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From Ctrl+Alt+Del

MIT researchers have shown that people who play video games tend to have larger brains.

Technically, people who play video games have bigger striatum which affects motor skills, acquisition of new skills and react with strategies to deal with changing environments.

From the Fast Company article:

According to Kirk Erickson, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and lead author on the study, this is the first time–ever–that the size of a specific region of the brain has been linked to better performance and learning in a real-world task.

Without getting all nerdcore on everyone, I think this shows the evolutionary importance of gameplay has been in human development.  People who play games learn to think abstractly, they perceive situations and stimuli in multiple perspectives and they’re willing to experiment, while retaining what works and what doesn’t.

A study I’d love to see would be one that tracks the ability of gamers to visually multi-task.  From anecdotal evidence, I’d suspect that we are, but then I haven’t seen the data on that study yet.

So, next time someone says you’re rotting your brain away, you now know that you’re actually contributing to the evolution of our species with your superior striatum.

via: FastCompany

Video game marketing, welcome to the 21st century.  For an industry that thrives on technological innovation to the point where it’s feasible to link PS3s together to simulate the work of a supercomputer, most of the marketing of video games seem to be in a digital rut.  The reliance on enthusiast media, review scores, print and TV media to promote their products are outmoded structures that betray the inherent interactivity that’s in the games themselves.

For their launch on February 2nd, Star Trek Online has joined with some of the bigger names in advertising, like the Ayzenberg Group, Dan Klores Communications and DKC Connect.   Their adoption into the social media blitz is fascinating to watch, eschewing more traditional outlets, they’re creating portals and campaigns that leverage the excitement of the fanbase and the uniqueness of the campaigns themselves to promote the game.

For example, on Twitter (over 2800 followers), they’ve created “Tweet in Klingon” which will translate your tweets into Klingon, simple enough… and of course, it’s attracting fanboys and haters all at once.  In this case, it’s a great way to leverage the unique history and richness of the Star Trek universe to digital promotion.

Also on the social media landscape is the game’s Facebook page, which allows a pretty standard application to turn your profile picture.. or a picture you upload into one of the iconic Klingon, Vulcan, Andorian, Borg, Bajoran or many other of the races in the Star Trek universe.  Overall, it’s pretty cool and it seems to be working with them capturing almost 28,000 fans at this point.

Another fairly unique avenue they’re exploring is the distribution and partnership route.  They’ve joined forces with Del Taco where they’re actively promoting Del Taco’s own Facebook page where you can get trailers, downloads and fun things like that.  While I wonder why they didn’t select a national chain, it’s unique for a non-movie to partner with a fast-food restaurant so early in the conception of the game.  World of Warcraft took several years to branch out into the food partnership marketing efforts.

Atari’s VP of marketing, Jonathan Anastas said :

“Other promotions have focused on ad networks and Google SEM/SEO, Anastas explained. “We’ve more than doubled our digital spend each month for the last three [months],”

This one quote seems to me like a significant shift in efforts.  With SEO, you use technology and good keyword research to get to the top of the search engine results page.  Something that would, on the surface, seem redundant for a video game.  After all, if someone is looking for Star Trek Online, wouldn’t they easily find it on Google?

The short answer is yes.  However, the keyword “Star Trek Online” is a very brand specific search, if someone is looking for a more general search like “star trek games”, as of right now, Star Trek Online is nowhere to be found on the first page, but it’s tucked back on the third page of search results.  The goal is to reach users through their searches that haven’t been reached by their traditional, social or partnership marketing efforts.  Unfortunately, I think they need some better SEO advice, looking at the Google text cache on Star Trek Online’s homepage, it reveals that Google & other search engines see absolutely zero content on the page.

Ultimately, while Anastas wouldn’t reveal the results so far of the pre-orders of the game, he said that he was “extremely pleased” with the digital marketing efforts.

It’s good to see the nearly completely social and digital launch go for such a highly anticipated game and they’re expecting the more traditional channels to be launched with in the next few weeks.

And for no other reason than that they’re completely cool, check out some of these amazing screenshots from the game distributed via the social media efforts.

Via ClicheQuest.com:

This is just way too good.  One more comic added to my ever-growing list.

Lately, the geekiverse has been all aflutter about Sega’s upcoming game, Aliens vs. Predator.  In fact, few movie franchise video games have really generated more excitement.  In my personal opinion, the first AvP game was probably the best AvP game to date.

With the release of the new trailer (be fore-warned it’s violent, with graphic mutilations, impalations, decapitations, evicerations and puppy-kicking) most of the major video game blogs have reported on it.  The comments on these articles range from excited “OMFG!” to “This is just over the top torture porn”.

As usual, this got me thinking about the marketing of this video game.  Is this blatantly over the top imagery designed to whip up the excited masses into a frothing heap of first day sales?  Does blatantly promoting the violence somehow make gamers look bad?  Is Sega’s marketing brilliant, reprehensible or just somewhere in between?

But first… watch the new trailer.

Got it?  Good.

First, the basics.  All marketing needs to start with an understanding of the target demographic.  Marketers do the research to figure out their audience, their purchasing habits and the desires they want fulfilled.  In this case, these are people (mostly male) who’ve consumed a considerable amount of sci-fi horror material.  They’ve seen the Alien and Predator series along with the AvP movies that followed them.  A portion of that audience reads the graphic novels, played the games and continue to debate in fan forums.

The second part of marketing that I want to focus on is the fact that marketers are tasked in describing what the consumer will actually get when they purchase the product.  Some games, like Brutal Legend were promoted as a kick-ass slash game through the “Metalverse”, some of them were visibly pissed off when they found out that there were significant portions of the game that were RTS elements… a genre that has yet to penetrate the console market successfully.  I can understand why Brutal Legend was marketed in the way it was marketed.  The reaction to a RTS console game is rarely well received.  From that angle, the marketing failed.  They pushed a product that didn’t give the consumer enough information to fulfill their expectations.

This looks a bit too well lit to be an Aliens vs. Predator game... but damn it's cool

In this case, the marketing of Aliens vs. Predator gives a tight group of the gaming demographic EXACTLY what they expect and what they desire.  This new trailer is probably one of the better trailers I’ve seen for a video game of that sort.  It communicates clearly, mixing what appears to be ingame scenes, pre-rendered scenes and actual gameplay footage into a bloody montage.

In fact, one of the quick scenes that’s stuck in my head is the part where you have the “mouth view” of the alien as it rushes in to separate a marine’s face from the rest of his head.

Yet is this a cheap attempt to gain media attention, to excite gamers by giving them what could be the bloodiest moments in the game?  Probably, but for the right audience, this is exactly right.  This is exactly what they want.  Fans of the Aliens and Predator stories (like me) have come to expect this over the top brutality in our comics, games and movies about this particular universe.

I’ve watched it dozens of times… and I don’t think I could get enough of this game.

However, Sega needs to watch it… if this game sucks, then this same trailer which is damn good video game marketing could become a touchpoint of fan anger if the actual game doesn’t live up to the standard that it’s presenting.  So even good pre-launch marketing could immediately turn into bad marketing if the product doesn’t live up to the hype.