Check out these images from the final day of E3 2012. And if you didn’t see it, check out the first two entries for E3 2012 pictures.
We got some great shots of various items around the show floor. Check out pictures of the people of E3 here!
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Last week, we had the first part of the Dark Legends interview with Spacetime Studios CEO Gary Gattis. For the second part, he provided some additional statistics: since Dark Legends launched on April 11, there have been over a half million Dark Legends game accounts formed. The game has 80 percent male players between the ages of 18-34 years old, mostly from English-speaking parts of the world. The Legends games in general see more than 1.5 million play sessions per week.
Dark Legends is clearly off to a hot start, and this week we talk about what’s different compared to the other Legends titles and briefly on their upcoming fourth title.
It was huge for us. We had originally planned on going with a different partner, but we are close with Google. It fit with our unified platform since it allowed us to release it on Chrome. That also softened the blow for iOS players who weren’t able to play it on their iPhones.
Our aim is to be a unified platform for independent Mobile MMOs for people to play the same games around the world together. PC, Linux, mobile, Mac all at the same time; our vision is any platform at any time. When I’m at work, in my bed or in the bathroom it doesn’t change the game I’m playing with my friends. To my knowledge, there’s no other game that can be played like that. We’re also border agnostic as well. We get deep penetration in nations that don’t have much PC integration.
We’re played in every nation except North Korea and Cuba, but I think Kim Jong Un may play it. South Korea (we’re not localized there, we have plans to but haven’t) is about 50 percent of the U.S. as far as download and usage, and that is very high; it is actually about the penetration in the U.K.
It’s more ambitious than our previous projects. We’re going to iterate with the gameplay. We have deep analytics and have been experimenting with energy and timers and have been very successful with it. They’ll be more integrated in the 3D space so more time sync mechanics will be coming
So we’ll be shipping [Arcane Legends] in three months or so and we’ve been working that for a while after getting Dark Legends out the door. Now all of our games have the same unified code base so things we’ve added, like achievements, we’ll roll back into other games.
We’re considering a Facebook client that would be fully unified with the rest of our stuff. There’s some concern with their level of control, however, and developers are moving from Facebook to mobile – it’s something we’re keeping an eye on.
We’re starting to see that in mobile as well. The size of the App Stores and the number of apps makes it a challenge, and now Apple is taking out the unique device identifier, and I think they want to take away incentivized downloads. Their App Store is the pleasure and the bane of the industry.
I totally agree. And I think the fact that we were the first mobile MMO, and were an early mover in the space, now we’ve got that network of players because we were out in front. We have built in debuggers because we have 1.7 million play sessions per week.
Those people become the content and platform agnosticism is where its at. It’s not about where I’m playing but what I’m playing. That’s been a fundamental tenet. Meanwhile, the retail business is struggling to find its footing. We were suppose to see a new console three years ago but mobile and tablets took over now.
We’ve just now put full-time teams on our live games. Pocket Legends and Star Legends suffered when we concentrated on Dark Legends, but now we have full-time live teams for them. Pocket Legends is larger than ever now. The average play session on Android is 12 hours a month and on iOS is about 15 hours a month. On our games, it’s about 25 hours a month. The hardcore players average 3 hours a day – a significant portion of the day. Pocket Legends and Star Legends are doing very well; people cross-pollinated between the titles. People that discover one can move over to the other games. We’ve got people making more content and people want that content.
We are 42 and growing, approaching a corporate milestone of 50 people. We’re still all in one big room and we’re in the “partner pit” in the middle. I described the ownership of the studio as being four people. The ownership of the company is represented by the four disciplines of making games (programing, art, game design and producing) and we’re still knee deep in game development and we’re still hands-on with making games. It’s a fun, interactive environment. It’s like a garage band that has grow into a 42 piece jazz fusion odyssey!
If someone came by tomorrow we’d hire them. We just love working together here and I want to preserve it.
Yep absolutely. It will be have 3D gameplay and things that people have never done before in mobile MMOs.
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By Meelad Sadat
It can take about 90 seconds to recognize the foundation for a good FPS. It’s that first feel for the control, the mechanics and targeting. A glance at the scenery. That first firefight.
