Radar Waves

Nice branding campaign: da Vinci Code on Google

There's nothing new about using online games to promote movies -- the alternative reality game based around Spielberg's AI is the classic example -- but for some reason I like this: Google and Sony Pictures are co-marketing an ongoing game tagged to the release of the da Vinci Code movie this week.

It's kind of based on the Myst model: each day you solve some minor puzzle (e.g. a Sudoku game using the Masonic symbols described in the film), and each successful solution brings you closer to solving the BIG puzzle. There are real prizes, including travel, laptops, flat-screen TVs, etc...

This campaign excellently harnesses the existing O.C.D.-like fanaticism that so many readers have already developed with the book, and effectively transfers that excitement over to the film (you get a face full of Tom Hanks the second you click a button). The real prize is the ability to participate in the GREAT MYSTERY -- the travel and whatnot are just gravy. Access Hollywood is also hosting hints for the game, and the sites do a great job of bouncing users between pages, but keeping them within the network. Google, for its part, is promoting the game in banners on its search pages, listing it first in the premium SEM spot when people search for terms like "da Vinci Code," requiring a Google login in order to play the game, and integrating it into customized Google Home pages once users have registered.

I'll be expecting a gmail encouraging me to buy the DVD in 6 months or so...

UMD R.I.P. -- Hurrah for Synergy!

Another proprietary, super-secure Sony format bites the dust. Only a year after PSP's U.S. debut, and despite the device's overall success (28% market share by year-end 2005), the UMD movie format is dead in the water. Two major studios have stopped shipping the format, and Wal-Mart is yanking it off the shelves.

Why? Because no one is buying them. Let's take a look at the feature set, and see what's behind this malaise:

• Lower quality than DVD (let alone Blu-Ray/HD-DVD)
• DRM'ed up the wazoo (neither rippable nor writeable)
• Can't be viewed on a TV screen
• Can't be played on a device other than PSP

Wow, who wouldn't want to buy one of those at $15 a pop? Let's take a look at emerging consumer trends in the video space, and see how the UMD fares:

• Increasing quality demands
• Ripping, burning, remixing
• Burgeoning home theater market
• Focus on universal formats

Hmmmm. In the meantime, the PSP keeps getting hacked to allow DivX playback functionality, despite a constant barrage of firmware upgrades. Maybe the consumers are trying to tell Sony something....

The real question is, how many proprietary formats does Sony have to burn through before it realizes that "synergy" between its filmed entertainment and consumer electronics divisions doesn't mean using one as a hammer to drive consumer adoption of the other? Outside of the magic Apple kingdom, that kind of strategy just doesn't fly any more (and even Apple is now supporting Windows on its hardware).

Then again, Sony's got a lot of smart people working there. Maybe the strategy adds up over the long term. Let's see. If each failed format represents $100M in lost revenue or sunk costs, and each successful format represents $2B in bonus revenue, and they only succeed one out of ten times, they lose (10 X $100M = $1B) total and win (1 x $2B = $2B) total, which means they net a healthy profit of $1B for all their troubles. Even if that's true, though, is the net gain worth pissing off countless consumers, retailers, content providers and hardware manufacturers? Sure, a buck's a buck, right?

Ironically, this move will probably boost the value of UMD movies among a small enthusiast community, thanks to the sudden drop in supply. Guess I'd better start hoarding them for my wife, who's a PSP junkie.

Better late than never: In-Game advertising article is published

The article Aram and I prepared for OMMA last week has finally been published: From Clumsy to Cool: Branded Entertainment and the Rules of In-Game Ads. Feedback is welcome...

Gaga for games

aram and I are presenting at next week's OMMA conference, and as part of that, we've also been preparing an article for mediapost. we'll be speaking on two interrelated topics - a panel on in-game advertising and a presentation on branded entertainment. as part of our preparation we've been interviewing companies in these spaces, as well as some tangential organizations that have a vested interest in how these issues play out, such as the WGA and talent agency UTA. While the topic of branded entertainment is vast, our audience will primarily be interactive planners and buyers, so its a natural that we've gravitated towards investigating gaming. I dont want to cannibalize our article, so you'll have to read mediapost to read out words of wisdom there, but I would like to post briefly on what we didn't include due to space constraints.

the first thing that struck me about the video game industry is how closely it resembles the studio system in hollywood in the 30s and 40s. its a rapidly consolidating industry that is increasingly vertically integrating, with spiralling development, distribution and marketing costs. The video game isn't quite as vertically integrated as the major studios of the 1930s, who not only owned the studios, the theater chains and the real estate the lots were located on, they also "owned" the talent as well. It resembles the studio system in another way, or more precisely, the beginning of the end of the studio system: talent, feeling mistreated, is increasingly seeking greater independence and agency. and the talent agencies have not ignored that fact - a conversation with UTA revealed they represent both companies looking for funding and individual talent who presumably will become "names" akin to auteur theory in film.

Yet, while the video game industry is moving closer in terms of structure to the film industry, the film (and tv and music) industries are moving towards a video game paradigm in several important respects.

first and most importantly, greater interactivity in these industries. we're talking about remixes, mashups, interactive TV - all the ways that formerly staid genres are becoming shaken up by greater consumer control.

second, producers in those genres are beginning to understand the value of a dedicated, proselytizing fan base. the video game market has long benefitted from a rabid fan base and has actively courted them. the film and tv industries are just learning how to effectively harness this group - some clumsily, some quite smartly.

third, and this one is a little more complicated - but video games face an economic quandary - development costs have been rising but game publishers cannot raise prices - the higher the game price, the less it sells. game publishers have been actively embracing online distribution to offset development costs. meanwhile, the film, tv, and music industries have been wary of digital distribution (to put it kindly). they've only just begun to explore the possibilities of online distribution. obviously, these are ideas that are still being hashed out (hopefully in enough time to present some of them on tues) and perhaps in some future papers?...

Clinton and Lieberman: videogames are bad, m'kay?

Here's a nice little bit of news: Senators Lieberman and Clinton are diverting important taxpayer dollars and CDC resources from bird flu research and paying off our record national debt to try and prove for the umpteenth time that videogames are bad for you.

Why do they want to do this? Certainly not from a dispassionate academic desire to know the truth. Copious academic research (including much done at my alma mater, USC Annenberg) has shown mixed results: if anything, short-term boosts in aggression or bad driving seem more than compensated for in long-term boosts to cognitive functioning and physical dexterity.

No, their motivation is more likely the same that has spurred countless congressional witch-hunts against Hollywood and other cultural centers over the years: a sycophantic desire to ingratiate themselves with ignorant swing-voters by preying on their deepest fears about new technologies and social change. These are the same self-serving cretins that blacklisted Orson Welles, drove Alan Freed to suicide, and, hey, now that I think of it, founded the first Communication schools at major U.S. universities.

Boo on them. Lieberman, I can understand. Hillary should know better. And Dick Durbin should have smelled the oily reek of Rick Santorum, and run screaming in the other direction.