marathon gaming session, quick snacks and caffeine-powered sodas are a natural thing to reach for. This association hasn’t escaped brand marketers, as in past years we’ve seen fast-food companies working with console makers, and more recently Coca-Cola sponsoring eSports.

The latest promotion promising to tickle a gamer’s taste buds comes from Mountain Dew and Doritos. Mountain Dew and Doritos have put a call out to gamers who can’t wait for Activision’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, bringing back both a gamer favorite — Mountain Dew Game Fuel Citrus Cherry — and a new flavor, Mountain Dew Game Fuel Lemonade.

The global Mountain Dew and Doritos “Fuel Up for Battle” promotion takes advantage of Call of Duty’s new game feature, the brand new “Supply Drops” currency platform. Starting October 6 (Monday, the same day the Mountain Dew products are released) gamers in select markets around the world can collect codes from specially marked packages of Mountain Dew or Doritos. Players can enter the codes online at www.dewanddoritos.com and then customize their Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer gaming experience by accessing exclusive (until Feb. 15, 2015) in-game gear using the “Supply Drops” system.

This could be fans customizing their player with ultra-rare accessories like an exo-skeleton, heavy vest kit, helmets, goggles, boots and more. Further elevating the experience, gamers will also be able to unlock double XP and rapid supply rewards. Every code entered from DEW and Doritos packages unlocks Call of Duty in-game rewards and each code entered will also provide a chance to win an Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft.

“We’re thrilled to bring together with Call of Duty such iconic brands as Mountain Dew and Doritos in a compelling and fun way that benefits both of our respective communities,” said Ashley Maidy, vice president of licensing and partnerships, Activision Publishing, Inc. “So, with the exclusive in-game gear waiting for DEW and Doritos consumers, gamers just need to fuel-up and login.”

“As in-game experiences evolve, the DEW and Doritos brands are constantly looking for ways to bring those cutting-edge ideas to life offline through unique promotions and exclusive opportunities for our fans,” said Greg Lyons, vice president of marketing, Mountain Dew. “As a brand with an endemic gaming heritage, we are excited to be able to offer this massive gaming community unique access to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s next generation ‘Supply Drop’ platform.”

“The Dew and Doritos ‘Fuel Up for Battle’ promotion is a great example of PepsiCo’s strength in delivering an integrated food and beverage marketing campaign,” said Jeff Klein, vice president of marketing, Frito-Lay. “Our unique ability to bring consumers exclusive experiences through our long-standing legacy of partnerships and programs around blockbuster video games, demonstrates why we are Better Together.”

As gamers have come to expect year after year, Mountain Dew is bringing back tried and true gamer-favorite — Mountain Dew Game Fuel Citrus Cherry — and a bold new flavor — Mountain Dew Game Fuel Lemonade — for a limited time only. Both products will hit shelves in the U.S., beginning October 6.

Fans can also participate in the”Fuel Up for Battle” promotion by purchasing any 3.375 oz. specially marked bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese, Doritos Cool Ranch, Doritos Spicy Nacho or Doritos Dinamita Chile Limon flavored chips, beginning October 6.

The interesting angle on this promotion is, of course, the virtual goods. Previous snack promotions have tended to be contests, offering the chance to win games or consoles. Of course, most of the snacks in that case don’t deliver anything, because the odds aren’t that great. Offering virtual goods or currency for virtual goods means that every item you purchase has value in the game, not just a chance at value.

Activision is also using the promotion to spur interest in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare prior to the game’s release, of course. Players will be encouraged to collect the snack foods and drinks ahead of the game’s release, stockpiling virtual items. This should act to increase a gamer’s desire to get the game, since they’ll be starting with an advantage.

The release of an advanced promotional campaign seems quite appropriate for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, as the game represents several advances for the Call of Duty franchise. The game narrative begins in the year 2054, when the Atlas Corporation, a private military corporation (PMC), has emerged with the power to rescue humanity after a global attack on its military and infrastructure. This setting means players get new, cutting-edge exoskeleton abilities and an advanced arsenal with new weaponry, vehicles and high-tech gear. Players can join the ranks of a highly-trained, specialized unit committed to restoring order.

