google valve rumours.

I don't normally obsess over rumour, but I have to say...

If Google buys Valve, it will make me happy only because it means a giant pile of money going into the development and expansion of Steam.

consistent branding is more important than continuity.

A good friend, who recently got some serious blog attention for noticing that even stuff aimed at the casual gamer hates macs, pointed this out to me.

They're updating the PC based version of the XBox Live Marketplace.  And have decided to give it the moronic title of "Games for Windows - LIVE XXXXX" where XXXXX is replaced by a selection from random user suggestions.

And it's embarrassing.  I've avoided commenting on the Seinfeld ads extensively, in part because I'm convinced the value will become apparent in the longer campaign, and in part because I think my distaste is Apple fanboyism gone rampant.  But this I have to comment on.

The XBox, and XBox Live, are the crown jewels of Microsoft's image.  Despite hardware that fails regularly, it's a premiere system, and in my informal observation, the number one choice of the hardcore gamer.  XBox is the brand you want associated with a system that is going to be a one stop competitor for Steam, iTunes Music Store, and who knows what else.

The product should be called XBox Live on every system, I'd think.  When you think of XBox, you think Microsoft Gaming, not specifically a console.  The marketplace should be the same whether you browse it on your Zune, your PC, or your XBox 360.  You should be able to buy products from any of these consoles, and have them download when you turn the appropriate device on.  You should be able so share and organize content between them.  XBox, in terms of appreciation, is the glue of users loving Microsoft.  Make it the glue of your digital distribution strategy.

I'd go as far as to release XBox editions of Vista, optimized for the hardcore PC gamer.  Why not?  It's a brand extension, but it needn't dilute the brand value, because it's the same idea.  Ideas don't have to be bound to a format, that's the first lesson of the digital copying era.

microsoft will never be cool.

Not too long ago, I read an article in Fast Company about Crispin, Porter and Bogusky being hired to more or less make Microsoft cool. This is a reasonable task, from the outside – one of the most prevalent, powerful, successful companies in the world. The problem is that Microsoft is inherently the antithesis of cool. As evidenced by the recent unveiling of their new Xbox 360 Dashboard project at E3.

This is an important moment in Microsoft history. They’ve finally stopped copying Apple, and started copying Nintendo.

Microsoft wants to be cool, that’s easy to understand. Cool equals new customers. But Microsoft, to me, seems based on a simple premise that’s very hard to pull off. They wait to see what resonates with consumers, and then they remake it, with the benefit of having the most money, the best people, and the largest built in market of users.

This isn’t cool. This is the opposite of cool. And despite the model working in every other aspect of the business, you can't copy someone else's ideas and become cool. No matter how much money, time and talent you invest.

Microsoft buys success by operating on a level above, strategy-wise, from their competitors. But not as a leader or a puppet master. As a very rich, very talented follower.

I feel for CP+B. This is an impossible, endless task.

penny arcade, authenticity, and branding

Yesterday morning, I downloaded the demo of Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode One: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.  Then I purchased the full version.  Then I played the whole thing before I went to sleep, told at least 5 people how much fun it was, had a long conversation about how it was accessible*, in relation to my recent post on gaming and exclusivity, and woke up this morning wanting to play it again.

This post is going to be able the game, yeah, but more importantly it's going to be about authenticity, in an odd way.

Penny Arcade is an absurdly popular webcomic, it has a colossal audience, and it has an untold amount of influence in terms of the videogaming media.  This includes PAX, a hugely influential convention, and Child's Play, a charity that, frankly, is the only piece of evidence you need to throw in the face of someone who says young people today only care about themselves and their toys.

We're talking about a pair of guys, and the company that is built around them, who are best known for brutal sarcasm, frank appraisals of fail, and a great collective sense of humour.  And although anyone successful is accused of selling out, I think they've remained very honest and very connected with the dynamic that made them famous.  This is despite massive amounts of money, creating promotional content for major studios as a kind of side business, and now, creating their own game.  

When someone starts out as a critic of sorts, then moves to being a collaborator with the large, supposedly evil companies, then begins creating in the medium that spawned them, it usually does not go over well.

Authenticity, in my conception, is more accurately described as the ability to grow and evolve without making your audience feel as though you have betrayed them.  That feeling of betrayal is simple enough to understand - they have been using allegiance to your brand as a sign of their intended persona.  They associate with you because you help define them clearly to others, whether this is conscious or not.

The short version is, people like brands because they want to be seen as like that brand.  Lots of people want to be associated with the what the fictionalized Gabe and Tycho represent.

There are many reasons the PA guys are seen as remaining authentic, and I could reference the tendency of the target market to accept corporate success as a goal, or the particular brand of sarcasm, etc.  But the two main things that come to mind are quality, and what seems like a complete refusal to consider compromise on core values.

By and large, everything that comes out of PA is good.  Varying degrees of good, sure, but none of it feels like an out and out cash grab, because it is 1) absurdly niche, and 2) totally willing to bite the hand that feeds.

