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The number of users and the amount of content they consume through the Xbox Live and Sony’s PS3 Home/Store platforms is growing at an alarming rate. According Dario Raciti’s Imedia Connection article, “How Brands are Winning with Xbox and Playstation”, Xbox Live is now considered the leading provider of on-demand, high-definition content in the U.S., providing twice the number of hours as the leading cable operators. The group consuming the largest amount of this content is men 18-34 who are playing more console games then watching any TV network.

With Xbox Live garnering the majority of the attention with 17 million users worldwide consuming over 550 million downloads of digital content Sony is making a push with its PS3 system to expand its services beyond that of Xbox. With its 3D virtual world, Home, Sony is pushing past the menu-style interface from Xbox Live and creating a greater variety of ways to interact with PS3 owners. The 3D world offers a variety of unique environments including a mall and movie theatre where users can meet and interact with other gamers. This has led to over 380 million pieces of digital content having been downloaded from the PS3 Home Store.     

The growing number of ways for consumers to interact and receive content through these entertainment platforms is leading to more unique advertising and branding opportunities. CBS recently partnered with Xbox Live exposing over a million new users to its Last.fm service, while Netflix adopted nearly 10 percent of it user base through Xbox Live. Though advertising opportunities are not as wide spread on the PS3 system a few brands have already begun to experiment by opening store fronts in Home where users can purchase products for their avatars.

Vicky Tamaru talked about the affirmation of Xbox as a platform that offers a new world of opportunity for content creators and advertisers in her February 2009 AllBusiness article, “Xbox: Advertising Game-Changer?”

According to Raciti, Nielson has found that consoles alone are as big as the fifth largest network and the numbers are growing everyday. And while in-game advertising can still be difficult the numbers are there to support the advertising opportunities. Advertisers should expect to see more solutions and increased opportunities to brand their products on gaming consoles, which hopefully leads to more effective and innovative advertising campaigns.

A new study done on behalf of Microsoft and Mediabrands Initiative has found a new way to measure the effectiveness of various advertising campaigns and allow for marketers to compare the direct impact of these campaigns across distinct media types. According to the MediaPost article, “Microsoft and Initiative Strive For Better Advertising Through Neuroscience” , EmSense, a neuroscience and marketing research company, exposed participants to various media and advertising campaigns from Hyundai and Kia Motors while wearing a special sensor-laden headset to measure brain activity, breathing rate, head motion, heart rate, blink rate, and skin temperature.

The research found the interactive components of Xbox LIVE engaged consumers more than did the :30 TV spot and :60 in-theater spots they were shown, and provoked an additional 238 seconds of engagement beyond the traditional video ad. Beyond this, the Xbox LIVE ads were delivering a higher level of cognitive and emotional responses, showing the emotional connection participants made with these brands.

Here is what trade marketing group manager for Microsoft advertising, Ginny Musante, had to say about the study and what it means:

“For years, marketers have been tracking what people say through survey data. They can measure what people do with behavioral metrics. This study adds what they think and feel with biosensory data. But what’s more important to the industry is the fact that we were able to combine all three in the same study using the same methodology, so we were able to compare impact across media.”

Insert from MediaPost

With the music industry and traditional record sales declining, rock bands are struggling to stay relevant to their fans. The famous rock band REO Speedwagon has apparently found a new way to market themselves and get their music in front of listeners. According to the article in The New York Times, “REO Speedwagon Rocks on as a Game” , the band is working with digital agency Curious Sense to introduce an online video game as a way to promote the band and their new album.

The interactive game features avatars of the band members with a plot centered around the disappearance of their lead singer. For the $8 fee, gamers have the opportunity for up to ten hours of game play as well as receiving discount coupons for the bands new album and a chance to win prize packages including backstage passes to meet the band. REO Speedwagon saw this as great opportunity to generate interest, while reinventing the bands image and providing them with an alternative revenue source.

Here is what lead singer Kevin Cronin had to say:

“There is a need for us to explore all kinds of different avenues to get our music out there,” Mr. Cronin said in a telephone interview. “If you just think about how it used to be, you’ll be left in the dust.”

