Dead Man's Bones - s/t

Dead Man’s Bones – s/t
Oh October, how you charm with your ghostly gifts. Halloween’s a funny (non)holiday – it gives us a chance to both cringe and laugh at the things that go bump in the night. The collaboration of Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields., otherwise known as Dead Man’s Bones, gets this contradiction completely. Backed by an eerily high-pitched children’s choir, they sings songs about zombies, love, werewolves, love and drowning – and in that order. It’s a marvelous blend of old-school doo-wop crooning and darkly dreamt romanticism – in other words, a great soundtrack for a night of ghouls and giving out candy. Highlights include: My Body’s a Zombie for You, Pa Pa Power and Flowers Grow Out of My Grave.

Wii Don’t Play – Why Nobody’s Playing the Wii in 2009

Sure Nintendo has put a lot of Wii’s in a lot of homes over the past couple years, but if a recent report by Nielsen Research is to be believed, nobody’s playing them. The report notes that only 6 percent of Wii users are playing the system actively, the other 94 percent aren’t using the system much at all.

You Can’t Stay Casual Forever

So what’s going on? I have one theory: when it comes to casual users, they either stay casual forever or eventually they become refined users.

The drawback to Nintendo’s blue ocean strategy is that the casual market is inherently an entry market. To use a metaphor, Nintendo is selling a product to infant users. As infants, there’s only two ways for them to go. Users can stay infants or they can grow up.

If they stay infants then they stay casual – for good. And as truly casual users, that means they aren’t going to play your system very often (likely at parties and social occasions), they aren’t going to buy very many games or non-brand games (non-Nintendo made games) and they are unlikely to buy system upgrades (the refinements to the Wiimote are going to be a hard sell).

As I’ve argued before, the original Wii sports was highly successful in getting these users to make a purchase based on its transformative experience. Unfortunately for Nintendo, for most of these users, Wii Sports is enough to satisfy their infrequent gaming needs – and things like Wii Sports Resort don’t appear different enough to be appealing.

Infant Gamers Grow Up

On the other side of the coin, some infants eventually grow up. That means users graduate from casual gaming to more refined gaming. Again, unfortunately for Nintendo, the needs of these users are not sufficiently met by the Wii. Ultimately, as these users become more accustomed to the norms of gaming, things like Wii Music appear too simplistic to say something like Guitar Hero.

That’s not to say that Nintendo has no games for this audience – there’s Mario Galaxy, Punch Out and others – it’s just that there aren’t enough of these games. Another inherent risk with infants who grow up is that they will start trying other systems and other games. Users being siphoned to other systems is only half the problem for Nintendo – another large issue is that as these gamers try other systems, they become accustomed to these system’s play styles and controllers.

By my own experience, what eventually happens, is that as a refined gamer, you begin to find Nintendo’s offering somewhat lackluster – both from a game level and a playability level. As a refined gamer, you start looking for bigger, longer games with more exceptional experiences – something the other consoles do quite well. And, as some of my friends would agree, you begin to say to yourself while playing a Wii game, “this is alright, but I’d like to play it with a regular controller.”

Even with the refined control of the Wiimote, I suspect it won’t be enough to convince refined gamers. Sure, the remote has some interesting input capabilities that mimic real-life interaction, but it also has its drawbacks. No one I know wants to be waving a controller around, all the time.

If I were Microsoft or Sony, that’s something I would be thinking about pretty hard before committing too much to their own waggle technology. Same goes for making casual games – it’s a huge market, sure – but it’s an unstable market that will possibly ignore your new games out of indifference, or worse, starting playing the competition’s games out of boredom.

PR: Are you Busy or are you Indispensable?

One of the great failings of most public relations is measurability. First off, I'm not talking evaluation. There's plenty of collecting news clips and analyzing media impressions.

That, however, is not the same thing as being measurable.

Sure we PR people do all sorts of campaigns and activities - and yes we make sure to count all of these activities and their surface level results. But what does this show? Does it show that we're indispensable or does it just show that we're busy.

I came across a recent article by Diane Thieke that resonated pretty strongly with me. She argues that we, as PR professionals, need to demonstrate the value of our offering in clear, measurable terms. And by measurable, she means the bottom-line.

She provides 10 different ways to accomplish this, and the ones that stick out with me are tying PR activities directly to company yearly objectves, assessing what the competition has done - and most importantly, objectively measuring the variety of relationships that PR manages.

That means analyzing and qualifying your strategic and media relationships, because the nature of those relationships, is the difference between getting good or bad press, or potentially, between winning or losing on vital revenue-impacting opportunities.

Collecting clips is a great way to show effort, but the analysis needs to go one step deeper. By taking evaluation to the next step, being truly measurable, you will not only quantify your activities, but qualify them with the contextual value that ultimately contributes to the bottom line.

DLC Works for Me: Burnout Paradise

They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Criterion that is, and the offer was expanded content for Burnout Paradise. At some point, the amount of downloadable content (DLC) that came with the game spurred some critical mass in my buying subconscious. With so much content to try and explore, I could no longer justify not owning the game – which made me wonder – am I the only one, or has Criterion discovered special in its DLC strategy?

Hit and Miss and Hit

When it first came out in January 2008, I tried the demo. I liked the game, but it I wasn’t convinced that I wanted it. So, I waited. And waited. The buzz for Burnout Paradise was strong at first, but then it diminished pretty quickly. Now, by EA’s own admission, part of the reason was that DLC support just wasn’t there. Blame it on a combination not offering a lot of content at the beginning, and overcharging for the content that was there.

