‘The Angry Birds Movie’ Takes Over McDonald’s In Virtual Reality

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McDonald’s has been experimenting with virtual reality a lot lately. First, it introduced Happy Meal Boxes that could be transformed into virtual reality viewers in Sweden; then it introduced a unique demo at SXSW earlier in the year, where users could climb into a giant Happy Meal box and paint to their hearts’ content; and it most recently paired with Rovio and Sony to introduce an AR game experience tying in with The Angry Birds Movie using BirdCodes.

It turns out that the Angry Birds promotion was such a hit that it’s back with another one. McDonald’s has released a new video featuring the feathery stars from the film roaming around one of the company’s restaurants, with pigs dancing in the aisles and Yellow Bird checking in on a family that’s dining in. The minute-long 360-video is ideal for virtual reality headsets like Google Cardboard or the Samsung Gear VR, but can also be viewed on desktop browsers.

The chain worked closely with Rovio to make sure the assets matched those from the film, and to ensure that interactions with the actors felt natural. It’s a process that turned out fantastically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdlMzR5vXtU

The video has done very well over the past week, garnering more than 4.5 million views. More importantly, it opens up potential new possibilities for McDonald’s advertising, as it continues to experiment with virtual reality content.

Future promotions could benefit from the introduction of VR-related videos, and it could also mean a push for those Happy Meal VR boxes to make their way to markets outside of Sweden. For the time being, everything is coming up Angry Birds for the chain, between the BirdCodes and other promotions.

How ComiXology Unlimited Will Help Make Everyone A Comic Book Fan

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ComiXology helped usher in a Kindle-style revolution when it made comic books accessible digitally. With the Guided View technology, comic book panels could be comfortably read from virtually any device, from computers to smartphones, and the company grew to offer thousands of titles from over a hundred publishers. So, it’s little wonder why Amazon decided to purchase the company in 2014.

Given the incredible success comic books are having in pop culture, with top-grossing movies like Captain America: Civil War and a multitude of television shows, the company is ready to take comic book reading to the next level with the ComiXology Unlimited subscription program. With it, subscribers gain access to hundreds of digital comic books, graphic novels and manga. Users can start off with a 30-day trial and can continue with a $5.99 monthly subscription afterward.

David Steinberger, ComiXology’s co-founder and CEO, talks to [a]listdaily about introducing the ComiXology Unlimited program, the incredible popularity comic-themed TV shows and movies are having, and the goal of turning everyone in the world into a comic book reader.

team_DavidSteinbergerWhat would you say has contributed the most to ComiXology’s digital comic book store’s success since it launched?

I think it’s a combination of two things. One, the experience of being able to read on any device, particularly using our Guided View tech on phones. Second, the content—tremendous relationships with a bunch of great publishers that put out an amazing amount of content, and deals that put it all at people’s fingertips.

What led to offering the ComiXology Unlimited subscription service, and how does it complement the existing storefront?

One big thing: the difficulty in penetrating the hundred-thousand-ish books we have on our system. And the fact that we feel that there’s a compelling amount of content that’s very hard to deliver in an interface that people, particularly those who are new to comics, can understand and know where to start. It’s a thing we hear over and over from people.

For the core customer who buys comics already, and is maybe a faithful buyer of one or two publishers, there’s this whole other world of comics, graphic novels and manga that have been created over the last 15 years. It’s an amazing time for comic book-style storytelling, and we feel that for six bucks, core customers can broaden their horizons and experience a ton of books that people have been telling them about, but they never had a chance to pick up. Now they can explore a huge amount of content.

For the newbie, it means that they can see something that they recognize—whether that’s Scott Pilgrim, or if they watch the Attack on Titan anime, or even Joss Whedon fans with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Serenity—they see something that they’re interested in and say, “somebody told me that the Buffy TV show continued in comics. There about five trade paperbacks of Season 8 on ComiXology Unlimited, which is about forty or fifty bucks worth of content. I’m getting a 30-day trial, and it costs six bucks a month after, so I’m going to see what Joss is up to.” Then boom, they can take their time and wade through this gigantic, beautiful pool of content and discover what they’ve been missing.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8

How has ComiXology been reaching beyond the core audience?

One of the beauties of being attached to Amazon is that we can connect with a lot of different people who have shown interest—in one form or another—in comic book-connected material. Dark Horse, for instance, has a bunch of video game-related comic books, and a lot of them are part of ComiXology Unlimited. We haven’t done this yet, but we could potentially reach out and say, “We have a 30-day trial, and this video game that you bought has a ton of comic book content from Dark Horse. Why don’t you try ComiXology Unlimited and see if you like it.” Then they can look at the video game list on the homepage to find fifteen to twenty books right off the bat. That’s an incredible thing to be able to do.

