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I'll put 200 down on Bleak

Yesterday we posted about Bethesda’s brilliant idea about dropping a vague tweet about the follow up to Fallout 3 , Fallout New Vegas, on Twitter leaving everyone in the dark for a full day. Keep in mind the last we heard about this game was almost a year ago. So come tweet time today we get this

Watch the #FalloutNewVegas teaser & RT for a chance to win a signed FNV poster: http://bit.ly/fnvcon Must be 18+

So not only did they deliver a sleek trailer using another ancient song gem for the soundtrack, but they also added an incentive to create a social media street team. Thumbs up or “like” the trailer on Facebook or retweet the post on Twitter and you get entered to win autographed posters. The game isn’t due until fall where it will contend with Halo: Reach but they’ve essentially already upped the marketing ante by starting this campaign to their rabid fan base months before E-3.

Their blog posts the official rules of the contest, their Facebook and Twitter pages have links out to it and the official site also has the trailer. With the last game’s success as well as it’s subsequent DLC we can only expect Fallout: New Vegas to deliver on all counts. In the meantime we can look forward a big videogame marketing push that will be drawn out right up to the day the game drops.

When Activision starts printing money they'll use this logo

The the Twilight: New Moon movie was supposed to break all kinds of records when it came out and impressively it made $120 million during it’s first weekend. COD:MW2 or MW2 made $550 million — in its first few days!

Let that settle for a minute.

It’s a recession, millions of people are unemployed and yet a videogame which retails at $60 made all that mad cash? Ridiculous? Yes when you consider we’re talking about a videogame and not a movie. But if you break it down and look at a ravenous fan base that was still playing the first game matched with a Kraken size marketing campaign what you get is one of the biggest video game launches ever and once again a top-rated, top selling game that outshines it’s predecessor in every way shape and form.

Rolling back to the success of the first game which continued to pull impressive numbers even 4 months after its initial release you can see where this thing started.

The Breakdown
Not very long after Infinity Ward’s home run in a box Call of Duty: Modern Warfare another COD was released called World at War … but this was not a sequel to modern warfare. Decent game, yes, but a follow up, no. When we finally got wind of what the real MW2 was going to look like well — then it was on.

Right from the onset of this marketing blitz we got to see how PR in the right hands can not just get people excited about a game but actually get the game to sell even more.

A Twitter page asking fans what they want to see in the game? Check. What better way to get every possible suggestion you could give credence to or toss? Then take that same page and use it to give the same fans an inside look as the game is being built. Can we say Pavlov?

It’s all about the branding

So to really give this game that “stamp” the used Infinity Ward used the branding of the developer and the game’s logo and sold that as the iconic image  in all their E3 signage and marketing material.  The minute you saw it, you knew what it was — like seeing that Marvel comic flip at the beginning of their comic book movies. A simple, clean presentation with a clever countdown date, a lot of buzz and very little intel to go on. Then slowly but surely things began to take shape. Okay so maybe the viral video promoting the game in a fake YouTube PSA called Fight Against Grenade Spam (F.A.G.S) wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but it did get people talking about the game.

But the trailer — oh that first trailer — what a way to get people excited about something in November besides football and turkey. Well executed and replete with all the things you would expect to see from this game it started a buzz that would eventually develop into a boom. When the game launched, Xbox live users logged in more than 5.2  million hours of multiplayer time. Keep in mind the game had a midnight release so we’re looking at a full 24 hours of people buying the game and then playing it incessantly.

Also know as Call of Duty: Cash Cow 2

Big Marketing Budget = Big Success

Let’s pull back the curtain though on these impressive numbers in sales and fan glorification though. How were they able to pull this off? Basically Activision allegedly spent more money on promotion, distribution and marketing than they did on developing the game. A little less than a quarter of the estimated $200 million budget was for development. What does that mean? It means that the  marketing budget gave them coverage in print, on television and the web with a heavy push the last month before release. It means that they wouldn’t run out of copies come game release day when they opened the doors for midnight sales. It means that they could also offer special edition packages and the mammoth 250 gig special edition Xbox 360 console as well and still sell them because people wanted to get those night vision goggles or that one of a kind console. It means that they spent money — to make money.

What we have here is a strategy that was mapped out, knowing that the cash cow was going to produce golden milk as long as they took extra special care of it no matter what the cost. Did it work? If making more than double what you spent on this title in a few days counts as success then yes. The beauty of it is that after all the hype (and controversy) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was an unparalleled success and all this right at the beginning of a holiday season where word of mouth and success translates into a hot ticket item.

Well done to Activision and Infinity Ward for making lightning strike twice. The bar hasn’t been raised, it’s been given an elevator ride 12 stories up.

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.

There was a particularly interesting and succinct article about video game marketing from Industry Gamers the other day.  The Ayzenberg Group, with some well known clients like Turbine, Konami, Lucas Arts, Ubisoft and Microsoft has built itself on marketing to the most advertising adverse audiences.  They’ve done some fantastic work with some pretty highly known video games, they know their audience and I’ve got a considerable amount of respect for them.

Steve Fowler, the current VP of Strategy and Client Services at the Ayzenberg Group presented a very cool, high level piece about the 5 Keys to Successful Video Game Marketing.  For the most part, it’s a good distillation of what’s known and what’s already being done.  However, what sets this apart from most of the video game marketing pieces I’ve read is that it goes beyond the channel and gives some excellent, short, snippets of wisdom and reasoning behind just the channel.