The new gear and futuristic setting lends quite a different flavor to Call of Duty, as Activision is looking to boost sales this year as the competition intensifies in the shooter category. Activision’s toughest competition may well come its own product line, as Destiny launches with high expectations in September. The games are very different in the setting and many of the gameplay elements, but both are shooters. Will players be willing to pick up both games, or can they both appeal to large audiences without any overlap occurring

Five Super Powerful Lessons ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Is Teaching Hollywood

BY

With big smiles and open wallets, people around the world are going back to see Guardians of the Galaxy again and again. This past weekend, according to Box Office Mojo, the film retook first place at the box office, grossing $252 million domestically, and closing in on half a billion dollars worldwide after three weeks in release. That makes it the #1 movie of the summer {link no longer active}, and Guardians is shockingly on track to become the #1 superhero movie of the year, beating out Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Futurepast, and even Disney Marvel’s own Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

So how in the world did this happen, and what is Hollywood learning from a global blockbuster that stars a sitcom second banana, a pro wrestler, a walking tree and a talking raccoon

To be sure, Guardians of the Galaxy had its doubters. Motley Fool, ubiquitous on Yahoo’s front page, predicted the film would be a total flop. The main characters were known only to a handful of fanboys. Director James Gunn hadn’t made a movie that grossed more than $10 million {link no longer active} domestically.

Besides dubbing the whole project “magic,” and dubbing Marvel Studio head Kevin Feige as the new James Lasseter (founder of Pixar), here are the takeaways for Hollywood regarding Guardians’ remarkable success:

1. It Pays to Go to the Library

We can trace the roots to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie to the Marvel Screenwriters Program, started by Marvel Studios to cultivate writers and incubate properties from the vast library of Marvel Comics characters. An array of second and third tier titles were offered to participants, and Nicole Perlman {link no longer active} (who had touched up the Thor script) chose the obscure Guardians of the Galaxy. Although much has been made of James Gunn’s rewrite, the point is that without Marvel’s foresight in letting Perlman dig deep into its stacks, Gunn would have had no Groot.

We’re seeing this elsewhere, as studios finally come to grips with the fact that comic books and other fictional universes have tons to offer, particularly if writers and producers apply some audiovisual imagination. While the CW’s Smallville TV series borrowed from Superman’s rogues gallery in name only, the more recent Arrow has been bold in its depiction of such costumed villains as Deathstroke, Merlyn, and the Suicide Squad. Now Fox’s Gotham, ABC’s Agents of SHIELD, and NBC’s Constantine will be tapping dozens of characters that would electrify comics geeks, but are hardly known to the unwashed masses.

Wildly ahead of the curve, Marvel cut a deal for Netflix to finance an entire farm team of secondary and tertiary characters such as Power Man, Iron Fist, and the Defenders in a series of maxi-series. The studio has made no bones about the fact that, as opposed to the Warner Bros./DC television characters, these heroes can then show up in Agents of SHIELD or even the feature films.

After Marvel’s success, the majors are catching on as well. More than a dozen obscure mutants showed us a good time in Fox’s X-Men: Days of Futurepast. Cyborg and Aquaman will make their live action premieres in Batman v. Superman. Sony will be plumbing the depths of its contractual corner of the Marvel Universe by turning a number of Spider-Man villains {link no longer active} into anti-heroes and giving them their own film series.

2. It’s Not Just a Brand, It’s a Story World

Much has been made of the “Marvel brand’ and how it has become trustworthy entertainment, like Pixar. That’s true, but there is something more at play. Although at first blush Guardians of the Galaxy seems to have little to do with the adventures of Iron Man, Captain America and the Avengers, even less acquainted audience members quickly realize that we are in the same story world as those more familiar properties; we are squarely in the Marvel Universe {link no longer active}. The film’s tone, humor and themes are in keeping with the rest of the series; Thanos, an uber-villain glimpsed in Avengers, plays a larger role here; the MacGuffin is another of those pesky Infinity Stones that everybody seems to be after in many of the films.

