marketing
Latest
The Soapbox: How to run a successful Kickstarter campaign
The past few years have seen an absolute revolution in the games industry, with an explosion of studios securing funding through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. In a time when banks worldwide are tightening their belts, Kickstarter represents a lifeline for indie developers and a way for the bigger studios to work on their own projects free from the need for outside investors or publishers. But with the growing number of projects seeking funding each year, developers are facing stiff competition and the rising challenge of running a successful campaign. Most developers don't release all of their stats or write up advice and insights following a successful crowdfunding campaign, and those who do are often lost on obscure blogs that don't appear when you Google for advice. But I'm in the unusual position of both being a games journalist and having successfully Kickstarted a small game project (unrelated to MMOs and my work on Massively). Six months ago, I ran a campaign for my new sci-fi 4X game Predestination, and in the process I learned some valuable lessons on what works and doesn't work on Kickstarter. We've since published the campaign stats and gone on to help a few other campaigns hit their goals. In this article, I run down the lessons I learned the hard way during the Predestination Kickstarter campaign and give some advice for developers hoping to get funded.
EA's Gibeau: SimCity 'plays like an MMO'
Remember when EA announced its SimCity MMO over a year ago? No? We don't either, and that's because the MMO moniker was only recently applied following the title's disasterific launch. Not so, according to EA president Frank Gibeau, though. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, he insisted that the online-only title has always been an MMO and that it's transition from a single-player franchise to an always-on environment has nothing to do with DRM. "I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once. You don't build an MMO because you're thinking of DRM -- you're building a massively multiplayer experience, that's what you're building," Gibeau said. "SimCity started out and felt like an MMO more than anything else and it plays like an MMO." He also posits that DRM is a "failed dead-end strategy" and "not a viable strategy for the gaming business." So why didn't EA market SimCity as an MMO from the beginning? Apparently it just slipped everyone's mind. "I'm disappointed that we didn't do a better job communicating that upfront," Gibeau explains.
HTC drops 'Quietly Brilliant' slogan, promises more aggressive marketing
With things getting just a little bit too quiet in HTC's finance department, the marketing folks across the corridor have come up with a solution: drop the old "Quietly Brilliant" tagline in favor of something bolder. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, HTC's new chief marketing officer, Ben Ho, said the company "hasn't been loud enough" in presenting its innovations. He didn't go as far as detailing a new motto, but after his recent remarks about the Galaxy S 4 we're expecting something punchy.
Editorial: Tech is a flock of starlings
You've seen the videos -- thousands of starlings flocking in the sky to swirl and surge across wide, cloudless backdrops. The beauty of their coordinated motion is stunning. The phenomenon is expressively called murmuration. There might be purpose to starling choreographies, but if so, it is movement without destination. The flock shapes and re-shapes itself continuously. Doing so makes preying on the flock difficult, but beyond that, the motivation of these group flights is ineffable. If ornithologists told us that starlings were imitating the group behavior endemic to tech-adoption culture, it would be easy to see the similarity. The science behind murmuration extends the analogy even further.
