| Set On Stun |

Apparently, Set on Stun and every other blog on the planet has been writing (and writhing) furiously about the Apple iPad announcement.  In the past few days, my partner Shawn and I have produced a few of those articles as well.

While I’m hesitant to add yet another article in the current cacophony of critical and complimentary yet credible connoisseurs of computing culture, I feel that I have yet to put my finger on why I simultaneously love and hate the Apple iPad.  I hate it because of what it is, yet I love it for what it could potentially be.

Why I Love the Apple iPad:

As my friend, mentor and former boss Thom Kozik noted in a past article, about my skepticism towards the Apple iPad, the revolution of the iPhone was not in the technology, the same could be said (and is being said) about the iPad.  He makes the point that

There’s an old adage in product design & marketing that the mass market will never recognize they need and thus will not demand, truly innovative products. I would challenge anyone to argue that they would have specified in some 2006 survey or focus group that what they *really* wanted was the kind of capabilities/functionality an iPhone user takes for granted (nay, is *addicted to*) on a daily basis. Design by committee doesn’t work here.

He goes on to describe the nearly imperceptible learning curve and its ability to “just work”.  In a sense, he described the brilliance of the Apple strategy.  They make products that they control to give people technology that fits the way they consume media (games, blogs, the internet, music, movies and more).  With the nit-picking of the iPad due to its lack of GPS, media outlets, Adobe Flash capabilities and many more, I realized that in my mind, I am looking at this device with the perception of a media creator.  I create things all day long, analyses, spreadsheets, articles and more.  I sit at my PC and I think, I work and I create.  With those lenses, I have judged the iPad and found it wanting.

However, after a brief IM with Thom and reading his response, I took a look at how I use my badly damaged iPhone and realized that the things I create with my iPhone is minimal.  The emails, texts, tweets and updates are minimal.  However, the media that I consume compared to what I create is staggering.

I sent 12 emails via my phone yesterday, read 12 blog posts, viewed 20 pictures, played 6 games, listened to music for 7 hours and watched over 10 videos.  The iPad would allow me to do that, and more (multitasking aside).

The iPad as a Media Consumption Product is Amazing.

As a content consumption device, it has flaws, but what I think Apple has figured out is not just what people consume on a mobile device, but how they consume media on that device.  The iPad version 1 will always be a test, it will find out what works and what doesn’t.  Patches will be added to update and upgrade the firmware, apps will be created to supplement and work around some of the idiosyncrasies.  Don’t even start talking to me about hating the iPad because of the “walled garden”  each gaming console is itself a walled garden.  I agree in principle, but the reality is that every popular manufacturer of content consumption (games, ebooks, music and movies) have some level of that baked into their process.

Why I Hate the Apple iPad

Simply put, for me, it’s superfluous.  I have consoles, both mobile and static… I have an iPhone, I have a laptop and the iPad is just one more piece of beautiful technology that doesn’t replace any of these items, doesn’t really do anything that these things do significantly better and has some drawbacks that I just don’t have to live with in the context of my current digitally mobile life.  I hate it because I’m attracted to it.  I want it… I want to play games, experience what I’m sure will be a new way to perceive and experience games.

That’s the crux.  All I see now is potential, the iPad is a platform that has a beautiful, yet flawed architecture that holds an incredible potential.  I can see that potential and I can see how Apple has designed this product to be iterative, to blend in with digitally mobile lifestyle and I can see how good it can be.

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.

According to an NPD study, 45% of all electronic hardware is purchased by women and over half of technology purchases is influenced by women.  Technology companies are rushing to serve (and sometimes exploit) this emerging market.  Women purchasers and influencers are enjoying a compounding, year over year, influence of consoles, TVs, phones, computers & laptops as well as other gadgets.  Yet marketers of video games and consoles often forget that women make up a significant portion of their player and purchase base.

With regards to gaming, over 28% of console gamers are now female, with the majority of those girl gamers playing on the Wii, then the Xbox 360 and lastly the PS3.  Interspersed among those consoles are the mobile gaming consoles.  Women prefer the Nintendo DS series over the PSP.  While there are no hard numbers to support this assertion, anecdotally some say the preference is as high as 7 to 1 women prefer the DS over the PSP.

