These awesome Mass Effect posters, based on the loyalty mission series, were first posted on Tumblr user Miri’s blog. Since then they’ve been shared thousands on times on multiple Tumblr threads, have made the rounds on Reddit and have even made their way onto Pinterest, demonstrating once again that nothing escapes the eye on those speedy pinners. Unfortunately, due to ownership issues over the background image, it doesn’t look like they’ll be available to buy anytime soon…
The role of a PR communicator has had to adapt to embrace the challenges social media presents; it could be argued that the role of a PR practitioner is very different to how it was perceived two years ago, as audiences, communications channels and the individuals that require influencing have evolved dramatically. This dissertation’s research proved that nowhere is this truer than in the video games industry. Continue reading
2012 was the year of social media at E3, with all the industry giants releasing some form of social tech alongside or within their big titles.
Nintendo announced its social platform for the upcoming Wii U, MiiVerse. Dubbed as a ‘safe social network’, MiiVerse will be integrated heavily in upcoming Nintendo titles, including the New Super Mario Brothers U. The company says the game will feature a real-time social window, allowing the players to connect with others; though the ‘real-time’ part is up for debate considering Nintendo plans to use human screening on all messages before posting.
I’m currently putting a lot of time in to the literature review and methodology for my final year dissertation (that’s thesis to any readers from across the pond). The title is ‘How has the role of a public relations practitioner in the video games industry changed with the advent of social media?’ and some of the subheadings contain little nods to the gamers that will probably fly over the heads of any marker, therefore being a bit pointless. Oh well.
One of the themes I’m looking at is Chris Anderson’s idea of several industries, such as film, music and literature, being ‘hit driven’, with certain titles expected to be a commercial success being afforded much more budget and marketing activities in the hope that they will generate profit. Mark Harris discussed the idea his GQ feature ‘The Day the Movies Died’, with studios afraid to try anything different or new, risking going against the industry and profit loss.
Anyone who’s played the GOW series will know just how special this final game was; sending off our Delta squad heroes – whom have been with us through gore, bro-mance and some pretty emotion scenes – into the distopian sunset. The GOW is a particularly interesting series, a trilogy that started with little social activity leading to the final episode that made the most of online tools to ensure it’s success.
Gears of War 3 gave its online fans much to keep themselves occupied and engaged in the run up to the COG last stand, from an online led campaign to decide the fate of our final recruit from the Carmine family, to fans getting a say in which maps made the final cut in the multiplayer maps and beta codes being released online to those lucky enough to gets their hands on them (like me!). The final game was hyped and promoted well online and the final product didn’t disappoint – I’m sure there weren’t many dry eyes from hardcore fans by the end of this game!
Last month I was lucky enough to attend Gamescom 2011 along with the rest of the Sony Ericsson XperiaTM PLAY team, to help out on the XperiaTM PLAY booth (which looked awesome!).
Being the resident Wolfstar geek (every company needs one!) means I’ve had the chance to work on the PLAY account from the start. It’s more then I ever could have hoped for on my internship year, with it being an amazingly fast paced and exciting account and totally focused around one of my own interests; the video games industry.
Whenever the topic arises in conversation, I usually get a funny look when I say I’m into gaming, People assume I must mean on the Wii playing fitness games (which admittedly I do) or on a more female orientated game like The Sims (again, guilty), so they are yet again surprised when I explain it’s more the action and shooter games that I put my hours into.
Whilst magazine circulation and sales decline (though Game Informer seems to be doing well) and tales of hidden agendas appear, online video gaming journalism has continued its strong rise. How? By producing high quality reviews and news in a medium that fits the industry better. Content like trailers, video interviews and breaking news work much better on blogs and news sites, in much in the same way many other print magazines and news papers are struggling to keep up with the online offering.
Online gaming publications have another big advantage; multiplayer games and achievements mean that offline gaming no longer holds the same attraction, so the audience of video games are already online and ‘social’.
This probably makes it all the more important, as a gaming developer or publisher, to keep tabs on the online conversation that takes place around released or pending titles. Three of my favourite series are all hitting the final journey of their trilogy in the later half of this year, so I though it would be interesting to try and gauge the buzz around the titles and the online marketing efforts of the teams behind them.
Cue some real and some possible fake covers for Gears of War 3 (release date September 2011), Mass Effect 3 (Q4 release) and Modern Warfare 3 (which might not actually be a trilogy and may also be a prequel, and will be released November 2011).
All set to be fantastic games if they live up to their predecessors, all with slightly different audiences and very different expected sales figures (Gears of War 2 sold 7 million copies, Mass Effect 2 sold over 2 million and Modern Warfare 2 pulled in over 22 million). So I was interested to see how they compared after running through a few free online monitoring tools…
It probably makes sense to go through these in order of sales, as that way the result should increase as we go along. And I like nice escalations. So that puts the order as ME3, GOW3 and MW3.
Social mention is the first site I looked at, which aims to give an overview of the reach and number of mentions of the search terms, as well as a stab at sentiment (eek). The tool isn’t perfect by any stretch, so the results probably aren’t hugely accurate, but I guess if all the terms used the same tool then they can at least be compared against each other, even if the numbers aren’t quite right.
So the left is ME3, middle is GOW3 and right is MW3.
The strength of the conversation is defined by Social Mention as being the likelihood your brand is being discussed. The sentiment is the positive:negative mentions. The passion is the likelihood that individuals will discuss your brand again. Reach is a measure of the range of influence; how far the message traveled. It’s also worth noting that this all applies to a 24 hour snapshot. I did it a few times and the results varied a little. So these are all from the same snap shot of about 10:30pm (GMT), which is annoyingly about the time I usually get an idea for a blog post.
As expected, most of the conversation was around MW3, with a mention every minute. MW3 also had the most strength, passion and reach; i.e. more likely to be discussed, discussed repeatedly and for the discussion to be seen by a higher number of people. However, the sentiment is lower than the other two titles. Perhaps because the game appeals to a bigger audience, it also draws more criticism. The issues between Activision and Infinity Ward (and the resulting lay-offs) probably haven’t helped.
I was a little surprised at the low sentiment score for ME3. Though the sales are lower, the sci-fi game has a fairly loyal audience of fans, who often post in forums and upload videos of their characters to YouTube. However, a quick scan through the results reveals the answer and it is the same problem that all sentiment analysis programs; they can’t truly tell the good from the bad. Results such as ‘Mass Effect 3 is the shit!’ or ‘Can’t fucking wait for Mass Effect 3!’ are noted as being negative in sentiment. Much of the content noted as neutral is also positive; some are articles showing screenshots, other are excited Facebook statuses.
As for GOW3, the game being released soonest; the invite-only beta opened at the end of last month, so if sentiment is anything to go by, people are responding favourably towards it, though with fewer authors and less mentions (perhaps because only a limited number of people currently have access).