Apple's new "Why iPhone" page reminds customers of key features
If ever an email should have arrived with a Minnie Riperton song as its soundtrack, this is the one. On Saturday afternoon, Apple sent a blast message to customers pointing out how awesome the iPhone 5 is, in so many different ways. The email points to a new "Why iPhone" page on Apple's site, which is also linked directly off the Apple home page. (Riperton, like the iPhone 5, found acclaim for her remarkable range.) The web page emphasizes customer satisfaction (eight consecutive J.D. Power awards for iPhone), precision manufacturing, the great Retina display, processing power (the A6) without compromising battery life, the camera, the App Store & iTunes store, iCloud, iOS 6, LTE wireless and the support infrastructure of AppleCare and the retail Genius Bar. All great points, and all valid, but why the full-court press now? The first-blush answer would seem to be the Android market pressure, and specifically the Samsung Galaxy S IV launch this week (see Engadget's liveblog here). Apple SVP Phil Schiller did a little bit of media this week, touching on many of the same themes while reminding WSJ readers that the churn rate of Android-to-iPhone switchers is much higher than the inverse. Schiller, and the Why iPhone page, also point out the popularity and quality of Apple's 8MP camera combined with great software, in a bit of specification judo against the S IV's 13 MP module. Putting aside the head-shaking spectacle of Samsung's launch event, the S IV's feature list includes a few items that might make would-be iPhone buyers think twice: simultaneous front and back camera video recording, 802.11ac WiFi, a 1080p 5" screen -- all marquee items that Apple's hardware won't offer until the next iPhone release, if ever. Given the fact that the S IV isn't shipping for six weeks, it certainly behooves Apple to remind the consumer about what they all loved about the iPhone 5 in the first place, and why they might consider signing up for another two-year contract hitch to upgrade those aging 3GS, 4 and 4S handhelds. [hat tip 9to5Mac]
When being better doesn't equal victory: Samsung's curious overshadowing of HTC
In a lot of things, being the best generally leads to victory. Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the London Olympics? He wins the gold. A hosting company has the best recorded uptime? It takes home an award. Google launches the fastest consumer broadband available in the US? Boom, victory. But every so often, life throws us a curveball. For every 1972 Dolphins team, there's a pack of believers from NC State eager to do something crazy in 1983. And in more germane terms, there's presently no rhyme or reason why HTC has continually outgunned Samsung in terms of design prowess, yet continues to bleed cash while its Korean rival mints it. Actually, there is a reason. It's called marketing.
Google yanks ad-blocking apps from Play Store, points to developer agreement
You know how it goes -- "rules" are only "rules" if someone bothers to enforce them. And enforce Google has. While programs such as AdBlock, AdAway, AdFree and the like have been running unabated for quite some time now, Google has evidently buckled down and yanked the lot of 'em overnight. Of course, the company's Play Store developer agreement already makes clear that apps designed specifically to hinder the natural course of advertising won't be allowed, but it's certainly interesting to see the company finally making good on its words. Specifically, the agreement states: "You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Market, including the development or distribution of Products, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator." See that bit about third-party clients' services? We're guessing that it's in reference to implementations of advertising code. Looks like the wild, wild west has a sheriff in town.
The Art of Wushu: Winning in market PvP
Last time on the Art of Wushu, I promised I would write on how to sell production crafts. Crafting is a big deal in Age of Wushu, so it seemed like a reasonable topic to cover. However, I realized doing so would probably be a mistake. Why? If you followed my advice from two weeks ago, congratulations. You probably noticed a huge nosedive in a few markets: hemp, ramie, iron, and mint all took a huge hit. It's a bit flattering to see how I can write a post on what to sell and readers like you guys take it to heart, flooding the market with supply and crashing the value of these commodities. If I gave advice on production crafting, the same thing would happen. Instead, this week I'm going to talk about real market strategy. Pointing out things that sell doesn't help you if the market takes a nose-dive. Understanding supply and demand curves, market equilibrium, and the importance of market diversity are all long-term tools that will help you regardless of what you're selling.
Google's Art, Copy & Code revives ads with sharing apps, talking shoes
It's hard to deny that online advertising has grown a bit stale, with most ads being some take on ye olde banners. Google obviously has a vested interest in keeping us clicking -- so it's launching its Art, Copy & Code project to liven things up. The initiative sees Google experimenting with partners to see which concepts garner the most interest. Among the early field tests is the "useful marketing" of Volkswagen's Smileage app, which uses a Google+ Sign-In to share media from a road trip; there's also an upcoming internet of things experiment that may involve talking shoes, among other wireless-aware objects. The full scope of Google's advertising outreach will have to wait, although the search firm plans to show and discuss some of its plans at South by Southwest this week. Companies that haven't been getting much attention from old-fashioned, picture-based pitches may want to give the project a closer look.
