While Thomas and Diane are already visiting panels and having meetings at the GDC Europe in Cologne, the rest of ICO’s crew is making the final preparations for their flights to the following gamescom convention starting on Wednesday. In fact, we are pretty much set and ready to go, staring at the planes taking off outside our office window at Gatwick Airport and looking forward to being on one of them tomorrow afternoon. We also finally got the confirmation for the catering service at our booth at Hall 4.1, Aisle H, Booth 055 – and as we are looking forward to seeing many of you in person, this means you can enjoy snacks and drinks while dropping by.

Like us, you may already have a busy schedule but even without having arranged a meeting you’re welcome to visit us and talk about business or finally meet in person. Whether you plan on publishing a video game in Europe, want to talk about partnerships with us or are just eager to collect the full set of our shiny new business cards, you should memorize the location of our booth.

Here is how I do it:

Germany-England 4:1, Hungary was the best team in ‘55 (before Germany won the world cup in ’56)

(EDIT: This is actually not true, but it works and could keep you busy to spot the error in the sentence)

Of course, that’s my way, easy for a German but might work for others, too.

(Now I’m back at nervously checking volcanic ash forecasts one more time)

The biggest F2P MMO in Europe, Metin2, was originally launched in 2006 as a subscrition game, and quickly repositioned as Free-to-play when it failed to gain traction. Since then, switching a struggling game to free-to-play has been a popular tactic, but for some games it did little to renew interest and bring a new audience, most of the time when it was too late already to adapt the whole game design and the way to run operations to the new model. That’s what happened to games like The Chronicles of Spellborn, which unsuccessfully switched to a not-quite-F2P model after an unsuccessful launch. The game just announced its definitive closure.

For some other games, like Turbine’s Dungeon and Dragons Online, it did bring a second youth and new players. Encouraged by the success of the tactic (or discouraged by its subscribers numbers), Turbine has since announced that its flagship MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, will switch to a Free to Play model at the end of the year. SOE has also announced recently that EverQuest2 was going free to play too. EverQuest 2 has been around since 2004 and isn’t getting any younger, so it’s probably an attempt from SOE to keep its existing base and attract ex-players.

Because, if everybody agrees that subscription is a barrier to entry, it’s also often overlooked as a barrier to re-entry, which is the main problem that declining games are facing.

We are curious to see how many more announcements there will be in the coming months, as the less pay-to-play MMOs remain, the more difficult it is for each one to keep the model. Games like Lineage 2 and City of Heroes at NCsoft could certainly be considering it, but even more recent games who did not meet the expected level of success like Warhammer Online or Age of Conan could be tempted.

The difficulty resides in finding the investment and expertise to develop the game around a new business model, while forgoing the existing revenue streams, which can be a huge gamble. This is also a difficult community management exercise, as first most people express discontent at having paid for something that is now free (a problem every company has when lowering the price of a product), and then if it is successful in growing the game’s audience, the reaction from the initial community can be very negative at the afflux of freeriders coming in. Not only are they n00bs, but non-paying ones at that!

It’s interesting to note that some recent or not even in Beta yet indie subscription  games have also announced their switch to free to play. The thing is, given the state of the AAA (understand “subscription-based”) MMO market in the West (which is flattening according to a brand new report by Strategy Analytics), it’s going to be very difficult for new games to be in a position to demand a subscription from players. The only games in position to keep the pay-to-play model will probably be the very niche games, where subscription is not the biggest barrier to entry and whose players are price inelastic (I doubt EVE Online would get much more players if it was free), and uber blockbusters which can command this premium  (Star Wars Old Republic will probably still launch pay-to-play). Even the biggest blockbusters might have trouble staying P2P, and those of the future might not be . The free to play offering is now so diverse and qualitative that it’s difficult to see what other type of game can now successfully launch pay to play. Attention is precious and the online model is games paying to acquire users, not the other way round.

We’re still noticing a lot of contempt in the generalist video games media for free-to-play games, when they are just not realizing that they are becoming the norm, and that the trend is accelerating. These media will go the same way of the pay-to-play games if they don’t get educated about free to play soon.

Because of the evolving nature of the social games, we are still at the very beginning of the story, and I expect the presentation to get outdated very quickly.

I had the opportunity to talk to people working at the biggest social games development studios during the process, and a lot of the content here comes from those discussions (which were full of hopes as well as frustrations). Here it is for you to read:

Which myth have I missed? What did you believe about social games that wasn’t true in the end?

The Guinness Theory

Guinness is a 250 years old brewer which enjoys success in Ireland, but also in Africa, Asia and in the Caribbean islands. Well known for it’s original marketing and sticky advertising (“Guinness if good for you !” “It’s Guinness time !”), the company is also famous to have created the biggest selling non-religious book in the world : the Guinness Book of World Records. It is this book that interests us today.