PlanetSide 2 makes a killer first impression. Beyond that, there are a lot of compelling promises from Sony Online Entertainment for the game. It starts with a scarily good one – perennial war. If it takes off, it’ll be more than a persistent MMO FPS. It’ll be a virtual world war without end, fought with repercussions whether you participate or not. Logging off doesn’t necessarily end the game. Your side may be gaining, losing, needing help, and you can track it all. There’s a website and mobile apps to follow in-game events and communicate with players in real time. What if your side needs help badly This game might drag you out of bed some night in the near future.
For fans of the original, it’s taken a long nine years for the sequel. It probably seems like an even longer three years for some of them since Sony Online president John Smedley set the stage for the follow up on Twitter. In 2009, the man known fondly as “Smed” to his loyal gaming community posted in perfect internet speak, “Planetside next. you will like.”
Judging by their showing at E3, where Sony Online unveiled hands-on for the game industry masses, they like. By the time we visited their booth, the PlanetSide 2 kiosk was already adorned with an armful of best of show nominations. It walked away with an impressive list.
We talked with Matt Higby, the game’s creative director, about what’s on the horizon over the next few months as the game moves into beta and towards launch. Not surprisingly, community outreach and social programs loom big.
PlanetSide 2 is right in the meat of its development cycle right now. We’re going to be starting beta in the next couple weeks and we’ll be launching in the next few months. We’re really waiting until we have a completely solid game before we put it out there, but we’re looking forward to getting our community in and starting to get some feedback from them.
E3 is definitely the start of our big marketing push but we’ve been doing a lot of other stuff behind the scenes. We’ve been doing lots of social outreach. This game has been great for us going on Twitter and getting players who are already interested in PlanetSide to start being mavens for PlanetSide 2. We’ve been working closely with the existing PlanetSide community to get them to start building that grassroots buzz. We’ve been doing a lot of different trade shows.
We started last year at Gamescom, that was the first major trade show that we did. All we had there was a show trailer, but we talked to a lot of different journalists out there. And we’ve been moving forward with inviting journalists like PC Gamer in, Game Informer in to get hands on with the game. We’ve already garnered a couple of different covers from PC Gamer. We’ve been doing a lot of pre-buzz, but starting with E3 this year is really where we’re kicking our marketing efforts into high gear.
Starting after E3 we have a major release of a new trailer. We’re also doing stuff at Gamescom coming up, probably going to China Joy to start building buzz out there. And of course right now we’ve already been nominated for a ton of best of show awards at E3, and we’re hoping to win a few of those. People are really starting to be aware of this game and how incredibly different, ground breaking and game changing it actually is.
I think PlanetSide is already fairly strong with the people who knew the game just because it was such an unprecedented gaming experience and still something that’s never really been replicated by anybody else. We definitely wanted to latch on to that and make sure people understood that what we were doing wasn’t fundamentally changing PlanetSide and only bringing it to the next level. And really what we’re doing is bringing it to where we wanted this experience to be. This is a game that’s been running forever. People have these really fond memories and epic moments within PlanetSide.
There’s nothing that comes close to PlanetSide in terms of overall production value. We have triple-A production value in an enormous game. This is a larger game than what you would buy in a box. We have battles that are huge [compared] to what you’d see in Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare. This really is an unprecedented multiplayer online gaming experience.
We’re doing a really wide approach to monetization. We’re going to see what sticks. We’ve put in a lot of different micro transaction items, but all of the items that actually affect game play can be earned entirely within game play as well. So we don’t have any sort of pay to win situation, which is damaging for a lot of people as to what free-to-play means.
With micro-transactions you can basically get extra convenience. I can get items quicker maybe. That’s a great approach as long as what you’re doing is making sure the items are just game play style differences. In PlanetSide 2, I can buy one weapon versus another and it’s not stronger, they’re just different situationally. Of course we also have micro transactions for purely cosmetic items, for boosts that give you extra experience.
We’re going to have a membership also. We’re working out the different pieces that go into our membership right now, but a lot of it is things that give you maybe quicker respawn times, or the ability to summon vehicles faster than other people, but nothing that actually affects moment-to-moment play. It’s not even a velvet rope. You’re going to have access to everything in the game. What you’re going to have access to [with membership] is maybe a grab bag of different items every month, that sort of thing.
PlanetSide already started with a really passionate and enduring fan base. We kind of had a head start in that area with already having grassroots buzz as soon as we announced the game. We’re really trying to make sure we stoke the fire of those guys by actually directly talking to them. We’re going to the places where our fans are already communicating with us. We’re going to fan sites. We’re going on Twitter. We’re engaging them on Facebook. And we’ve been doing a lot of listening. When we went to GDC we showed the game live for the first time. There were some things that existing PlanetSide players didn’t like about it, and we revisited them and we figured out ways to solve those problems but still do the things that were important to us.
