GAMING WEEK CONTINUES

I'm going to make a very long post today to finish out Gaming Week.

CASUAL GAMING GENRES

Just like Core games, Casual has a set of key genres:

Classic Arcade: Like the name says, these are PC and Internet versions of classic arcade games – pinball, Pac Man, and the like.

Card: PC versions of classic card games.

Gambling: Poker and casino simulations.

Pop Culture: Home versions of game shows, celeb trivia, you get it.

Puzzle: Think of them as desktop distractions, simple, telegraphic, relatively short duration of game play.

Resource Management: Similar in spirit to Real Time Strategy games, but with decidedly nonviolent content. A classic example is that you are running a lemonade stand and through guile and efficiency and marketing savvy become a lemonade tycoon.

Trivia: You Don’t Know Jack got it started, now there are many clones. Trivial Pursuit made electronic.

Word: Crossword, Jumble, Sodoku (yes I know it’s numbers).

There are other genres, but these are some of the biggies.

SOME STATISTICS ON WHO’S PLAYING WHAT

There are five major sectors of gaming to consider:

Core Console: This refers to people who play “core” games on machines like XBOX 360 and PS3. Men 18-34 dominate this sector. According to a 2007 Jupiter report, 42% of men 18-34 play console games. This compares to 7% of women, and 21% of all men. Those are some huge differences – Men 18-34 are 6 times more likely to game than all women, and twice as likely as all men.

Jupiter also reported that 52% of console gamers are Men 18-34, and that most advertisers who had used game environments to deliver their messages were naturally focused on this demographic. For such advertisers, in-game represents a need as much as an opportunity given that this demo has reduced its TV viewing by 5 hours a week in recent years.

Core PC: Jupiter states that 32% of men 18-34 play “action/arcade” games on PCs. That compares with 24% of women, and 24% of all men. Title specific data shows, though, that women and men tend to play different games. For example, the SIMs franchise has some of the highest female usage rates.

Core Online: Jupiter also reported that 38% of men play action, fantasy, and other “core” games online. This compared to 22% for women and 24% for all men. The higher relative and absolute figure for women reflect the kinds of games available for play online, and a greater propensity to play more MMOGs like WarCraft.

These character development games have violent content, but also place greater emphasis on community and bullet-free personal interaction.

Anecdotally, I recently attended a dinner party where the conversation may have provided some insight into why women are choosing these social environments. Four of the women (all single, all between 35-45) were players of Eve Online, the Sci-Fi MMOG that is growing rapidly.

Here are a few of their comments:

“I am sort of embarrassed to say this, but I joined to meet guys.”

“Yes, there are always more men than women on these. And the guys chat you up.”

“It’s a strange way to meet people, but no stranger than eHarmony, and you can tell something about a guy by how he plays and who he’s friends with.”

Casual Online: Again, Jupiter provides the following facts: 26% of men 18-34 play “traditional card/board” games online. The figures for all women and all men are 23% and 23% respectively. The results may vary somewhat by title, but noncore “casual” games are clearly a medium that many mainstream brands could leverage. Men play more poker, for example, and women more celebrity and board games.

Hand Held Gamers: 13% of Men 18-34 use a handheld gaming device, compared to 5% for all women and 7% for all men. All according to the same Jupiter report.

At the risk of getting a mailbox full of disagreement, I offer the following perceptual map based upon an extensive review of gaming sites and blogs. And YES, I know there are women playing Street Fighter, and Men playing Millionaire. But generally this appears to be the lay of the land:

One critical consideration is that 20 years ago the average gamer was in his Teens. Now, they are in their 30s. Partly the result of an aging society, but also because gamers took play with them as they grew up, and options for women became more prevalent.

There’s a lot of information in this section. But really only one essential takeaway: The people that you think are gaming – young males, gadget geeks, techies, absolutely are. But they are far outnumbered by the tens of millions of other people who play games but don’t fit any of those stereotypes. If you are steering clear of gaming because of such misconceptions, you may very well be missing out on some of the best marketing opps you have available.

GAME RATINGS

Naturally, target is a huge consideration for marketers, so understanding who plays what is crucial. An additional consideration is the gaming environment in which your marketing could appear. Brands need to align their game media choices with their editorial standards for the environments in which there messages appear.