Part of our marketing team’s efforts is figuring out how to connect with the right people, both on Amazon and more widely on Facebook and social media. I could go on and on with the licensed content. We have the Joss Whedon stuff, Outcast from Cinemax, Transformers, Star Trek, which is based on the new universe from the movies—and of course, the manga I mentioned before, like Attack on Titan, Scott Pilgrim and other books. There’s a lot of related material, so there are a lot of different angles where we can appeal to people who have shown an affinity for this material and introduce them to this wonderful world.

Tomb Raider Comic - Dark Horse

Is it ComiXology’s long-term goal to make all of its digital comics accessible through the Unlimited subscription program?

No, at least not right now. If we build an audience with the kind of size that creates an atmosphere where creators and publishers make so much money that they create more content for a bigger pool, that would be great. At this point, we’re more focused on how to get more people introduced to comic books. A program like that, with the size of the audience right now, would be incredibly expensive and would limit the amount of people that could come in instead of increasing it. For us, the $6 price point and 30-day trial means that people can jump in with very little risk. If they find a bunch of stuff that they love, they can afford to purchase more.

That’s where we’re starting. Do we expect it to increase and get bigger? Yes, we do, and we’ll be changing out the content month-to-month, and continue to add a ton of value, just to keep it exciting and fresh for subscribers. If we get to the point where comic books are as big as movies, TV and music, then I’d do it in a heartbeat—make a ten dollar program with access to everything. I would love that. But, if we go back to your first question, the reason we succeeded in the first place is with great content and a great experience, and that means that we understand where the industry stands and how to increase the people, and not harm the industry by being a disruptor. It would not be good for the comic book industry right now to disrupt through making every book available.

If we can get there, that would be amazing. That would mean we succeeded, and that tens of millions of people are reading comic books, and that would be an incredible feat. ComiXology would have succeeded in its goal, which is to make everybody on the planet a comic, graphic novel or manga fan.

What about offering classic issues to promote the program, like Amazing Fantasy #15, where Spider-man first appeared, or Detective Comics #27, which introduced Batman?

That would be great. I would love to have something like that, but of course, the problem is that they’re not written with modern sensibilities. While it’s fun to read them, and we have them for sale on ComiXology, I don’t know how many people it would appeal to. It’s fun as an educational exercise, especially for core fans, and the issues are relatively inexpensive on our site. The first Spider-man is about $1.99 and often gets discounted to 99 cents. So, I encourage people who are interested to check out the site. We [with Unlimited] focus mostly on stuff that’s fairly modern in sensibility, and I think it’s a second golden age of comics right now in terms of the maturity in writing, storytelling and artwork.


Has the recent popularity of comic book-themed movies and TV shows impacted the growth of ComiXology’s audience?

I think it’s been super-positive because any time people are thinking about the material and getting interested in comic books is a huge plus. I think The Walking Dead TV show was extraordinarily positive for us. Then, anytime Marvel or anyone else does a movie, there’s a tremendous amount of interest, and comic books get to coast off the marketing work that the movies and TV shows are doing. DC, for instance, did a really nice thing where a lot of their TV show actors tweeted out a code for the new Rebirth book, and it got a lot of people to the site to download that book, which I think is really exciting. So, we have to capitalize on that to try to get people back in the door. I think ComiXology Unlimited is a great way for people interested to start up.

Civil War 2

And I think Marvel and DC are getting much better at aligning their editorial calendars towards the movies. Marvel has Civil War 2 out right now. I sometimes feel like it should be even bigger when you see the huge diversity of audience at the conventions. Sometimes, in the core market and comic book stores, the diversity of audience doesn’t meet with the diversity of content. It does at ComiXology because we have infinite shelf space, and you can create your own comics that have no publisher, and we can put together a program like this—where any geek-oriented person who is into pop culture can find a lot of amazing material on ComiXology Unlimited that’s fiercely diverse with wide-ranging content.

I’m very bullish that the embrace of media, cosplay, and being a fan continues to bleed into comics. I think that’s one of the core drivers of growth for the industry over the last few years.

Are you surprised by how much comic books have grown across different media since ComiXology started?

I’m not surprised at all. As a comic book fan, I think we all had this fantasy of everybody seeing what we saw in books, instead of having some preconceived notion about what a comic book meant and what it was like to read it. I think the TV shows and movies really help. Even before us, the newest movie runs started with Spider-man and X-Men in the early 2000s. ComiXology came into digital in 2009, and a lot of it had already percolated into movies and such. And DC has done an amazing job on TV. They’re killing it with all these shows.

To me, it’s not a surprise, because these are rich characters with faults and dreams. They embody a lot of hope that people connect to. Obviously, it’s a very encouraging time for any thirty, forty or fifty-something nerd who has read comics their whole lives to now see everybody embracing what it means to them.