From this perspective, Marvel Studios is pioneering a 21st century franchise production philosophy, where the “transmedia story world” (a persistent fictional universe that extends across an array of media platforms, with each piece a self-contained addition to a greater mythology) rules over the whims of talent or the politics of corporate suits. Why do it this way when it would be so much easier to let different directors, studios, and licensees do whatever they pleased with each character and storyline The proof is in the results:

Story worlds connect with fans because they simulate reality in terms of consistency, depth, and scope. We are implicitly told that there is a design sensibility to this world that the creators aren’t simply making it up as they go along. Story worlds appeal to our collectors’ mentality: the more we buy into them, the more complete the puzzle becomes, even though we know the picture will never be fully complete. That intrinsic interactivity is quite simply fun, and our natural inclination is to become loyal to it, and lead our friends to it.

Christopher Nolan’s vision of Batman was compelling, but by its nature it was exclusive and self-limiting. Interestingly, Warner Bros. has veered away from this auteurist approach, and as of Zack Snyder’s Superman v. Batman, is now emulating the Marvel Cinematic Universe, pulling in members of the Justice League to start building a DC movie story world in earnest.

Universal is finally pulling its act together and uniting their library of classic monsters (The Mummy, Van Helsing, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, etc.) into a single cinematic universe under the aegis of Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan. The studio is doubling down with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, again acknowledging that the new reboot will tap into the breadth of her entire novel series, rather than simply adapting them one at a time with different casts and disparate visionaries at the helm.

Also, this year, the granddaddy of transmedia story worlds, Star Wars, has announced that all content moving forward “counts” and will be a part of a massive “interconnected long-form narrative.” Creator George Lucas had always made it clear that only his six films were the official story of Star Wars, and all of the thousands of comic books, hundreds of novels, and dozens of video games were not canonical. In a striking reversal, new Star Wars overseer Kathleen Kennedy has formed a mysterious story team deep within Lucasfilm, who will form a kind of narrative hub for the franchise, carefully coordinating between Disney, and a raft of licensees to make certain that if a Wookiee sneezes in a comic book, he gets a Gesundheit in a video game.

But it’s not just about appealing to the geeks, who have clearly inherited the media, if not the Earth. Story worlds make financial sense. Although movies may retain the prestige crown, we now live in a world where any content is accessible through a wide array of media platforms. More kids are being introduced to Harry Potter through the Lego video games than through the Scholastic books. It simply pays for the world we find first to be a vital part of the official world of the franchise, not simply a knock-off to make a buck off licensing. If any date can be the start of a long-term relationship, it behooves the storyteller to dress up a bit, and put their best foot forward.

3. Post-Millennials Are Vibing with Vulnerability

As the world seems to have grown harsher, there is a new closeness between Millennials (those born roughly after 1982) and their Gen-Z (or Pluralist) kids. Combine this with a greater sensitivity toward gender issues and “outsiders” in general, and you have a mass audience of — tweens and teens who are less interested in godlike beings (such as the heroes in the recent Superman and Green Lantern films), and more taken with heroes grappling with personal vulnerabilities, like we’re seeing in the Marvel films.

Director Gunn takes care to give us quick but touching back stories for most of the major characters in Guardians of the Galaxy. The result is that some soul slips into the bombast, and we relate to a band of loveable, strangely innocent weirdos. Interestingly, Universal is circling current vulnerability king Josh Boone, director of The Fault in Our Stars, to helm the first of their Vampire Chronicles.

The Fault in Our Stars

4. Talent Must Serve the Story World, Not the Other Way Around

Some have criticized {link no longer active} Marvel’s rapidly expanding universe of imposing a “house style” on filmmakers, stifling creativity and making the interconnected films and television shows hard to follow. Director Edgar Wright left Marvel’s Ant-Man ostensibly over creative differences stemming from the fact that he’d begun development on the project long before the move canon had matured, but was now being cajoled into bending his script to serve it. This could have meant adding characters from elsewhere in the canon, referencing the overall continuity outside of the story at hand, or even altering the plot to accommodate the superstructure of Marvel’s decade-long master plan.

We return to the distinction between a more traditional auteur-driven approach, and that of talent being brought in to create a new chapter in an ever-expanding but still integral story world. Marvel’s Kevin Feige brought an innate sense of reverence to the source material to the production process, dating all the way back to the launch of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. After all, when a writer or artist is brought in to script or draw an issue of a Marvel comic book, there were certain rules of style and continuity that had to be respected. Keep defying those and the entire universe starts to unravel. Why not observe the same approach with the movies? Keeping track of the canon is half the fun — as fans of soap operas and sports leagues would certainly attest. But does this kill creativity?

