| Set On Stun |

Firstly, I want to say that I’m a platform agnostic.  I enjoy both the Xbox 360 and the PS3.  When the blue slot lights up on my Wii, I remind myself that I have yet to have a bad experience on that little bugger.

I have a badly damaged iPhone that still works and more because it’s a point of pride, I still use the damn thing.  It refuses to die.

However, since I’m out of contract, I’m seriously considering a new droid phone, yet not terribly happy about having to lose so many good games I’ve got loaded.

This is what happens when you let your 4 year old play games on your iPhone

So, with all that said, I’m not really a fanboy of a particular brand… but I love new technology that works, that makes my life simpler, more fun, more organized and more connected.  Mobile gaming touches me on two of those points.  The games I’ve put on my phone have given me countless hours of fun and connection with friends.  And most of the time, it works well.

So, when Flurry, a phenomenal mobile analytics service, released some information that the major focus and use testing were for video games, naturally, that set my heart fluttering just a bit more.

Flurry used their mobile analytics to identify categories of the application usage on the Apple tablet.

However, there’s been something that’s been pulling on my brain about the Apple Tablet, it’s failed to capture my attention in the way that the iPhone did.  The iPhone was called the Jesus Phone, it took the reality of living a digital life to a new and amazing level, for that, I’m loathe to ditch my iPhone.  Yet, I think this is the crux of my skepticism towards the Apple Tablet.

The iPhone felt new, unique and exciting.

The Apple Tablet doesn’t strike me yet as revolutionary.

Mobile games have become a huge business, capturing the core-gamer and casual mom-gamer demographics expertly and almost completely.  However, my trepidation rests in the feeling that the Apple Platform will raise that bar only in scale and not connectivity, functionality and immersion.   I understand that the tablet, as a reader, could be superior to the Kindle or the Nook, I understand that the Tablet wont just be a big iPhone… all of these things I know.

However, if the primary use of the table will be gaming, as Flurry’s data suggests, it has to revolutionize gaming.  It can’t be just bigger, prettier, higher rez and have better multi-touch features, it has to force game development companies to truly change the way that games are made again… in the way iPhone games added a new element to gaming, the iPhone forced gamers to perceive and experience games in a way that hadn’t really been done before.

So, as it’s released today, I’ll be interested to see how they’re planning to take gaming to the next level, to change the game again and how they’ve not been satisfied to just make a bigger gaming platform, but how they can connect it with people, reinvent the way we play games again, force developers to take risks in the new functionality and ultimately give gamers and consumers a new way to experience games.

This is a case where I hope my skepticism is unwarranted, I want innovation, I want to buy the tablet and I want game companies and gamers to be surprised with how good it can be.  As for now, I’m not really seeing anything game changing about it.  Of course, I could be wrong… and we should all know by the end of the day.

Remember an older Friday Fhtagn, where I nearly fell over myself saying how amazingly awesome James Riot’s Arthurian/ Lovecraftian comic “The Path” was?

In case you haven’t read that article, I’ve just linked to it above and here are the links for you to go… go now and read them.

Well, I’ve been catching up on some of my webcomics lately, and reading some of the news from the Long Beach Comic Con where I fell upon this: The Mediocre Militia.  It’s a place where some more excellent webcomics are linked to, and there’s a blog too.  That’s where I found this:

So, what’s in store for The Path? I whole freaking LOT.

“Strange Tales of The Path” collected edition, compiling “The Path” stories done by other creators! Featuring a story by MM’s own Barry Linck!

Mobile-only downloadable stories are coming for your smart-phone/iPhone/Blackberry/whatever. I’m working on the 1st one as I type.

The Path: The Video Game is in development, coming 2010! Seriously. With the ability to be ported to web, iPhone/iPod, and XBox 360!

Contactually-obligated updates! The Path won’t ever have a hiatus ever again! God help us all…

In development is a video game for The Path.  This webcomic has become my favorite story based webcomic.  I cannot say enough good things about this webcomic.