What’s funny is that you have some shows—and Attack on Titan is a good example—that make people say, “What? It’s a comic book? What do you mean? It’s a Japanese anime show.” And you say, “No, it was manga first.” Now I can point to ComiXology Unlimited and tell them to try out the trial and read Attack on Titan. Also, by the way, here are a bunch of other Kodansha [published] books that you can try out, some of which are also anime. Find the source material; it’s amazing.

I’m grateful that we’ve made the company in this time. It’s a fun time to be part of it.

Attack on Titan

 

SuperData: ‘Dark Souls 3’ Crushes April 2016 Game Sales

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SuperData provided video game sales numbers for April 2016, and here are the latest details.

Digital game sales increased by five percent over April 2015, totaling $6.2 billion dollars. “Digital console again sees the fastest growth of any segment for both revenue (up 23 percent year-over-year) and audience (up 15 percent year-over-year),” said SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen. “Mobile, MMO and PC also show YoY growth in revenue and monthly active users as digital full game downloads and free-to-play games take market share from physical games.”

He also noted a shift in casual gamers “from social desktop to mobile devices,” with a slight decline in Social Gaming (by ten percent) as a result.

But perhaps the month’s biggest success story was Bandai Namco’s Dark Souls III, the final chapter in the horror action series, where players control a knight battling against massive enemies in a dark fantasy world. The game managed to take first place in PC game sales, earning an estimated $45 million in its first month of release, which is an $18 million boost over console sales.

“This is the first Dark Souls title to perform better on PC than console, demonstrating that both Bandai Namco and From Software put the lessons learned from Dark Souls I and II to good use,” noted van Dreunen. “This time around, a PC-optimized version was prepared in advance for the game’s dual-platform release, providing PC users with improved controls and graphics from the get-go. The title’s PC success makes up for its failure to earn a top-ten grossing rank on Digital Console.”

On the mobile side, Supercell’s Clash Royale and Clash of Clans found a secure spot in the top five, with Monster Strike in first place. “Supercell keeps printing money with both its Clash games earning over $100 million a month,” said van Dreunen. “Following a spectacular release month, earnings for Clash Royale show first signs of normalization as revenues more closely resemble those for the firm’s other title, Clash of Clans. Both grossed a little over $100 million last month, with combined earnings still higher than before the new game’s release.

“So far, Supercell’s new title has managed to add to the company’s bottom line, rather than cannibalize the success of its existing titles.” However, he did note a drop-off from when Clash of Clans earned over $5 million a day, eventually settling to under $4 million.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III continued to be the top seller in digital console titles, with EA Sports’ FIFA 16, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division, Rockstar’s still-selling Grand Theft Auto V and Dark Souls III rounding out the top five. Meanwhile, League of Legends and World of Warcraft still ruled the MMO charts, across free-to-play and pay-to-play, respectively.

As for eSports, van Dreunen noted that the “entry of broadcasting networks and non-endemic brands raise eSports market to $892 million.

“Hoping to connect with a hard-to-reach demographic of young adult males, advertisers have warmed up to competitive gaming recently, and the global audience is on track to grow to 214 million by the end of the year,” he continued.

He also noted the success of Overwatch, attaining 5.4 million viewer hours on Twitch within its first 48 hours of release, which beats the previous record of 4.2 million attained by Fallout 4 in its first two days of release last year.

Steve Case Discusses The Role Of VR In ‘The Third Wave’

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Steve Case, an AOL founder and now currently the top executive at Revolution Ventures, has a new book called The Third Wave. In it, he explores the Third Wave of the Internet, and how entrepreneurs from around the globe will transform everything from health, education, transportation, energy, and food using this technology.

Case was instrumental in laying the foundation for the First Wave of the Internet, which became mainstream (in part) thanks to America Online (AOL). The Second Wave saw companies like Google and Facebook build on top of the Internet to create search and social networking capabilities, while apps like Snapchat and Instagram leverage the smartphone revolution.

The Third Wave promises to change our lives beyond social and communication. And both virtual reality and augmented reality will be part of this latest paradigm shift. Case talks to [a]listdaily about emerging technologies, and the globalization of entrepreneurship, in this exclusive interview.

stevecase - CopyWhat similarities do you see with companies laying the groundwork for virtual reality social interactions to the early days of the Internet?

We first looked at VR probably 30 years ago. VR is an example of something that we will see more of in the Third Wave, which was an interesting initial technology. It just took some time to be refined. The progress we’re seeing now is significant, but I’m sure there will still be a number of years ahead before it really gets mainstream adoption. VR is an example of something that we saw in that First Wave, where things generally took a while to get to the point where they really were ready for prime time .

We did a partnership at AOL in 1986 with George Lucas’ Lucasfilm Corporation to create the first graphical multiplayer online game called Habitat. It was at the time for a Commodore 64 computer with 300-bit modem. It was pretty basic and Lucasfilm had the tech for graphics. Even back then you could see the potential for the idea, but it’s taken some time to make those ideas a reality in a way that lots of people can access them.

