Digital Interactif

Mobile Gaming Industry - MIT Interactive Entertainment SIG

This past Monday, I attended the inaugural MIT Interactive Entertainment Special Interest Group (SIG) event.  The speakers on the panel included Mathew Bellows (GM of Floodgate Entertainment), Jeff Burden (VP Digital Media & Games for Hasbro), and Beth Marcus (Founder of Zeetoo.net). 

The panelists painted a bleak picture for the $1 billion mobile gaming industry.  There are currently two major obstacles facing mobile game producers, Carriers and Hardware:

• Carriers
  • There was agreement on the panel that the single largest obstacle facing game makers is the phone carriers themselves.  The "$6 per game" business model has been undercut by the payments demanded by the major carriers.  According to Jeff Burden, roughly 35-50% of a game's revenue is taken by the carriers upfront.
  • Carriers reserve the right to terminate data packets if they deem them burdensome to the network.  Therefore, even if a game is successful, a carrier may pull the rug out from under it because the game is causing too much traffic on a mobile network.   
• Hardware
  • The market for handsets is too fragmented.  Differences in screen size between handsets make standardization of game resolution impossible. 
  • Memory on most cell phones is not large enough to support high quality games.

The margins for mobile gaming companies are small due to the market's small size and the obstacles thrown up by the carriers.  Matthew Bellows observed that there are not many marketing costs associated with getting a mobile game to market, except taking Execs out to dinner!  Matt insinuated that there was no effective way to market to consumers.  But this point of view avoids the potential of in-store bluetooth downloads and other means of getting consumers to download and interact with video games directly in retail environments. 

Mobile gaming companies have a slight advantage over game makers for traditional gaming platforms because of the relatively low cost of creating a mobile game.  The cost of producing a major PC title typically runs from $4 - $12 million.  The cost of Mobile games on the other hand runs from $150k - $750 per title.  The low end mobile games are 2D, single/multi player whereas the high end games are 3D, multiplater, and bluetooth compatible.  This results in mobile game makers throwing a bunch of games at a "wall" and hoping that they'll stick.   

Mobile gaming has yet to see a game with a viral component.  The first real "big" mobile game will probably arise from a synergy of a mobile social network(Mocospace) and a mobile game.  Additionally, there has yet to be a game with any tie-in on the Internet.  The old model of designing PS2 games for a mobile handset is a dead-end and there is a great amount of potential innovation to be seen within this industry. 

One way to move the mobile gaming industry forward is to look outside of the physical handset for motivation.  Local interactive media company Locamoda has developed technology that allows users to interact with LCD screens hooked up to the Internet via local access numbers.  Using Locamoda's technology and a mobile phone, consumers can control the content on LCD screens, whether it be at a mall or a bar.  This technology could radically alter how the industry develops and looks at mobile games because it would allow game users to bypass the carriers and play games via local access numbers against people in the same room instead of having to use bluetooth or data plans.  This work-around would also allow game makers to do what they are good at: producing high quality games!  Since the games themselves would now be embed applications hosted outside of the handset itself, the level of interactivity and social aspect could be increased drastically . Additionally, projecting mobile games onto an external high quality screen would overcome the fact that it's just not fun to play a game on a tiny mobile screen.

The next MIT Interactive Entertainment SIG event, Financial Game - VC Funding in the Gaming Industry, will be taking place on December 5th.   

Wiffiti brings the Interactivity to your Hompage

The above is a Wiffiti screen that exists in the digital realm and can be updated via text messages. 

The website lists all the publically viewable Wiffiti screens and each screen is geo-tagged on a Google map.  Though texting a SMS message to an online message board is nothing innovative in of itself(twitter has allowed this for a while), Wiffiti creates a visually pleasing application that could be displayed on a large LCD screen in a bar, cafe, sports venue, ect.   