Everybody loves Octodad; here's how the devs made that happen
The path to indie stardom is founded in tenacity, creativity, good timing and a heaping pile of luck. The developers behind Octodad, initially a student project and now the reason for Young Horses' existence as a studio, know all about spreading the word about an indie game (and probably a lot about crossing their fingers and hoping for a hit).Programmer Kevin Geisler breaks down the Octodad media timeline on the game's official blog, noting that traditional events such as the IGF and GDC aren't huge draws for traffic. Octodad gets a break when other mediums pick up the story: The first major spike was a random note in a Ctrl+Alt+Del comic in 2010, and later from a swath of YouTube "Let's Play" videos. The "other" forms of advertisement even eclipse attention from established news sites, such as this one, at least in terms of traffic to the Octodad site.The top YouTube videos for Octodad-flavored content come from outside sources, with Cr1tikal's 2011 gameplay video topping the charts at 1.5 million views. The top official Octodad video comes in at 430,000 views. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook are of course important draws, and Octodad finds itself in a lot of forum threads that mention similarly eccentric games, such as QWOP and Surgeon Simulator 2013.For an overview of how Octodad does it all, complete with graphs and figures, check out the full blog post. Octodad 2: Dadliest Catch is set to launch this year for PC, Mac and Linux.
The Perfect Ten: Memorable marketing campaigns
I took only a single marketing class in college, so by no means am I an instant expert in anything but being on the receiving end of marketers' nefarious experiments to manipulate me so that I buy their stuff. I did take away the lesson that all marketers are professional liars who have no shame or dignity. Pretty much the same as a blogger, so I guess I have a backup career. Believe it or not, MMOs get off easy when it comes to notorious marketing campaigns. Anything on the following list, good or bad, is a pale shadow of what we've seen in the larger video game industry. Still, there have been plenty of attempts to promote MMOs in ways that make us either applaud or laugh at the studio (and sometimes both at once, which takes coordination). After doing some staff polling and internal polling, here are 10 memorable marketing campaigns from the era of MMORPGs. Maybe they're all winners in that they got noticed by at least one person, even if they're the most foolish notions in history. Here we go!
American McGee AMA: EA ads for Alice were a 'trick'
American McGee, the man (and name) behind Alice: Madness Returns and its predecessor, has a lot to say about developing those games, working with EA, and Kickstarting his latest venture, Akaneiro: Demon Hunters. His recent Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit reveals a few gems, including some insight into how EA handled the Alice: Madness Returns trailers with animation company Shy the Sun. Spoiler: McGee isn't a fan of EA marketing."What was frustrating was how EA marketing interfered - telling STS from the start that all creative direction and final say would come from them, not from us (the developer/creator of the story/tone)," McGee writes. "That resulted in trailers that were much darker and gorier than the game, and that was a calculated disconnect created by EA. They wanted to 'trick' gamers into believing A:MR was a hardcore horror title, even though we refused to develop it in that tone."Their thinking is, even if the game isn't a hardcore horror title, you can market it as one and trick those customers into buying it (while driving away more casual customers, like female gamers, who might be turned off by really dark trailers). It's all a part of the race to the bottom EA, Activision and the other big pubs are engaged in. Expect to see it get worse before it gets better."How's that for dark? McGee notes that his Spicy Horse studio is the largest Western, independent game development company in China, and he discusses how he ended up there and the stress of maintaining a successful indie studio."Working as an indie means having a terrifying amount of freedom," McGee writes. "We make decisions that we know might simply put us out of business 6 months from now."For more insight into how Alice came about – The Crystal Method's "Trip Like I Do" had something to do with it – and all things McGee, check out the Reddit AMA.