1: Identifying Emerging Trends

This is the core of video game marketing.  It’s well known that gamers, geeks and the tech-native crowds are early adopters, early abandoners and can intuitively find the value and usefulness of pretty much anything they put their minds to.  For example, when Twitter first came out, it was primarily a haven of tech-heads talking amongst themselves.  An essential and primary function of marketing to gamers is to understand where they are, where they migrate and to be absolutely embedded in that community.

2: Utilizing Social Media

When Myspace, Facebook started to boom, most advertisers looked at uniques, pageviews and the number of active users.  The immediate reaction was that it was a place to drop new banners to reach them.  However, as time passed, it was obvious that the click throughs were down, conversions were down and there was a tremendous amount of fraud.  One campaign that I ran in the early days of social media marketing, I found that over 20% of my conversions and sign-ups were inactive users, UGC farms and for the most part, absolutely useless.  We paid quite a bit of money to learn that mistake, yet what grew out of that failure were the core aspects of marketing through social media that Steve Fowler reiterates.

• Be authentic: It’s ok to be a marketer, just don’t try to hide who you are.
• Be a part of the conversation: Gamers will know if you’re one of them, if you’re an authentic gamer, then that will show through.  Your excitement and enthusiasm will translate to the conversations with other gamers.
• Add value: Don’t just sell shit.  Don’t just try to make people buy shit.  That will piss off more people than it’s worth.  Give gamers the things they want, they want media to share and consume, they want information, they want transparency and they want to be a part of the experience.  This is the value that gamers crave.
• I would add the following: Crave criticism and feedback.  If something sucks, you will be told, other people will be told, entire networks will be told.  Your reaction to that criticism will be a defining factor in how you’re perceived.  If you take that feedback and change it to suck less, then you’re adding value and being a true part of the gaming community.  If you try to spin what sucks into something else, you’re done.
• Lastly: Be Active: Don’t just post a few statements, drop a few links and expect hordes to come following you.  Engage people, don’t just be a marketer, be a person, be a geek, engage other users & not just other industry people.  If one of your followers sends you a message, do your best to respond to them, re-tweet them or engage them in a real conversation.

3: Think Beyond the Click

I particularly like this principle.  When dealing with an agency, sometimes they can be an oppositional force to your goals.  Most agencies rely on automation, replication and procedures to run campaigns.  Make sure you have transparency in the data, make sure you work closely with them before the campaign is launched so that you have clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  Secondly, work with the agency or professional.  Understand that the campaign may not go as well as planned.  The time to find out about that is before the campaign is over and before the money’s spent.  Allow the agency to re-work and optimize the campaign.  Hold the agency accountable, but understand that it’s a partnership where both parties are working for the same goals.

4: Activate Your TV Spots

Commercials are difficult to get hard data from, most of the information can be correlative and there are often (especially if you are running online campaigns) other variables that can affect spikes or dips in the KPIs.  When running a campaign, give the viewer an action.  Go to a microsite, find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter.  These steps turn an otherwise passive activity into something that can be directly measured.  If you know that your TV spots are running at certain times, track the time of the following notifications to show if there are significant spikes in people engaging in your call to action.

5: Trailers are Important

From the teaser trailer to the preview to the ad to the gameplay trailer.   It’s critical to produce good trailers on a regular basis.  I look to the success of the marketing campaign of The Saboteur, their trailers are well produced and themed.  Know that your audience is actively searching for and spreading these trailers, the better they are, the more excitement and engagement you’ll create.

6: Adding Value to the Marketing Message.

This is probably one of the most important and most elusive aspects to video game marketing.  The value can come in packages (as the NVG’s for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) or they can come in bundling (as The Orange Box).  The can come in exclusive in-game items from GameStop (something that I don’t particularly like as a gamer… but it can be effective).  Bridge the campaigns from the digital to the real-space.  Participate at events, create your own events and find ways to cross over the game to other media.  This last one gives an incredible amount of freedom and creativity to explore.

I’ve expanded upon Steve Fowler’s excellent summary of video game marketing principles.  I enjoyed its brevity and clarity and absolute spot-on message.  However, I would add just two things.

1: It’s no longer true that just being talked about is successful marketing.

With EA’s “Sin to Win” jackassery at ComicCon, and the pathetic apology following, it’s clear that context matters.  Dante’s Inferno looks like a fantastic game that’s had a particularly stupid marketing campaign.  If the goal is to sell the video game, then just getting people talking about it will no longer accomplish that.  Understand that gamers are voracious content consumers online.  Chances are, we know about the game.  Chances are, we’ve consumed some media about it.  So there’s very little value in just getting the name out there for its own sake.  What matters now is the context of that message.

The movie Bruno had a massive marketing push, yet within a single day of release, the twitterverse immediately panned the movie and it saw that no matter how much marketing, no matter how many people were “talking about it”, the movie failed expectations because the context of the conversation mattered to people.

2: Embrace the Mobile Platform

With smart phones becoming ubiquitous, it’s absolutely critical to have a mobile component to any video game marketing campaign.  The campaign could be simply SMS, it could be a mobile site, it could be an app.  Understand that most of the tech-native audience now owns and uses a smart phone for games, utility, entertainment and communication.  This new trend is not changing anytime soon.  Create compelling experiences that can engage users in an entertaining and useful way.  The experiences you give them on the mobile platform can become bridges between the marketing, the game and the overall experience.  A simple free application can become a marketing tool as well.  If I download a free application, and between levels, the loading screens can be modified to promote a microsite, a Twitter account, a new game or anything else you want.