For instance, since the application records when messages are put up on the screen itself, this type of device could be used in conjunction with quiz nights at bars.  Instead of long, drawn out rounds at quiz night, the Wiffiti screen could serve as the official judge of who texted the correct answer to a given question.   Not only would this save people time by speeding up rounds at quiz nights, but it would also solve the problem of cheaters who use the long rounds to call/text their friends for answers to questions. 

Go ahead and leave a message, its very easy: Text @DIGITAL to 25622.  Wait to receive back a text from 25622.  Then text your message and it will appear on the board.  Very easy! 

Wiffiti is a product of Boston-based Locamoda.
 

In VoIP We Trust

Today Avaya's stock price went hog-wild, at one point dropping nearly 11% before regaining some of it's strength and ending only 1.73% down.   Currently in the midst of a private equity buyout, Avaya is worrying investors because of continued turmoil in the credit market and the recent collapse of stereo-maker Harman International's own buyout deal.  Fortunately, the Avaya's underlying business is solid as a rock. 

As the economy moves forward over the next couple of quarters, skeptics and investors aplenty will cry wolf, but companies that provide VoIP equipment/software for businesses will remain on solid footing.  VoIP is spreading throughout the business world and this will benefit makers of VoIP equipment and software, especially one's with respected names in the industry. The underlying logic is that even if our economy does enter into a recession,  VoIP communications provides a means to simultanously reduce costs and enhance productivity.  Therefore, the equipment makers for VoIP products stand to make considerable profits as businesses inevitably invest in this cost saving technology. 

Two companies to keep an eye on are Level 3 and Shoretel.  These stocks are a win-win situation in the long-run for two reasons.  Firstly, as described above, high rates of adoption and considerable profit margins will allow these companies to grow over time.  Secondly, this sector of the telecommunications industry will see much consolidation in the next few years in order to take advantage of VoIP's global spread. 

Also, keep an eye on the equipment giants Nortel Networks and Alcatel-Lucent.   Nortel is currently priced at a four-year low and it may still have a few bad quarters ahead of it, thus it's price may still go lower.  Likewise, Alcatel-Lucent is nearing a four year low and is currently having difficulty realizing gains from it's recent merger.  But for all their problems, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent should not be trivialized.  Their international presence and market size could see them reemerge as an increasingly important players in the next two year. 

FYI: I do hold small stake in AVAYA.  I don't (at least not yet) hold any stock in Level 3, Shoretel, Alcatel-Lucent or Nortel.   

How's Your Signal Doin?

Signal Map is a new website that allows users to upload their cellphone service's coverage strength onto a Google map.  It is really easy (too easy in fact) to add signal information and if enough people do it, this site could become a great resource for people choosing between cellphone carriers. 

Currently Signal Map is in Beta mode so I hope that there are some updates coming down the line.  One obvious improvement would be to have user profiles.  As it stands, you do not have to identify yourself if you are going to make an addition to the map.   This is unfortunate because there is no way to assess whether a poster has a good "reputation" or if they are "truthful". 

Also, I would think it would be cool if there was a feature that would show all of the signals that a user had uploaded onto the map.  It would give you a glimpse of who the user is and it would also clearly show if someone was spamming the map with false wireless signal strengths.

Integrating Social Networking-esq functionality into the site might not be part of Signal Map's business plan, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.  All in all , Signal Map is a great idea and I look forward to using it when I get a new cellphone plan.   

The Age of the Twitter Conversation

The WSJ reports that TV Shows are going to be launching Ad Campaigns based on Twitter.   In the article though, all of the ideas put forward are extremely Web 1.0, they are just communicating them in Web 2.0 fashion.  Example:

The title character in the new NBC show "Chuck," about a computer geek who becomes a secret agent, will twitter to fans of the show. The campaign launches next Monday and NBC hopes Twitter will send users to other platforms like MySpace, where Chuck will also have a profile.

