Hey Baby

The following article was published in yesterday's NY Times. I was fascinated to read about the author's sentiments to the situations in the game, which in my mind could only come from playing such a game vs just reading about it. At TGA, we often talk about the impact of gaming medium, but this was a very interesting approach to raising awareness to a common social behavior & its potential outcomes...depending on who you run into. It would be interesting if there was a measurement engine to see what scenarios play out most often and to get a demographic analysis of our population given the situation in the game.

June 8, 2010

Video Game Review

A Woman with the Firepower to Silence Those Street Wolves

By SETH SCHIESEL

I have never been sexually harassed. Walking down the street, I have never had a stranger say anything suggestive or complimentary about my appearance (though one night last summer a homeless man in Midtown Manhattan did sneer “Nice get-up” as I passed by in yellow shorts and a bright blue polyester shirt with a huge collar).

So when I first tried Hey Baby, a new Web game that takes aim at catcalling and its practitioners, I thought it was not meant for me. Developed by the New York artist and producer Suyin Looui, Hey Baby at first appears to be a self-consciously ridiculous revenge fantasy for women who have felt oppressed or threatened by sexual attention or commentary from men. Think of “Death Wish” with a woman walking home from work in the role ofCharles Bronson.

Yet over several hours my initial alienation and annoyance gave way to a swelling appreciation of Hey Baby, not as a game but as a provocative, important work of interactive art as social commentary. The people who should really play Hey Baby are men, even if you have never said a word to a woman you didn’t know on the street.

The game, playable free at heybabygame.com, is quite simple. As in any first-person shooter game, you use the mouse to look around your surroundings, and the keyboard to move, while holding a big gun. In this case your surroundings are a small cityscape that appears intended to be generically American (though several of the storefronts are drawn directly from small businesses on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which happens to be my neighborhood).

In most first-person shooters, your enemies — the things you shoot and kill — are zombies or aliens or terrorists. In Hey Baby, men approach you and say something, and you can either blow them away, leaving tombstones inscribed with their affronts, or you can say, “Thank you, have a great day,” and the man turns around and leaves in a cloud of floating pink hearts.

The men may say something like, “I don’t mean any disrespect, but you’re beautiful,” “Can I help you, miss?” “Excuse me, do you have a boyfriend?” or “God bless you.”

Or they may say something like “I like your bounce, baby,” or yell obscenities and other unprintable comments, or threaten imminent assault.

There are other women also walking around, but you cannot shoot them. You also cannot shoot the men until they actually say something to you.

At first I found myself somewhat offended. In Hey Baby a man says, “Wow, you’re so beautiful,” and that is license to kill him. It should be obvious that a video game in which you play a man who can shoot only women would be culturally unthinkable, no matter the circumstances.

But as I played on, I came to realize that it is equally unrealistic and absurd to suppose that saying, “Thank you, have a great day” is going to defuse and mollify a man who screams in your face, “I want to rape you,” with an epithet added for good measure.

And that is the point of Hey Baby. The men cannot ever actually hurt you, but no matter what you do, they keep on coming, forever. The game never ends. I found myself throwing up my hands and thinking, “Well what am I supposed to do?” Which is, of course, what countless women think every day.

So where is the line between saying “Hey, sweetheart” and “Baby, I could blow your back out”? Is there one?

I doubt any noninteractive art form could have given me as visceral an appreciation for what many women go through as part of their day-to-day lives. Just as I have never been sexually harassed, I have never accosted a strange woman on the street. After playing Hey Baby, I’m certainly not about to start.

Quantifiable Lift With The Addition of Social Media to Advertising

A recent joint study from Nielsen and Facebook, titled "Advertising Effectiveness: Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression," analyzed survey data from more than 800,000 Facebook users with regard to more than 125 Facebook ad campaigns from 70 brand advertisers. The report provides quantifiable data that can be mapped to trusted advertising benchmarks: Ad Recall, Brand Awareness, and Purchase Intent.

Studies have shown that consumers trust their friends and peers more than anyone else in making a purchase decision. The authors acknowledge that it's critical to understand advertising not just in terms of "paid" media, but also in terms of how "earned" media (passed along or shared among friends) and social advocacy contribute to campaigns.