For reasons that will become clearer later, most marketers aren’t buying in-game opps title by title but rather by rating and genre. This strategy is really the only way to make in-game advertising and marketing scalable for major national brands.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board provides ratings for games, much like the MPAA does for movies. But the letter indicators and descriptions are different. Here’s a summary I lifted from the ESRB web site:

If you read the statements, you may find the standards more lax than those of the MPAA. They certainly are for suggestiveness and sexuality.

ESRB is a self regulating body, not a government organization. Just like MPAA. One criticism of the ESRB system, besides having relatively lax content standards, is that the ESRB decides the rating for a game based upon a video of game play sent to them by the game producer. Basically, the producer can get any rating they want by carefully selecting game play content. In other words, there’s really no doubt about what rating a game is going to get like there is sometimes with a movie. In fairness to the ESRB, this is really the only practical way to do this – a body like ESRB cannot be expected to play every level of each of the 1000+ games that are produced. But for some parents, it may foment cynicism.

I’ll leave it to you to decide what kind of content is appropriate to associate with your brand.

DO CORE GAMES INCREASE VIOLENCE IN PLAYERS?

The issue of the impact of violence in core games on children (and adults) is an industry bugaboo. As a marketer, you may have moral or expedient concerns about this issue, so it seems prudent to discuss research and opinions on the topic here.

Well, do they increase real world violence? Honestly, I can’t say. There are studies on both sides. One of the most sensible in my opinion was conducted in Swynburne University of Technology in Australia. The study said that play of a violent first person shooter exacerbated violent tendencies among kids who were violence prone, but had no effect on kids that didn’t.

It seems likely to me that there also has to be a question of degrees. If you allow a 14 year old to play a first person shooter for 6 hours a day, I think that it is likely that the game will have an effect on that person’s outlook. Not that they will go shoot up their High School or something. But there are surely effects of spending 25% of your time killing things. But if everyone who had ever played Halo killed someone, the streets would be piled with corpses.

Misogyny in games is another consideration. There are a lot of 38DDD women characters in these games and a lot of women who seem to exist to be wanton sperm receptacles. I know of one in which a buxom female secretary sleeps with men that can help her so she can live without working. Hmm. I would imagine that this does has an effect on how young boys value girls and women.

On the other hand, many female characters in games are kickass heroines who do their own fighting. No trembling wallflowers these. No “you stay here while I fight the pterodactyl” that you get in movies and TV.

Ms. Pac man may have had a stupid bow, but she ate power dots and ghosts just like her brother. And characters like Lara Croft and Princess Peach were famous for competitiveness, tenacity, and kicking butt.

In sum I would say there is sexism in games as there is in all popular entertainment. After all, it’s the Harry Potter series, not the Hermione Granger series.




THE MARKETING OF CORE GAMES

There are two words that really define the tools of game marketing: graphics, and game play. Gamers constantly demand greater realism in their gaming experiences. And games are truly unbelievably realistic today. There are two aspects to this beauty – the “frame rate” and rendering speed possible, and the art behind a game.

You’ll probably hear game people talk about polygons at some point. This basically refers to the polygons of graphic that make up a game. If a computer can process more polygons, there can be more polygons on the screen at one time. More polygons mean that objects can be made up of smaller piece, so that greater realism is possible. For example, you could make a human face from one squarish polygon or thousands of them that simulated eyes and nose and teeth, etc. No one wants to look at a square for a face.

The things that hold back game realism are processing speed and graphics rendering speed. On your computer it would probably be the graphics that hold you back. That’s why the minimum requirements specs on a game often refer to needing advanced graphics accelerator cards that make the rendering go faster. Faster rendering allows more polygons and more realism.

The best way to see this is by playing, or by going to this link to watch a video of the best graphics for 2007:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29276.html

My personal favorite is mentioned in the list: Assassin’s Creed.

Sports games demonstrate more realism, but for pure beauty, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed is tough to beat.

XBOX and Playstation are constantly battling for leadership in graphics. Nintendo chose to take another road – innovating new forms of game play.

Wii is their revolutionary system that uses controllers that allow the users to actually simulate the actions they want to induce on screen. Pantomime batting, fishing, shooting whatever. Wii graphics aren’t as extremely intricate as those of the other two leading console platforms, but Wii is tearing up the marketplace because while Microsoft and Sony pursued better and better rendering, Nintendo decided to pursue better play.

