| Set On Stun |

Guess what? I'm cool and people like me.

You’ve seen the Sony commercials in the last year. Ever since the slim and the price drop Sony seems to have found its sense of humor it lost years ago back in the PS2 days. Their slew of “It Only Does Everything” ads have been entertaining and very funny thanks in part to the style and the spokesman they tasked to be the voice of the company Kevin Butler (actor Jerry Lambert) breaking the fourth wall and talking to us the gamer/consumer about a variety of things.

Now that the PlayStation Move is official it only makes sense that they would task Jerry to do his bit for promoting the new product … by making fun of the other guys. In the ad, Kevin, now anointed  as the VP of Realistic Movements comes back from the future (November 2010) to report on how well the Move is doing and things are going well. He continues by dropping these gems throughout the commercial.

• While waving his arms like a T-Rex, he says , “Because real boxers don’t hit like this.”
• On the topic of the controller he says, “It’s also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters, platformers, well, anything that doesn’t involve” … and here comes the dig,  “catching a big red ball.”
• And this one well it might be a dig at both the Wii and the Natal, “C’mon, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun. What is this, third grade? Pew, pew, pew.”

Hilarious? Yes. Asking for a fight from the other two console makers? Hell yes. As a bonus marketing push they have created a Twitter account so you can follow the fictitious Jerry online. It’s some good old fashioned mudslinging that’s more subtle than a political ad but just as effective without ever saying the names of their competition.

As to whether or not Microsoft or Nintendo will respond remains to be seen. If anyone was going to step into the ring first it’s a god bet it will be Microsoft  but since we have yet to see a single TV ad for Natal we’re not sure if or when this will happen.

The merits of the three systems are pretty much clear at this point in their existence but with the new motion control peripherals being launched for PS3 and Xbox 360 a new area of competition has been created. And from the looks of things we’re giving round 1 of this battle to  Sony.  Looking forward to round 2.

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.

A while ago, an article on GameIndustry.biz caught my attention.  Matt Martin’s review of the EEDAR, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research group showed that more money spent on video game marketing turns a better return on investment than media reviews or the actual game development.

Speaking at the Montreal International Games Summit, Jesse Divnich delivered what could be considered a heretical, yet data-supported claim.

“You can make the greatest game and it won’t even matter. I know that’s discouraging to developers at first but it’s very true”.

“Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores. There’s a giant myth out there that reviews scores are the most crucial to a videogame. The reason why that is is the information is readily available – we can go to Metacritic – and we see games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty succeed and we see they have a high quality score and we make that correlation. But the truth is, marketing actually has much more of an influence to game sales than high scores.”

In every single meeting I’ve been involved in where the marketing of a game was discussed, the primary focus was on making sure that the reviews from the enthusiast media and the aggregates were high.  The prevailing wisdom was that high scores had a direct corollary effect on the overall sales.  Review sites have spent a significant amount of time to develop ways for publishers and developers to track and trend the game, calculating varying data points like UGC, page views, time on page and other factors.

Media sites have shown developers that once a positive review is out, the user chatter increases as well.  However, all this really amounts to is buzz and interest, not sales.  The effect of the EEDAR research has on these measuring strategies promoted by the media sites could force developers, publishers and ostensibly the ad agencies they hire to re-evaluate the obsession of the review.

From a purely anecdotal perspective, listening to the Joystiq podcast the other day, they made the comment about the NPD numbers as it related to Halo ODST.  This game trounced all other entries in the field, yet it in the middle of the road compared to the other Halo games reviews.  (Halo ODST: 83 - Halo 3: 94 - Halo 2: 72 ) They noted that the marketing campaign for Halo ODST was massive and that was more than likely the primary mover to influence gamers to actually go out and buy that game.

For some perspective, Halo ODST sold more than 2.5 million copies in the first two weeks whereas Halo 3 sold 3.3 million copies in the first 12 days.  At first look this may appear that the better critical acclaim for Halo 3 would support the idea that a better reviewed game would support the idea that a better review would translate to higher sales, however… while the details of how much money was spent on each campaign are not available, Halo 3 had some massive cross-promotion, with Mountain Dew featuring a Halo 3 themed drink etc.  For Halo ODST, the marketing campaign was massive, but didn’t have the overall reach and crossover to all the other areas where gamers were likely to encounter that message.  Lastly, the marketing campaign for Halo 2 wasn’t nearly as massive as either of those campaigns.

This brings into question another assumption about the gamer population, are we really as marketing averse as we think we are?  Are we really immune to the forces of marketing?

Yes (but only if you define marketing in a particularly narrow way)

Gamers tend to be less susceptible to traditional forms of marketing compared to other groups, however, we crave content, media, conversations, images, op-eds, previews and a myriad of other forms of communication to consume.   This is also marketing.  Gamers are pre-programmed to consume the kind of social connection marketing that’s evolved over the internet, social media and mobile applications.  We eat this stuff up at a phenomenal rate.