Percent of Respondents Trusting "Completely or Somewhat" in Selected Forms of Information
Form of Information	% of Respondents
Recommendations from people known	90%
Consumer opinions posted online	70
Brand websites	70
Editorial content	69
Brand sponsorship	64
TV	62
Newspaper	61
Magazines	59
Billboards/outdoor advertising	55
Radio	55
Opted-in Emails	54
Ads before movies	52
Ads fromSearch engine results	41
Online video ads	37
Online banner ads	33
Text ads on mobile phones	24
Source: The Nielsen Company, April 2009

The study took a close look at 14 Facebook ad campaigns that incorporated the "Become A Fan" engagement unit and sliced the effectiveness results three different ways, by each of the types of ads available on Facebook:

· Lift from a standard "Homepage (Engagement) Ad"

· Lift from an ad that featured social context or "Homepage ads with Social Context"

· Lift from "Organic Ads," news-feed stories that are sent to friends of users who engage with advertising on a brand

For those Homepage engagement ads at the top of the marketing funnel, awareness increased on average by 4% between exposed and control audiences. Purchase intent also increased on average by 2% following ad exposure on Facebook.

Variance Between Control Group to Homepage Ad
Benchmark	% Lift Change vs. Control
Ad recall	10%
Awareness	4
Purchase intent	2
Source: the Nielsen Company/Facebook, April 2010

Comparing the responses of those users who had seen ads with social context against users who saw ads with no social context from the same campaign, there is a measurable lift in lift.

Relative "Lift" between Homepage and Homepage with Social Context Added
Benchmark	Homepage Exposure Lift	Homepage with Social Advocacy
Ad Recall	10%	16%
Awareness	4	8
Purchase intent	2	8
Source: the Nielsen Company/Facebook, April 2010

While exposure to the homepage ad itself increased ad recall, those users exposed to both the "paid ad" and the organic impression remembered the ad at three times the rate of those just exposed to the paid homepage ad.

We saw a similar effect for the other two metrics evaluated. Homepage ads increased awareness of the product or brand by 4% on average, but exposure to both homepage ads and organic ads increased awareness by a delta of 13% versus the control group. Exposure to organic impressions also impacted purchase intent as well, increasing the impact of the ad from 2% to 8%.

Variance in Lift Between Homepage Control and Homepage Ad With Organic Context Added
Benchmark	Homepage Ad Exposure	Homepage Ad + Organic
Ad Recall	10%	30%
Awareness	4	13
Purchase intent	2	8
Source: the Nielsen Company/Facebook, April 2010

Now... That's a Great Social Loyalty Program

Pizza chain Papa John's is launching a social-media campaign at its Facebook site, called "Papa's Specialty Pizza Challenge," asking its fans to suggest a new pizza.

And in an unusual twist, the company is offering the winner of the promotion a portion of the profits from sales of the top pie, which will join the menu list at restaurants, and $1,000 to help market the pie during the month when the finalists compete for sales volume.

When people go to Facebook.com/PapaJohns, in addition to entering the toppings list they have devised, they also have to write a brief rumination of 250 words or less what makes their pizza unusual, special, or generally audacious for a chance to win. The company is judging the pies on appeal, taste, creativity of the name and the quality of the back story on how the contestant dreamed up the pie.

While the company says all entries will be featured in a gallery on Papa John's Facebook page, the company's president, "Papa" John Schnatter, and associates will choose 10 semifinalists, whose recipes will be cooked and tasted-tested by Schnatter and other judges at Papa John's Louisville, Ky., headquarters.

The top three recipes will be showcased on the chain's menu through August. The highest-selling pizza wins, and the winner gets free Papa John's pizza for life and an appearance in a "Papa's in the House" TV commercial.

A Papa John's spokesperson explains that the contest winner gets 1% of sales, up to $10,000 for the 12 month period that his or her pizza is offered following the contest. The winner also gets free pizza for life (based on 50 years of pizza at $480 per year). "The winning pie will actually become a part of Papa John's specialty menu, but the start date is yet to be determined," says the spokesperson.

As for the $1,000 that the finalists get to promote their pizzas during August, "They can use the cash to create viral videos in support of their pizza, buy advertising, rent a billboard and so on, or just keep the money and hope the popularity of their pizza catches on in other ways," says the spokesperson. This is the first time in company history that Papa John's has asked consumers to name and create a pizza and share the story of their pizza.

Last May, the company launched the "Papa's In the House" campaign, whose central conceit is that Schnatter might actually show up to homes as the delivery person. The ads have him driving a replica of the Chevy Camaro he purportedly sold to fund his initial foray into pizza. The ads, via Z Group, use real customers and are shot around Louisville.

The international chain is the third-largest pizza company globally, after Domino's and Pizza Hut.