Game marketing itself has traditionally been more hype than bona fide marketing. It’s like selling a movie. You generate pre-release buzz that hopefully comes to a crescendo with people standing in line for your title. Of course, people don’t stand in line for many titles. There are well over a thousand games produced every year. Perhaps 25 are megahits.

Since about 1999, however, game companies have put greater emphasis on brand franchises like Madden Football and Halo. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, if you have a mega seller, you want to connect with that entire audience again. Second, many people who buy core gamers aren’t super hard core. Maybe they buy 204 a year, and aren’t reading the game blogs five times a day. If there are a million super hard core gamers, there are tens of millions of in-betweens who buy games they have faith in. The cost of a game can be $50 or more, so these in betweens want an assurance that they are spending their money on great titles. One way to send that signal is to slap a megahit name on it.

Anyway. There is now more long term marketing being done, particularly on mega franchises. But it will probably always be a hype driven category.

The costs to develop an excellent, graphically intense game can be colossal. Ten years ago $500K-$1MM could make a decent title. Now it can be $10MM or more. The most expensive ever, according to most-expensive.com, was Shenmue, which was completed after 7 years of development at a cost of over $20MM. This was a game with a real, changing, weather system, according to the site. When you read that, it becomes clearer why the industry is gravitating more to tried and true franchises and sequels. Shenmue, BTW, was pretty much a flop. Partly because the lead platform was the now defunct Sega Dreamcast.

Games typically get a trailer, a sexy box, a mini site, some print ads and digital ads, and maybe a couple weeks of male skewing TV. It’s a good hype artist that can turn that little into a phenom.

Another major challenge of game marketing is the retail trade. It is controlled by a few national retailers, who have a thousand new titles to choose form. Slotting, in store ads, retailer promos and a bunch of other things are essential to keep the giants. Some of the giants, BTW, are:

· Best Buy
· Circuit City
· Costco
· EB Games
· Office Depot
· Sam’s Club
· Staples
· Target
· Wal*Mart

When you look at that list, you can see that these are some of the most powerful and data savvy retailers out there. It’s a rare title that doesn’t have to go on sales calls with hat in hand and other hand with fist of cash.

Of course, online sales are increasing, which may change the retailer dynamic over time. Additionally, better broadband connections will eventually make it possible to download games without a retail purchase. One suspects that there are a lot of senior execs at gaming companies dreaming of that day.

And as a hype driven business, you buy your way onto the shelf, and then you better deliver sales pronto. Because if you don’t, you’ll be out of the planogram in a few weeks. This is cut throat stuff.

Another trend is that more and more games are being adapted for online play without gargantuan downloads. This is also changing the landscape for gaming companies and retailers.

ENTER GAME-DELIVERED MARKETING

Naturally, the idea of creating new revenue streams through advertising is very appealing to the gaming industry. If you’re plunking down $10 Mil on a new brand, it’s reassuring to have several ways to make money on it.

Marketers outside of the gaming industry have already shown great interest in in-game marketing. It started as a way to reach those elusive 10-34 year old men that appeared to drastically reduce their TV time over the past several years. But now it is broadening as CPG and other categories use casual and all family games as a way to create brand experiences. This section will discuss some of the leading options for game-delivered marketing.
Console and PC Video Game Advertising

Most major video game companies now offer opportunities for marketers to insert ads and product placement in their titles. Gamers, by the way, are fine with this if:

· The marketing contributes to greater realism. For example, if a game takes place in New York City, having Starbucks on every corner makes the simulation more realistic.
· The marketing increases the budget for the game, making it better.
· The marketing effectively reduces the retail price of a game.

Here are some of the ways for a brand to be in games:

Billboards and Posters: One of the earliest forms of advertising in games, posters and billboards allow advertisers to insert static ads within the environment of a game. As players walk, run, or drive through the environment, they pass these messages just as one passes billboards in real life.

3-D ads allow products and messages to be more of a fixture in a game. These can be 3-D ad opps like a billboard truck or actually featuring a product in the game, like a car. Again, two screenshots from the Massive site:

More advanced versions of 3-D product inclusion are that users can actually employ virtual versions of advertisers’ products in the game. This has become increasingly popular with auto makers as a way of generating awareness and interest in new models, especially models geared to young men.

Interactive Ads: Interactive billboards change graphically when the user clicks on them. This can provide additional info, branding or product views.