What role do you see VR playing in the short term now that we are seeing huge companies like Facebook and Google investing a lot of money in this technology?

It’s significant because there’s now a critical mass of companies, whether it be Facebook or Samsung or others, that are doing a number of different things in a significant kind of way toward really tipping the scale and introducing this technology to a large audience. It’s also great to see one of the themes in the Third Wave is that interesting tech companies are emerging in places that would surprise people. For example, Magic Leap is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It shows that entrepreneurship is regionalizing and that’s a positive.

Samsung has over 1 million Gear VRs and Google over 5 million Cardboards out there. What role do you see mobile VR playing in this new ecosystem?

With Samsung, my guess is it will take a few fits and starts in terms of tweaking the products, figuring out the right way to get the price points in order, and the right way to create the platforms with a broad range of developers and their ecosystems before something gets broad adoption. But clearly what’s happened in the last year would suggest that after three decades of talking about VR, this upcoming decade will see a shift from it being a concept to a reality, from being just a vision to being something that really is being executed. My guess is some of that will be applications that are consumer related, and some of those will be more enterprise related.

We’re also already seeing at the business level, augmented or mixed reality being used by companies today with devices like Microsoft HoloLens and Epson Movario. What role do you see that technology playing in the Third Wave and the future of the Internet?

It’s going to be extremely important, and [AR] has the potential to be even more important than the VR side of things, particularly in some of the institutional enterprise applications in healthcare for example, or a lot of different places where initial pilots are being tested out. It could have a very significant impact. The areas that are ripe for significant disruption in the Third Wave are healthcare, education, and transportation. So exactly how they come to market, exactly which ones are successful, exactly how they continue to evolve, time will tell, but I have no doubt that they will be important.

thethirdwave

Magic Leap is based in Florida. What are the benefits of having startups and entrepreneurs create things outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, which is a bit removed from the real world?

Yeah, I think that’s fair, and to be candid, I’m right now sitting in Silicon Valley, having spent the day at Google because they have an initiative called Google for Entrepreneurs that supports entrepreneurs in cities around the country like Raleigh-Durham, Minneapolis, and Chicago. I was a judge at their Google Demo Days, trying to expose entrepreneurs from these emerging tech cities to investors in the Silicon Valley area. I did a talk at Google headquarters, so I have great respect for Silicon Valley. I continue to be impressed by the pace of innovation, and the fearless culture of the willingness to invest in what some people think are crazy ideas that turn out to be great, change-the-world ideas. I’m actually bullish on Silicon Valley, but at the same time, I think there is not enough recognition that there are great entrepreneurs building great companies all across the country, and indeed all across the world.

Part of my argument with this book—and my Rise of the Rest initiative that we’ve been doing for the last several years through bus tours around the country to a couple dozen cities—is to shine a spotlight on the great entrepreneurs building great things, and trying to drive more capital towards them. My guess is it will not just lift up some of these communities and drive more job creation, economic growth, and general civic vitality, but also will be the source of a lot of innovation. People who are closest to the problem are most likely to come up with the right solution.

Are there examples of this in companies you’ve invested in?

We’ve invested in a couple of companies doing some interesting things with solar in rural villages in Africa. They’re basically addressing the fact that there is no electricity grid in much of Africa, and that’s not something that people sitting in Silicon Valley are aware of or have a personal understanding of. In the Third Wave, some of the innovation is in agriculture technology—AgTech is real common in Silicon Valley—but I’ll bet a lot of innovation comes in places like Louisville, which has a farming culture, or St. Louis where Monsanto is based—the largest AgTech company in the world.

How will this impact the future of startups?

People will realize that innovation and expertise are already coming from more broadly dispersed partnerships with some of the incumbents in the Third Wave. Many of those incumbents are not in California, New York, or Massachusetts, even though last year 75 percent of venture capital went to California, New York, and Massachusetts. It will result in more insight to create more interesting companies that have more impact in terms of different products and services that can improve our lives and will, in the process, lift up more communities and drive more job creation. That’s not to say that ten years from now Silicon Valley won’t still be great. In fact, it probably will continue to be the leader of the pack. But you’ll see a broadening of, and a diffusion of, innovation both regionally within the United States and globally around the world.

Google And Levi’s Team Up For Connected Jean Jackets

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Designed specifically for device-savvy bicycle commuters, Levi’s Commuter Trucker jacket is the first wearable to utilize Google’s Project Jacquard technology. Woven with conductive threads, the denim jacket features a detachable, electronic tag that houses all of its electronics and connects to a user’s Android device via Bluetooth.

With a wave of the hand, a user will be able to perform tasks such as access Google Maps, play music, or ignore your boss’ phone calls, as seen in the latest promotional video.