Some TV Viewer Loss Blamed On Video Games

Television's prime time is video games' prime time.

Television viewer erosion is the result of a fractionalized viewership -- which is due, in large part, to cable viewing and Internet usage. But a lot of video game usage is also contributing, especially in the evening hours between 7 and 11 p.m.

A new study by the Nielsen Games measuring division says Xbox 360 usage, for example, hits nearly 25% between 7 and 11 p.m, with men around 23% and women's usage at around 17%.

Xbox 360 users are comprised of 45% 18- to-34-year-olds, 31% 12- to-17-year-olds, 13% 2- to-11-year-olds, 7% 35- to-44-year-olds and 3% 45- to-54-year-olds.

Nielsen also looked at Xbox 360 popular live game "1 vs 100" -- which comes in two versions -- one with a live host; the other where players could practice among themselves.

The live-host version play averaged 87 minutes, while the practice verison was 71 minutes. That's equal to about one TV drama and one sitcom. Both types of Xbox play offer advertising integration during the "game breaks" after each set of 10 questions.

Carolyn Fuson, senior audience and analysis manager for Xbox Live advertising, said in a Nielsen Wire blog: "In one specific case, an advertiser who placed ads within the games saw notable brand recall and lift. Our ability to learn more about the audience can only be a positive to those brands looking to make an impact on the growing gaming community."

Bayer Launches Diabetes Management Game for Nintendo DS

Pharmaceutical company Bayer announced the release of DIDGET, a blood glucose monitoring system that connects with Nintendo DS systems and rewards consistent testing with unlockable minigames.

DIDGET is a fully functional blood glucose monitor, and does not require a Nintendo DS to operate. The device reads and records blood sugar concentration levels determined by Bayer's prescription CONTOUR test strips.

When connected to the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot on Nintendo DS and DS Lite systems, DIDGET converts blood glucose test results into reward points.

Players can redeem these points to unlock new levels, minigames, and items in Knock 'Em Downs: World's Fair, a Nintendo DS adventure game bundled with the DIDGET device.

DIDGET additionally features an online community with score leaderboards, web games, and player profile pages that can be customized by redeeming DIDGET reward points.

An online demonstration is available at Bayer's website.

Apple Captures U.S. Video Game Market Share

More than 30,000 games have been released in the iPhone App Store since its launch in July 2008. With titles that consistently dominate the Top Paid and Top Grossing lists, there is no question that the games category is the most lucrative category in the App Store. This report focuses on how Apple has affected the market share of U.S. video game and portable game revenue since the introduction of games sold through the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch.

Using publicly available market data, provided by NPD (mostly through Gamasutra's Behind the Numbers series), Flurry calculated U.S. console and portable game software sales for 2008 and 2009. We also estimated Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable game software sales, which make up the significant majority of the portable category, in order to compare these to iPhone game sales. We estimate iPhone game sales using a combination of data made available by Apple and using ratios and calculations from an aggregated set of data that we track through our analytics service.

We begin with a look at the U.S. gaming market, which NPD defines primarily as console and handheld. PC gaming, which has been declining over the last decade, and is currently approximately 5% of the total U.S. market, is not included. Also, for this analysis, we ignore online gaming revenue (e.g., virtual goods and subscription fees from social networking games and massively multi-player online games).

Below is our estimation of market share by platform among console, portable and iPhone platforms for 2008 and 2009.

NPD Group shows that combined U.S. console and portable software revenue was approximately $11 billion and $9.9 billion in 2008 and 2009, respectively. After estimating portable sales, we were able to back into console revenues. We then added our own estimates for iPhone game revenue, detailed later, which total $115 million and $500 million for 2008 and 2009, respectively.

With these figures, our main finding is that iPhone (and iPod touch) is a gaming platform to be reckoned with. Controlling 5% revenue of a $10 billion industry in just a year and a half is significant. From a market share perspective, console games lost ground to portable platforms and iPhone. While the downturn in the economy may have dampened sales of the more expensive console games category, there is no denying that iPhone has generated substantial revenue and entered strongly into a mature industry.

More interesting to us than iPhone's impact on U.S. gaming was its impact on the portable category, which we estimate totaled $2.25 billion and $2.55 billion in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Michael Pachter, managing director at Wedbush Morgan Securities and a prominent video game analyst, suggests "iPod touch is the most dangerous thing that ever happened" to game publishers. As prices come down for the iPod Touch, and games sold through the App Store continue to have lower price points, more of the young gaming generation may switch to Apple devices over Sony PSP and Nintendo DS for gaming. Further, Apple has squarely positioned the iPod Touch as a gaming machine. Check out a TV spot here to get an idea.