CES 2013: Shazam adds TV (and TV ads) to its music finding service
Shazam's Executive Vice President of Marketing, David Jones, kindly found some time to meet up with me during CES 2013 today, and we chatted about what the company has been up to lately. You probably remember Shazam from their very early days on the iPhone as a music-finding app (you can use the app to "listen" to any music you hear, and it will tell you the artist and title of the song), but in the past few years the company has grown to be a lot more than that. Specifically, instead of just finding music, Jones says the big push for the company lately is in recognizing television shows and television ads. The company's two biggest news stories out of CES have nothing to do with iOS: The Shazam app is going to come pre-installed on a series of Android phones, and the service is also joining the QNX car audio architecture. But both of those new developments are really signals that Shazam has grown way beyond its now humble iOS roots. The app can now be used to identify any television broadcast, and the company has joined up with over 200 brands, and more all the time, to try and make every TV ad "Shazam-able" as well. Jones said that Shazam not only fingerprints every broadcast, but even the specific time of every broadcast, so the company can know exactly when and where you set the app to listen in. "We can make TV ads, for the first time ever, interactive," Jones told me. Shazam's monetization strategy is a patchwork quilt of different deals and techniques: Generally, the company will make content "Shazamable" for free, but will then ask the broadcaster to somehow mention (either via a quick explanation or just a logo on the bottom of the screen) that Shazam is enabled. As a result, says Jones, Shazam has picked up about 10 billion impressions from TV in the last year, which not only drives users back to the iOS app, but also just raises awareness among users that they can "Shazam" shows and ads. Shazam also deals in sponsorships and advertising, and will sometimes make money off of referral links directly into iTunes or other marketplaces. As Shazam has opened up into tracking more and more content, the company's technology has gotten better as well. Right around this time last year, the company started doing "live ingestion" which means that as soon as something was broadcast, it could be identified by the app. And better search and find algorithms mean that identifying a broadcast is faster than ever. When Shazam actually finds your program, it provides you with a list of options and content related to it. For TV shows, it can pull up cast information, or, Jones says, a very popular option that lists music heard in the show. Sportscasts are one of the most Shazam-ed forms of content, and when those shows are brought up, Shazam can show sports scores around the league, and can even time them out to the exact point in the broadcast that Shazam was listening in (if a user happened to be watching a game on DVR, for example, and didn't want the results of other games spoiled). Live music shows are another popular choice for Shazamed content, and awards shows are big as well: Jones expects a lot of traffic for the upcoming Golden Globes show. Of course the Super Bowl is a big win for Shazam, and Jones says we can expect the app to show up in the worldwide broadcast at some point (though he said details on exactly what that will entail are still being kept secret for now). Jones says there's still plenty of room to grow for Shazam. The company has done all of this pushing on TV and ads even while keeping its music-finding business going (and growing), so that part of the app is still very important. 2013, said Jones, will likely be dedicated to continuing to grow the TV ads business, but there are plenty of other places for Shazam to go, including radio, and even inside retail stores (so you could hold a phone up in a retail store, and automatically get information about not only the music playing, but any current sales or promotions on what you're shopping for). Shazam started out early on the iPhone with its music history, but there's a lot more left for this company to do.
HTC's Peter Chou: poor marketing held us back in 2012, but the worst has probably passed
Peter Chou has gone on the record with the Wall Street Journal blaming his company's rough financial performance last year on insufficient marketing. Speaking about HTC's competitors, and presumably about Samsung in particular, he described them as "too strong and very resourceful, pouring lots of money into marketing." He was candid about the fact that, relatively speaking, he doesn't have a great deal of cash at hand to counter rival publicity, but instead puts his faith in having more "unique products" -- possibly referring to phones like the 1080p Droid DNA. Overall, he said that "the worst for HTC has probably passed" and that 2013 will be "not too bad." Which is about as cautious as optimism can get.
Google reportedly poaches key Samsung marketing VP for Motorola
Google may be doing more to boost Motorola's presence than whipping up a new device strategy, if rumors are true. AllThingsD claims that Google has poached Samsung's American VP for strategic marketing, Brian Wallace, for a roughly equivalent role at Motorola. The move would not only give Motorola a high-profile executive who's had stints at companies like RIM, but one who's not afraid of taking the competition head-on: Samsung's TV ads poking fun at iPhone launch queues appeared under Wallace's tenure. We've asked Google, Motorola and Samsung whether or not the shift is real; Motorola won't comment in either direction, and we haven't heard from the remaining two. If there's any truth to the story, Motorola might have a stronger carrier-independent sales pitch than the occasional dystopic TV spot.