The Levi’s Commuter line of clothing and accessories is specifically geared for those who get around with a bicycle—with features such as reflective elements, temperature control and even a higher back on their pants to avoid cracks. (And we don’t mean on the pavement.) The Commuter x Jacquard jacket will be the first piece of wearable technology in the company’s 143-year history. The partnership with Google was announced last year, but it wasn’t until the Google I/O keynote that details emerged—partly because Levi’s didn’t know what they were going to do yet.

commuter jacket

“Last year we left it quite open [what the product might be]; it could have been jeans or smart pants,” Ivan Poupyrev, technical program lead at Google’s Advanced Technology and Products told Forbes. “But what we’ve now got is a functional and fashionable garment in the Commuter Jacket, where technology is serving a very clear purpose.”

Levi’s Is Only The Beginning

Jacquard’s conductive fibers are compatible with any industrial loom, and the technology was designed with creativity in mind. Clothing is just the beginning, opening up such possibilities as an interactive carpet, stuffed animals or anything covered in fabric. “Everyday objects such as clothes and furniture can be transformed into interactive surfaces,” Google says on the official Project Jacquard website.

Levi’s is Google’s first Jacquard partner, but the platform will be open to third-party designers and app developers—just like Google’s smartwatch line Android Wear. Any designer of textile-based products will be able to incorporate the technology into their products without the need to be a tech expert. Intel made a similar partnership for The Met Gala this year, creating a gown that interacted in real-time with Twitter reactions.

The Levi’s Commuter x Jacquard jacket will be available in Spring 2017.

‘RiddleVerse’ Will Reward Clever Minds With Cash Prizes

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Today, Versyv unveiled its new and unique skill-based contest: RiddleVerse. Part game and part cash prize contest, RiddleVerse challenges players to answer custom written riddles in the shortest amount of time, but these aren’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill riddles. Inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, they’re presented in metered rhyme. Players can compete daily to win part of a $5,000 prize pool. First prize is $2,000, second prize is $1,000, the third is $500 and so on.

Versyv CEO, Andrew Gladney, has a personal hand in the creation of every riddle, guaranteeing that there are no esoteric answers, and its subjects are widely known in American culture. He further states that each riddle uses regular English and that the rhyming verse “adds more focus and makes it more compelling.”

RiddleVerse will be accessible through the web and an iOS app this summer, with an Android app to release sometime after launch. Andrew Gladney and Versyv CMO, Dan Norcia, sit down with [a]listdaily to discuss the creation and promotion of the platform. Of course, they began by first providing a riddle to tease our brains.

“A dozen brothers in a ring;
Among them dwells but one changeling.
Though ever and anon he gains,
The least of them he yet remains.”

Andrew Gladney, Versyv CEO
Andrew Gladney, Versyv CEO

What is RiddleVerse, and what inspired it?

Andrew: RiddleVerse came into being as a sort of literary pursuit that developed over years. I was a voracious reader in my childhood, read a lot of English poetry, and studied English in college. So, I developed an affinity for rhyming verses. At one point in time, I became very interested in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote a series of riddles in his book, The Hobbit, which are asked back-and-forth between Gollum and Bilbo. These riddles are of a particular genre. We call them “riddles in rhyming verse,” and I think Tolkien set the initial construct for these—a riddle describing something, but written eloquently. That’s what differentiates from the, “what’s black and white and red all over?”-type of riddles more Americans are culturally familiar with.

At some point, I began to craft a few of my own. The hobby became almost an obsession, and I kept writing until I had a big collection of riddles. Over time, I got to thinking about how to share them with the world, and what sort of platform I could put them on. I started with the idea of publishing them in a book, but with the high-tech world we all live in, people advised me that it would be better for an app. Different elements were added until we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do with these riddles. It’s such a great experience to read them and try to guess them that we thought we would “gamify” it, and put it into a platform where hundreds of thousands of will be able to enjoy them and compete against each other for prizes.

Dan Norcia, Versyv CMO
Dan Norcia, Versyv CMO

How will you separate RiddleVerse from regular riddle apps, and how have you been promoting awareness of the experience?

Dan: We have a few different points of contact with potential customers; one is working through our PR firm, TriplePoint. We also have some partnership plans in the works, and we’re having a few conversations with some distribution sources. We’re planning on doing some fairly aggressive performance marketing and use all the social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.

That’s the plan. We think there’s going to be a fair amount of virality behind this because it’s such a unique concept and idea. There really isn’t anything out there like this. So, we think that once people become interested, they’re going to share it with their friends. The cash prizes don’t hurt, either.

