Importance of Fansites for the Game Industry

Right now we are bombarded by the news of the games and the industry because of the "E3". There are tons of videos, trailers, interviews and previews of the games that, we cannot even trace all of them. When I tried to find information about the upcoming game of the "Bethesda", "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim", I found an interesting fansite that, summarize all the information about the events of the "E3" for the Skyrim's fans.

The fansite I found was "The Skyrim Guild", which is the one of the important fansite of "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". "The Skyrim Guild" offers information about the lore, skills, items, news and trailers of the Skyrim. Also, you can find interesting topics and share your ideas with the other fans of the Skyrim in their forum page. Moreover, they have their own facebook and twitter page. Furthermore, I noticed the countdown of release date of "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" (It's actually very painful to watch because there is still 147 days to release.).

After I searched how important "The Skyrim Guild" for the fans, I decided to make a little bit research about the importance of the fansites to the industry. I found out that many important games have their own fansites such as "Batman Arkham City" and "No Mutants Allowed" for the Fallout series. These fansites are more likely to "The Skyrim Guild" which offers information and a community place for sharing ideas and discuss about their favorite topics. There are also, wikia pages which are created by the fans and offer lore, information and walkthrough about their games.

I noticed that, many developer offer fansite kit in their official site (most likely in their forum page) for the fans who want to create such websites. I downloaded such a fansite kit in order to understand what are they contain for the fansites. Most fansite kits offer various screenshots, videos and design materials for creating a fansite. I understand that many developers use fansites for their own marketing plans. Especially, fansites are really effective to create an awareness of the game.

Furthermore, many fansites have their own facebook, twitter, rss feeds and other social media channels like "The Skyrim Guild". This activity of the social channels offer developers a chance to reach more players with the help of their fans (and lowering their cost of marketing). Also, fansites are platforms which developers can listen their audience and make some changes for meeting the demands of the market. Although fansites can be effective for the marketing of the game, they can be some drawbacks.

Fansites cannot be controlled by the developers. They are under total control of the fans and these fans may not be happy about the some changes of the game like gameplay, graphics or interface. This can be a huge problem for the developers because they may face an organize complaints from huge amount of crowds.

The best example of this situation is the resistance of the "No Mutants Allowed" fansite for the changes of the "Fallout 3". They were worried about the game would change into "Oblivion with guns" so they protested the changes of the Fallout 3. This situation created an awkward relation between Bethesda and the fans of the Fallout series, but Bethesda overwhelmed the problem with receiving many good reviews, awards and of course sales.

In the conclusion, fansites does a great job nowadays and they become more important for the marketing plan of the developers. Their "reach" gave a huge advantage for their marketing even though they cannot control it. Thus, many developers creating fansite kits to hope their fans create a huge fansites and deliver them to that "reach" to create a game, which attends the needs of their audience.

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In-game Digital Marketing

I know I wrote another post about advertisement in video games couple of months ago. However, this post is not just about advertising. It is about in-game digital marketing which grows in the game industry.

Many games use in-game advertising model in order to get more revenue. This business model create win-win situation because this is the only model which advertisement actually liked by the audience. The reason is simple, in-game advertisement adds realism to the games and because of that many players actually prefer to see advertisement campaigns. The best example is the NBA2K series. You can see a lot of brands in match which are well-known by the players.

Especially since game industry grow more than Hollywood, many digital marketing campaigns hubs around massive online games. Most notably, World of Warcraft and Second Life. This development in the game industry adds more opportunity for the developers like sharing your achievements and progress of the games in the social media channels like Tweeter and Facebook create free digital marketing for the developers.

Also, this system sometimes works like Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Achievements and progress of the game is mining by the developers. This in-game data mining offers a chance to analyze the audience behavior which will use as a feature in the next project. "Mass Effect" series is the best example of this new in-game data mining system. With uploading player's progress in the games, developers enjoyed %50 more profit of the "Mass Effect 2" compared the first game.

As the digital world changing continuously, many entertainment business change their marketing plans to reach their audience. Especially for the industries like games, analyzing your audience and understanding of their demands is the most important aspect of their products.

