TriplePoint PR

Australian mobile developer Firemint came to us a few months ago with one goal in mind: to make their new iPhone game stand out among the crowd. Of course, this is no small task given the extraordinary rate of proliferation of iPhone games appearing on the App Store since the beginning of the year. But Firemint had something unique: a car racing simulator called Real Racing that had been in development for more than a year and specifically designed with the unique feature set of the iPhone and iPod touch in mind.

Firemint’s unique challenge was that they had a little over two months to officially announce, promote, and differentiate Real Racing from the competition before it launched. And the main competitor in this instance was EA’s Need for Speed iPhone title, a game launching in the same period that had enjoyed months of marketing and PR support from the industry’s biggest game publisher.

Talk about an underdog situation.

June NPD data showed the game industry’s sharpest decline since 2000, with overall sales dropping 31% from this same time in 2008. The sales decline contrasts sharply with the fact that 4 million new gamers have entered the industry in the past year. The rise in audience size alongside a sharp drop in sales signals an emerging trend that players are increasingly turning to affordable digital content, free-to-play online game portals and casual games for interactive entertainment.

With Gamestop openly stating that their margins are being buffered by used game sales, protecting them from the sharp decline, one has to wonder if the sales slump is a temporary trend, or a permanent change. GameStop’s stranglehold on the used game market has caused many publishers and developers to explore alternative distribution outlets via online distribution platforms and console based marketplaces, and thus the quality of digital content has increased monumentally over the past year.

Last week was certainly a busy week for the gaming industry here in New York City.

Worlds collided on Monday night as Mediabistro hosted its “Flacks ‘n’ Hacks” party at New York City’s Arctica Bar & Grill.  A wide variety of professionals in both the public relations and journalism fields converged to battle it out in an intense “Flacks vs. Hacks” Guitar Hero competition.  All virtual music rivalries aside, the event enabled PR representatives and journalists to converse with one another, going beyond the walls of cyber-talk and meeting one another face-to-face.

On Tuesday night, the gaming action headed to the Lower East Side for the monthly New York Gaming Meetup, co-organized by Brad Hargreaves of GoCrossCampus and sponsored by TriplePoint.  This month Gallery Bar was host to live presentations of the latest games and technology stemming from the NYC area. Demos from Lior Messinger  (LiveStream), James Prucey  (Canned Bananas), William Stallwood and Dain Saint (Auditorium), and Naveen Selvadurai (foursquare) were complemented by opportunities to talk with a diverse group of members within the NYC gaming community.

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the most successful and iconic video game brands of all time, partially because development of each game alternates between two studios, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, allowing publisher Activition to release a new full game each year. But that boon has turned into a burden as the desire for differentiation has resulted in an identity crisis for the brand. The internal politics between Activision, Infinity Ward and Treyarch has created congnitive dissonance over where the Call of Duty series is headed. And in the case of this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Activision has said that they’re gunning for Grand Theft Auto 4′s launch sales records, but their indecision over the official title of the game may have cost them millions in opening day revenue, and has potentially pushed GTA IV’s sales records out of reach.

For Call of Duty fans the buzz leading up to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been a roller coaster ride of product branding and re-branding. When the game was first mentioned during a Massive Inc., “upfront” advertising meeting in late 2008, it was referred to as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. After 2007′s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Activision dropped the, “4″ and began using subtitles to denote sequels, hence 2008′s Call of Duty: World at War – sometimes referred to by fans as Call of Duty 5. Confused? Well don’t feel bad, you’re not alone.

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is calling for submissions for GDC 2010. GDC is the premier professional conference for creators of videogames and interactive entertainment. Speaking opportunities are available in six tracks: Audio, Business & Management, Design, Production, Programming, and Visual Arts. Presentation formats include lectures, panels, roundtables, posters and tutorials.

Applications are due Friday, August 14th at 11:59PM EST. To learn more, visit the GDC Call for Submission page: http://www.gdconf.com/conference/callforpapers/index10.html

GDC 2010 take place March 9-13, 2010 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

My Twitter bio reads, “I’m a PR guy, whatever that means.”

It might sound cynical at first (and it probably is, a bit), but I like to think it has another meaning – it’s simply a statement of fact. PR is, has always been, and always will be an evolving practice.

The changing landscape of journalism, the uptake of social media, and the worst aspects of capitalism coming to a head at the same time are all factors that affect the way we communicate about products and brands.

For TriplePoint, there’s another layer of complexity: we live in the games industry, a sector that’s defined by constant change. And the latest upheaval has been a fierce one.

In part due to the factors I mentioned above, and in part due to a number of new technologies, the barriers to entry for new gaming products have been smashed to the ground.

There’s been a lot of talk online over the past couple of days about Claire Cain Miller’s recent New York Times article (“case study” might be a more accurate description) on the state of tech PR. It’s an interesting and somewhat short sighted, look into the professional (and personal) life of PR veteran Brooke Hammerling. Unfortunately, like many articles that offer a peek into the world of public relations, there’s a fair amount of misconception of what a PR professional actually does on a daily basis.

Hammerling is a successful publicist, and it should be obvious to anyone remotely familiar with PR that there is more to her process than setting up meetings and “whispering in the ear” of industry insiders. I’d argue that Hammerling is at a point in her career where her main role is to make high-level connections and leverage the relationships she’s built over time to benefit her agency and its client roster. Miller, in my opinion, uses this profile to generalize tech public relations with a set of enduring PR flack stereotypes – name dropping, schmoozing at expensive parties and the consumption of delicious green Jolly Ranchers (wait. what?).

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend E3, the largest gaming event of the year and an indicator not only of the current health of the industry, but of the technology that will carry it through the next year. 2009 was a show of rebirth for a conference traditionally mired in spectacle and hype. Stepping into this year’s event after the previous two was like stepping off of an airplane, the pressure dropping around me, and the atmosphere felt as justifying as it did celebratory – once again E3 was about the fun and excitement of being a gamer. And the first step to getting gamers excited at E3 is to know how to communicate with them.

Now that E3 is back to its former glory, it is once again a battle for hype between the three biggest companies: Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. “Winning” E3 requires more than just showing incredible technology – there’s nothing BUT incredible technology at E3 – it takes a great presentation of that technology to build maximum anticipation, and doing that requires a great public relations strategy.