The Guinness beer hasn’t changed or inovated that much in 250 years, and therefore, the company didn’t try to “sell beer”, it didn’t try to prove why its product was better than another one, it was confident in its potential, and thefore tried to grow the market, knowing that, as more people would drink beer overall, more will drink Guinness. From this point, Guinness tried to attract more customers into pubs, and this is where the Book of Records enters the story : although it is nowadays sold in book stores and very successful, this book was initially published by Guinness as a free product which was distributed to pubs in Ireland and around the world. Why ? So that people would have something to talk about around a couple of drinks, make new encounters, have a good time, and therefore come back more often, maybe stay for longer periods, and consume more.

An Irish pub is not only a place to drink, it is a place to go with friends, a place to meet new people and exchange on topics you wouldn’t have imagined. Not willing to alter its famous recipe, Guinness grew by providing pub customers a new service : a book full of wonders and unbelievable deeds which would facilitate people chatting with each other while having a drink after work. They have also applied this strategy to sports sponsorships : most sports event sponsors dedicate their budget to these events because of the media exposure they get, but it the case of smaller national Irish sports like Hurling or Gaelic Football, this exposure is much lower. It doesn’t stop Guinness for supporting these national sports with important funding, simply because these games are public events, and attract people to pubs where they watch it with their friends, and with dozens of other people they will just meet there, and together they will enjoy an important moment, over a pint of Guinness of course…

How to apply it to the games industry ?

This example is just one of many showing one very important point : services that are provided for free to support a product can have a strong impact on sales, customer fidelity, and

the overall success of this product. Now this can easily be (and already is by some companies) applied to the games industry : just think about what your players do when they play, and think about how you could make the experience easier, faster, and more enjoyable without changing your product itself. All the ideas that come into your mind now are services that could help your games grow bigger : simple registration and login, unique currency system, streamed updates, friends list, cross-compatibility, etc.

Many tools already exist to help game developers and publisher achieve this goal, and more need to be developed as games become more and more service oriented and members of the industry begin to realise that good games with terrible services can easily fail, whereas “bad” games with very good services can become huge successes.

We would be more than happy to discuss this topic with you at GamesCom from the 18th to the 20th of August on Hall 4.1, Aisle H, Booth 055. If you plan to attend and wish to meet, don’t hesitate to drop us an e-mail.

On Tuesday 13th of July, I presented my lecture “Games as a service, do you really know what it means?” at the Develop in Brighton conference. While I have changed the slides a bit for the event, the content was essentially the same as when I presented it in Seattle for the LOGIN conference, and you can find the presentation on slideshare.

The really good news is that Dan Hon did a great write up of my presentation (something I meant to do for a while but never took the proper time to do) and you can find it on his blog:

My next speaking event already takes place in Munich this week. I will present a keynote at the Social Media Summit of the Making Games Conference with the topic ”Social Games: Busting the Myths”. You can find details on the event here.

And you probably know already, we will be at gamescom this year, we even have a booth: Hall 4.1, Aisle H, no. 055. Contact us if you want to meet.

The opening speech made it very clear. Asking the audience ‘What is Community Management?’ brought it straight to the point why a Community Manager Conference does make sense. It’s by far not the very first time I saw this question being raised and everyone giving a different answer. The first time was years ago and still not much seems to have changed. No wonder then that the audience got excited hoping to know the answer by the end of the day. This, on the other hand, would have been a wonder. Nonetheless, the CMC proved to be a stepping stone for many who are now hoping to be able to visit similar events in the future – and maybe one day be able to answer this question without second thoughts and hesitation.

The other thing that became clear is that while Community Managers tend to know each others (board)names and faces, they usually don’t have time for long discussions at conventions where their companies are exhibiting. This is usually the time where Community Managers bond with the community itself as those shows are more consumer oriented – and consumer relationships are a vital part of each Community Manager’s job. The CMC did a great job in bringing people together and get to know each other better.

Most likely everyone will have left the convention with different thoughts but I am sure most of them were positive. If you haven’t attended CMC or aren’t sure if you should visit future conferences then here’s a short list of things you could take away from being there.

Think outside the box

A lot of Community Manager job descriptions list ‘thinking outside the box’ as a desired ability. While it’s easy when you start the job – maybe coming from the outside or even the fanbase – it gets tougher once the routine kicks in. You know how your company rolls, what your managers want to see and it becomes tempting to take less risks and focus on safe results.  Speaking with or listening to other Community Managers enables you to not forget how to think outside the box. While many share the same challenges, the approaches to tackle them differ. Beyond that, everyone has other special abilities and ideas. Ideas you might have never thought about before – maybe because of lack of time or treading water. Get inspired!

Personal development

Inspiration is one thing, the actual implementation is the tough part. Talking to other Community Managers can help you improve your knowledge and gain more skills. A rule I’ve told myself but unfortunately not follow all the time is to also visit speeches or panels I don’t have a clue about at all. Sure, the title of a speech might sound interesting if it’s a topic I am enthusiastic about but then I often find myself leaving the room an hour later not having learnt anything new. It might even have been a great speech but only 5-10 minutes of it have been things I haven’t heard before. It does not have to be a speech about quantum physics but anything outside my expertise might give me 50-60 minutes of new knowledge. This knowledge might not be necessary for my day to day routines but can come in handy when encountering an unusual problem or trying something new.

