May 5, 2008
01:32 pm | 2 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Grand Theft Auto 4 earned $500 million sales the first week it was released according to publisher Take Two. Six million copies of the gritty crime game have been sold for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Those numbers eclipsed the record-breaking sales of Halo 3 last year. Defeating this record is huge, but is not what fascinates me.
Leading up to the game's release, Hollywood execs feared that the game's following would decrease the box office revenue that weekend, including the release of Iron Man. That great film (almost as monumental as GTA4 in its own way) went on to earn $200 million worldwide that weekend. The fact that this proves Hollywood can't blame games for poor reception of poor films makes me smile, but is not what engages my attention.
What gets my blood pumping and my brain-juices flowing is that the success of Grand Theft Auto 4, and not just the financial success, but the critical reception of the game-changing franchise, displays once more that games are not juvenilia. GTA4 is a mature game with artistic merit, interactive thrills, and a robust adoption by the mainstream public.
Halo 3 and other hits before it made the public and the business world take note, but GTA4 cements this concept. Games are for everyone. The good ones are fun and captivating; they can posses the craft of any great art and appeal to the creatives of this world. Games are a mature industry that can attract the business world's attention (the focus on Nintendo and the Wii evidences that fact). And games should no longer be the scapegoat of politicians crying against violence (such games are labeled M, much like violent films are labeled R), nor the punching bag of elitists that hold up "kiddie games" as a sign of our society's demise.
Grand Theft Auto 4, Boom Blox, Metal Gear Solid 4, and the like are here to stay. And such good games will continue to push an artistic medium into its rightful place in our culture. Revel in it. Or just deal with it.
10:22 am | 1 recommendation | 3 comments
In his blog post Where's the Beef?, Marc Hausman gives some suggestions on how a company can successfully execute viral marketing. While I agree with most of his concepts, his first one irked me. "Embrace humor," he advises. I strongly disagree with this.
What's the quote? "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"? Well, humor is the goblin of lazy marketers. For years now marketers have thrown funny at the wall and hope it sticks. Well funny marketing videos feel old to me. I think good viral marketing is engaging. For the Dark Knight film opening in July, Warner Bros. has executed a full viral marketing scheme centered around the Joker. The psychopathic clown sends fans on scavenger hunts or makes them play puzzles online. The reward is fictional newspaper pages from Gotham, new teaser posters, or even an early glimpse as a new trailer. This strategy engages fans, puts them in a world, and doesn't use trite humor.
Last week the groundbreaking video game Grand Theft Auto 4 was released. It takes place in a fictionalized New York City called Liberty City. In the months leading up to the release, all across NYC small wanted posters for the criminal main character Niko or other supporting characters were posted on traffic light and telephone poles. These posters effectively teased the game and in a compelling manner -- fans were stoked to see the game world of Liberty City made more real and those who did not know of the game were curious and sought answers from more savvy friends.
Viral marketing should be more than a funny video on YouTube. That concept is years old -- just look at this archival blog entry from yours truly. I completely agree with Hausman's assertion that companies should keep trying viral campaigns, that even if one out of ten succeed then that is an achievement. But marketers must go beyond trying different levels of humor and truly mix things up. People need substance and not just lighthearted fare.
10:14 am | 2 recommendations | 4 comments
Last night I saw an early preview of Iron Man. I am not going to say much more than it was a solid film that will appeal to a wide audience. And that is an accomplishment.
Every since the Lord of the Rings films, what has been called genre films (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) have been getting more respect. As our article Rebel Alliance discussed, those who respect such material produce something of real quality that becomes a hit with more than geeks. Iron Man is no exception. A talented cast and crew have created a great movie.
Over the next 12 months, the blockbuster films that will be released reveal a continuing respect for genre material, if not out-right adoration. Consider July's The Dark Knight (Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan continuing on with a psychotic Joker by the late Heath Ledger), the next Harry Potter in November (based on the sixth novel and with the same excellent cast as before), and from 300 director Zack Snyder we are getting Watchmen -- often called the greatest work of the superhero genre every written -- in March 2009.
Iron Man is kicking off what looks like a great summer of movies, and another year of innovative approaches to genre films. I can't recommend the movie anymore and hope you all get to the multiplex this weekend.
P.S. -- Stay for the epilogue after Iron Man's credits finish. You won't regret it.