Branded Environments: Here the advertiser can create a branded section of a game that users can walk through, fight in, buy things from, etc.

Video Inserts: A step forward from the billboard is the video insert. Here a billboard or other such object can actually play a video or Flash animation. In the example below from the Massive site, a brief trailer for the movie 300 is playing in the billboard.

Challenges to Core Video Game Advertising: One of the biggest issues is how to balance the needs of the advertiser with legitimate gamer expectations that the marketing be game enhancing. Choice appears to be a critical consideration here. A 30 second prestitial forced upon the user before every level? No. A billboard flashing in a Times Square environment? Yes.

Anecdotal evidence appears to suggest that gamers don’t like heavy handed marketing, especially in very expensive software titles. If you shell out $60, you shouldn’t be playing an infomercial.

Another issue is the updatability of ads. The original ads in a game were hard coded, meaning that you designed an ad for your product and it stayed the same. It’s not as if an ad for the old Scion XB becomes a new XB when the model changes.

Dynamic ads are possible in games played online, but the development cycle of a game, which can last years, can make it very difficult for an advertiser and its agency to nimbly include messages. You don’t get into a AAA title release with three weeks of lead time. You have to plan ahead.

Now companies like IGA offer dynamic in game advertising in games played over the internet. This is an important development. IGA and the other majors are also creating in-game ad opps that work more like classic net advertising – where you buy a demo rather than a title. This is important stuff in terms of creating a massive category. Product placement in AAA titles will continue to be a factor, but the emergence of impression-based demo buying will likely revolutionize this business.

Content has also been an issue for many advertisers. While some male oriented brands may have no issue with their billboard being splattered with blood or filled with bullet holes, most marketers would cringe at these possibilities. An advertiser does have a choice of what games she advertises in, and could further decree that they only wanted to be in ESRB “E” titles or some such. But it can still be a little scary for a wholesome brand.

Online Core Game Advertising

The above information really relates to shrink-wrapped games. But increasingly, core games are also available online without the purchase of a shrink wrapped product. Sometimes these games are Flash versions of heretofore CD-based titles, and other times the titles are released as online games only. In either case, advertising plays a much larger role in this segment of core gaming. Since people want everything online for free, you cannot expect people to pay $50 for an online game. Instead, marketing and advertising must pick up the tab.

Fortunately, however, the dynamism of the online environment makes it far easier to develop and execute effective marketing programs in this type of gaming experience. The leader in this space is Wild Tangent, because of OEM agreements (OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer, and refers to the bundling of software into the computer units that a manufacturer ships. Wild Tangent has agreements with Lenovo, Toshiba, HP, and Dell computers, and is rumored to have more agreements in the works. Thus computers from these companies come with the Wild Tangent gaming environment pre-installed.

Companies like Wild Tangent offer three basic types of advertising solutions:

Site Page Sponsorships: You can place ads on the pages of the sites where consumers look for these types of games. Banners, towers, and big squares are available.

Around Game Ads: These ads appear around a game screen. There are several types:

· Console wrappers that skin the edges of a game screen with branded graphics and messages.
· Game launch ads that appear when the consumers clicks to play.
· Load screens that display while a game is loading.
· Game exits that appear after the consumer ends her gaming session.

In Game Ads: Online games offer the same sorts of display ad options as shrink wrap games. One difference is that because these games live online, the flexibility to change and rotate creative can be greater.

Deep Sponsorships: Online games also offer the opportunity to create deep interactive experiences in support of a brand message. Some examples of how this can look include:

· Special brand themed levels or rooms of a game.
· Special characters related to a brand.
· Special objects in object oriented games.

There is a great deal of flexibility in these sorts of game formats. The game development platform for Wild Tangent, for example, was specifically designed to allow advertisers to become an integral part of games in a few weeks of development.

Such gaming solutions typically offer a range of both core and noncore titles that make them fairly versatile for meeting the needs of a brand range of advertisers. Companies like Unilever and Clorox, for example, have become involved in game marketing through this channel.
Non Core Online Games

Sites like Pogo, Yahoo Games, Wild Tangent, and MSN Zone offer a broad range of games, and advertising is a critical revenue stream to keep these environments going. While many of these sites now sell more complete versions of casual games in download form, ads still comprise bread and butter revenue for such sites.

