Circling Back: How Serious Games is[sic] Helping the Commercial Industry
Posted 3/8/2005 10:40:00 AM by David Michael
Circling Back: How Serious Games is[sic] Helping the Commercial Industry
This was a panel discussion featuring James Regan, Dean Ku, and Roger Arias, moderated by Warrn Currell.
James - Works for Ubisoft as Director of New Business Development. Ubisoft is both a publisher and a developer, focused on next generation of consoles. Blah blah blah corporate details that I'm sure they're proud of but I couldn't care less about. I sat there waiting for him to get to the damn topic. (He never did.)
Dean - Works for RedOctane, makers of Ignition Pad, the top selling dance pad in 2004...blah blah blah. RedOctane created the"Getup and Move" PR campaign in 2004. The campaign spokesperson lost 95lbs playing a dance game.
RedOctane stays close to the dance game community. They started receiving emails from players who were losing weight. Personal and powerful stories. The spokesperson (whose name I never took down) didn't start dancing to lose weight, she just played the game and saw it happening. The "Getup and Move" campaign started in Jan 2004, and received a lot of media attention starting in June 2004. The PR campaign had a huge sales impact for DDR and DDR2.
The message connected with both the media and consumers. Child obesity is getting a lot of attention these days, and the Getup and Move campaign worked well with that.
* Consumers connected with the personal stories of fitness and weight loss
* The message was fun. Stay in shape by playing a video game
* The media helped promote awareness.
Some statistics:
* American's spend an estimated $30B a year on weight loss products and services
* In 1999, 13% of children aged 6-11 years and 14% of adolescents aged 12-19 were overweight.
RedOctane is now working with schools to integrate RedOctane products into classrooms, and is working on other products.
Roger - Destineer Studios had no original military or government focus. Their initial focus was on premium games, with a secondary focus on mass market games. They have gone from being a commercial game developer/publisher to also being military/government contractor.
The budgets for some military/government projects is smaller than retail projects, but some of them are in the same scale. And money is, after all, money.
Q. Under what pretences is the Serious Games (SG) sector providing inspiration, talent or technology back to the commercial games industry.
Roger - SG sector will have their own subject matter experts. Developers may or may not have any expertise or inhouse experts. SG products tend to remain stable over a period of years: if it still works, why change it?
James - Ubisoft is using military licenses to make games, like improving on America's Army. It's a win-win situation. Ubisoft gets the license. The Army gets a lot of exposure, and is portrayed accurately.
Audience question: Have improved simulations improved the overall industry?
Government agencies see existing games and want to port them to their own uses.
Dean - Teachers bring a lot of enthusiasm, and new ideas. Applications we would never have thought of.
Warren - Exposure to information that isn't publicly prevalent has proven useful in making commercial games.
Q. Can it ever become pervasive enough to forge stronger links between publishers and serious game projects or studios.
James - Yes. Ubisoft now has a multi-year license contract with US Army.
Roger - If you're a good customer to the military, they will recommend you to other organizations.
James - It's tough to have one game work as both trainer and entertainment. You can't do both with a single product. You have to tune the game to the audience.
Warren - The type of training you're targeting is important.
Dean - Huge potential for a stronger link between schools and video games. Hard to motivate kids to do/learn anything. Video games...kids love them. There is a lot of funding out there (in the education space). Down the road we expect see more collaboration and cooperation between schools and developers.
Warren - Not all good serious games are commercially viable as entertainment. Full Spectrum Warrior had crossover appeal, though some taxpayers protested the use of government money to create a commercial game.
Q. Given recent taxpayer/media reaction to Full Spectrum Warrior, do you think that this will deter any future collaboration between SG and commercial games.
James - Too soon to tell. Even if this is an issue, it will be a short term one.
Roger - Army had paid $5M to fund a training tool partnered with Pandemic and THQ. Army felt thought that they (the Army) did not get what they paid for; the game didn't match their training objectives. This won't deter future collaboration. The military is getting up to speed with working with game developers, and vice versa.
Audience comment: When you're designing a game, you have to keep focused on a single audience.
Roger - It comes down to paying attention to your customer. If you don't get the exact requirements, you're not going to please your customer. Each side might think it's being clear, but you have to ask the question enough ways to make sure you have the right answer.
James - We are starting to see both sides being more pro-active.
RM's Comments: I expected more from this session than a list of how publishers have been able to cash in on the newfound interest in serious games. And I really didn't care to hear Ubisoft's corporate slogan, "Top 5 in 2005", over and over. Overall, though, there was some good information presented, especially from Dean Ku of RedOctane and Roger Arias of Destineer.
Southwest Gaming Expo