Can I hope and dream that it will really come to fruition in 2010?  I don’t want to get all fanboy about this, but a video game about The Path could be immensely cool (for iPhone/ Xbox 360/ Web!).  If the author, artist and creator of The Path puts his talents for story, character and stylized action to a game, I think I can honestly say that’s a game that I’d be only too happy to purchase.

Suddenly 2010 seems too far away.

I’ll keep an eye on this game as it develops and if anyone who’s working on this project wants to talk to me about it, I’d be thrilled to.

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There’s very little question at this point about the ubiquity of mobile integration with digital life.  On a broad scale of the mobile market, the phrase Apple’s adopted for their App Store is “There’s an App for that”.  On September 28, 2009, Apple claimed that 85,000 apps have been downloaded  from Apple’s iTunes over 2 billion times.  This alone is not new information.

That’s the App marketplace for just the iPhone, not counting RIM Blackberry, Android or any other smartphone.  Analysts predict that the total smartphone penetration will reach 28-30% of the market, with an estimated number of users reaching 1.6 billion smartphones.

Wireless Expertise forecasts that the global mobile app market – including games – will be worth $4.66 billion in 2009, rising to $16.60 billion, in 2013.

With this said, the emergence and subsequent potential domination of the mobile market will become highly competitive, potentially lucrative and absolutely exciting.  Since this is a blog about video game marketing, I want to take a step back and specifically focus on the mobile gaming market.  Currently, the top mobile gaming platforms are:

• iPhone/ iPod Touch
• N-Gage
• Android Phones
• Sony PSP/ PSP Go
• Nintendo DS/ DSi
• Game Boy

Some of these are devices, like the Sony PSP or the iPhone, some of these are application platforms that are loaded onto phones like the N-Gage.  Nevertheless, while the iPhone has done much to launch the mobile game revolution, its success is based on older platforms like the PSP and Nintendo’s Game Boy and DS devices.

Enough with the history, on with the measurement:

There are several critical, interdependent aspects to mobile game marketing.  In marketing anything, especially to a group as tech-savvy, vocal and opinionated as gamers, the product has to come first.  The game design document must be clear and focused.  Is the point of the game to have fun (Witch’s Workshop), be social (iMob/ iVampire), inform (Horoscopes) or recreate an interactive experience around a known property (Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles).  Once the direction and characteristics of the game have been agreed upon, the features need to support the overall goal of the mobile game.  From that point, the marketing can really begin.

The first thing to consider is the mobile gaming marketspace.  When you combine the ubiquity of mobile platforms, the affordability of the games, the ease of entry and the growth potential and profitability, you’ll end up with a cluttered marketplace.  This is true with mobile games and to some extent, 3rd party Wii games.  When marketing a mobile video game, the first thing to do is cut through the clutter.

• The Game

The game itself has to stand out, there are hundreds of Peggle clones out there.  When playing iMob, iVampire or any other mobile MMO, there’s a lot of replication.  In terms of iMob and iVampire, it’s the same damn game.  There’s some imagery and text differentiation, but the core structure is identical.  Games like iMob rely on peoples’ impatience in leveling up to entice a microtransaction to purchase items, energy and other things.  If the game you’re making is a clone, marketing that game will boil down to, “Did you like iMob?  Then try iVampires, it’s like iMob, but with Vampires!”.  Not a particularly strong value proposition to the user.  It’s ok if a game is like another game, but cloning other popular games diminishes the marketing efforts to cut through the clutter and almost guarantees a short game life.

• The Price

The price of the game is critical.  Naturally the goal is to make a profit on the game itself or drive interest and revenue to another property.  If it takes $100 to make and market a mobile game, then at the price of $0.99, after Apple’s 30% cut on the sale, you’ll have to sell just over 150 apps at that price to start making a profit.  When you consider that the mean price of apps on the Apple store is $2.65 and that the average price for apps are on a steady decline from $3.15 to $2.55 determining the price point can be tricky.

the market for anything more expensive than that will be a tough sell for most application users.  While these numbers may indicate a reason to despair, according to Flurry mobile analytics,  setting the price point at the right spot (with a free trial version) can actually increase revenue once you lessen the price point barrier.