Finding the answer – what do you do?

As mentioned before, even Community Managers still have problems describing what their job actually is. If they don’t know, how are others supposed to know? You might end up in a situation where you have to sell your services and by then it’s best to know how valuable you are. Maybe your company hired you just because they heard that they need Community Managers without even knowing exactly why and how to track their value. (Same phenomenon can sometimes be seen with Social Media Managers these days). This shouldn’t stop you from learning from other people’s experiences to find out how things are being managed elsewhere.

Maybe it’s the other way round and you already have a clear image of not only doing what you’ve been told but shining as an expert in some areas. Share that knowledge and get knowledge back in return.

Community Management takes place in an ever changing environment. Your community might be totally different than other communities. A global and everlasting definition of Community Management and its tasks might never be found but there is one question you should be able to answer when being asked:

‘What is in there for me if I let you manage our community?’

So, I am very pleased to announce that last week, ICO gained a new team member: Julien Wéra. I have known Julien for many years, from when he was playing The Fourth Coming and Dark Age of Camelot as I was operating them. In some small way I like to think that I might be partly responsible for his career choice, and I take great pride in this considering how well he has done. One of the first team members of the gPotato Europe team, he was leading their PR and Marketing activities before he joined Popcap’s European office to manage their Public Relations towards France and Germany. He is coming to us with wide experience that complements our current team very well, and will help to develop ICO Media, our PR service dedicated to online games. We have been developing ICO Media stealthily (but not really secretly) for the past year now, in parallel to ICO’s growing consulting activities.

We shall talk more about ICO Media at Cologne, during gamescom, where you can come visit us on our booth in the business area:  Hall 4.1, Aisle H, no.055.

Meanwhile, you are very welcome to say “Bienvenue” to Julien.

As you can tell from the latest schedule, I’ll be the moderator of a panel discussion with the catchy title “Media isn’t social – People are!” at 3:15pm in Room 10. I am sure you get the social media reference in it, but why a title like this, you may ask?

When dealing with customers on a daily basis, Community Managers need to know where their community is hanging out, what they are talking about and ideally also how they are talking about things with their friends. Most companies have figured out by now that a lot of customers are using social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to talk with their friends – also about the company’s product/game. They then rush to “be on Facebook or Twitter” to spread news about the company there. The question is, have they realised that these aren’t just communication platforms, but spaces that bring about a whole new kind of customer and communication behaviour?

In our panel we will focus on the social customer. Media itself isn’t social, but cleverly designed platforms can promote social behaviour between users. Many ‘social customers’ now get their information and learn about new trends from their network of friends, instead of browsing one corporate website after another. Those customers tend to become more and more resistant to purely promotional material, and expect brands to engage with them in the same ways that their friends do.

Communicating with the customers is a major task of every Community Manager, and the members of the panel will discuss this paradigm shift, giving insight into how they are transitioning into the social space. After all, those new social technologies offer the tools to bring relationships with the customers to a whole new level, and can help creating better products by understanding their needs.

Join us at the panel discussion in Room 10 at 3:15pm. I am glad to have such interesting panel members from both inside and outside the gaming industry, with Philip from the multi gaming guild Thelyn Ennor representing the customer’s point of view. The panel members are:

• Donna Prior, Bioware
• Silke Schippmann, Qype GmbH
• Jan Hantke, Bigpoint
• Philip Dietrich, Thelyn Ennor

If you’re going to the CMC, I hope to see you there!

Most of my talks recently have been very factual and number-driven, and they have been supported by very factual, number-driven Powerpoint presentations. Sharing those was very easy and straightforward. If you didn’t attend the event then you missed some of the information, but honestly, you could get the gist of it in Slideshare.

The Games as a Service presentation doesn’t work that way. It’s very dependent on the content of the talk, and it doesn’t stand alone very well. I was hoping to be able to take some time to add comments to the presentation, and expand on its usefulness, but realistically it won’t happen before the next time I deliver the lecture, which will be at Develop in Brighton on July the 13th.

So, I have decided to share it “as is”, with the content from the LOGIN conference. I expect the Develop one to be shorter (I went way overtime in Seattle and I had to leave out part of the content), and I will replace my Dyson vacuum cleaner picture with one of Lady Gaga (if you want to know why, you know what you have to do!).

I hope some of it will be useful for you, and please feel free to comment with your thoughts.

I couldn’t test the game, Gun Range, myself but there is a video on YouTube and while it seems to offer a very basic gameplay, it’s obvious how much closer this way of aiming in video games comes to the real thing. Instead of using a controller or swiping the screen to rotate the character in the game, the player actually has to move around with the iPhone, thereby changing the viewing angle in the game.

It’s a little bit like playing with a light gun, and still pretty far away from the ‘window to virtual worlds’ I was hoping to see when writing my previous article, but given that the developers didn’t have access to the hardware for a long time yet, it can only be seen as dipping the toes into fresh water.

Watch the video and see what it looks like for yourself. If you have an iPhone 4 and give Gun Range a try, I’d love to hear your impressions in the comments.