The game will be released Dec. 3^rd on many popular websites for casual games including, BigFishGames.com, MSN Games, and Yahoo games.

image from The New York Times

CBS has partnered with Xbox Live to sync to Last.fm allowing their Gold subscribers access to Last.fm content. Last.fm is an internet radio and music community website that exposes new music to users based on their profiles and music taste. According to the paidContent article, “Xbox Connection Funnels A Million New Subscribers To Last.fm”, Xbox LIVE users have already contributed over a million new subscribers, setting a CBS record for new profiles created in a 24 hour period. This has lead to both companies hyping the new partnership as a success, and helping CBS to increase the reach and targetability for the Last.fm service.

Video game developers are now using social networking tools to gather more valuable insights in an effort to improve the focus of their marketing efforts. As detailed in MediaPost’s article, “Social Media Fires Up Video Game Marketing”, video game marketers are utilizing social networking communities to target specific genres, delivering the message straight to the people who play and buy the games, rather than purchasing mass advertising that reaches a broad scale of age and gender.

And while the marketing focus historically has been on the person buying the game, the video game industry now realizes efforts need to tie in the player. “We have a lot of data on the person who purchases the games, and for years we assumed that person also played the game,” says Tracy Williams, director of global brand management at Activision. “Now, we are getting more dynamic data about the number of people who actually play the game, which is about two or three age brackets lower than the person making the purchase.”

By integrating social networking communities such as Twitter and Facebook into their games marketers have seen an increase in web traffic and a marked improvement in marketing efforts. Expect to see even more interesting marketing strategies in the future has marketers continue to find ways to fine-tune the focus of their marketing strategies and convert marketing efforts into sales.

image from MediaPost

According to MediaPost’s article,\ “Microsoft Targets Television Advertisers For Xbox Live, Embeds Nielsen Measurement In-Game”, Microsoft’s Xbox Live advertising group will be collaborating with Nielsen to embed Nielsen’s traditional TV and video measurment tool to help them convince TV advertisers to expand campaigns to the Xbox platform.

Pushing the ‘Three Screens’ concept, Microsoft has been working to run multimedia ads produced in Flash as well as Silverlight on on the Xbox.
By embedding these technologies on the platform, agencies will be able to repurpose content far more easily, saving time and money while extending the interactive experience of the Xbox.

Vicky Tamaru discussed the promise of Xbox as a platform that offers a new world of opportunity for content creators (including the networks) and advertisers back in February 2009 in the article “Xbox: Advertising Game-Changer?”. 

I’ll be heading up the “Social Networking and Branded Games” roundtable at the Casual Connect Leadership Development Forum along with Ada Chen from Mochi Media. The Forum is a one-day event organized by Women In Games International, Women in Games Vancouver, and the IGDA Women in Games on Monday, July 20 at the Triple Door in Seattle.

Other topics include “The Importance of Leadership”, “Reinvigorating and Facilitating Corporate Culture Change” and “Designing Games for Women”.

Other speakers are Brittney Buchan from RealGames, Peter Aderson from Big Fish Games, Sheri Graner Ray from Schell Games, and Dana Hanna from Microsoft.

More details about the event can be viewed on the Seattle Casual Connect website.

See you there!

Here is a rare peak under the hood of the creative process behind our contribution to Zune: the game Sudoku. The game is available now as part of the Zune firmware update.

Challenges

As with all projects, there are a few parameters from the client and expectations for a successful product:

-    Create original art and assets for use with XNA development practices.
-    Work with Zune development team iteratively and remotely.
-    We would not be able to “preview” assets in real-time or use an emulator.
-    Design for localization (English, Spanish, German, French, etc).
-    Full traditional 9×9 grid and smaller mini 6×6 game play.