From what we calculate, consumers are downloading iPhone games in droves. Comparing iPhone against Sony and Nintendo games sales shows that Apple has taken nearly one fifth of the portable market in 2009, largely at the expense of Sony PSP. With Sony PSP Go, Sony's latest effort to revive its portable sales,having fallen short of expectations, Sony finds itself now challenged by two competitors in this segment.

Looking forward, with the iPad set for an April release, the traditional gaming giants may yet again be disrupted by Apple. With companies like Electronic Arts and Gameloft joining Apple on stage during its January unveiling of the iPad, the tablet device will enjoy elite game publisher support on day one. Further considering data that Flurry released in its latest Smartphone Industry Pulse report, where we determined that more than one third of iPhone game developers come from the traditional gaming industry, Apple has already established broad third-party game publisher support. With the iPad featuring a larger screen and more processing power, games on the tablet take a step closer to PC and console gaming. Unless the other major video game platform providers (i.e., Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft) respond accordingly, Apple could continue to roll up video game market share.

Video Games see Social Networks as Growth Engine

For those wondering when the video-game industry will enter its next console cycle, some argue that the new cycle has already started, with social networks as the next big opportunity. Such was apparent this week at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco, an annual gathering of video-game designers and publishers. While the event saw some big developments among traditional gaming -- most notably, Sony's new motion-control system -- a big theme running through the event was the rapid growth of social networking and the related opportunity for game makers.

The opportunity is big indeed. The largest social-network site -- Facebook -- alone has more than 400 million monthly users. MySpace, its closest rival, has 100 million monthly users. Those numbers are far above the number of people who own traditional video-game consoles. Games are becoming hot property for social networks. The soaring popularity of games such as "Mafia Wars" and "FarmVille" over Facebook has attracted the interest of both game makers and investors looking to pump money into the next Big Thing. Such was apparent at GDC this week. Among the crowd of programmers and designers were venture capitalists, financial analysts and private equity funds, sniffing for opportunities in the market.

These investors are not looking to sink money into the next PlayStation or Xbox game; rather, they are looking for the next Zynga -- the San Francisco-based company that makes "Mafia Wars," "FarmVille" and other social-network games. Still privately held, Zynga landed $180 million in funding late last year from Digital Sky Technologies, or DST, the Russian outfit that also bought a large stake in Facebook. Media reports said the investment gave Zynga a market valuation between $1.5 billion and $3 billion. The company reported 100 million unique monthly users in November, and reportedly has about $250 million in annual revenue.

There are over 200 million people playing games on Facebook each month, out of 400 million total Facebook users, suggesting a 50% penetration rate. For game makers, the growing interest among social networks provides a new opportunity beyond the industry's typical channels -- which are largely consoles such as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and associated handheld devices. These social networks are competing against each other to lure developers -- and each offers its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages. Facebook offers the largest base of users, by far. Offsetting that is recent developments whereby the social-networking giant will be taking a portion of the revenue generated by games in the form of virtual goods sales. The company has also changed some of its policies that had previously allowed game makers to market their games more aggressively, after several users compared the efforts to spam.

Hi5, a social network with about 50 million monthly users, is working to make itself into a gaming-focused site. The company recently hired Alex St. John -- founder of the successful online gaming site WildTangent -- as its president and chief technology officer. St. John said the company will target the best games from developers and give them top promotion, in order to reduce the need for promotional activities by the developers that may upset users.

While social networks offer game makers a large potential audience, the business models are very different from the traditional, retail-based game business. Many social games are free to play. Rather than charge up-front costs, producers try to drive revenue through in-game transactions and some advertising. The social networks themselves are trying to solidify their own businesses. Social games are growing like a weed, but the industry is facing some new challenges. Facebook's new policy of taking a portion of gaming revenues and limits on how game makers can promote their products to other users may crimp future growth, he said.

Social games are still expected to change the overall face of the gaming business. Traditional high-end games such as "Call of Duty" take two years to develop and can cost near $100 million in production expenses. "FarmVille" was developed in five weeks, according to Mark Skaggs, vice president for product development at Zynga. During a presentation at GDC, Skaggs contrasted the development cycles for the two types of games, noting that social games have the advantage of being continuously improved based on user feedback. With traditional games, most of the work happens before the launch. With social games, most of the work happens after the launch.