Andrew: We’ve searched hard to find any game that’s like this. It [RiddleVerse] really is stylistically different. Our riddles have a very consistent brand and feel. They’re in really tight, metered verses. So, they’re very different from other riddles you might find out there, which are a little more simple and not as engaging. When we come out, and our riddles are seen by people, there’s going to be a distinct brand and identity to the RiddleVerse riddles that will help us rise above the white noise of other trivia and riddle games.

Are there long-term concerns about content, since you essentially “burn” each riddle you publish?

Andrew: Yes, it was pointed out to us, during the formative months of RiddleVerse, that we had a scale issue. As we keep on going, maybe the game gets more popular, and we’ll increase the number of contests per day. It quickly became apparent to us that we had to solve the riddle scale production issue. To that end, I reached out to a couple hundred people who were interested in being writers. Then I spent a month and a half working with them, and that constitutes our external writing team. We now have between twenty to thirty writers submitting works to me, which I read and edit to make sure they’re on brand.

Dan: What happens with the riddles, after they’ve been in the cash contests, is that they are circulated into the free-to-play version of the game. We’ll be doing three contests per day at 4 o’clock, 5 o’clock and 6 o’clock Pacific. People who don’t want to pony up the cash for the cash prize contest are free to enjoy all the riddles in our inventory once they’ve gone through that process.

There’s a premium buy-in for the cash prize contest?

Dan: Everyone who enters the contest has to buy entry. Each entry for the cash prize contest is one coin, and coins can be purchased from RiddleVerse.

Obviously, the cash prize is a great incentive, but how else will you encourage players to participate in the premium contest?

Dan: A lot of the game mechanics are very similar [to the free-to-play version]. If you’re playing in the free-to-play section, you can still gain badges and achievements. But, similar to Candy Crush, there’s a timer for your next riddle. There are three available, each with a 20-minute recharge timer. So, you either have to wait for the next riddle or pay a coin to see it immediately. But if you’re going to pay a coin for a riddle, you might as well join the cash prize contest.

How difficult is it to come up with riddles in the Internet Age?

Andrew: You’ve stumbled upon one of our great adjectives that we use with our messaging: “unGoogleable.” All of our riddles are unGoogleable. They’re all original compositions by me and our writing team that no one knows the answers to. We built an encrypted software called The RiddleVault, and everyone submits their riddles there. That’s where the riddles are generated from once they’ve been marked for publication.

I’ve taken the first lines from some of my riddles, typed it into Google, and it came back with completely incoherent and unhelpful results. Whereas, if you typed in the first line of a Tennyson or T.S. Eliot poem, it would pop right up and identify who had written it. In this Internet Age, we think that’s going to be one of the drawing points. There really isn’t any way to shortcut any of the riddles. They’re unGoogleable and unWikiable. You just have to use your brain.

And you’ll be selling clues to these riddles?

Dan: Yes, there will be three clues available for purchase in every contest. The first clue costs three coins, the second is five, and the third costs seven. Or you can use the “Knowledge is Power” button to purchase all three clues for twelve coins.

How will the mobile app work?

Dan: It’ll send push notifications a few minutes prior to every cash contest. It’ll also alert you when the leaderboards are updated and when the contests have closed. We want to make sure that people remain engaged and are notified of when our cash prize contests are.

Andrew: The reason we have the big cash prize at the top of the hour is because if one person does the riddle earlier in the day, and another person gets it at a different time, that could lead to collaboration and collusion. They could solve it, then go on to someone else’s account to solve it at a much faster time. So, it has to be at the same time all the time for the cash contest. Everyone has to see the riddle at the exact same starting time, and then they’re in a fair playing field.

So, what is the answer to the riddle?

Andrew: If you’re looking at it on paper, here’s how it works:

  • “A dozen brothers in a ring,” think twelve things in a circular or repetitive pattern.
  • “Among them dwells but one changeling,” only one of them ever changes.
  • “Though ever and anon he gains,” every once in a while, he gets bigger.
  • “The least of them he yet remains,” he’s still the smallest of the twelve, even when he gets bigger.

After elucidating all of that, you can see that the answer is February, the shortest month of the year, even with a leap year.

We love the “ah-ha!” moment. The minute people get the answer, they say, “Oh, of course!” and that’s how we like to try to keep our riddles—in the domain of cultural concepts that are shared by all, but certainly not pop culture as a lead category. Our riddles cover a wide spectrum of subjects. Every riddle that comes out is easy for people to read, engage and at least understand the words. We try to make something with a lot of literary excellence, and a high standard and brand of meter and rhyme, but addresses subjects everyone knows.

Sample Riddle Answer

Wargaming Rolls Out With Dark Horse

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Wargaming, the company behind free-to-play hits such as World of Warships, teamed up with Dark Horse Comics last month for a special series based on the highly popular World of Tanks games.

Titled World of Tanks: Roll Out!, the limited edition series will focus on events that unfold during the summer of 1944, with comic book veterans Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra taking part in the production.