Apple still working on 'next version of Logic Pro'
There have been rumors bouncing around recently that Apple's digital audio division has been losing employees over the past few years, to the point where it's just a couple of guys still around to maintain the audio apps that are still out there (mostly just Logic Pro, which last saw a new full version back in 2009). A MacRumors reader named Nicholas decided to check in with Apple on the matter, and his request for information reached all the way up to the music product marketing chief in Cupertino, named Xander Soren. Soren replied to Nicholas via email, and assured him that "the team is still in place and hard at work on the next version of Logic Pro." You'll note that he didn't say just how big the team was, or even deny the rumors that the department's numbers had been lowered recently (Logic Pro itself was cut back last year, from a full retail version to a Mac App Store-only version, at half the price). But Soren did say that there is another version of Logic Pro planned, at least, so anyone still using Logic can be assured that there's at least one more update on the way. It'd be a shame to lose Apple's formerly popular audio editing suite, but given the company's focus on mobile devices and other areas, it's not too surprising to see something like this may be falling by the wayside.
App downloads saw a surge after iPhone 5 release
A mobile marketing firm named Fiksu has posted that the iPhone 5 had a tremendous effect on app downloads, bringing up totals by as much as 33 percent. That's huge, and Fiksu says it hasn't seen numbers like that since, well, the iPhone 4S released a year or so ago. I've heard about numbers like this before -- the creators of big apps like Doodle Jump and Angry Birds say their download numbers always experience a big jump whenever a brand-new Apple device is released, and considering how popular the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini have been already this year, it's not hard to imagine that developers saw nice benefits from both new devices. The high download numbers probably aren't over yet. Every year around the holidays, developers report a nice big jump in downloads, as more and more people bring new iOS devices home for the holidays and then go looking for apps to install on them. Especially around the Christmas / New Year's period, there will be lots of new iOS devices jumping into the App Store ecosystem, and we're likely to see more big movement during that time period. So yes, the iPhone 5 may have boosted app downloads, but I doubt the boosting is over yet. [via VentureBeat]
Apple airs two new iPhone ads
Apple added two new iPhone 5 TV ads to its YouTube channel last night. The first ad, "Orchestra," features a collection of stringed instruments and showcases the noise-canceling abilities of the iPhone 5. "Even when the world gets noisy, iPhone 5 with noise canceling lets you have a better phone call." The second ad, "Turkey," has a Thanksgiving theme that shows off Photo Stream and how you can use it to share your holiday photos. You can watch both ads in the YouTube videos embedded below.
App Rewards Club reports on what going free can do for developers
App Rewards Club is an app and service put together by a few iOS developers to help their fellow app devs with user discovery on the App Store. Like the Free App a Day service, App Rewards Club highlights free apps every day, which benefits users because they can grab apps for free, and then benefits developers because they can grab users to monetize off of. App Rewards Club also offers a monetization service, teaming developers up with other promotions that let users earn rewards in apps. The club has been keeping a tally of how it all works when various apps go free, and they've posted a very interesting report over on the official blog, talking about that very subject. What's perhaps most interesting is just how organic the App Store is: The apps that ARC saw do best with a free period spent exactly zero marketing dollars on their sale, and were instead just propelled by being featured on the App Store or mentioned in the press. As ARC says, "some apps have a natural propensity to get attention and move downloads without getting a big marketer involved." That's a fascinating result, and it's likely one that Apple will be thrilled to hear, given that the App Store was designed to be a relatively open marketplace, where individual developers can compete up alongside much larger companies like EA and Activision. This study finds that a marketing budget doesn't matter so much as just how "sticky" the actual app is. Elsewhere, the company also found that switching from paid to free, while having an (obvious) negative immediate effect on revenue, will actually raise the average number of purchases after going back to paid. It's not by much, and downloads go very high when flipping over to free, but developers looking for a spike in app interest can definitely consider a temporary free giveaway to do so. There's a lot of interesting information here, and the company says it still has a lot to learn going forward. But the main takeaway here seems to be that, for now, growth on the App Store is still fairly organic. Some apps can do well when they get attention, regardless of how much money they spent to get it.
Spencer: Halo 4 is Microsoft's most expensive game
Halo 4 is the most expensive game Microsoft has ever made, Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer tells Polygon. It is "absolutely" the most money Microsoft has ever spent developing a game, he says. "Nothing's even close."Estimates for development costs of Halo 3 average out at $60 million, and that was including a massive marketing budget of about $30 million. Halo 3: ODST ended up bringing in more than $170 million in its first 24 hours on the market. Overall, Halo is a $3 billion franchise, Spencer says.
