There’s more to come too but one item I wanted to share was Frank’s radio show. Mainly because it drew some pretty nice comments (although to be fair, one commenter thought he was an asshole). You can watch the show over HERE for part one and HERE for part two.

It’s sort of leading me to think about what interests folk through social media and also why we even want to interest them. Is interactivity important in social media or do people prefer passive experiences (such as viewing or listening), leaving social media as a mainly distributive mechanism? And how important are genuine conversations (I’d have thought that was probably the most important aspect of a campaign but mostly I tend to see broadcast campaigns). All that’s food for an article on another day, I think, because games are a very different beast when it comes to advertising.

For now, take a look at some of the nice comments:

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

SPiN Galactic is a ping-pong game for iPhone that is light-years ahead of everything else. It’s fast, stylish and built for the gamer who wants more than just a simulation. It’s awesome and we love it.

Head First worked with VivusNet and SPiN New York to emulate the über-cool vibe of Susan Sarandon’s nightclubs complete with their celebrity verve. The result is a game that will test the skill of ping-pong enthusiasts whilst catering to the quick-fingered reflexes of the old-skool gamer through a series of special attacks and defenses.

SPiN Galactic is the start of an epic voyage.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

The original game was great. It did well and a sequel was commissioned. Which also did well but which didn’t star Frank.

But that’s ok because now Capcom are back with a game which DOES star Mr West and it brings with it the whole smart mouthed attitude and ludicrous fun you’d expect.

Our campaign for the game is going great guns (and chainsaws and lazer powered helmets). Under the banner of “Journalism With Guts”, we have launched into Facebook, YouTube (and somewhere which will be announced soon) with a series of fun videos, copy, images and activities.

In just two weeks, our approach has boosted the Facebook page to over 45,000 users (that’s from a base of under 15,000). Our initial video (over on YouTube) has had 21,000 views so why not treat yourself to a look at that before heading over to Facebook and seeing what we are up to there?

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to ideas we like to think being different is a pretty good starting point. A few months back, a new client asked us to come up with ideas for a game based on Ping Pong in order to promote… well, let’s just say it’s something pretty cool.

We huddled and thought and huddled some more (hey, it was back in the depths of winter) and came up with a good few ideas. The client thought and thought and thought some more (their winter wasn’t that cold) and chose… not Swing Pong.

It was fair enough. They wanted something to meet a slightly different task (and we’re in the process of fulfilling THAT brief too so hang in there).

Something, however, wouldn’t allow us to let go of Swing Pong.

Maybe it was the name or maybe it was just the idea of basing a sports game on audio reactions that kept us interested but we plugged away and, thanks to some hard work and a team of honest beta-testers, created Swing Pong.

We think it’s a bit of fun.

The Guardian think so too. Which is nice.

We could have created a regular ping pong game of course. The App Store has quite a few of those. Poke your finger at the screen and score points. But we wanted to show that anything can be turned on its head and presented in a different way in order to stand out from the crowd. Add an ad spend to that and you have yourself a clear proposition which has really, measurable value.

Take a look and see what you think.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Every now and again we like to sit back and take stock of the remarkable range of super huge brands worked on at Head First. That such global companies have been trusting their IP to us for over 10 years now means that we are getting something right.

Too often, work for these brands doesn’t bring anything else to the mix. Maybe it is because with these brands comes a large and rich resource library from which to pull high quality art. It could be a simple job to align the images and add the necessary logos before handing it back to the client as “job done”.

The strategic arm of Head First always makes us go further and add whatever value we can into a job. This ad for Ben 10 Cosmic Destruction is one such example where we sought to bring a sense of the bigger picture to the page – one not found in the asset library.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

The game layer can be dropped over anything we do in order to help customers engage with products, processes or people.

When Head First set up shop, it was on the strength of believing the approaches of each market specialty, from videogames to DIY, could and should engage in whole lot more mixing.

From the perspective of videogames it seemed advertising often took a back seat to illustration, as though the two disciplines were interchangeable, as though merely by saying that a picture was worth a thousand words actually made it so.

The sophisticated techniques, the considered messages, these were often missing from marketing strategies for the fast growing sector of videogames and Head First wanted to change that.

At the same time, however, we knew that videogames had a lot to give. Energy and engagement were just two things that the world of videogames had to offer every other brand. Sure, the big boys knew how to form a message but videogames… well, they could deliver it in ways that just clicked with audiences of all ages.

Videogames, we said (and still say) aren’t something you grow out of.

We understand the power of the industry and believe in it so strongly that we thought it was time to show just how engaging it can be.

Enter Super Twario and a whole new look at how Twitter can be accessed.