Wireframe

The objective of Sudoku is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine block regions contains the digits from 1 to 9 only once. The Zune team supplied a basic wireframe and a few game play suggestions. Playing Sudoku on paper is a consistent experience, but playing online varies widely – with very few conventions. We started our design process by playing some of these versions online and thinking about extrapolating behaviors to the Zune controls.

Visual Concepts

The visual design was our major contribution to the project. There are already quite a variety of themes already on the web, so we tried to develop 3 very different visual directions for the Zune team to consider. Giving the concepts names – “Telephone” “Tron” and “Japan” – not only made it easy, but instantly crystallized the inspiration. It’s a technique that we plan to move forward with in future visual explorations.

Refining the Direction

The Zune team went with “Japan” and we collaborated back and forth on elements of game play and adding a little more visual distinction to the game. This included developing the menu style, refining the commit/notes mode interaction and the mini game version. During this phase, we iterated closely with the Zune team on image production assets (or sprites) for the XNA development process.

We affectionately refer to the final look and feel as “Genghis Khan” or “Indiana Jones” It was rewarding to see it come out last November… and who knows, hopefully we will get the chance to do more games like Sudoku.

- T.

Roshamboom began with just another fun distracting link from Jesse. Someone had taken the time to create a game of Rock Paper Scissors using 101 different gestures. Its tag line was “The most terrifyingly complex game ever.”  It was displayed in a kind of chart of what beats what, so you and a nerdy friend could memorize the 101 gestures and 5,050 outcomes and intrigue and baffle everyone that sees you playing it…awesome. This reminded me of my quest to produce the most difficult maze in history. Ah, high school.

Around the same time Jesse introduced us to this game, we were having a much belated wrap-up on a project that didn’t sail so smoothly: designing and building a load of Silverlight controls. Nobody in the design department was familiar with building anything Silverlight, but we were confident and optimistic. Our positivity died painfully. While working on this project the tension in the design loft grew arms and legs and ran around stabbing us all in the side with thorns. We could also hear screams next door from the dev loft. The theme of the meeting was how to avoid this monster tension in the future, and we all decided it was best to make a Silverlight GAME! For FACEBOOK! Because there weren’t any yet and we’re THAT GOOD! I believe it was Andy that suggested we build “The most terrifyingly complex game ever” in Silverlight. It could have been Lisa. Everyone agreed. Yes, this was the solution to our chagrin.

I took another look at the RPS101 website, and found that the more I familiarized myself with it, the more impressive it was. The creator didn’t just figure out the game, he gave it real hilarity. The ridiculousness of “Paper covers Rock” was furthered 5,047 more times in ways like “Monkey flings poop at King,” and “Queen’s bosom is Mountain.” Genius!

Ian, Stephanie, and I had fun designing the controls and working out the functionality. Inspired by airplane safety information cards and the ViewMaster, we all came up with different screens and eventually married them all to create what is online now. I believe it was Matt that suggested we ask Lisa’s friend’s class of 2nd graders to draw some of the more appropriate gestures, which Stephanie used to design the ranking system.

We showed it to the creator, David C. Lovelace, and he had this to say:

“Roshamboom is awesome! Everyone at Plexipixel really did a great job with it. RPS-101 took a year to develop on my end, so I was impressed at how well its complexity was preserved in this very engaging, addictive new version. I like the “view all” functionality, the challenge history, and the interactive way it publishes match outcomes on your page. It’s just brilliant. I can finally play this game the way it was probably meant to be played — not even I can really be sure! — since I never expected anyone to actually remember all 101 throws, and certainly not all 5,050 non-tie outcomes!”

Hooray!

It’s that time of year again, time to sprinkle some light and joy on your dark winter days with Plexipixel’s annual animated holiday card: Twilight Pixie Glide! Collect cookies and candies as your Plexipixie glides about a snowy winter’s evening lighting up the night. Those of you eager for some Festive casual gaming or Chistmas social gaming can play at Plexipixel’s Twilight Pixie Glide site, or on Facebook for a little added social networking!

And we’d like to thank Aaron Simpson at Cold Hard Flash for his Animated Holiday Bonanza shout-out!

Happy Holidays!