Directors such as Gunn, Joss Whedon (Avengers), and Anthony & Joe Russo (Captain America 2) don’t seem to think so. The Russos, in fact got to unfold a fairly subversive storyline with Winter Soldier, commenting sharply on America’s surveillance state. Gunn’s Guardians is fraught with themes and quirks that speak to his obsessions. Its psychedelic palette and surreal images hearken to the director’s love of 1970s pop culture, particularly prog-rock album covers, the airbrush painted sides of Chevy vans, and yes, Marvel Comics. But Gunn also understood walking into this situation that these toys are not his, and although his contribution to the sandbox counts big-time, he still has to play well with others. Like the best Frank Miller or Alan Moore scripted comic books, Gunn has proven that you can join a vast work in progress, yet still make your distinct voice heard over the din.

5. Keep it Warm

Finally, Guardians of the Galaxy hammers home the fact that warmth, cleverness and imagination will win out over uninvolving operatic spectacle any day. Godzilla became a low-key monster march the moment Bryan Cranston dropped from the movie. Lal-El’s aloofness in Man of Steel, capped by the decimation of Metropolis, left audiences slightly chilled. The first five minutes of Guardians, on the other hand, set millions of eyes glistening with tears, and our default response to the fundamental good-heartedness of its motley crew of outlaw heroes is to smile.

Warner Bros. was smart to cast a warmer Ben Affleck as Batman to Henry Cavill’s flinty Supes for the upcoming sequel. There is recent evidence that Superman’s costume will become less muted and more colorful {link no longer active}. Marvel may even take a cue from itself and infuse some of their Agents of SHIELD with a stronger sense of camaraderie, and humanizing emotional complexity in the show’s second season.

Breakthroughs don’t appear out of thin air, and it’s probably true that Guardians of the Galaxy would not have been nearly as successful five years ago as it is today, but it’s not just about the Marvel brand. Any number of studios can cobble together transmedia story worlds, but the true takeaway out of these five lessons is that audiences are tiring of spectacle without drama, confrontations without imagination, and super powers without heart. And a wiggling tree dude with Vin Diesel’s voice never hurts…

_______________

Jeff Gomez is CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a New York based production company that consults with Hollywood studios on some of their most popular entertainment franchises. Follow him @Jeff_Gomez.

New Apples Are Ripe For Gaming

BY

The fall is that time of year for pumpkins, the turning of the leaves… and the introduction of new Apple devices. This year, the changes look to be more significant than last year — or perhaps for the last several years. As usual, the rumor mill has been buzzing, but this time we have numerous sightings of Apple parts for new devices to lend some solidity to the rumors.

Of course, with iOS developers raking in billions of dollars, and games being the #1 category for iOS app revenue, the introduction of new devices is highly significant to the game industry. Taking advantage of changes in Apple’s hardware lineup, and the release of new system software, can mean millions for companies that do it right. There’s also a major marketing opportunity for some lucky games that may be the featured app to demonstrate the power of new Apple hardware.

The rumors seem to center around Apple holding an event September 9, where it will introduce one or perhaps two new iPhones, and an October event where the company will introduce new iPads. Speculation has centered on the iPhones because of the rumored new screen sizes, while the iPads will probably be content with faster processors and the Touch ID sensor, and perhaps better cameras.

The new screen sizes for the new iPhone 6 models are still a mystery, but one that some analysis can help illuminate. John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog has an extensive analysis of the situation, looking at what Apple has done in the past and the hints provided by the recent Worldwide Developers Conference, along with some quite logical math. Gruber selects the following screen sizes: 1334 x 750 for the 4.7″ iPhone screen (326 pixels per inch); and 2208 x 1242 for the 5.5″ screen (461 pixels per inch).

These resolutions would put both phone screens over the Retina display threshold of 300 ppi. The 5.5″ iPhone screen would be an impressively high resolution, but we’ve already seen phones with screens at even higher resolutions, like the new LG G3 at 2560 x 1440, which should be shipping this fall. So it’s not impossible, but it would be at the cutting edge of display technology – which might explained the rumored production difficulties with the larger iPhone 6, which may keep it from widespread availability until late this year or early next year.