[a]listdaily recently had a chance to chat with Wargaming America’s director of marketing, Erik Whiteford, and business development manager, Bryan Nunes, about what to expect from the product and partnership, and the potential for new stories to be told in the future.

What prompted Wargaming to produce a comic book series? Was there another side of the World of Tanks story you were looking to tell?

Erik: We are always looking for interesting and unique ways to tell stories about tanks and create a deeper connection to lore of tanks–especially as they relate to WWII. A graphic novel is a great way of doing this as this genre of storytelling was very popular during the war and in the post-war era. When the opportunity to work with Dark Horse, Garth Ennis, and Carlos Ezquerra presented itself we knew that that stars had aligned and this was the perfect partnership.

For us, it’s not so much about telling another side of the story, but rather accessing another medium to celebrate and relive the lore. Many of our players are true tankophiles and love anything that has to do with tanks, so we felt that creating a graphic novel based on WWII tanks would be well received and celebrated by our players. We want to deliver an opening, to become engrossed within a story that speaks true to the nature of our passion. Something we felt, would extend our WoT brand and give any type of person, whether that be a Gamer, Comic Enthusiast, history buff and all the in-between, an engaging piece of artistic work, crafted by the genius minds of Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra.

World

Did Dark Horse Comics come to you with the idea for a comic book series, or did you approach them?

Bryan: Originally, we reached to Dark Horse for licensing products and to potentially have them publish art/interactive books. We did discuss the possibility of creating a comic book for WoT as one of the options. In the end, we just waited for the right opportunity and right story to tell as we want this endeavor to ring true with our players.

How were you able to snag such top-form talent for the World of Tanks comic?

Bryan: It was during PAX East 2015 in the middle of the worst storm Boston has ever seen: A PR guy, a marketing guy and a business development guy walk into a bar. One thing led to another, and BOOM, Garth Ennis’s is working on the WoT comic. The detailed answer is…

Alex Brewer (senior PR manager), a comic book PR veteran, was passionate about creating a comic for World of Tanks since he started at Wargaming America and actually came in with the connection to Dark Horse comics. Thor Parker (marketing coordinator for Wargaming’s Chicago office) has worked with Garth Ennis in the past from his time at NYC’s legendary Midtown Comics. Thor kept a great relationship with him, so when he reached out to Garth and described the opportunity and told him about Wargaming; Garth’s interest was stimulated. At that point, Garth described to Thor a story he had been wanting to write, about the British Cromwell units that entered Normandy a month after D-Day. He said he had been compiling research for some time but never got around to digging deeper and writing it. After seeing World of Tanks, his motivation for the story returned

The fact that he had already wanted to write a story that fixated on different historical National Tanks, was incredible luck.

How many issues will the series be spread across?

Bryan: It is a five issue graphic novel series following story-arc throughout the five issues. Every issue will be distributed both digitally and physically at the same time/day of release.

World 2

If successful, do you see Wargaming returning to the comic book front for other franchises? A World of Warships comic, perhaps?

Erik: Perhaps. Right now the focus is on the World of Tanks: Roll Out project. But we are always looking for unique and creative ways to bring our players and fans interesting stories and content.

What do you think about the free-to-play gaming market as it stands? 

Erik: We’re very bullish on the free-to-play category. It continues to be a very successful model on PC and mobile and we are really excited about the growth we are seeing on console. We are also focused on distinguishing our model (call it “Free-to-Win” or “Premium Free-to-Play”) from other models that are more in the “Pay-to-Win” models, as they really offer very different experiences for players. We believe as more and more players experience Premium Free-to-Play games, they will better understand the differences between the models. In the end, our focus is on providing great value for the time and money our players commit to World of Tanks and our other products.

Why Digital Video Is The New Display Ad

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Social media video consumption is on the rise, with Snapchat daily views reaching 10 billion, Facebook reaching 8 billion and YouTube daily views pushing 5 billion, respectively, as of last October. Social platforms generate most of their revenue from native ads and will continue to dominate overall native ad spending through 2021, according to research conducted by Business Insider. A study conducted by eMarketer predicts that 72 percent of leading brands intend to invest in digital ads through YouTube over the next 12 months, according to those surveyed.

social media eMarketing Survey“Video will be playing a central role for us on social in 2016, based on the level of engagement and positive brand lift that we saw with the video campaigns that we ran in 2015,” Linda Duncombe, global head of digital, social and content marketing at Citi said in the new eMarketer report, Video Ads in Social Media: With a Full Slate of Ad Products, the Social Properties Take Aim At TV.

The latest advertising push comes in the form of autoplay ads, a service offered by major social networks including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. YouTube, in particular, has been courting marketers with Google Preferred, matching brands with popular YouTube channels frequented by millennial viewers.