When marketing a mobile video game, it’s important to balance the numbers of installations with the price in order to maximize installations and profits.  Sometimes, just giving the application away can be a way to capitalize on the user’s activity in order to cross-sell, create ad supported units or create partnerships with other businesses to make up the development and marketing costs.

• The Key Performance Indicators

Simply put, KPIs for mobile applications are slightly different than for traditional web analytics.  The strong indicators for the success of an application is the number of installations over time, the rate of application usage, the rate of application deletion and if the game has any social network integration, the number and rate of social network contributions.  I need to look at how often people are using the app, are they using it daily, weekly, monthly or do they just download and forget about it?  If I find that it takes about a month before most people delete the application, I’d consider pushing small updates to the application once every 3 weeks.  If the abandonment is generally after a week, then there may be a core flaw with the application itself.  At its core, the KPIs for mobile applications are about loyalty.  Once again, Flurry has an excellent chart to show users’ loyalty to different types of applications.

We see here that mobile video games have a higher than average rate of use, but they fail to deliver on the retention rate.  Finding creative solutions to enhance the retention on the mobile application can transform further application marketing, monetization and renewable revenue from the app.

• The Virality

How does your game spread?  Is it because it’s a featured app?  Is it because it connects to social networks like Twitter or Facebook?  Does it have the ability to email or text your contacts?  If it’s a social game, how can your game leverage your existing network to spread the game?  This is a tricky question that has a crappy answer, it depends on the game.  This is a question that needs to be answered during the design and documentation phase of the game development.  Games like Doom really don’t have a mechanism for social spread, however, Spore might benefit from posting your critter on your Facebook profile.  Allowing your impressive high score to populate a Twitter post could entice other people to try to beat that.  When its appropriate for the game, it’s important to find relevant and natural ways for that game to replicate itself and become its own marketing machine.

• The Social Networks/ Community Management

When putting out a mobile video game, whether its on the PSP or the iPhone, leveraging the community is an essential function.  First and foremost, it provides a place for people to connect and ask about tech support, resolve issues and provides a place for people to share their scores, tips, cheats and experiences with other people.  One of the better successes for this type of mobile game marketing is the community that surrounds the game Pocket God.  It’s a game that combines cool and unique gameplay with a fun, personable and responsive community around it.  If the platform allows it, such as the iPhone, the game can integrate with any of the networks you’ve joined.  A few months ago, I was working on a mobile game project in the works and had a fantastic chat with the smart and attractive guys at Spark Plug Games about how to integrate and leverage social networks into a game, at what points should those social triggers happen and using the mobile game to feed the web game, and how to use the web game to feed the mobile game.  Talking to them was one of those experiences for me that revealed to me how absolutely big the potential for social gaming across platforms, social network integration (such as the gaming network GamerDNA) can be for not only marketing the game, but community creation and other aspects that gamers find standard in console or PC games.

• The Cross Marketing

Cross marketing should always provide value for the click.  In fact, it’s critical to think beyond the click.  There are several ways to cross market in a mobile video game, that generally apply to demo or free applications.

1. In the game iMob and iVampire (I keep using them as an example, don’t i?), they have a bar that’s below the character information screen and above the game information section that promotes their other games.  It has creatives like “Download Fighter Jets and get 10 points and a free spiked sword”.  When a game like this relies on the microtransactions of their points, the appeal for a few free points is pretty high, you already know that you’ll be able to play the game and of course, when you’re all out of energy points in one game, you can play another game to get your fix.
2. If I’m playing a free game that’s level based, the loading screens can become dynamic landing pages for other apps, sites, events or pretty much anything that fits with the demographic that plays the game.  This is essentially the ad-supported method.  I’m playing a free platformer game on the iPhone, I go from level 1 to level 2, and since the game is about zombies, my load screen could be a geo-tagged ad to go see the new movie Zombieland.  As a marketer, I know that my load times could be anywhere between 10 and 20 seconds, that’s a good way to engage a captive and interested audience with a locally relevant, interesting way to promote other things through the application itself.  My personal feeling is that if you’re selling an application or charging for a service, it’s probably not the best thing to advertise to them too.  (It’s like how I would like to see a free ad-supported Xbox Live or a paid ad-free Xbox Live… that would just make sense).
3. Capitalize on a game that already has a planned obsolescence.  This would make sense for a more media oriented campaign.  When the new Star Trek movie came out, I noticed that there was an app for it, and they wanted me to pay for it.  While I understand that it had “extra” material, extra content and it was a neat comic prequel mini-series, it just seemed to me that it was, at its core, an ad that I had to pay to see.  Essentially, I couldn’t find a single person who had it, we all thought it was B.S. to pay for what was essentially an advertisement.  If this app would have been free, the options for SMS, email, regular and phased updates, media delivery could have kept people eager for more information and a level of cool interactivity could have kept the Star Trek brand, movie and products in front of more eyeballs.  Yet, they chose to sell the fancy ad.