The large iPhone 6 is also rumored to sport an even more improved camera than the 4.7″ iPhone 6, along with a top end of 128 GB of storage, and perhaps an extra $100 retail price to go along with those extras. The extra price point plus the limited early availability, along with the large size, make it logical to assume that the 4.7″ screen size iPhone will be the biggest seller, and the sweet spot in the market.

Game developers will of course continue to target the largest possible markets, so don’t expect new games that are only aimed at the latest devices. It’s quite possible, though, that a game developer could offer special graphics that are only seen on the latest Apple hardware. That’s the sort of thing that might get you invited up on stage during Apple’s introduction of new hardware, something that has happened to Chair Software on more than one occasion, as Apple used Infinity Blade to show of the graphics power of the latest iPhone.

The real impact for game industry will be in Apple’s market share. It seems likely that the new devices being introduced will sell well, with rumors noting that Apple is ordering somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 80 million iPhones for delivery before the end of 2014. With the previous record of selling 51 million iPhones in a single quarter, it seems Apple believes it can blow past that number with ease.

This is a good opportunity for game companies to make an impression, with new device owners looking for something that will showcase the power they’ve just purchased. There’s nothing like the latest game with amazing graphics to show off that new iPhone or iPad. A senior game app designer at a major publisher sees Apple continuing in its role as the prime target for apps. “I believe iOS will probably continue to be the first development target for mobile game developers because it isn’t fragmented,” the designer noted. “The large market share plus minimal changes needed to address all iOS platforms just make it a clear choice. With any platform that has severe fragmentation, it then becomes a game of which handsets give a large enough ROI to warrant the additional dev time.”

The [a]listdaily spoke with Paritosh Shah, Head of Mobile Engineering from Pocket Gems, about the impact of Apple’s new devices.

[a]listdaily: How will iOS 8 features impact games and game development? Are there important changes, or is it minor? What about Metal, Apple’s new and more powerful graphics software?

Paritosh Shah: We’ve been seeing a shift towards high-quality AAA games on mobile and the most recent announcements from Apple, especially their Metal technology, is a confirmation of the trend and will help accelerate it. As developers start understanding and integrating the enhanced capabilities you’re going to see a higher bar being set for quality of games on mobile which will improve the total ecosystem. I believe you’ll also see more proprietary tech in mobile games over time as developers build unique experiences in order to set themselves apart in the space. At Pocket Gems, we’ve invested heavily in our own engine built from the ground up to be optimized for mobile, that’s going to help us create rich and engaging novel experiences for our users.

[a]listdaily: Supposedly the iPad line will get faster processors and the Touch ID sensor, but no other major changes. Sales have been slowing for the iPad. What do you see for the future of iPad games, and how will this new hardware affect things? Is the iPad still going to be the best tablet for games?

Paritosh Shah: We believe that smartphones and tablets will be greatest gaming and entertainment platforms of our lifetime, but we have a long way to go. What we’ve seen for iPads is longer replacement cycles (versus iPhones) which factors a bit into the sales figures. Because of the longer replacement cycles, we definitely see a lot of users on old iPad 2’s and it’s crucial to build your game with performance in mind for these low end devices. At Pocket Gems, we’ve built proprietary tech that seamlessly tunes the features and richness of gameplay to the performance profile of the device. This way we’re able to address a very broad market while keeping the quality bar for high end devices.

[a]listdaily: The new iPhone models are coming soon, reportedly featuring larger screens (4.7″ and 5.5″) that probably have higher resolutions than the current 1136×640 resolution, and no doubt with a faster CPU and GPU. What impact will this have on your current games, and games you are planning?

Paritosh Shah: Our next generation of games are going to be a significant departure from what people have seen from us before. New tech is very much affecting our batch of games — both from devices and our own.

[a]listdaily: The market share for iOS has fallen worldwide, but the Android share is more fragmented by OS versions, devices, and markets. Do you think iOS will continue to be the first development target for mobile game developers, or will that change?

Paritosh Shah: We believe that with today’s tech and third party providers, having to choose just one platform is actually a false dichotomy. The focus should be on making the most fun mobile game possible, platforms and new devices should be a secondary concern.