One of the really cool things that we’re doing from a community standpoint is what we call the first platoon program. We’re taking community leaders that have their own guilds, that have their own clans. These are all FPS gamers that are really influential in the genre, including things like YouTube casters. Those sorts of folks that have really wide reach among actual gamers. We’re bringing those guys in first to be able to give us direct feedback on forums that we’ll be monitoring really closely and talking directly to those guys. We think that’s going to pay a lot of dividends as they get their communities involved in our game and pull in their own groups of players from Counterstrike and from Team Fortress, all of these different FPS games that exist out there that have really tightknit communities. We’re trying to gather as much attention as we can from the leaders of those communities right from the start.
Right now we’ve been working with TotalBiscuit, who’s a really huge game caster. He’s here at E3 doing live TwitchTV broadcasts of our booth and of the people playing here. We’ve worked closely with him to get some of our initial game footage out there. We’re going to be working with other big guys in the future. I’m not sure if I can announce all of them yet because we haven’t got all the contracts signed, but we’re really looking to get the best of the best of YouTube content creators and get them to be involved to do something for us. We have three different unique factions in the game, so I want to get one YouTube caster to represent one of the factions and be casting their live game play from their faction’s perspective. We can do a weekly get together where they shit talk each other and slam on the other factions right there on their own channels. I think that would be a fun way to closely knit the community and [introduce] what the different factions are, what their personalities are, and really take advantage of these strong, close gaming communities that exist on YouTube.
Another awesome thing we’re doing with PlanetSide 2 is that we’ve externalized a lot of stuff. People don’t have time to play the game 24 hours a day. We’ve built a web site that allows them to connect to their friends, to their outfit, to look at the status of the world they’re playing on. We’ve also built an iOS app and an Android app that’s going to allow people to not only real-time see the capture status within their world but also to communicate using voice over IP directly into the game. So if you want to talk to your outfit when you’re not online you can just open up your iPhone app, talk to your outfit, let them know you’re going to be home in 20 minutes, let them know to attack a certain base because you just saw on the map that it was under attack. Really, really cool connectedness to give people the 360-degree [experience], “I’m out of the game right now and I want to go back in,” or, “I want to go to the web site to look at stats and see how I’ve progressed.”
We have three unique factions. One big piece of our ongoing marketing effort is to going to be basically allowing people to understand who these factions are and gain an allegiance with that faction. We have a Facebook app that’s up right now that allows you to take over different states and different countries in the world based on your faction. You can recruit people to your faction. You can see the map completely change from one faction to another if you recruit enough people [for instance] in your home town. We’re really incorporating the faction styles into our ongoing efforts.
I want to let everyone that you should go PlanetSide2.com to sign up for beta. We’re going to be starting that really, really soon. Make sure to check out us on Twitter. I’m on Twitter @MHigby. The product is there @PlanetSide2. We’re always on Twitter sending out behind the scenes screen shots. We’ll take an asset that’s halfway done being made and send it out to see what people think about it. It’s really awesome being able to have that direct connection with our fan base.
A game as highly anticipated as Diablo III demands a marketing campaign that hits consumers wherever they are, whether it’s online or in front of their television. The level of passion for the game warranted a campaign designed to directly engage consumers, and that was achieved with a community site designed with the help of the Ayzenberg Group. John Pingol, Blizzard community manager for Diablo III, and Ilja Rotelli, Blizzard’s Global Director of Community & eSports, kindly answered some questions for us about the online engagement site and other aspects of the Diablo III marketing campaign.
Blizzard Community Team: The Diablo III site we launched with the announcement of the game was a fairly static ‘marketing’ site with basic enemy, class, and content information. While it was a great site with a ton of relevant content, our goal was always to create a true community-driven site that not only provides visitors with dynamic news and exclusive content (short stories, developer updates, downloadable media), but also online tools found in the game guide section, like our skill calculator and item database. These all come together on the new Diablo3.com community site we launched in August, 2011, and provides visitors with more ways to learn more about the game, get excited pre-release, and post-release serve as the primary destination for game news and info.