Seriously? I don't give a damn about "Chuck", nor will anyone.  Utilizing Twitter is a good idea as long as the idea is good.  Getting a twitter from "Chuck" is pointless.  At most it will be 140 characters, and I don't need to hear about fictional "Chuck"'s daily activities. 

But there are some great promotions that can be achieved through the combination of TV and Twitter.  For instance, there could be a weekly give away based on Twitter.  Half-way through the TV show, a plot question could be asked via Twitter.  If you twitter back the correct response, you win.  For this to happen, people would have to add Chuck's profile on twitter as a Friend.  That way, the user will receive any messages sent from Chuck's account and vice versa.  Additionally, these Twitter messages can be sent directing to and from your cellphone via text message.  Therefore, if you are watching the show on TV and have taken the necessary steps, you will be notified of the Twitter question via text and you can actually respond back via text in order to win the contest.

Another idea for twittering is to send out a tweet whenever the show is coming back from commercial break.  I like flipping channels and not watching commercials (so don't most people) but I hate it when my flipping-instincts cause me to miss parts of a show.  So a reminder that the show is coming back on in 't-minus seconds' would draw back in crowds and keep them from getting sucked into another program.  Of course, TV shows operate in different time zones, so I definitly don't want a text message coming into my phone when the show is airing in California.  Therefore, this should be unrolled as an East Coast idea first and see where it goes.

I think this would be a great way to converse with the people watching your show.  Obviously, the people Twittering "Chuck" are going to be the most avid fans.  But these are also the fans that marketers are trying to reach within that particular 30 minute block of time.  There could be many different conversations taking place via this medium and many of these conversations will be valuable to the marketer.   

Jaxtr and a big thumbs up!

I recently came across the Jaxtr service and I am pretty impressed by its offerings. 

Essentially, friends can call eachother via cellphone or landline through the Jaxtr service.  The service currently works in 43 countries:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Guam, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and U.S. Virgin Islands

I tried out the service for the first time on Friday and I was amazed at both its ease of use and sound quality.  My friend who lives in Poland signed up for the service and all I had to do was click on his "Call Me" button located on his Jaxtr profile.  (for reference, this mine: http://www.jaxtr.com/digitalinteractif).

About 5 seconds after I clicked on his "Call Me" button, I received a phone call on my cell phone from Jaxtr.  A voice on the other end of the telephone line said "Please hold, connecting your call..." or something to that effect. 

I was on hold for about 10-15 seconds before I was connected to the sound of a phone ringing (it was actually more like "beeping" but that is just because I was calling a polish phone).  After the 3rd ring, my friend answered his Polish cell phone in Warsaw and we were talking...for free. 

Our conversation lasted about 20 minutes and not once were our voices cut out as had happened with the Mobivox service.  The sound quality of the Jaxtr service is truly incredible!  I give the service a big thumbs up and recommend checking it out. 

Currently Jaxtr is marketing itself to social networks because it allows anonymous calling, but Jaxtr needs to market itself better to international communities.  For instance, a big improvement would be to have pages created in the different languages that their service works in, such as French.  There is a large growing community of American's who have lived abroad and know people around the world, and thus this great segment of the population to target.  I have a few friends in France who don't speak English and cannot read it either, so navigating Jaxtr's site is a daunting task for them.  If Jaxtr took the time to create mini-sitelets which would act as simple sign up pages for various languages, this service would transcend some of the potential cultural/language barriers that definitely exist in international communication.   

I have been disappointed by Jaxtr's widget though.  I have had it located on this blog for the past week and not once has it worked correctly.  It is always in the "loading..." window which I find extremely annoying.  If the widget function doesn't work, please don't take it to market! It's just a waste of my time and it looks bad.  But as soon as the widget starts working, you will see my a functional button on the top of the right column that says "Call Me".  If you are a registered Jaxtr user and click on that button, we will be connected seamlessly and for free.  Pretty cool.

UPDATE:

Thanks for the fix Jaxtr!  Unfortunetly the Jaxtr widget isn't easy to get onto Typepad's sidebar, there is no Typepad option within the 'Post It' options but I look forward to the day that your engineers get it up and running.