The Rise Of Native Ads And The Importance Of Being Human

BY

The announcement of that some of the brightest VCs in Silicon Valley at Andreessen Horowitz are investing $50 million in BuzzFeed has stunned many. Why? Because the company is regularly dismissed by others for its lightweight “click bate” type of content it is widely known for. But Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz, who is also joining Buzzfeed’s board, explains the rationale behind the investment on his blog:

“Many of today’s great media companies were built on top of emerging technologies. Examples include Time Inc. which was built on color printing, CBS which was built on radio, and Viacom which was built on cable TV. We’re presently in the midst of a major technological shift in which, increasingly, news and entertainment are being distributed on social networks and consumed on mobile devices. We believe BuzzFeed will emerge from this period as a preeminent media company.”

This is a big statement and it puts Buzzfeed in a different light. Dixon doesn’t see them as a traditional publishing company, but an innovative tech company.

“The most interesting tech companies aren’t trying to sell software to other companies. They are trying to reshape industries from top to bottom. BuzzFeed has technology at its core. Its 100+ person tech team has created world-class systems for analytics, advertising, and content management. Engineers are 1st class citizens. Everything is built for mobile devices from the outset. Internet native formats like lists, tweets, pins, animated GIFs, etc. are treated as equals to older formats like photos, videos, and long form essays. BuzzFeed takes the internet and computer science seriously.”

Buzzfeed’s business model, which can be discerned by anyone who visited the site, is native ads. It’s what’s working for Facebook and it works for Buzzfeed because it works on mobile.

But what a “native ad” represents is still up for debate, but Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, explains it well in a recent LinkedIn post:

1. As the traditional advertising business model continues to evolve, more publishers than ever before are opening up native opportunities on their digital properties. In essence, media companies see native as a replacement for the banner ad. Native has been working so well from a revenue standpoint that some publishers, like Buzzfeed, generate a majority of their online revenue from branded content.

2. Brands are starting to understand that consumers have every right to (and will) ignore their traditional marketing practices. To combat this, brand marketers are beginning to develop content that their customers and prospects actually care about, in the hopes of getting attention and possibly some positive behavior change down the road. Native advertising is a valuable “paid” way to distribute that original content.

However, there are many things that need to happen on both the publisher and advertiser-side to make native ads the “killer app” on mobile that it has the potential to be. Pulizzi  proposes the following fixes:

  1. Fix the editorial process so that native ads have to be created or approved by the editorial staff.
  2. Fix the media business model to diversify revenue streams and be less reliant on ads.
  3. Brands should develop rent-to-own strategies to drive traffic to their own owned-media platform.

Andreessen Horowitz investment of $50 million in BuzzFeed is a bold bet on that the future of media is spelled t-e-c-h, but that doesn’t mean that newsrooms and publishing houses will be filled with robots anytime soon.

I recently visited Buzzfeed’s new Hollywood campus and was amazed to see how many people worked there and how creative they all were. Not at all the assembly-line you would expect. It’s all about rebuilding the media business model where the user/reader/viewer is in focus, not an single know-it-all editor, and then have editorial, business and tech all work together to find the best possible solution to engage that audience.

Listen, then talk. Traditional publishing has never been very good at that. Companies like Buzzfeed is building a new user-focused model that I would argue is more “human” because it uses technology from the start to be better at listening and then creating content, sponsored or not, that is specifically created for social media and mobile devices from the bottom up.

It’s a new way of thinking for publishers and advertisers alike, but the sooner we can accept and embrace this new model and fix our internal processes, the better off we’ll all be.

Five Qs With Vine Star Princess Lauren On Her Latest Brand Deal

BY

by Jessica Klein

Vine creator Princess Lauren (real name: Lauren Giraldo) has regularly managed to do something that most comedians constantly struggle for — being hilarious in a matter of six seconds. The Vine star is only 16, but she’s already gotten the attention of major brand Clean and Clear, meaning she will serve as brand ambassador for their campaign to empower girls, #SeeTheRealMe. The campaign focuses on girls in pursuit of their passions (forget about acne — this is about strong women).

Giraldo speaks both English and Spanish, reaching a total of 2.9 million followers on Vine. This frames her as an attractive partner for brands, and she already boasts sponsors who will pay her just to share their videos with her large audience. We got to ask Giraldo some questions about her involvement in the Clear and Clear campaign and her life on Vine in general. Here’s what she had to say.