If you haven’t visited these sites in awhile, take a virtual trip over. Things have changed from…say…four years ago when games were more web based and less dependent upon downloads. The downloads offer greater game play and appear to be a tool to get users to buy deluxe versions of games. Often games have a free one hour trial followed by an offer to purchase the game or a deluxe version of the game for $20 or so dollars.

Because advertising often makes gaming experiences free, casual gamers are far more tolerant of overt advertising approaches. Therefore, as you will see below, the media vehicles that are most used will look rather familiar to marketers who are active in other areas of digital marketing.

Site Banners: The gimme of the genre. Yes, you can buy banners on gaming sites. Based upon the preponderance of DR advertising on these sites, one suspects that this is not considered “premium” inventory. Intuitively that makes sense. If you are going to a site to play, banners are going to be bottom of mind.

Around Game Banners: These place your ads in the relatively low clutter environment around the playing screen of a game. Typically, free versions of the games offer ads, while pay do not.

Game Sponsorships: Brands can sponsor casual games and get logos and other graphics integrated into them. You can either sponsor a free game or offer free plays of a pay to play game.

Branded Versions: There are many examples of branded versions of other games. For example, there is a SpongeBob version of the popular “Diner Dash” casual game, in which SpongeBob must wait on an increasing number of tables in a diner.

Load Screen, Entrance, and Exit Screens: These are low clutter units that appear just before or just after a gamer plays.

Sponsored Channels: Advertisers can now have “channels” of games created for them, or simply sponsor existing channels of ads. Megabrand Olay is an example of a brand that has done this successfully.

Unusual Opps: There are other ways to participate on a game by game basis that can offer really interesting opportunities for certain brands. For example, editions of MSN’s OutSmart celebrity game had plugs for Ford trucks by country music stars.

GAME MARKETING PROVIDERS

I have mentioned a variety of companies in this white paper, and have used the best visual examples I could find. Because some company sites offer more examples than others, it may appear that I am favoring one company over another. That is not my intent. To level the playing field, I’ve tried to provide as comprehensive a collection of the major providers and their strengths below.

Major Core Gaming Marketing Providers (Alphabetical order)

Double Fusion (http://www.doublefusion.com/)
IGA Worldwide (http/www.IGAWorldwide.com)
Massive Incorporated (http://www.massiveincorporated.com/)
Wild Tangent (Online Only Versions of Games) (http://www.wildtangent.com/)

Major Casual Games Marketing Providers

AOL Games (http://games.aol.com/
Free Online Games (http://www.freeonlinegames.com/ )
MSN Zone (Soon to Be Live Games) (http://www.zone.msn.com/)
Pogo (http://www.pogo.com/)
QQ (http://www.qqgames.com/)
Wild Tangent (http://www.wildtangent.com/)
Yahoo (http://www.games.yahoo.com/ )

OTHER WAYS TO LEVERAGE THE APPEAL OF GAMING

A final approach I would like to discuss is advergaming, or the development of branded games for use in marketing efforts. Advergames are not new, but in my personal experience the results from advergames, and specifically advergame ad units, are nothing short of phenomenal. Here are some stats from my personal experience:

· A media company targeting advertising with an average 0.23% CTR for Flash banners got 3.55% with an advergame over a two month flight. 15X
· A publisher trying to drive traffic with average CTRs of 0.45% got 9.3% CTR with an advergame. 20-21X!
· Another publisher with CTRs of .17% for flash banners got 3.45% with an advergame ad. 21X

But that’s just clicks. The proof is in other metrics. In each case, the quality of traffic-to-other-desired-actions (leads, memberships) was AT LEAST AS GOOD as for the banners. For purchases, conversion rates have been about 25% lower in my experience, but that diminution in quality is more than made up for in quantity.

These are isolated examples, but I have NEVER seen an advergame get less than 8X the clicks, and 50% of the conversion quality.

Advergames work. They have, in my experience, particular power in B2B, where the balance of advertising on a page tends to be boring and predictable.

CONCLUSIONS

Gaming is ready to help most brands market. Is it your best choice? I have no way of knowing. But it definitely warrants consideration and testing, whether your target is M18-34 or really any other demo. Of course, gaming needs to be evaluated in the context of a broader marketing strategy, and the specific game programs you select need to be both respectful of gamers and consistent with the brand and your desired audience.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.