Also, a friend of mine had added the Jaxtr widget to their facebook profile and it appears that her widget also belongs to Odessa the Engineer. 

But no love lost, I made another call with Jaxtr today and it was just as great as the first time I used it!   

Live Sports Scores via Text

This weekend as I was reading USA Today on the train on my way up to Maine, I came across a service that I have been on the lookout for.  I am not sure who is paying for the service, but beneath the advertisement in the newspaper it said - presented by chevy.com - so I can only assume that we have chevy.com to thank for this. 

Send text message to 44636 (4INFO) with TEAM NAME (Red Sox, Yankees...) or LEAGUE NAME (MLB, NASCAR) 

The advertisment only has MLB and NASCAR, but it may work for others such as NBA, NHL, NFL, ect...
This is a great service and I am surprised I haven't seen it pushed through other mediums.  For instance, why haven't I heard of this service at any of the 5 Red Sox games I have been to this year or the 20-something Red Sox games I have watched on TV? 

Whoever is marketing this text program is obviously missing their key demographic(which is 16-33 years old who have cell phones and know how to text message.)  This age group reads the news online and for the most part doesn't deal with print news.  I am very fortunate that I came across this ad in USA Today, but it could be marketed in a much better way. 

I would like to see  "Red Sox Nation" t-shirts sold outside of Fenway with this texting info on the shirt itself.  Now THAT would be a tshirt with some VALUE both for the marketer as well as a fan. 

Equally surprising to me is that this service does not even serve up an advertisment with the score.  Whoever is providing the service is missing a chance to generate a significant amount of revenue from a marketer.  Or if it is chevy.com swallowing the cost, they should at least let you know in the text itself that they are the ones providing it.  Take a little credit!  It's an awesome service.  Thanks Chevy!   

xfruits.com

xfruits is a French website, conveniently translated into English, that provides a host of RSS tools for you blog.  xfruits gives you a profile and has a some cool additional functionality. 

RSS to MY BLOG is the newest function to be added to the site.  This automatically reads your blog and syndicates it.

EMAIL to RSS allows you to email blog posts to your website by email. 

I've just started using the site, so if you know anything more about it, drop me a line.  It'll be producing some cool RSS features in the future. 

The T-Shirt Revolution

This company, Reactee, has been around for a while now but they still haven't gotten noticed on a large scale.  You can custom design a shirt which will have a # that someone can send a text message to and then they will receive a predetermined text message response from you. 

This is a GREAT idea, but I would never endorse Reactee...solely because it costs $20 per shirt.  On a mass scale, this could be a great business, especially if you serve an advertisement up with the text message while providing a meaningful service that people value.

My initial reaction was that this would play well with non-profits and political parties, but its success depends on how you utilize the shirt and what you expect to gain from it.  Today as I was walking home from work I passed by a bunch of street-beat workers for some non-profit looking for signatures, but it's really your money they want...

the same kids who will come up to you and say "how are you, would you sign this petition to help ______".  So you stop and get ready to sign their petition and then they pounce, "If you give $__ it will really make a difference!", just as you are prepared to sign the petition.  Well at that point I don't sign the petition cause then they'll have on record who the cheap ass was that started ignoring them as soon as they started talking about money.

...so I found that I've conditioned myself to avoid any and all form of eye contact with them as I pass by.  This is quite similar to the Banner Blindness affect, where if it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, then it's something that's just too much like a damn duck and I don't like duck.(Truthfully, I like ducks, who doesn't?) Basically, I avoid eye contact with street-beat folk, for guilt reasons or whatever else reason, so in the end I would never actually get a good look at their shirt and thus I wouldn't text whatever number they have on their clothing.