April 4, 2008
11:14 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently announced there would be no price cuts coming for the companies game systems, the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS.
When Nintendo announced the existence of the Wii a few years ago, terms like "blue ocean" and "innovative" were thrown around. Since the game console's launch, the Wii has become a huge success, appealing to both Nintendo fanboys and to casual-gamer families.
Nintendo is playing by its own rules and profiting well. But I think the company has alienated the hardcore fans and followers of the industry. By not lowering the price of the Wii, the company is breaking the usual practice of incremental pricedrops that occur across the lifetime of a console. These pricedrops usually increase sales and make a system more widely adopted. And while it is true that Nintendo's sales do not need increasing and have already found mainstream adoption rates, this move bothers many hardcore fans who were waiting for a pricedrop to increase the value of the Wii.
To many gamers the Wii is something of a mixed-bag. Though the motion controls provide a novel experience, there aren't that many non-casual games for it. And most of the well-reviewed games are from Nintendo, sequels to long-established franchises like Super Mario or Legend of Zelda. But there are gamers who aren't fans of those venerable games who see only a small value in owning a system with a lack of diverse games. I am an owner of a Wii and am beginning to feel that way myself.
Would you consider Nintendo's mainstream strategy successful, despite the indifference of many gaming enthusiasts?
10:52 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
It amazes me how businesses title themselves. There seem to be differing points of view on what constitutes a good name.
Today I saw an advertisement for Bionic Bagels. While the sci-fi fan in me smiles at that, the reality is that the name doesn't make much a sense. Another wacky business near my home is Eat My Chicken. With names that make you snicker, I suppose the strategy is that amusement will imbue the name with sticking power. This is a similar strategy to having a witty or pun-filled name. But I prefer the wit of Breaking Balls pool hall to the awkward implication of cybernetic baked goods.
Other companies go with cool and techie names. This is especially true on the internet. It overflows with Vimeos and Orkuts. But does inventing a word really give a name distinction? I have forgotten many of these nonsense words. A similar tactic is to spell a word in new ways, making it more hi-tech: Kyte or Flickr, for example. I find this more digestible and much less ridiculous than the Plaxos of the world.
It seems to me the best company names are those that go with simplicity: Apple. Yahoo. Short words that actually mean something. These one word names are elegant and lasting. And the companies give these words more meaning, making them their own.
What do you think about company names? Which do you feel are most effective?
10:37 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
In a blog post, "And Now a Word From Our Sponsors," Chase Wegmann wrote how television shows are returning to the radio-era practice of hosts giving live commercials for sponsors. He writes how it is one of many ways marketers are trying to mix things up and present products in new ways.
Chase doesn't really touch on why this is happening. It has become common knowledge that people are spending less time watching television, that everyone' attention is splintering. There are more diversions and hobbies now than there ever been in society. All of the past times of yesteryears are still accessible -- whether a variety of sports, parlor and card games, or newer media of television and music -- but digital diversions and hobbies have supplemented those. People are playing Scrabble on Facebook, chatting in message boards, doing fantasy baseball online, following the latest ARG, playing World of Warcraft, or enjoying a multiplayer game of Call of Duty 4.
People have less patience, not settling for only one or two hobbies to fill their hours. They also have lost patience for typical advertising that pushes too hard. So marketers keep trying new things to invigorate their business. Besides the many experiments in traditional media, websites and online media are also featuring increasing complex advertising. Revision 3's shows have host-given commercials, sites have more interactive banner ads with games and audio, sites devoted to movies have small ads that expand into a full film trailer, websites will have their entire background and all ads taken over by a company, many video sites overlay annoying advertising over the bottom third of a clip, videogames have product placement and billoards inside them, and many websites (including our sister-site Inc.com) have advertorial content.
Advertising has since become a mess. Viral marketing, sponsored contests that bleed into the real world, ads posted everywhere you can imagine; all of this just makes people more jaded to the act of being sold to. I think people will continue to tune out and the hard sell will become marginalized. And while most forms of advertising won't disappear, it will be those that encourage customer control that will thrive. User-generated content and non-intrusive experiences should be the new focus. Else marketers will find themselves without a market.