So, there you have it.  For me, it’s a small step in a very big world of mobile gaming.  I know that I’ve only touched the surface of mobile game marketing.  As always, in marketing, the devil is in the details.

I’ve waited for a while to actually bring this article to life.  It’s a massive topic and it’s full of complexity and dynamic technologies with companies working feverishly to push the limits of the platform in order to create more compelling mobile experiences.  The next aspects I want to explore about mobile game marketing is how search and media marketing online and through offline partnerships can affect the sale and download of mobile apps.

Just recently, I was sent an invitation to try out the new Google Wave.  What it is, is a community and contact based communication and collaboration hub.  Google’s attempting to create a multi-use platform for people to connect, optimize workflow, share information, create documents in real-time and have fun.

After playing with Google Wave for less than 24 hours now, I’m seeing some incredible potential to view this as a powerful social gaming portal and platform.  Firstly, to give a little bit of background, I’m going to categorize some of the current social gaming platforms and then give my thoughts on how Google Wave can change the game, in a very literal sense.

• Tabletop Games: (RPG’s like D&D, Board games like Risk, Card games like Poker)
• Embedded Browser Games: These are games like PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies game.
• Full Browser Games: Browser based MMORPGs like Runescape.
• PC/ Console Ports: Online FPS games like Rasterwerks Phosphor.

Traditional Table Top Gaming

I’ve been known to engage in the occasional D&D or Call of Cthulhu RPG, part of that experience comes from being around the table, with your friends, huddled around a cheeto-stained map with your intricately designed figurines in a strategic formation.  While there have been several attempts to recreate that experience online, using proprietary programs or the browser, none of them have really replaced the essential table top experience.  However, for smaller adventures, I can easily see Wizards of the Coast developing an extension for Google Wave that allows for customizable maps, figurine placements and even automated rolling, saves, damage, spell casting and other critical components of the game.  While this would not replace the face to face game, we see apps on Facebook like D&D Tiny Adventures.  Entering that same principal on a more social level into Google Wave could be very cool, more addictive and more fun.

Embedded Browser Games

I bring up PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies for the simple reason is that it’s inherently multiplayer.  You can be either the plants or the zombies, utilizing critical resources and materials to defeat the other player.  The good news is that the game is already browser based and very popular, it can be as short or as long as you want it to be and it’d be very cool for a quick lunch time pickup game.

Full Browser Games

While I’m not sure if the full browser experience will be a part of Google Wave, there are hundreds of browser based games that can be developed as an extension to Google Wave.  The difference between the full browser game and the embedded browser game is that games like Runescape are persistent, you can log in, play your avatar, log off and continue on.  The group functions of Wave can provide for easy guild management, chat and discussion for MMOs like this.  You’ll be able to meet other Google Wave users, add them to your contact list and have an experience not unlike the traditional browser MMO.

PC/ Console Ports

I’m a huge fan of Rasterwerk’s Phosphor.  With graphics better than some of the older engines, quick pick-up action and well designed maps, I can forgive some of the latency hiccups and invisible walls I find when playing in Chrome, it’s a fantastic game.  This kind of technology can easily find its home in Wave.  If there’s a way to adjust the size of the playable window, players and contacts can hop in, fight a quick deathmatch or two and then go back to being productive.

