| Set On Stun |

Check this out if you want.  It’s very slow, very boring and the exact same game as any Mafia War, FarmVille Facebook game you’ve ever played.

A friend of mine sent me an invite to play this game, and my first thought was, “you’ve gotta be shitting me, is this an app to promote the same Dante’s Inferno game from EA that got second place on my Worst Video Game Marketing Campaigns of 2009?”

Yes.  Yes it is.  Despite the slowness of the game, despite the fact that it’s a clone of other popular games on Facebook, the only thing that shocked me about this is that they actually made it.  I mean, if you’re gonna piss me off, do so in a way that doesn’t bore me to tears.  Even the UI, which seems to be created with the elegance of a crowbar is fitted to promote in the most visible way the upcoming game.  I guess subtlety is not in Visceral/ EA’s vocabulary.

Click to embiggefy

Before I sound like I’m picking on Dante’s Inferno, I want to say that they’re doing the right things, they’re creating a bit of controversy, they’re making marketing campaigns based upon the content of the game, they’re expertly using the language of the story and of the game to communicate to its potential customers.  All of those things, they’re spot on.

Unfortunately, the execution of these efforts are just wrong.  From the #EAFail grope a booth babe contest, to this Facebook application.  Yes, they should be on Facebook, yes they should be leveraging social media.  Unfortunately, this effort is so slipshod and devoid of any real thought that it almost pains me to say that I miss them pissing me off.

If you’re going to offend me, do so intelligently, not by copying what EVERY OTHER FACEBOOK GAME IS DOING.

Dante’s Inferno marketing, once controversial and offensive has entered into the bland and “meh” category.

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.

One of the games that I’ve noticed has had a lot of good press, not only from the enthusiast media, but from their community is Fallen Earth, from Icarus Studios.  It’s a niche MMORPG that enters the unique and often overlooked genre of the post-apocalyptic/ sci-fi genre in MMOs.  One of the many reasons it caught my eye is that unlike most MMOs on the market now, it’s a classless game, similar to SWG, that uses a skill based system to level up characters.  I’ve seen the trailers and it’s one of the few MMOs that’s come out lately that I’m really excited to try out.

However, in the midst of some positive reviews from the gaming media and players themselves, the general consensus is that the game is fun, challenging, unique and not for everyone.  It’s been simplistically described as “Fallout 3 Online” because of the setting, the look and feel and, of course, the proximity to Fallout 3’s overall success.

However, an article yesterday on Massively titled “Fallen Earth fan: “Don’t Play Fallen Earth”” points to an article by Syp at Bio Break, titled “Why You Shouldn’t Play Fallen Earth“.  Massively’s Elliot Lefebvre says:

“Syp outlines all of the reasons that most players, even if they’ve been enamoured of the game’s press, might want to use extreme caution stepping into Fallen Earth for the first time.”

Syp gives potential players six reasons why they “should not play Fallen Earth”.

1. Like Its Frontier Setting, Fallen Earth’s Stability Is Rough And Wild
2. The Economy Is A Foggy Crystal Ball
3. End Game?  Who Knows!
4. It’s Complex
5. You Can Gimp Yourself
6. Greed Rules The Wild, Wild West

As a marketing guy, I’ve worked on the marketing campaigns of hundreds of clients, ranging from video game clients like Tecmo and most recently Spark Plug Games, to Fortune 500 clients like Lowe’s Home Improvement and Motorola.  Part of working on their marketing is reputation management.  Sometimes, it’s as simple as setting up a Google Alert with the right keywords and, as Google sees those keywords pop up on the web, they send you the link via email.  Yet when a professional marketer sees a title as potentially incendiary as “Don’t Play Fallen Earth”, I can absolutely relate to the sinking feeling as you click on the link to read the article.  You just don’t know what to expect as you read the article.

In this case, Syp plays Fallen Earth and is a fan of the game.  While his article has a good critique of the game, he makes sure to let his readers know that while there are issues and questions about the game, there are two things he wants to leave the readers with.

1. In a year, it will improve
2. If the points he brings up are deal-killers for you, then you will be disappointed.

Now that there’s some context behind the article, this brings up two very important concepts in marketing that I want to expand upon in the competitive and community dependent world of marketing MMOs.

The Reaction to Negativity as Marketing:

Firstly, it’s incumbent upon the developer/ publisher to set the right expectations.  This has been something that Fallen Earth has done very well.  Anyone who’s done any research on the game will know that Fallen Earth is from a smaller, indie company that’s putting out a game that has no thematic equal in the MMO space.  Gamers immediately know that they’re not dealing with a monolithic Blizzard/ EA and for the most part, can forgive the details if they’re having fun.  Gamers will know that they’re playing in a niche game, and if the article from Syp reinforces anything, it’s that Fallen Earth is not for everyone.  The media that Fallen Earth has produced has been complex and interesting, from the faction interaction wheel to the crafting system descriptions to the numerous point allocation guides, players should know that they’re entering a complex game in a brutal world that requires them to plan ahead.

Just as I’ve dived into building an Ikea entertainment center without the instructions, some gamers will enter an online world that’s at least twice as complex as an Ikea cabinet, suddenly realize that the game mechanics that they’re used to in other, more mature games, aren’t there, they can be turned off.  Some gamers will enter the forums and start their own researching, others will turn to the nearest blog post and immediately start comparing a brand new game from an indie company to a nearly decade old game that’s had multiple expansions and countless patches.