10:27 am | 1 recommendation | 1 comment
In her blog post titled "Net Neutrality," Vivian Wagner raised the frightening reality that her students did not know about the situation with net neutrality. It seems to me that many today take the internet for granted. People, young and old, don't see the whole picture.
A fragment future is a specter that continues to linger in the corners of the internet. Net neutrality would insure the internet stays as open and as free as it currently is. But that freedom is being limited in ways that most do not know. Many telecoms have started limiting users bandwith if they download too many large files. You pay for the DSL or cable connection, but are prevented from getting the most out of it. And while the internet is global, it isn't always the same internet. Many nations have regimes that strictly control what sites are available to citizens -- China's great firewall is the biggest example. Many large corporations, Yahoo and Cisco, have been involved with this.
Your own company may be restricting the internet. Some firms set up filters that won't allow access to certain sites. And not just pornography that is NSFW, but hobby sites or social networking pages. The internet is the most free form of communication and medium of information sharing that has ever existed. And large organizations, governments or corporations, want to keep their control and find ways to limit that freedom. But the collective internet, as comprised by millions upon millions of users, continue to move toward more freedom. Open standards and user-generated content have become the norm.
The World Wide Web is a wondrous thing, so far removed from the likes of Compuserve, Prodigy and the America On-Line of yesteryear. Any user that benefits from its existence, basically everyone, should keep an eye on the big picture and help keep it free and open. Else in ten years I will post a tirade on how I miss the nineties and the two-thousand-oughts when you could publish sites to a central net and weren't hindered by regulations.
11:05 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
For decades CliffsNotes has helped students digest the verbosity and virtuosity of Shakespeare's plays. Now the company is extending that approach to a new market with Manga editions of Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. The plays are greatly abridged ("so reading these isn't tedious torture," according to the website) and paired with comicbook art in the style of the Japanese -- big eyes, cute faces, and exaggerated poses.
While I appreciate any attempts to make the works of Shakespeare popular with a new generation, something is lost in the translation. Looking at the sample pages provided online, many characters are drawn as cartoon villains or simpletons without the shades of gray present in the original plays. Removal of much of the text also simplifies the stories and characters to the point of caricature.
Products and concepts can be brought to different media or markets, but sometimes something is lost in the translation. The spin-off then fails as a standalone product and may then only succeed as expensive marketing for the original. I feel that these manga fall into this category. There are filmed versions of these plays that better translate these great plays into a more accessible form. The utility of these editions is diminished to nothing more than average illustrations of excerpts from some of the greatest literary works in English. Maybe one day someone will create manga or anime versions of Shakespeare that does the original plays justice.
What other things have lost their virtue when translated to another medium?
10:54 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
For a good laugh, check out Joshua Letourneau's latest blog entry in our Careers blog. I remember being asked similar questions in a college class. I thought it was ridiculous then and completely agree with Joshua at this point in my life. One wonders how come so many managers rely on tired clichés to do their jobs. Is originality that hard to come across?
Then again, is there something wrong with sticking to what works or using a playbook of time-tested moves? I suppose a good manager finds a balance of past wisdom handed down by others (in hundreds of non-fiction books) and new ideas tempered by a personal style. The friction between what has come before and what can come to be is a constant in life.
Still, I wouldn't mind not hearing the terms "comfort zone" or "outside the box" ever again. What business clichés are you tired of?
10:05 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
On Saturday I found a surprise in the mail, a box containing five HD-DVDs. When I bought the HD-DVD accessory for the Xbox 360 in December, it came with a coupon to mail away for free films. I sent it out early in January and promptly forgot about it. When the format was sent to its death in February I had briefly wondered what would happen to that promotion.
And here we are two months later. I am impressed that Toshiba and the other companies in the HD-DVD consortium continue to support HD-DVD owners and paid the expense to mail out hundreds of thousands of discs. Toshiba has stated that the company has lost over $600 million on HD-DVD and this is where a bit of that money went. I think honoring the promotion instills good will in a segment of consumers that got the short end of the stick.
Of course, one can look at my unexpected box of discs with a cynical view. The consortium is just giving away obsolete trash that couldn't be sold anyway. And honoring the promotion is cheaper than dealing with a potential class action lawsuit. I personally feel that this viewpoint was part of the decision to continue supporting the promotion, but I also want to believe that doing right by customers was the primary objective.
What is your opinion on this support of a dead technology?