That willingness to bite is the refusal to compromise I was talking about.  They will shit on your brand, the game you really needed to be a blockbuster, your promotions, your screenshots, whatever you happen to do that will offend them.  And they will smile as you take your business elsewhere, because, from what I've seen, they won't work with you if you suck anyways.

What I'm trying to say is there is a certain brand of antisocial, unreasonable geekery that is integral to a brand like Penny Arcade, with that level of scope, maintaining the qualities that make people everywhere in their niche, want to be associated with them.  Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is a lot of fun, and it's a great game, but really it's impressive because nothing was toned down, nothing was taken to an extreme.  It was faithful.  Barely anything switches from one medium to another and remains faithful. [There is another post in here somewhere, I'll find it.]

The funniest part is, I don't think any of this was intentional.  This was, for lack of a better word, an authentic representation of the personalities behind the comic, not a strategy.

*[In relation to my post on accessibility, this game still does what I was complaining about - it's major reference points in game play are those great old adventure games, like Final Fantasy.  It runs on more or less the same mechanics.  But it was fun for someone like me, because, well, I loved those games.  And it transcended them because the writing, the art, and the humour were very, very original.  Go Play It.  You'll probably like it.]

narrowing audiences by catering to them.

I was recently attempting to explain why I don't play many videogames to Angus McQuarrie, a friend of mine who is an avid gamer, and on the cusp of starting out in that industry. His assumption was half right, that I don't play more 'complex' (read, non-nintendo) games because I don't get any gratification from them in the short term.

The reason behind this, though, is that the majority of blockbuster videogames are absolutely incomprehensible to me, in terms of control scheme, and game dynamics. I have pretty good reflexes, and I have an excellent academic understanding of different game dynamics, but I am useless at playing a game aimed at the 'hardcore gamer' well enough to enjoy it. Whenever I attempt to play Halo, or GTA, I get killed a dozen times in the first ten minutes, and then think to myself 'There are things I can do that I will actually enjoy' and go off in search of one of those things.

The game is designed with a curve that appeals to the people the game is marketed to. This is the fairly large segment of people, they are the ones who give the aforementioned game franchises opening weekend tallies that embarrass the biggest blockbuster films. But I, and many others, don't fit into it.

I don't speak videogame. Which is fine, except that the games which become pop culture touchstones are entirely inaccessible to me - I can't draw on past experiences, skills developed in previous iterations, and understanding of how to solve a specific problem with the controls that an avid gamer would know intuitively at this point. This is because gaming has, in part, evolved to meet the need of that specific subset of hardcore gamer - to keep them engaged, the references and experiences they have developed needed to be built upon.

When I try to play a game aimed at the hardcore gamer, it's as though I decided Finnegan's Wake would be an excellent follow up to the initial reading experience of Goodnight Moon.

Comics (the mainstream superhero market) has the same problem. The people who buy comics now are the same ones who were buying them 5 years ago. And, to cater to those consumers, continuity is an appalling mess for anyone not intimately familiar with the characters and history, impossible to delve in to. Even ignoring the tendency for Marvel and DC to directly reference events from the mid 80s, certain that the readership will understand, most flagship titles are now written based on the assumption that the reader at least superficially follows another 5 or more titles, within that company alone.

Both of these markets, the hardcore gamer, and the hardcore comic reader, have inherent limits to their size. Consumers will age, lose interest, decide to move on, and the product is not accessible to a larger group of potential new consumers.

The solution to this problem is to challenge and engage people by creating new experiences, not just further refining old ones, increasing the complexity to flatter those who have developed insider status. Nintendo does this, after falling behind in an attempt to compete by refining it's old experiences, by stepping outside of the conventional control scheme. Many comics publishers are doing the same, creating new worlds and content that doesn't re-hash the same tropes and characters as the mainstream successes.

The problem is, that this process of refining and focusing on a mainstream, hardcore consumers in both mediums has gone on for a long time. Long enough that the scope of the medium is conflated with the mainstream successes. It's very difficult to avoid - when I say comics, you think superheroes, and when I say videogames, you think sci-fi, fantasy, or crime - based characters completing tasks in search of reward or advancement. And of course, when the mainstream products all inhabit that genre-space, all media attention further supports that bias.

In short, developing a relationship with your core audience is great, but the potential fallout is altering your product to the point where it will not appeal to anyone else. If you can't continue a relationship with your current followers, without driving other potential customers away, you're doing something wrong on a very basic level.

this is a gimme.

Maybe it's just me, but there are certain barriers for whether or not I want someone's opinion. At the very least, please don't give me cause to assume you are horribly out of touch before I read a word you've written.

This just popped up in the RSS feed. [via MIT Adverlab]

I have to ask... Is it really a good sign when a book on in-game advertising, with the words 'next generation' in the subtitle, chooses the frankly ancient Super Nintendo controller as the indicator that gaming is the subject matter?

Come on, people. Work with me, just a little.