Our main objective was to create an experience that invited people to become acquainted with the lore, setting and heroes of Diablo III. To achieve that, we empowered them to influence the outcome of the site, provide exclusive in-game rewards for participating, and provide unique and highly sharable content.
Each of the teams within Blizzard coordinate their individual and coordinated efforts during sync-up meetings, and work to make it clear to each of the internal stakeholders any and all risks and opportunities. What really assists us is a common goal to put out the highest quality content and experience possible.
When the designers are looking at a new direction for a system we’ll sit down with them to get a solid understanding as to why the change is being made, what the reaction may be, and how we can effectively inform our players. Generally, if we’re making a big change it’s because a lot of thought and effort has gone into making the decision, so we already have good reasons for why a change is being made. It’s then just a matter of anticipating various conclusions and reactions from our players and explaining the change to meet as many of those concerns and questions as possible, in a transparent and approachable way. We then watch closely, gather feedback, bring that back to the designers and address some of the follow-up concerns people have, and/or use the feedback to make any additional tweaks or changes.
It was part of our strategy from the very beginning. With so much incredible content made specific for each class we did not feel that unleashing it all at once would do them justice. It also fit with our intent with the site to be something you want to keep coming back to. As content unlocked, people uploaded their photos, fan art was submitted to the contest, and classes became available you’d essentially always have something new to look at when you came to the site, and something new to share with your friends on Twitter or Facebook.
Diablo III: Wrath
We knew that the style of the video, Peter Chung’s resonance throughout geek culture, and this new take on Diablo lore and visual aesthetic through an animated short would fit perfectly as the centerpiece for the promotion. Not only was it a new venture for Blizzard, delving into 2D animation, it was something that would automatically evoke a reaction from the core community. Diablo III: Wrath was a deeper look into the Diablo universe and lore, something we knew our community was extremely hungry to learn more about. It all came together in a really perfect and somewhat unexpected way. We were really fortunate to be able to have the site compliment the Wrath short and vice versa, and hope it’s something Diablo fans will enjoy going back to and watching for years to come.
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Engaged in the Diablo III community campaign Can’t get enough of the game Join the discussion on Facebook.
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn takes place during the beginning of the Human/Covenant war. During the events of the series, we’ll see Master Chief inspire a young cadet who would eventually become a leader aboard the UNSC’s greatest vessel: the UNSC Infinity.
Part of a larger campaign for Hot Wheels had a rather elaborate stunt at 2012 X Games in Los Angeles. Team Hot Wheels drivers Tanner Foust and Greg Tracy set a Guinness World Record racing two vehicles through a six-story double vertical loop.
Assassin’s Creed III conjures up images of the American Revolution, which should be reflected on however briefly this July 4th. Ubisoft released this trailer, giving a good glimpse as to the large scale battles taking place in Assassin’s Creed III.
Oliver Stone returns to the screen with a ferocious thriller Savages, based on Don Winslow’s best-selling crime novel of the same name. Laguna Beach entrepreneurs Ben and his closest friend Chon run a lucrative, homegrown industry — raising some of the best marijuana ever developed. Their lives are idyllic until the Mexican Baja Cartel decides to move in and demands that the trio partners with them.
On the official Facebook page, fans can access an app and help to find ‘O’, the girl that’s been kidnapped by the Baja Cartel. Follow the clues left behind on the Facebook timeline to help find ‘O’ before it’s too late. Each week new clues are hidden in an image on the Savages Facebook page. Find the clue and enter it for a chance to win a trip for the to Laguna Beach. Each time the user enters a valid clue, they will receive another entry into the Grand Prize drawing. Each week, fans can win a $100 AMEX gift card. Enter all 8 clues to find ‘O’ and unlock an exclusive clip from Savages.
Raptr is giving players an opportunity to explore the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria via Raptr Rewards. They will be given out on July 5, 2012 though players are encouraged to sign up beforehand as they will be awarded on a first come, first served basis.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria will have a whole new region in the game and content up to the increased level cap of 90. Players can find out what it’s like to play as World of Warcraft’s first neutral race – the Pandaren and experience the new monk class.
“Eligibility to redeem rewards will be based on games played and ranks earned on Raptr; ranks are determined by time played and achievements unlocked. The World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria reward is available in all regions with the exception of China and Korea. All rewards will be offered on a rolling first come, first served basis,” notes Raptr. “More details about the reward and who is eligible to earn it will be available on July 5, 2012.”
Find out more at at Raptr.com/rewards.
