A Tree Falling in the Forest

I pride myself on my “brilliant grasp of the obvious.”   But sometimes concepts bathed in divine light before my eyes are hidden to the entire world leaving me sitting like the solitary school-boy laughing to himself in a corner while the world doesn’t know why.      My gift tells me Zynga is in a good place. For those of you who feel I put too many words to my thoughts on this blog, this time I will get to the point before I digress.   Even though you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a Zynga naysayer, show me one person in the business who would not give their left nut – women included – to be in Zynga’s position today.    Lots of these well intentioned but sadly misguided folks are offering advice and statements about what should be done, and I will certainly start listening,   as soon as one of them shows me the 2 plus billion dollar company (Zynga’s current “depressed” value) with 60 million people a day checking in that...

EA and Activision's back and forth banter is making a lot of press - and is certainly fun to watch - but it is sadly nothing new. Those of us enjoying our formative beer imprinting years during the rise of Corona may remember the workers are pissing in Corona rumors started by US Heineken distributors and there are many other similar stories over the years. While at a car show in Pebble Beach over the weekend I came across an old Cadillac ad providing the best way to address these campaigns. In those days they did not use the press, they did not use a whisper campaign, they just talked about themselves. In 1915, when Cadillac was establishing its reputation as the "Cadillac" of cars, it was the first to market with a V8 Engine. Packard, the major competitor, did not like this and responded by spreading rumors about reliability. The lead copywriter was frustrated by all of the misinformation in the market and tried to figure out the root of the problem. A...

My posting continues to move at a glacial pace. For a while, there was nothing new to say. Then, all of sudden, the world exploded with new ideas and I had no time to write. I attribute the plethora of new ideas - things other than marketing gaffes, publishers' hosing of developers, the need for independent finance and the folks who are saying they have it or xBox becoming cable - as a reflection of increased sensitivity attributable to too much travel and too little sleep. But bubbles are growing, companies are reacting, and CEOs seem to be turning into either Chicken Little or ostriches with heads in the sand. Some of the new stuff floating around in my head is: - The abandonment of seasoned game designers in favor of metric driven design - catering to metrics let you keep more players, but are those players worth keeping? - The complete lack of game sales data for XBL and PSN - Do the platforms really think they are helping us by cloaking sales in a shroud of mystery? - Th...

I have actually been too focused on my day job to post recently. Some the work was announced today, more will trickle out later. Here is the announcement from EA: Ludlum Entertainment Grants EA the Exclusive Video Game License for the Works of Robert Ludlum 02.02.09 Redwood City, Calif. - February 2, 2009 - Ludlum Entertainment has granted Electronic Arts, Inc (NASDAQ: ERTS) the exclusive worldwide license to create video games based on the works of Robert Ludlum, including the blockbuster Jason Bourne series. The first game to be released as part of the multi-year agreement is based on Jason Bourne and is currently in development with Starbreeze Studios in Uppsala, Sweden. "Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne is the most exciting action hero to emerge in decades, thrilling audiences around the world," said Mike Quigley, group vice president of marketing, EA Games Label. "EA is excited to enter into a long-term relationship with Ludlum Entertainment, bringing the action, i...

[ Let me apologize in advance for the length of the large gaseous stream of consciousness belch which follows, it's been a while since I wrote anything and I guess some pent up stuff started flow .] Another Q4 is behind us and the publishers are locked down in the deep, dark, musty bowels of their fortress like edifices surveying the seasonal lucre. The piles are not quite as high as year’s past and when they reemerge into the sunlight from their Morlock existence in the counting and analysis rooms, they will not be happy. Contrary to the mainstream media reports, sales for most publishers were less than stellar. Gamasutra’s story highlighting what they characterized as low numbers for Mirror's Edge and Dead Space (for the sake of argument let's not mention they did not apply the NPD multiplier to determine real US sales, nor did they add in PC sales or sales in foreign territories which are not reflected in NPD) reflects the norm rather than the exception. The point ...