Why millennials? Although marketing to the audience is nothing new, millennials are 112 percent more likely to share online video ads compared to other age groups, according to an Unruly study. During NewFronts, Buzzfeed announced a new analytic tool called POUND (Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion) that traces sharing across multiple social networks.

YouTube is confident in their millennial influence, and for good reason. “We reach more 18-49-year-olds during primetime than the top 10 TV shows combined,” YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki said during this year’s Digital NewFronts.

Calculating actual video views can be tricky, with Snapchat videos considered “viewed” as soon as it renders on the user’s screen and Facebook videos are counted if they have been played for at least three seconds. LinkedIn autoplays YouTube videos on a user’s feed, as well, which can inflate statistics considerably. Regardless of a lack of continuity in what constitutes a “view,” this data remains valuable to marketers who want to reach that coveted 13-to-34-year-old demographic.

In order to deliver these statistics, Instagram started showing view counts on its videos in February. It also extended the length of video ads from 30 to 60 seconds so that TV ads could seamlessly transition to social media. In the first quarter of 2016, almost 60 percent of all ad impressions on Instagram came from video ads, which nearly doubled the percentage in Q4 2015, according to a new study by Brand Networks.

As social media timelines fill up with ads, it is critical for brands to connect with their audiences in a unique and engaging way to cut through all that noise. Brand stories have returned to “survival of the fittest,” as creative director Joey Jones explained during this year’s [a]list summit.

“Transmedia [has been] fighting for its place for many years now.” he observed. “I think that can really find its nest, its home and really be able to tell stories that cross many different platforms.”

[a]live: The Emergence Of Predictive Analytics

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When marketers think of bots, they usually shudder. Bots have been the bane of the display ad market for some time, costing about $7.6 billion this year according to the Association of National Advertisers with ad fraud.

But bots that mimic user activity and Facebook Messenger chat bots are really just the beginning of something even bigger—an evolutionary leap of sorts has made it possible for machines to begin learning. With so much data available out there and conversations occurring, we finally we have the ability to make sense of this data like never before, which we can use to hyper-target consumers.

Join [a]insight’s Kai Mildenberger and host Andrew Volpe as they discuss what the future holds for this radical shift in technology in this week’s [a]live.

‘Battlefield 1’ Xbox One Branding Won’t Affect Game’s Success

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A couple of weeks ago, Electronic Arts premiered the trailer for its upcoming shooter, Battlefield 1, which takes players to a World War I setting, instead of the futuristic world Battlefield 4 took place in. Fans went wild over it, the trailer has gained more than 32 million views and 1.5 million likes—a record for the video game franchise. For perspective, the original Battlefield 4 teaser video (which premiered in 2013) has about 1.6 million views to date, while the giant 17 minute “Fishing in Baku” gameplay reveal peaked at 19 million views. Meanwhile, Battlefield Hardline‘s announcement trailer pulled in 3 million views.

But some fans have noticed that the trailer has Xbox One branding on it, indicating that the console’s owners will get to play the game first through the EA Access program. However, EA affirms that it shouldn’t be too much concern, as Battlefield 1 will be just as accessible–and enjoyable –on PlayStation 4 and PC as it will be on Microsoft’s console.

Speaking during an earnings call earlier this week, EA CEO Andrew Wilson explained that, despite the Xbox brand being present in the popular trailer, PlayStation 4 owners won’t be turned off by its branding. “This is a game for PlayStation as much as it is for Xbox as much as it is for PC,” he noted. “I don’t see any limiters to our ability to reach a really broad audience of gamers across the whole shooter spectrum.”

Console makers often make deals with third-party developers for exclusive content for games. For instance, Sony struck a multi-year deal with Activision last year to bring exclusive content to its Call of Duty games for PlayStation 4, following a similar deal Activision previously had with Microsoft that lasted for many years on Xbox consoles.

Even with this content, however, the game should be a huge success on other platforms, noted Wilson. “Our console partners want to stand right next to the biggest and best games in the industry. Typically, what we see is that just aids awareness. It aids awareness whether you’re a PC gamer or an Xbox gamer or a PlayStation gamer.”

As for why Microsoft and Sony go after exclusive content deals, Wilson noted that it drives “disproportionate awareness around the game as it relates to their particular console.

“But what we have seen–and we’ve seen the analytics against it–is if you’re a PlayStation gamer, you do not reject it because it is brought to you by a potential console partner,” he continued. “You understand deeply that it’s also available on your console. And what we get is just a multiplier effect of greater awareness in the marketplace.”

A version of the EA Access program (called Origin Access) is available on PC, so there is a chance that PC subscribers will be able to play Battlefield 1 before it officially releases. Additionally, those that pre-order the Deluxe Edition of the game will be allowed early access. But everyone can enjoy Battlefield 1, regardless of platform, when it releases on October 21st.