What does a game company do to address these complaints?  Do they send their army of loyal players to go and counter the argument?  Do they draft a press release to reassure people that there’s a new patch coming that could address the issues?  Do they stay silent, take the feedback and use that to modify their existing plans?  Do they insult their players and issue a non-apology like EA did after their whole Comic Con #EAfail incident?

The challenge for gaming companies, and specifically companies that are running a MMO is that the plans change.  Most often, negative statements are absorbed but not responded to because if you give a group of gamers a deadline, they’ll hold you to it.  Failing to comply with those statements will just make you look even worse.  Other times, companies acknowledge the issues, make vague statements about “overall improvements, stability and features” but they give no timeline.  There has to be a response between responding and not responding.  There is.

One solution is to build an alpha-testing team out of players who’ve shown a capacity to give constructive and brutally honest feedback.  The company can create a dedicated team of volunteer community managers who can organize community feedback and report it to the team on the overall state of the players.  These are good ways to reinforce within the community you’ve already built that their concerns are being heard and worked on.

The most important part of any MMO is the community, these are the people who will go to their friends and convince them to play.  These are the people who will do hilarious mashups and machinima for YouTube.  These are the people who will, by their own enthusiasm, become the greatest marketing force you could hope to employ.  By selectively engaging with the community and leveraging their feedback, companies can not only turn negative press into a positive, it could ultimately lead to the game becoming a stronger experience for everyone.

Test, Launch, Measure, Relaunch, Repeat:

Taking a look at the core critiques of Syp’s article, there is a way for the marketing and technology teams to work together in tandem.

I’ll take the game economy as a test example.  The current critique is that Fallen Earth’s economy is facing some challenges of item scarcity and commoditization.  Without analyzing the problem of item saturation, artificial scarcity, decay and market glut, the way that a marketer can work with the technology team is to first, determine what the successful markers are for an in-game economy.

I’m not going to pretend to be an economist or an expert in MMO economy, I’ll leave that to people like Tobold (and his excellent article about MMO economies).

However, once we’ve agreed upon what the key performance indicators are for stimulating the in-game economy, experiments can be run, data can be collected, data can be adjusted in-game and the experiments re-run.  Part of the experimentation would be to look at the raw numbers as well as the qualitative feedback from the community.

I’d take a baseline number of “There are X negative economy posts” per month.  Then as the tests are being run and data collected, do the same analysis.  If I find that there are less people complaining about the economy, if there are constructive ideas about how to fix the it, then we’re addressing two issues at once.  We’re addressing the quantitative aspect of measuring the KPIs as well as the qualitative aspect of community feedback.  If the data supports growth and the community is happier, then we’ve simultaneously addressed a technological problem and a marketing problem.

The happier the community is kept, the more likely they are to recruit other players and generate more media themselves, giving the game an additional “marketing team”.

Ultimately, in terms of MMOs, the players are the most important resource.  It’s critical to listen to them and address their concerns.  Understanding that there will be trolls, there will be those who’ll bash the game, those people can be quickly identified by the marketing team and the community, the ultimate goal is to be able to understand the community, build their trust in the game, manage their expectations and overall, provide them with a game that they cannot wait to play.

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.

One of the most common ways for marketers, and not just video game marketers, to promote their services is to connect with relevant and influential bloggers.  As a marketer, I’ve developed relationships with bloggers, offered to let them try out a product that I think their audience would enjoy, then wait for feedback from them, their audience and the community at large.  More often than not, I try to remove myself from the inherently biased system to make sure that my “marketing input” remains separate from the blogger.  In other words, I’m generally looking for honest input from that blogger.

As a blogger myself, I’ve been contacted by marketers to try a new product or service out and then review it.  There are even times where they’ve asked to review my blog post as a condition of accepting the product.

The FTC has just changed its policies on endorsements to include blogging and social media.  With popular bloggers and celebrities getting some sort of compensation for promotion, it’s clear that there will be some abuse of the public trust.  So, with the best of intentions of transparency and clarity, these new rules create a nearly unenforceable set of conditions for bloggers who review products, then put a fine of $11,000 upon conviction of the violation of those rules.

For me personally, I know that transparency is the key to maintain any kind of credibility.  If and when I receive things that could be considered promotional, I add either a disclaimer (as when I’ve posted things about my work with Tecmo) or I clearly state that I’ve not received any kind of compensation for my work.  I know that when a “marketer” promotes something, there’s a rightful skepticism for that endorsement.

At the heart of this is the concept of “material connections”.  This implies that something is given to the blogger in exchange for promotion.  It could be money or it could be barter.  There needs to be clear rules for violation.  If I attend E3, pick up some swag, then recount my experience and express my excitement for that particular game, does that swag become a “material connection”?  In the document, there doesn’t appear to be a clear definition of “endorsement” either.  Does my personal excitement translate to endorsement?  Does the inclusion of a critique make it more neutral?  Do I need to reveal the monetary value of the swag?

From the FTC document:

[The new rules] address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Overall, I think it’s a good way to maintain and attempt to reach a level of transparency, and I think it’s a good step.  However, I think there are a few exploitable holes in the rules and some of the key concepts remain unclear.

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