This data doesn’t suggest that developers skimp on a good game, just balance out the emerging data that shows that when a game is marketed to the right people, when there’s plentiful information and content to consume, gamers are more likely to buy.

online gaming made simple

Look,  here’s the bottom line with this whole thing — Xbox Live is already an active social media application. It has been since it was first introduced back in the old days of the green machine.

• Friends online — check
• Same friends know when you’re gaming — check
• You can chat and game all over the world with people using a mic and a controller– check
• You can even watch movies together — check

So why — please tell us why the hell would you now need to muddle things up with all kinds of gobbledygook from FB and Twitter. Why? It’s not like you can hop on Facebook from your console and start chatting using the oh so deft controller to type responses to wall posts or for that matter chat with anyone. As it is it’s slower typing with your controller than it is with cell phones without a keyboard. And if you get a keyboard (that costs $30) then why don’t you just use your computer. It’s utterly ridiculous.

The basic notion of Xbox Live is social media for gaming and then some. No one actually goes on there to “catch up” with old friends. You go on there to shoot dudes with your buddies, demolish other gamers in some hella fun frag war or play some goofy games together. Occasionally there will be some kind of tournament or other gaming  opportunity/contest to win stuff,  then there’s all the other things we’ve grown accustomed to having with our gold memberships (beta tests, demos, movies, music, TV shows and the supremely awesome Netflix). Putting Facebook and Twitter into the the mix — well it’s stupid.

Some Things Are Better Left Alone

Let’s look at it from a purely simple, logistical perspective. What are the things that are intrinsically natural with Twitter and Facebook?

1. They’re internet based
2. Designed for instant communication
3. Open sources that allow you to open links, download apps, chat and even “poke.” They allow you to … browse

Now let’s compare that with Xbox Live — Closed environment, designed primarily for online gaming and getting stuff (either buying or trying out) oh and yes, for gaming.  No where in that template is there an opening for browsing the internet,  or chatting. More importantly, why. Yeah we know — all in one machine and all but guess what, XBL is really good at what it does. In fact some would argue it’s the best out of the three in this department.

“But what about the photos and stuff?”

What about them? Great you can tap into the photos and posts your friends post on FB. And? You can’t really respond to them unless you want to spend 10 minutes typing something with a controller. And the key point again is, why? Why bring these two worlds together. If you’re playing Modern Warfare 2 you could care less about what your cousin just tweeted or that your old high school chum just found a funny link on youtube.

When most gamers turn on their console they’re doing 1 of three things

1. Checking out the dashboard to see who’s online to game with and what new stuff there is to download or check out
2. Loading up netflix to watch a movie
3. Or loading up a multiplayer game and hoping to get in on some multiplayer fun where they will escape in videogame land for a while.

Oh and maybe, they might actually just want to play a …what was that again .. VIDEOGAME!

That’s it. Why mess with that Microsoft? Change the GUI all you want. Just don’t try to change an elephant into a camel.

Yeah I'm a killer in a robe -- so what?

Call of Duty Modern:Warfare 2 biggest game launch ever, blah blah. Did COD parlay their game into a YouTube film series that isn’t actually half bad well in advance of the game’s release? Has anyone?

Let’s be clear — Assassin’s Creed Lineage took some major marketing moolah and cajones to develop  for a game that, while was one of the top games of the year when it was first released, has yet to deliver that promise in it’s sequel which isn’t even due until next week.

The Scoop
These films, created for and based on Assasin’s Creed 2’s back-story  are luscious to look at, only demand about 15 minutes of your time each and actually play really well as short films. Taking a page from the ODST playbook but going way beyond the trailer films for that Halo game,  these AC2 films follow the tale of an assassin, Giovanni Auditore, on his quest to unravel the mystery and conspiracy in late 1400’s Italy.

Typically these are the type of things you see after a game is released and succeeds but what Ubisoft is doing here is employing one of the most well used social media tools, YouTube, to feature these mini-films while promoting the game.

Developers and publishers take note, this is a level of videogame marketing that goes way above and beyond expectations. Forget the fact that this is a game-based promotional tool. We all know too well how many of our hallowed video games have been decimated by horrendous film versions (Hitman anyone?). So in making this series, the filmmakers opted for following the game’s setting and mood, gave it a little bit of the Hollywood action flare and epic score and tossed in some high quality visuals.

Sure you can have swag, pre-order goodies and traliers up the ying-yang but to go out and make a series of short films, then release it on YouTube and gamer friendly networks like Spike TV? Well let’s just say that Ubisoft has made their big game release for this year, that much bigger. Maybe it will help heal the wounds of our yearning for the absent and delayed Sam Fisher sequel, but one thing is for certain, it certainly is a great and innovative way to promote a new game release.  AC2, hopefully, will not disappoint.

Have a look for yourself and see if it was worth the effort to go that extra mile.