How did you get started creating videos on Vine, and how did it escalate from simply creating videos for friends to a career move?

My friends all asked me to start posting Vines, because they thought they would be funny, so I started making more. Before the “Re-Vine” feature, I went on a cruise with 300 followers, and while I was on it, Vine updated the app to allow for “Re-Vines, so when I got home I had 300,000.”

Working with a brand is a new experience for you, correct? How do you feel about aligning yourself with one, and how did you decide to work with Clean and Clear?

This has all happened so fast. It feels rewarding to be recognized for my posts. I am very picky with the brands I choose. Clean and Clear felt right, and I love what they stand for.

Could you describe your role as the brand ambassador for Clean and Clear’s Girl Empowerment campaign, #SeeTheRealMe What does it entail on your end?

We are working on a project by project basis, so I’m not sure what my formal role with them is. The current project we’re working on, #SeeTheRealMe, is in conjunction with the 2014 MTV VMAS. This entailed social media, and I also filmed a commercial and look forward to working with both MTV and Clean and Clear in the future.

How do you identify with the campaign’s message?

I strive to be confident and always show the real me in all of my posts.

Do you think being bilingual plays a large role in your popularity on Vine/your audience reach?

I am very proud to be Latina and speak Spanish and English. In my posts, I normally speak English, but the more languages you speak, the more people you can reach. I love it.

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.

Why Helsinki Is A Hotbed For Hit Games

BY

Seriously could be the next Helsinki company to deliver a mobile hit, in the wake of global successes like Rovio Entertainment and Supercell. In fact, Seriously co-founder Petri Jarvilaehto has already been involved in two local game companies that become global powerhouses. Jarvilaehto is the Chief Creative Officer at Seriously. Seriously is his third game start-up in Helsinki, having been one of the founders of Remedy (and project and lead game designer on Max Payne 1 and 2) and joined Rovio Entertainment right after the launch of Angry Birds and headed up the games division.

Now the new mobile company is poised to release its first game, Best Fiends, this October. Seriously will also be launching animated shorts, original music, making-of videos, limited edition artwork, a brand book and stickers for messenger apps in partnership with distributor Swyft Media. The company has offices in Santa Monica, California, where business development and marketing functions are based, and in Helsinki, Finland, where the game development team is located. Jarvilaehto talks about the new company, the evolving video game business and explains why Helsinki has had so many mobile game successes in this exclusive interview.

Petri Jarvilaehto

[a]listdaily: What did you learn from Rovio that you’ve applied to Seriously?

Petri Jarvilaehto: The biggest thing is that right now the entire gaming and entertainment industry is going through a massive transition. If you look the amount of reach that you can have with hundreds of millions of players every single day and that pretty much changes the entire digital entertainment industry. We feel that going forward some of the biggest entertainment brands are going to be created on mobile platforms and we want to be there leading that change.

[a]listdaily: How do you approach developing entertainment franchises versus mobile games?

Petri Jarvilaehto: It’s really about building up the IP and putting a lot of effort into how we create the world, what kind of characters do we have, how do we create characters that can translate from within the game and genre to outside the game. And it’s about setting up the conflict and creating a compelling scenario and then deriving multiple games around the same IP. There are a lot of companies out there that are doing one type of game development. We’re approaching this from the point of view of how do we build a bigger portfolio around the same IP.

[a]listdaily: What games are you working on right now?

Petri Jarvilaehto: Going forward we have a road map of three games that are all built around the same character, the same world, the same conflict and we’re very happy with the way it’s all been coming together. In Best Fiends, players will discover the world of Minutia and its population of cute, courageous and increasingly fiendish inhabitants as they work to collect them all and level them up to gain special powers. Best Fiends is the first in a series of games, telling the story of these heroes’ epic journey, and their battle against the voracious Slugs of Mount Boom. This is a game and a world that I have wanted to build for a long time, and it’s a dream to be working with the incredible talent we have at Seriously to develop Best Fiends together.

[a]listdaily: How long have you been working on this particular project?

Petri Jarvilaehto: Seriously was founded last August. We’ve been working on building up the company for about a year now. We’ve been focused on this one property so far completely. We generally believe in being extremely focused and doing fewer things but doing them really well. Right now we’re 14 people and that’s something that’s still a very focused team.