For a while now there have been claims to have created the first ever Twitter game but these claims are built around spamming rather than engaging and users often Tweet in anger as they feel cheated into allowing the service to broadcast messages on their behalf.

With Super Twario we didn’t want to engage with Twitter at all, we wanted our users to. By providing the platform (literally) for them to roam through their Feed in an exciting and, dare the word be uttered, an innovative way. Add to this a score system and you have engagement in a very real sense.

What Super Twario does is show how different products (such as Twitter) can be approached in very different ways.

Most of all though, we wanted people to see that Head First has some pretty great ideas.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

DA:O is a game based in European myth and fantasy but is really a game about choice. It is the game that Fable 2 promised to be and failed to deliver but perhaps with less whimsy. From the beginning you are presented with a large range of customisable options for your main character. You have freedom to define your specialist class (warrior, mage, etc.) and the appearance of your character is pretty much up to you (as an aside on this, I noticed that you were free to choose from a range of skintones for your character, but most NPC’s in the game were white – it would have been nice to see some more diversity within the game itself). There are six different origin stories for your character to begin the game from – each of these origins will significantly influence the choices available to you during the game.

Now, here is the thing about choice. Many video games (like Fable 2) have said they would offer it, but it very rarely has an impact on the game itself. In video games choices are limited to the extremes of morality – would you like to care for these orphan kittens or would you like to throw them in a river to drown? You are hardly ever presented with options that inhabit a morally grey area. More than that, these choices often have very little impact on the story narrative itself. You can be as evil or as good as you want and there are no direct consequences apart from perhaps a change in NPC dialogue. The choices do not influence the gameplay and you are still playing a linear narrative. Choices are meant to make games feel as if we are creating our own adventure instead of playing out a predetermined path. I had not yet played a game that makes me feel like that until I played DA:O.

DA:O offers the feeling of genuine choice when traveling through the lands of Ferelden. Of  course, there are times when I am stuck to the story path but I was not limited to having only 2 ways of moving the game forward (good vs. evil). I was presented with moral dilemmas that actually made me pause to think. Sometimes, all the options I was presented had persuasive good points and points and I really had to decide what I thought would be best either for myself, my companions or the world my characters inhabited. This also applied to conversations I had with many of the world’s NPC’s. These choices would then change the world of the game around me. Conversations may become closed off if I pissed someone off, new quests might open if I made a decision in favour of one person over another and companion characters might leave my party for good if I made certain decisions. Sometimes, I couldn’t even guess what the outcome may be so I was forced to rely on what I thought was the best thing to do, rather than try to second guess the game to make sure things went in my favour. Because of this I really felt like I was carving my own path through the game and the adventure was unique to me.

All this relates to the end of the game. The epilogue quite clearly shows you how your actions and decisions have changed the world of Ferelden for good. Depending on how you play the game there is a diverse set of outcomes that will likely vary from player to player. Now, this is what excited me. Bioware has another game called Mass Effect that is also based on these principles of choice but in a sci-fi rather than fantasy setting. Mass Effect 2 is due to be released in 2010 and will use the players Mass Effect save in order to continue the story. I can already see that the DA:O epilogue will have a significant impact on the sequel I am sure Bioware are planning to make. This is why the game made me feel like I was left on a cliffhanger – the story, MY story is not yet over. It will continue and my previous decisions will impact on what happens. I am left to wonder if that demon I let go in exchange for 25 soverighns will come back to haunt me (I needed the money at the time!) or if it really was a good idea to get romantically involved with a certain character. I want to know!

DA:O has not promised me choice but then denied me the ability to shape my own story. It made me feel like I was having an adventure. I am sure that in 20 years (maybe even 5 years!) the choices presented by Bioware in DA:O will look limited and trite in comparison to the games being produced, but I really think that this game is one of the first to understand what choice really means. If you look closely, sure, DA:O still moved my character down a pre-planned narrative but it was up to me how I got there. I think this is where the future lies. I could go back and replay DA:O with a different character and different choices to see where I end up, but I don’t want to. I played this game by deciding to do what I thought was best. I look forward to finding out the consequences to that.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

This project has been one of the most interesting of the year, not because of the game (which looks fabulous) but because of what it represents.

Video games, generally speaking, are written by “developers” and then published by “publishers” in much the same way as authors and publishers generally work. Big publishers such as THQ, Capcom, EA etc are great at bringing games to market. They provide an expertise of marketing but also they provide the funds necessary to get it, well, published. It takes a lot of money to fund games these days. A lot of money to keep the developer going, a lot to pay out to the makers of the console and then a lot to market it to as wide an audience as possible.

But things are changing.

