"Spotlight On" is a recurring feature on nycgameindustry.com that allows us an opportunity to get to know the passionate students, talented developers and professional companies which make up the New York video game industry even better. This month we sat down with The Game Agency, a marketing firm uniquely devoted to meeting the video game, interactive entertainment, and social media needs of clients.
NYCGI: What is The Game Agency and what is its focus?
TGA: The Game Agency is an awarding winning marketing firm that specializes in video games, interactive entertainment, and social media. Our employees have worked in every facet of the interactive software industry and we pride ourselves on delivering this medium to our clients. We leverage a deep network of developers, publishers, distributors and retailers to find new markets to create, market, and distribute content. Bringing content to life is fun and maximizing the reach and impact of that content is our sweet spot!
NYCGI: You recently developed a Facebook game for the Ghostbusters license. Have you seen an upward trend in requests for these social-casual games?
TGA: Social media has changed the way we communicate, both personally and professionally. Without a doubt, marketers are leveraging this medium to position and promote their message, engage dialogue and change behavior. According to a recent Nielsen study, social networks have become more popular than email with more people are now using social networks rather than email to communicate.
NYCGI: What are some ways that people are taking advantage of social networks?
TGA: Many different ways, however social gaming is actually among the most popular activity across the spectrum. On Facebook, the top 10 games have an average of 7 million active monthly users. Among these 10 games, 5 of them focus on building a community and interacting with others and almost every one of our clients wants to be part of this.
NYCGI: How do you make a successful app on an already heavily saturated social platform like Facebook?
TGA: At The Game Agency we have five rules when designing our games/apps for Facebook.
1. Keep Simple
Facebook is simple. The features on Facebook are simple. Our hypothesis is that no application which is more complex than the most complex feature on Facebook will succeed. The simpler you make your app the better it will do.
2. Be Social
Just because you’ve built it doesn’t mean the users will come. Facebook is still first and foremost a social platform. If your application has no social component it will fail to achieve its full potential. Make it a group effort or there will be little reason for people to install it.
3. Get Viral
Write an application which does nothing more than spread itself. If your idea is funny enough, like Vampires or Zombies and Mafia Wars, people will use it.
4. Stay Fun
We ensure that all of our designs incorporate game mechanics. Games are successful for many reasons but understanding the properties and mechanics of popular games and then deploying those properties in our social applications has proven a recipe for true success.
5. Quality Matters
This might be obvious, but quality matters. Apps like Mafia Wars, YoVille, Lil Green Patch and Causes provide a set of high-quality features. They are straight forward and very compelling. In addition, be prepared to deal with your growth. Predict how many users you’ll have in a few days, weeks, months, etc. If it’s more than you anticipated make sure you have the hardware to handle it— users will uninstall apps that are slow or broken, even if it’s not the apps’ fault.
NYCGI: Tell us a bit about the basic idea behind the Ghostbusters Facebook game.
TGA: Atari was looking to promote their Ghostbusters game (now available on PC, X360, PS3, PS2, Wii and DS) in the social media environment. The Game Agency's solution was to create an interactive Ghost Hunt (http://apps.facebook.com/ghostbusters-game/) that challenges players to search for ghosts, share their findings and slime their friends.
Ghosts can be found throughout Facebook profile and product pages, blogs, game sites and corporate websites. This game provides prizes including a custom Ghostbusters designed Dell computer, Intel Core Processors and copies of the Ghostbusters game. In its first month, the game had over 35,000 people sign up and over 1,000,000 slimes.
NYCGI: When a client approaches you with a request for a game, how much do they typically bring to the table and how much is TGA's creative input?
TGA: The Game Agency has 3 divisions: TGA Digital, TGA Events and TGA Public Relations. We have a variety of capabilities that we deploy for clients including game development, marketing, promotions, partnerships, media, licensing and public relations.
Every project is different but often our clients are looking to extend a current campaign via games. We get briefed about their brand, their consumer and the creative components already in the works and we challenge ourselves to deliver a compelling game strategy that will engage a target audience and achieve their overriding goals.
Sometimes we focus on online games, sometime we focus on mobile games, sometimes we focus on live events. We are lucky that our clients trust us to get our hands dirty with them.
NYCGI: What's the turnaround time on most of these projects?
TGA: There's no firm rule for turnaround. Some games take a few weeks to develop while others take up to a year. It all depends on the platform and the depth of the user experience. The average campaign is 3-6 months.
NYCGI: Do you foresee TGA working with any of the new motion-sensing technologies on display at this year’s E3?
TGA: 3D camera motion sensor games are one of our biggest initiatives right now. The Game Agency is working on one fitness game targeting Microsoft's project Natal’s launch and several games that will be introduced in 2010 with global brand and retail partners. We like to think of these games as the next-next generation in gaming. They all focus on getting consumers active utilizing the human body as a game controller.
The physical activity of running, jumping, crouching, balancing and many more moves allows players to advance through the game. This is cutting edge technology and a real jaw dropper for everyone we've shown it to so far.
NYCGI: What other game technologies are your teams excited about?
TGA: The Game Agency is working with Aspyr Media on a new Nintendo DS game called Treasure World. It's the world’s largest treasure hunt with hundreds of millions of treasure spots around the world. Players use the DS to find Wi-Fi signals and unlock content (characters, clothing, environments, etc.). Our team has established co-promotional programs with restaurant chains, malls, libraries and children's non-profits to engage kids nationwide. We are now focused on the using this game engine for companies trying to reach consumers and employees through custom game development on Nintendo DS and Wi-Fi USBs.
NYCGI: Do you see the industry trending towards casual or core gamers in the next five years?
TGA: The high growth area in gaming is casual. Core games and gamers will always play a huge role in shaping the gaming landscape but technology has thrown open the door for every company to utilize gaming for advertising, social engagement, public relations...even employee training. Whether online, mobile, console, handheld or events we expect more and more content to be introduced for the everyday person (kids, parents and grandparents). The better the hardware gets the lower the barriers are to engage.
NYCGI: Thank you so much for your time and best of luck with all those amazing projects!
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