Related Articles:

1. http://nishithsblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/in-game-advertising-next-big-thing-in-digital-marketing/
2. http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/111/1117896p1.html
3. http://www.know-what-im-sayin.com/video-games/digital-marketing-strategy-of-mass-effect/
4. http://www.sophisticatededge.com/what-is-digital-marketing.html

Screenshots

1. http://blog.pcnews.ro/wp-content/photo/2008/03/adsingame21.jpg
2. http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/Doiggy2007/ManagerScreen-1.png
3. http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/111/1117896/crazy-mass-effect-2-stats-and-what-theyre-used-for-20100903105831289-000.jpg

Visual Novels

I know you properly wonder why I am writing something about novels in a blog, which is about RPG and game industry. The truth is the other name of the visual novel is anime games.

Anime and game fans properly know what visual novel is but, they are many people out there never even heard about it. Visual game is an interactive fiction game using state anime art graphics. They are a lot like a RPG games with a lot of dialogue feature.

Most of the visual novels narrated as first person rather than third person like the printed version. It feels like you are in the story as the protagonist as many mainstream games do. Also, visual novel use days rather than chapter as primary structure unit.

Even though visual novels are also called as anime games, they offer minimal gameplay. Sometimes you can choose multiple options or interactive story driven actions like Da Capo which use the map of the school and surroundings in order to make you choose how do you plan to do in this time. In addition, many novels offer multiple endings which depends on your choices during the novels.

There are a lot of genres for this games but, most popular are science fictions, horrors and tragedies (which also mentioned as crying games.). It is hard to say which one is the most popular genre but, right now the eroge genre which also called erotic genre are more popular than other adult content products in the different industries. Most of these games were focused on story rather than the erotic content. They became so popular that some of the other genre visual novels starting to offer adult version or adult pictures as add-ons.

If a visual novel became successful than there will be a good chance that, the content of the novel will be adopted to manga and anime if they became popular as a visual novel like Da Capo, Fate/Stay Night, Clannad and School Days.

Because, most of the visual novels do not distributed in the West, visual novels have a small market in here. Although it seemed visual novel market in the West tart to growing as many visual novels translated to English, French and Russian.

By the way, you can find many information about visual novels in this website. They provide great database for the visual novels as well as information about their release platforms and language.

Screenshots:
1.http://s.vndb.org/sf/06/1306.jpg
2.http://s.vndb.org/cv/65/8565.jpg
3.http://s.vndb.org/sf/02/2302.jpg

Mods...what are they?

I know many of the hardcore gamers know what is a mod and how important it is for players. But, during my conversation with other players I realized that there are many gamers still don't know anything about mods and how mods can affect them.

Basically, mods are additions created by the players (they were called as modders.). They are made for especially role playing games, real time strategy games, turn based strategy games and rarely first person shooter games. Although as I mentioned many modders are players, many of them have programming and graphic design background and they were some cases that some mods created by the current developers and unemployed game developers.

However, downloadable contents (DLCs) and mods are a little bit different. DLCs are created by the official developer teams and that kind of addition are created for gaining another source of revenue. But, mods are created for sharing your work with the fans of the games and they are free for the players.

Some games offer toolset of the game in order the create mods. For example, games like Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout Last Vegas (although they use the same G.E.C.K toolset.) and Dragon Age Origins. These mods created by the modders usually shared with modding community websites or some social websites that created by the developer team. However, some games do not offer any mods and many modders change the code of these games and add their designs to make mods for them. Best examples are mods for Total War and Civilization series.

Why it is so important to download the mods? Actually if you like your game and satisfy with everything and do not want to change the original content of the game you do not need to (and possibly you do not want to) download mods. However, many mods adds additional varieties and more options to the games. For example, with the mods you can have more weapons, armor, items, enemies and quests in your game database. In addition, with the mods you can add more realism or more arcade overhauls to your games. They are definitely worthwhile to download especially you want to add more fun to the games and I can guarantee you that there are many good modders which offer you the mods that you do not want to miss this chance to download.

P.S I also want to thank all the modders who use a lot of times and work to create these wonderful mods.