The easiest example of this taking place can be seen on the App Store (Apple’s online store for it’s iPhone applications). These are beginning to be created and released by tiny teams with virtually no marketing budget. They have a willing audience who are looking to purchase and, for the most part, rely on the brilliance of their design as their best advertisement.

The technology involved means that this approach, for now, is possible.

And it is being followed by other consoles such as XBox Marketplace and PlayStation Network. Increasing numbers of people are opting to buy direct via digital download rather than through traditional retails.

But the rush to digital marketplaces and the compartive ease by which products can be created means that there is now an awful lot of products are being released.

Apple make this a bragging point – something like 100,000 apps are now available through them.

But turn it around and say you have one of the 100,000 apps. You are faced with a problem.

You need to make your product stand out.

Because increasingly we are seeing the big brands make it to the front page. So Jamie Oliver’s cooking app is up there and it’s there not because it’s the best cooking app in the world but because it is easily recognised. It’s a brand.

Which leaves lots of cooking apps, like the one my Mum might write, going cold. Not because they are worse, but because we live in a world where big brands are pushed over better products.

So my Mum now needs to make her cooking app which will actually stir your sauce for you*, stand out.

Which means, well, marketing.

And those one person developer teams might be able to do that on their own or they might need create a streamlined marketing process.

Relentless Software are doing this with Blue Toad Murder Files and Head First have been proud to work on it with them. For us it shows what a knowledgeable agency can do to help make a point of difference because, unlike in the days where all you had to do was place a print ad in a specialist magazine, now you have different issues. Bringing games to market in the era of digital downloads is just as challenging as it was in the days of those old fashioned things called shops.

These days you might not know where your consumer is. They might not be browsing the sites you think they are browsing. They might be watching TV whilst texting. They might be using Messenger whilst listening to the radio.

So you need to be clever. Or cleverer. You need to create advertising which can be passed on. Which is fun and entertaining in its own right and which has a message which can be adapted to suit the medium.

It’s an old-fashioned idea really.

And it still works.

*not even remotely true.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

The PR on this game has been extraordinary.

It was only whilst walking past the billboard that I wondered about the game’s advertising strategy. What is the big idea behind it? Does it, in fact, need one when it’s clearly going to sell (and has sold) millions?

It made me ask around and do a quick survey on what makes people want to buy the game and here is a selection of the comments I received back:

* because i love CoD

* I bought it to be a social animal as my friends list are all on it and I missed the boat on MW1

* I’ll almost certainly get it at the weekend when I know I’ll have the time to play it properly.

* nope can’t say I’ve heard of it.  seen the tv ads for some war games but couldn’t name them – look cool though.

* yes, it was in the free paper I read on the train the other day

Those comments come from a range of people (all men, incidentally) who are a mixed bunch of gamers, ex-gamers, very casual gamers and non-gamers. Not surprisingly the gamers had all heard of MW2 and all expressed a desire to own it. Some were keen to get it as quickly as possible (some had bought it on pre-order) and others, whilst keen, were happy to hold off the purchase until it suited them.

The casual and ex-gamers had registered the fuss and, at best, acknowledged its good looks. They were’t moved to buy it especially if that meant having to buy the console to go with it. For them, this wasn’t the game that would drag them into the joys of modern gaming.

So that made me even more curious. The game is fabulous. It’s selling by the bucketload. It’s being launched into a climate where interest in modern warfare is high and it has a budget behind it that brings video game marketing in line with film marketing.

That’s when I began to look at the advertising in a little more detail and found very little in the way of sophisticated communication or strategy. I felt the PR and so had my core sampling of casual gamers but the advertising was something else altogether.

It was, at best, a clear example of support strategy. It’s role, as far as I can tell, is to remind us that the game is out there and that it is big enough to warrant an outdoor spend. On TV the visuals are stunning – to the gamer who, as we know from my detailed research (ahem) were sold early on by the strength of the brand and the advance word generated by PR.

Activision won’t be grumbling over the sales of course. It made over $300 million in 24 hours (take THAT film industry) – who would grumble with that?

But I’m drawn back to the advertising because it could have done more. Actually, it could have done something. It talks to the initiated leaving the unintiated to stare at the image of a soldier. This could be for any war game. The cover art is lovely – moody and violent and beautifully realised by the design agency (or perhaps by Infinity Ward themselves).

But packaging is not advertising and this could have been a marvellous opportunity. There is no big idea, no added value to the advertising. Essentially it is a picture and a logo and why pay an agency for that?

And then all this leaves me wondering about something. If another publisher had pushed out a cheaper, similarly packaged game at the same time how would it have fared? Would it have benefitted from Modern Warfare’s generic advertising strategy?

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.