[a]listdaily: Why did you decide to explore the mobile game space

Petri Jarvilaehto: Mobile is, by far, the most exciting area to work in games right now. With the rise of the mobile, we’re living in a perfect storm where there’s several transitions going on at the same time. The business models are changing from premium to free to play. The distribution models are changing. You’re no longer distributing through publishers or box copy or similar format. Games are becoming a service. It’s no longer that when you ship a game and you’re done. That’s when you start building and interacting with the fan base. At the same time we’re even seeing the console transition, which to us isn’t really that material, but that is one more transition going on.

This perfect storm of change has not been present in gaming throughout my entire career. It’s a very unique time and with mobile you can probably reach 10 million to 20 million people with a successful game. On a highly successful mobile game you can reach hundreds of millions of people. And you can keep entertaining them much more regularly. Essentially, you’re building a hobby for these players and you’re interacting with the entire audience constantly. We never saw anything like that in console space. To me, consoles seem extremely rigid and limited in terms of what you can actually do as a developer. I have a background in AAA at Remedy and I know very well what it’s like to work on bigger console titles, but to me this new mobile world is much more exciting.

[a]listdaily: What excites you about the rate at which mobile technology is advancing?

Petri Jarvilaehto: The biggest change that we’re seeing is that everything is accelerating so fast. The time spaces are getting so compressed. It also opens up completely new opportunities. On a big scale, if you look at what’s been happening in the gaming industry, you have big giants of the previous previous generation like Electronic Arts and Activision’s and newcomers from this transition like King and Supercell. When you factor in everything that’s happening in Asia, there’s a huge amount of opportunity that’s purely created by this change that we’re seeing now. As a developer and somebody who makes games to reach a large audience and somebody who’s targeting at building a business out of it, it doesn’t get much more exciting than this.

[a]listdaily: How has being in a small company spurred creativity?

Petri Jarvilaehto: Once you start scaling up, you start having a mandatory need for process and structure. Whereas being able to operate with a smaller team you can be completely agile. You can get a huge amount more work done in a much more compressed timeframe. The way we’ve approached this at Seriously is to find veteran people that have worked together in the past who have experience on shipping highly successful titles. By having a small team of highly experienced people, you can get out of the way and let them work. It’s very different from a big organization where it’s all about reporting and budgeting and by default is much more inflexible. With a small team you can focus on the game as opposed to having all the inherent disruption that comes with a smaller organization. Plus a smaller team has more responsibility in many different departments versus having many departments with too many people. There’s an automatic feeling of ownership. We don’t have anyone else to blame if this thing fails. If this thing succeeds, then it’s because we worked really hard at it. That automatically creates a very different sense of ownership in both the creative process as well as in the product.

[a]listdaily: What impact has the fall of Nokia and the rise of Apple and Android had on Finland?

Petri Jarvilaehto: While it’s tragic for the friends I have who work at Nokia to go from an undeniable number one position over seven years to being acquired by Microsoft, from a developer point of view as long as there are healthy platforms that you can develop on and reach an audience that’s the one thing that really matters. Android is great in providing an audience where you can reach an order of magnitude more people than an iOS. We’re very happy working with those two platforms now.

[a]listdaily: How do you feel the Finnish culture influences games developers make here?

Petri Jarvilaehto: What really has a big impact over here is that within the games industry here in Finland we have a pretty unique community. There’s a culture of sharing and people helping each other. The more we have success stories here, the more that attracts attention and new capital and more doors open. What we saw back in 2001 when the original Max Payne shipped and Finland had its first AAA hit, that opened a huge amount of doors to everyone else. Suddenly publishers were interested in Finland. The quality of that game opened a lot of eyes. Now with the success of Rovio and Supercell, there are a lot of opportunities for everyone else to follow in those footsteps.

[a]listdaily: How have you seen the game development community grow here in Finland?

Petri Jarvilaehto: There’s been incredible growth. The local IGDA chapter is the most active in the world. Fifteen years ago we might have had 10 to 15 developers meeting up for a beer once a month, and now we get 200 to 300 developers. There are lectures and presentations. It’s become a great happening where you get to see all of your friends and you can talk about the latest changes in the industry.