[I put this up a few weeks ago, and then took it down. I don't know why, so now I am putting it back up. Enjoy.] A couple weeks ago Take Two announced the termination of takeover discussions with all parties, but it seems the “victory" over the would be invaders is Pyrrhic at best. While the company will certainly survive, whether the actions were in the best interest of the shareholders is up to debate. With the decision to remain fiercely independent seeming set in stone, maybe Take Two will finally move to more fiscally responsible plan than “Rockstar makes all the money and 2K spends it” If last quarter’s events taught us nothing else, we learned GTA’s value has always been factored into the stock price. After the smoke cleared, we see the company is worth roughly the same thing as it was the day Strauss Zelnick entered the board room. I know all the game stocks are down now, but the most recent USD 380 million plus decline in market value happened before any of ...

According to this post, wholly stolen from Jalopnik , pro Obama ads appeared in Burn Out. Barack Obama has begun advertising on billboards within the virtual world of an online video game in what appears to be a first for a presidential campaign. Players of the online racing video game Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 Live network noticed billboards promoting Barack Obama and the website VoteForChange.com, which helps people determine how to register to vote and where to vote. This was later confirmed by a representative for the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, who said: "Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates. Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

While the world is focused on our presidential slates poised to shatter glass ceilings over race or gender, Larry Probst just crashed through the one cantilevered over video game executives. It's not as historic as Jackie Robinson, or Dick Parsons, but it is a major leap for our industry. I wrote about mainstream perceptions of our industry in a post about similarities between porn and games in a post heavily edited and improved by N'Gai Croal. I left out the part about executives. Until yesterday's announcement of Larry Probst's new position as Chairman of the Board of the United States Olympic Committee, game executives were mentioned in the same breadth as "real executives." Yesterday, Larry Probst's announcement treated him as the veteran executive he is. "There wasn't any debate at the board meeting," Ueberroth said of the unanimous vote that ended in Probst getting a four-year term. The 58-year-old Probst will be involved in the...

While most publishers' direct customer knowledge is limited to the names of the few customers who register the games on line, or log into a website for previews, EA is truly getting to know their customer – and everyone else’s. They have been tracking on-line play of their own games better than any other publisher for a while. Now with the acquisition of Rupture, they are on course to capture, understand and exploit the game habits of other publishers' consumers. EA's history points to how nicely Rupture fits into the strategy. The company was the last hold out from Xbox Live. While the other publishers were jumping on, EA was objecting to Mirosoft's central control business model. Then CFO, Warren Jenson, went on record saying it just didn't make sense. Sony had the opportunity to leverage the discord into a relationship which would define the on line nature of the next gen platforms, but held true to its laisse a faire position. Eighteen months after the l...

I have been a fan of Peter Moore ever since I saw him get on the stage at the 360 introduction and talk about the future of connected gaming. He ran a demo of Project Gotham and talked about a sponsored event, played by thousands and watched hundreds of thousands. It was really cool and at the time, it was unique. It didn't really play out quite along those lines, and the race never happened, but the seeds were sown. Now as head of EA Sports, arguably the strongest brand in games, he is acknowledging the wonders of market expansion. This morning I woke up to a gamedaily article quoting Peter's view of Rock Band changing game forever. "It really came home for me when we were in Munich for our global marketing meeting and we took over the Hard Rock Café for the night and had a Rock Band competition. There were a hundred of us and it was like a real rock concert. It was a blast. I stood back and I thought that this was an incredible cultural phenomenon," he said...

It looks like Wall Street wasn't as excited by John Riccitiello's Jerry McGuire moment as I was. The stock is down over 10% since the announcement. The daily stock price is not the be all end all, and every CEO will tell you they do not let the stock price dictate corporate decisions, but stock hits make access to capital harder, making things like purchases of Take Two relatively more expensive. The decline is probably more attributable to the losses disclosed on last week's earning call, or the expiration of the Take Two tender offer, but the guidance of no quarterly guidance coupled with likely delays did not help. I say “likely delays” even though the company didn't he was very specific about products slipping from a quarter but staying in the fiscal year. Spore in the first quarter of 2009 would still be a fiscal 2008 release. The point I highlighted in the earlier post, was the commitment to quality against a backstop of the objectively measurable delive...