I’m very optimistic about the potential for Google Wave, with social gaming, web gaming and other non-console based games start getting better, more involving, more integrated with other networks, Google Wave can provide an extra level of interactivity, social connection and fun to the gaming experience.

Lastly, with OnLive getting funding from AT&T, this type of cloud based gaming technology cannot be too far away from entering into platforms like Google Wave.  In fact, I would not be surprised at all to see Wave extensions being developed from traditional games, new games and even for marketing purposes.  Would it be possible to play a demo for a game in Wave?  Would it be possible for a game like Fallen Earth create minigames that would be attached to the user account and give people a chance to play games that would actually be attributed to the main avatar when they log into the PC?

When the bigger discussions around the marketing meeting is to “get through the clutter”, can a creative exploitation of Wave’s inherent social, sharing and gaming capability be a way to capture a loyal audience?  Can Wave’s group functions enhance the viral spread of a game?

Time will tell, but the more that I play with Google Wave, the more I’m excited to see the evolution of this product into the gaming arena.

I’ll be the first to admit it. I love my PSP.  When I first got it, the handheld had been out for just a little over a year and I was pretty skeptical.  None of my friends had one and to be honest, I was unaware of any games that I’d really wanted to play on it.  Then, on one of those post-tax return shopping sprees, I finally splurged and decided to get one.  I’d started travelling a lot more for my job and it had made a lot of sense to actually pony up the cash to get one.

I’d also never really been a huge fan of the UMD format, they’re flimsy, easily lost and completely toasted if your toddler finds one and decides to play with it.  (I’d finally found my old copy of Dead Head Fred in his toy box… had to super-glue it together, and now it plays fine).  Now, my PSP goes with me everywhere, on planes, trains, long trips and more.  I watch movies, play games, listen to music and store pictures.  It’s my second mobile digital media outlet.

With the new PSP Go, I’m thrilled to see Sony putting together a service that allows for greater portability, storage and flexibility onto their already solid mobile device.  I must admit, I’m really excited for the PSP Go, however, I’m not thrilled about the price point.

Now, the news is that early adopters in the US will get a free Lite version of Rock Band Unplugged free with purchase.  Meanwhile, UK early adopters will get a free full version of Gran Turismo for the PSP.  With the Rock Band game, you’ll get 5 free songs and the ability to download further Rock Band songs from PSN.

What irritates me about this decision is not that there’s a disparity of games presented to the US vs UK gamers.  In fact, it’s nice that UK gamers get a break, often times they get the short end of the stick when it comes to release dates and special packages that are only available in the US.  What irritates me is that there’s a disparity of value and concept.

There’s a core difference between upselling and adding value.

When gamers download a trial game, we expect to have a shortened experience designed to entice us to buy the full version.  I tried the trial of Assassin’s Creed for the iPhone (and purchased the full version), same with Batman: Arkham Assylum for the XBox 360 (which I plan on buying).  That’s fine, it’s what I expect.  Yet when there’s what’s essentially a demo packaged in the hardware and we’re told that it’s a “bonus”, that’s dishonest.  There’s no real value in the packaging of an incomplete version of a game in the product with the full expectation that we’ll have to buy more songs in order to make the experience complete.

With the UK’s PSP Go release, they’re getting the full version of Gran Turismo, that’s a true value add.  It entices people to perceive an added value to the purchase, it gives them the confidence that even with the high price point of the PSP, they’re still getting a good deal, and they can immediately start playing a game the minute it’s out of the box.

This is the kind of practice that gives marketers a bad name.  We know that these decisions were mostly likely made at the business development level, then passed along to the marketers to promote.  Since it’s the marketers who have to pull the company line, they’re the ones who get saddled with trying to sell this demo as if it was a genuine added value.

The good news is that there’s a good way to measure its effectiveness.  If you take a look at the mobile platform gaming market in the UK, compared to the US, then measure the percentage of pre-orders between the two, that will start to give you a good idea of which deal is considered to be the better value.  My suspicion is that the early adoption rate of the UK PSP Go will outstrip the US version in terms of adjusted market percentage.  Only time will tell, but when these numbers are available, I’ll do an analysis.