Now in politics it is a similar situation, especially in New Hampshire during primary season.  I feel bad for people living in NH during the primary election cycle, cause their towns, neighborhoods, and homes are swarmed with volunteers, pamphlets and phone calls, OH MY!  So I wouldn't expect them to text message based on the shirt of someone coming to their door. 

But where I do see it possibly working in Politics is on Main St with the street-beat volunteers:

• Its good for the environment.  Don't hand out pamphlets because everyone knows that it's garbage the minute you hand it away.  Instead, have people text you for a your policy stance on Iraq, Social Security, Health Care, Immigration, or taxes.  In 5 years, the new saying in politics will go "If you can't fit it into a text message, then it's not worth saying."
• Volunteers work in teams comprised of 5 individuals.  Each volunteer wears a different shirt emphasizing a different policy issue with a separate message. 
• The street team can "shout"-"say"-"beg" to folks passing: "Interested in Bill Richardson's position on Iraq, text this number!" Nothing exchanged but a smile. 
• The volunteers would be spaced out about 15 yards apart, so as people walk down the street its a veritable gauntlet of policy issues that they have the option to learn more about.
• BEST OF ALL: if they text you, you know WHO texted you.  So come December/January when the primaries are getting near, you have the cell phone number of a potential voter.  If they are going to text message your tshirt, I bet they are the same type of person who will actually vote.(future research project...not it!) 

That's how I see it working in politics.  But I think there are countless ways that this type of interaction can be effective in business, branding, networking, dating(?), or whatever.  The majority of the people I know have cell phones with no data plans, so texting is the 'greenest'/best way to communicate in real-time with a passer-by on the street.(Especially the person who won't stop to sign a petition) 

 

Prank Calling The Brits

I don't know about you, but I plan on prank calling a couple of British folk I know this 4th of July.  Normally I wouldn't do such a thing, but this 4th of July it will be for free and from my cell phone thanks to MOBIVOX.

MOBIVOX offers to anyone who is registered to the service $10 US worth of free international calls from anywhere in the United States this July 4th. Users will be able to make their free calls from the United States to anywhere in the world on mobile or fixed lines anytime from midnight EDT to 11:59:59 pm EDT July 4 for a value up to 10$ US of MOBIVOX credit. At 11:59:59 pm EDT the unused portion of the gift in dollar value will be put back to zero.

MOBIVOX's Independence Day promotion is a way to connect friends and family separated by oceans, continents or simply national frontiers who can't make it to Fourth of July picnics or barbecues, and to thank its growing user base for choosing the MOBIVOX service.

THANK YOU MOBIVOX.  I truly appreciate the gesture and this promotion will be the first of many times that I use your service.  You are terrific...

But, I expect more.  Essentially you dial up a local access number and then from there you are connected to the number you are trying to reach.  Currently, Mobivox allows one to only call landlines in the following countries:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg), South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul), United Kingdom and Venezuela-Caracas.

While this is a nice selection of countries, all of my friends currently over in Europe only own mobile phones.  I have no one to call on a landline in Europe so I will be forced to call random british people who I will thank for losing the war of independence a few hundred years ago...all from my cell phone with a beer in hand.  So cool.

And just in case you are curious, here are the countries in which you can call Mobile phones  for free through the Mobivox service:

Canada, China, Guam, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Thailand and United-States (including Alaska and Hawaii).

Seriously, Guam? Ok whatever, it's cool.  But do they even have cell phones in Guam? If you're reading this, you're not from Guam.  I'd say that last one is true.

UPDATE:

Great News!  I was wrong! You can INDEED call cell phones AS WELL AS landlines, no matter where on July 4th for free.  Now just to clear it up, it's not unlimited FREE, but instead you receive a $10 dollar credit.  This is cool but the rates are pretty expensive. 

For instance, I am calling a friend in Poland on July 4th(don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be calling him if it wasn't for Mobivox's promotion, so again, thanks Mobivox, you rock!) but it is $.26 per minute.  This works out to be a 40 minute phone call which is pretty sweet...but its too expensive to make it a habit.