I think Nexus websites are great for searching mods for your preference. If you search mods for your games here are the links for the nexus websites;

http://www.tesnexus.com/ (for Oblivion)
http://www.dragonagenexus.com/ (for Dragon Age: Origins)
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/ (for Fallout 3)
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/ (for Fallout New Vegas)


Screenshots:
1. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/38336-1-1304674120.jpg
2.http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/3374-1-1286773944.jpg
3.http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/images/2822-1-1305486739.jpg

Power of the Teens

Today I watched 3 podcast which are related to game industry. Each of the podcast discuss certain aspect of the game industry. Mostly, the liabilities which can be a huge problem to the relation between games and minors.

First podcast was about the Supreme Court case about selling mature games to the minors. In this podcast there were 2 guests which discussed the ban the games for minors is right or not. I had to admit, I liked this podcast because topic was discussed objectively which related how the mature games effect the minors. How minors can access the mature games and how these games affect minors daily lives. I agree with the host about this court is a serious matter for the game industry which will able to influence game industry seriously.

Second podcast was about the same issue, but this time host had 3 guest which overview the censorship of the game. In this discussion mainly focused rating system that if it is really working or not. Also, how the decision of the Supreme Court will affect the industry. Some of the guests were strongly disagreed with the idea of banning the games for the minors. However, they also discussed how rating and censorship is in the Europe in order to compromise the issue with alternative point of view.

Third podcast was about the same issue, but compare to the first two podcast, this podcast shoot by the non game related websites. This podcast was about the host's point of view about the issue and how important the game industry for the economy and most of the gamers. He was worried about the impact of the decision of the Supreme Court will destroy most of the important franchises like Activision's Call of Duty. He defended his issue with how violence and nudity is the reflection of the reality.

This issue is a very serious matter recently about the game industry. As all the podcasts discussed the decision of Supreme Court will have a huge impact to the game industry. Rating of the games or "maturity" of the games right now seems that the most important liability for the video games. We see more news about nudity and violence of the games. Moreover, some of these games already banned from other countries because of their maturity. Moreover, this time entire genre is going to aimed by the court. All of these issues will affect the developing of the mature games which are the backbone of the game industry.

Podcast links:
1. http://www.gameindustry.com/podcast/item.asp?id=95
2. http://www.gameindustry.com/podcast/item.asp?id=68
3. http://www.justin.tv/thegunnshop/b/281891068?utm_campaign=archive_export&utm_source=thegunnshop&utm_medium=youtube

Screenshots:
1.http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ccfc/images/manhunt%20axe.jpg
2.http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1425/710361398_04a8ee59ca_o.jpg
3.http://jimmyjangles.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/miranda_breasts_sex_scene_mass_effect.jpg

Other side of the Coin

Everyone who is interested in the game industry or read news regarding the games probably read couple of sues regarding the game developer or distributor companies. It is like every major or minor company in the game industry that faced couple of courts since 2000.

Most of these courts focused on violence and nudity of the video games. With the advancement of technology and popularity of the mature games, many games today contain violence and nudity in their arsenal. Best examples are Dragon Age, Mass Effect and The Witcher franchises for the RPG games.

Because of that, many parents and media focused on the contents of the game. Recently, long awaited game Duke Nukem Forever accused as highly sexist by the media and Women's Media Center VP. Because of the status of the women in the game (every women in the game are strippers and you can kill them for fun), The Gearbox Software will likely face a case about this issue after the release.

Regarding of the mature game issue, there is another case about mature games in the Iowa Supreme Court. The case is about how to sell the mature games with or without parents. California State wanted to prohibit the sail of mature games to the minors who do not have parents with them. Video Software Dealers Association and Entertainment Software Association concerned by this law because they fear that this law may hurt their income tremendously and apparently both parties will face each other in Iowa.

However, the industry does not just face sex and violence regarding cases. Sometimes taxes and the other regulations are important case as well. For example, the best known Facebook games, FarmVille and CityVille developers Zynga considering the leave San Francisco because stock-option payroll tax.

Screenshots:

1.http://www.electricpig.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/fallout-gore.jpg
2.http://www.3drealms.com/duke-nukem-forever.jpg