As a result, Burnout Paradise drew scorn from users who felt they were paying for content that either could be in the game (play modes) or content that didn’t seem to require much effort from Criterion (palette swaps on cars). Eventually, I stopped hearing about the game and forgot about it.

Then a funny thing happened. Criterion released new game modes in July 2008 – and along with it, new challenges, and a couple new vehicles. Then, in September 2008, Criterion went one step further, adding a whole new play type – bikes – plus, a day/night cycle, dynamic weather and more new challenges.

Following up on free content, Burnout Paradise began offering paid DLC, starting with a local multiplayer party pack (February 2009), to new theme cars, to new game styles to most recently an entire new island filled with new cars, events, smashes, jumps and challenges (Big Surf Island - June 2009).

Content keeps them coming back

I couldn’t say no any longer. For me, the content was just too tantalizing now, and I picked up a copy. That’s my story. But the question is, what did EA and Criterion learn? And more importantly, was it a success on a bigger scale?

A quick survey of media coverage says yes. Between the Cops and Robbers release and the Big Surf Island release, Burnout Paradise is renewing media interest with a slew of reviews and discussions – and this is more than a year-and-a-half after the release date. That kind of coverage is unheard of for most games. As one senior producer at Criterion noted, the response to DLC was a significant increase in people playing the game right after new content was made available.

Criterion’s approach is unique, but they aren’t the only company who’s made a commitment to supporting their games well after launch. Most recently, World at War (WAW) and Fallout 3 have offered extensive iterations of DLC post-release. The results have been significant, with WAW garnering over 2 million downloads of both map pack one and map pack two. Fallout 3 has experienced similar success, as Anchorage and Pitt have been some of the top downloads on Xbox Live.

DLC makes cents

If there’s one thing these games share, it’s the idea that the purchased disc is only the beginning. As a recent interview with EA’s John Riccitiello noted, the publisher is invested in the idea their offerings don’t have to end with the first purchase. With a mix of free and paid-for DLC, gamers now have the opportunity to expand their games, prolonging value, preventing trade-in and providing revenue through expanded content that doesn’t require a whole lot of new assets.

And for the developers themselves, it’s the opportunity to keep the game fresh, going so far as updating the game in order to improve the physics or continually refine gameplay elements. In the case of Burnout Paradise, Criterion uses its DLC not only to offer content, but to refine the code, so that the gamer ultimately receives the best experience the game’s technology will allow.

All this leads to positive word-of-mouth, which builds momentum through the right media channels, and makes someone like me, reconsider a game I originally passed over for purchase. In my case, the DLC worked for me – and as the numbers attest I don’t think I’m the only one – so I fully expect to see more of this DLC strategy when we see a Burnout sequel.

Music Review: Discovery – LP

Discovery - LP

Summer is the best time for ridiculousness. Something about all that heat seems to loosen up our normally narrower critical faculties. Summer makes it okay to wear crocks and appreciate Transformers sequels un-ironically. With that in mind, LP from Discovery is made for the sunshine season. Born out of a long-running side project from the lead singer of Ra Ra Riot (who released the solid Rhumb Line recently) and the keyboardist from Vampire Weekend, Discovery is all about throwaway pop songs and plenty of auto-tune. It shouldn’t work, and it wouldn’t usually, but the cheesy lyrics and ramshackle synths scream summertime good times. If a comparison can be made, it’s like Chromeo, but less lusty. Whether it’s the playfulness of So Insane or the spot-on cover of I Want You Back, Discovery are mining the right kind of shallow – and making the perfect soundtrack to baggy shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

Calisthenics

swells moans thunderbolts

chassis geysers rocket

throttle honey hums

plume dewy with

hot dissonance joyous

fricative ersatz throaty

ribbons flailing red

palaver exceeds levers

feverishly furiously zeal

Oil Industry PR: Too little, too late?

I recently came across a commercial by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, in which the main message is that CAPP wants to listen to you, average joe, about your concerns about the oilsands development.

Sometimes people ask my why I haven't dived into oil industry communications and one response out of a variety of reasons, is that I feel that it's an industry dicated more by PR than actual action.

While I realize this isn't always the case, the CAPP commercial certainly demonstrates an organization clearly attempting to communicate to concerned publics well after a slew of damaging media coverage directly (National Geographic) and indirectly (other news agencies covering the fact that National Geographic covered the Alberta oilsands).

In the realm of public perception, how can something like CAPP's efforts looking nothing but as a reactive PR policy supported by an industry who's concern for the environmental stewardship of northern Alberta only becomes apparent when the negative publicity makes it possibly expensive not to do so....

While I totally acknowledge that CAPP has long existed before this whole controversy, the organization's communications effort regarding what concrete actions the industry was taking, certainly needed to happen a lot sooner than now...maybe it's just my uninformed opionion, but the CAPP commercial leaves me with the impression that the industry wasn't doing enough, until its publics told it loudly that it needed to...and where there's smoke, there's fire: something smells like a major failure in action or public relations by the oil industry in all of this...

ringtone

all along the watchtower
weaponed breaths beat rust
waiting exhale wails bullets

Crosshatch

I will be your father figure
linger in the leaves laced
black gloves eyeing wallets