Establishing the prevalence, the growth, the power and the influence of the girl gamer is not difficult at all.  Women of all ages, races, socio-economic backgrounds, marital status and sexual identity/ preference play games that range from the simple to learn, difficult to master flash or mobile game all the way up to the competitive FPS game or PvP in MMORPGs.

The difficult part is defining what hard-core is.  If you lock 10 gamers in a room and have them come up with a definition of “hard core gamer”, you’ll end up with 12 different opinions, a huge mess and probably a body to hide.  I tend to use the term hard core by combining a quantitative and qualitative aspect to the description.  When I say “hard core gamer” I refer to a person who plays more than 3-4 hours per day, regardless of game, who frequently consumes gaming media on YouTube, Kotaku, Joystiq, 1UP or other gaming media site, and who has the desire to master and be recognized as an expert on aspects of a video game.  While I know that this is a fairly bulky definition, in most cases, it fits.

So with the considerable amount of evidence that shows that female gamers are a powerful force to be reckoned with as purchasers, influencers and gamers, why do video game marketing campaigns consistently communicate to them as if all girl gamers wanted were pets, gardens, pink things and animals with big eyes and poor spelling.

This is the kind of marketing that allows someone to think that for the second episode of Nintendo’s Girl Gamer magazine, it’s just fine to have a contest for a girl to win an actual baby simulator (from Ubisoft by the way).  Because apparently, the ultimate prize for a girl is to grow up and make babies!  Good thing there’s a video game simulator that will train them how to be prepared for such a task.

Thanks Ubisoft!

Molly Wood, executive editor of Cnet TV, the Buzz Report and the Gadgettes, responds that women enjoy style as well as function.  Rather than designing for pure functionality, as we’ve seen with some of the console UIs, some of the controller pads and other peripherals, women, more so than men, take into account the form, design and style.  On the product level, ignoring this audience and their desires lead to such colossal failures as the pink Playstation 2.

Thanks Sony, This Really Helps.

In regards to video game marketing, this means that marketers need to know that between 20 and 30 percent of people viewing their ads, their media, their videos, their trailers, their box art, their posters and their contests are going to be women.  If you’re marketing a game that can have broad appeal it’s probably not a good idea to focus on the porny S&M armor.  You may get a short term boost of interest and conversions, but in the long run, if you’re ignoring what is nearly a third of the potential audience, that’s a long term loss.

We saw what this kind of short term thought did with EA’s “Sin to Win” campaign, we saw the progression of the horrible Evony ads yet even more subtley, this kind of persistent campaign for the stereotypical male gamer at the exclusion of the female gamer is no longer acceptable.  People, and not just women, are pushing back.  Gamers have grown up, the gaming industry is growing up & it’s about time the video game marketers grow up too.

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.

This video was brought to you by Netgear, which is a really fun, tongue in cheek video about the evolution of gaming.

Overall, I enjoyed it.  It reminded me of my own life of gaming, from programming my first Commodore 64, to having a fight with a friend of mine over the power glove.  I loved the retro bits, I thought the references to Tecmo Bowl (all time classic) and so many other games that caught the gamers’ imagination and embedded itself into our culture, were spot on.  Everything works well.

Of course, I have a few critiques.  The video does have a “trying too hard” feel to it.  It just feels like the “in your face” attitude, the witty and often times funny lyrics just seem to be calculated to get the maximum reference effect.  While the rap is clever, we’ve seen so many good ones like the Star Wars Galaxies/ MC Chris Boba Fett Rap and we’ve seen gaming raps that are just Epic Fails, like the “All I want for Xmas is a PSP” rap.

I have a gut feeling that the whole rap motif is a bit played out, it’s a bit too late ’90’s, when rap really hadn’t hit mainstream saturation.  I get the whole “white guy rapping” irony, but for me, there was a twinge of the feeling that I’d seen it all before.

Yet, with that said, I enjoyed it… I thought it was fun and clever and it will absolutely stimulate the nostalgia bone.

Jut in case you haven’t seen the Boba Fett Rap Machinima… here it is:

Also, if you’re not familiar with the Xmas PSP rap… I’m warning you now. It’s beyond awful. I almost hesitate to put this video on the same page as the Gamers’ Evolution video… but sometimes context can be a harsh mistress.