1) According to Nielsen, The Weather Network was the 4th most accessed site (in Canada) on mobile phones in Q1/2009. They beat out Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iTunes, Google Maps, MSN Games, and YouTube. Windows LiveMail, Google Search and Facebook took the top 3 spots.

Think about this. 674,000 people were in a position where they needed to access information that is questionably accurate at the best of times. Further, it’s winter in Canada (Q1 2009). You do not need a network of trained meteorologists to tell you that it’s going to be COLD.

2) I’ve decided to use the Twitter account that I had abandoned 3 seconds after signing up for it upon its birth, to actually, genuinely see what the fuss is all about. I don’t know if I plan on updating it. I want to see if I can establish a really ecclectic list of people to follow for starters. My first reaction? Following Brent Spiner is equal parts amazing, creepy, and disturbingly addictive. I’d definitely suggest checking out his feed.

“ALARM! ALARM! Someone has breached the security system! “Ernst, Ernst, to me! (learned that from Picard) STAT! (learned that from ER)”

3) The same could be said about any specialized industry, but I’ve always found the task of describing what I do to be a difficult task, especially when the person asking isn’t in the industry (specifically if said person is older and happens to be in my family). I usually start off explaining a particular project, stepping back to mention that it’s in the Digital Marketing space, stepping back once more to mention that it’s just marketing with a particular technology spin to it, and finally I resort to grunting “I do computers.” This is usually met with a lightbulb reaction and a remark similar to “Ah yes. My friend/your cousin Jane is a programmer too!” It’s usually at that point that my soul dies a little and I start fantasizing about violently dramatic ways to escape the conversation and/or the room.

This is not exactly what I had mind, as all this really does is launch a web browser which is outside the game world. But it was certainly a step in the right direction. Merging elements of real life into the game environment is something that’s evolved over the last few years, and it’s been met with equal amounts of positive and negative feedback from both consumers and game developers. The major concern amongst the gaming community is that the inclusion of marketing material into a game detracts from its creative value; if you put an ad for Coke or Pepsi into a game, the entire game essentially becomes one giant advertisement. On the other hand, the industry has to be open to different revenue models that will allow it to remain competitive. At the end of the day, someone has to get compensated. So where’s the middle ground?

Well, there are some companies that have been trying to strike a balance. IBM, SonyBMG (there’s that name again), and Nike among others have all set up permanent residence within SecondLife, an online world which has been eluding a specific definition since its inception in 2003.

Once a brand makes a transition like this into a virtual world, it changes in a way that marketers and gamers don’t fully understand yet. If you walk into a store “in the real world”, you interact with a brand. It’s the goal of advertising to make this happen (in order to facilitate a transaction). If you “walk” into a store in SecondLife, the distinction between marketing and brand-interaction becomes blurred. If you end up making a transaction, the experience is really no different than if you walked into a physical store.

The difference between SecondLife and other online worlds however, is that SecondLife has no inherent storyline. There’s no plot distract from, which makes advertising seem less intrusive. It’s almost part of the experience itself. The open ended nature of many modern online games allows for the same kind of “freedom” when it comes to in-game ads. As players find themselves in between a particular set of tasks within the game, they usually congregate in common areas, which provide prime opportunities for advertisers to engage them. At this point, it’s merely up to the advertisers to do what they’ve always been tasked with doing: Provide consumers with an engaging message that persuades them to [trans]act. This doesn’t mean billboards and banners, which seem to be the predominant form of IGA (in game ads) right now. This means being as immersed within the game world as the gamers are. This means understanding their behaviour, and responding to it in a way that is as engaging as the game itself.

An example of such behaviour involves something as simple as traveling within the game world. One of the more tedious aspects of online gaming involves plodding/flying/otherwise moving from place to place. Such a thing can take several minutes, hours, or in some cases, days. So what if a company like RedBull offered an in-game service that would take the player to their desired destination (giving them wings as it were… sorry) for a nominal price (real or virtual)?

Makes sense, no?

It’s one of the more recent debates that’s polarized both consumers and game developers. There’s been a sharp decline in the variety of titles on store shelves, which themselves have yielded floor space to console games. At the same time, subscriptions to popular titles like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online are quite high. Whether it’s dying, growing, stagnating, or recovering, there’s only one thing that most people can seem to agree upon; it’s changing. Scratch that… it’s changed. In fact, I can’t think of anything significant about PC gaming that’s remained the same in the last 3-5 years. But that’s actually a good thing, for those differences have allowed PC games to survive for as long as they have.

The past:

Walk into a retail outlet, buy a game off the shelf. Return home, begin the install process. Check the manufacturer website for the latest game patches. Check your PC component specs to ensure that they’re also up to date. Once you’re in the game, the usual single player vs multiplayer options present themselves, and then off you go. After an average 30-40 hours of play (single player), the title is essentially expired, and it’s off to the retail outlet once again. The only exception to this would have happened if you were involved with the still rather niche FPS genre (Counterstrike, Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament), or with MMORPGs which were in their adolescence at the time.

The present:

Download a full game from the manufacturer’s website, or though distribution channels like Steam and Stardock. Launch the game and wait for it to automatically update itself, verify compatibility with your system, and connect to a group of servers. Then decide if you want to pay for it. … That’s right. Lots of games are offered virtually free of charge, supported by in-game advertising, graduated subscriptions or other forms of user segmentation. Further, these same channels also allow you to centralize game/community settings, character configurations, and even hook into already established social networks in order to enrich the entire gaming experience.

The future… is anyone’s guess, and here’s mine:

As game platforms evolve, so will their content and their methods of distribution (regardless of genre), and the popularity of the MMO format will continue to inform this transformation. While this is happening, there will be a convergence between the offline and online identities of gamers themselves. The notion of a gamers “Profile” will carry more and more weight. You’ll no longer purchase “a game”. You’ll adopt a another brand which you can then apply to your profile. “John Doe the FPS player” becomes “John Doe the adventurer” with consistency in the way their online identity looks and [perhaps] performs in the new game environment. That environment will continue to integrate different (and hopefully engaging) forms of in-game advertising, in order to sustain the financial growth for the different franchises that choose to be a part of it. Imagine a scenario where you actually order a pizza from within a game environment like Grand Theft Auto, or the Sims, and it shows up to your front door. The advantages to this multiplicity favour both the gamer and the manufacturer (not to mention the marketer). If this model does indeed develop, the information associated with a player’s profile becomes that much more valuable. Granted, the requisite privacy issues will have to be ironed out, but those issues are omnipresent in any case.

To say that “PC gaming is dying/ has died” is to fail to recognize that a PC is merely a manifestation of technology, which continues to change. Arcades have all but disappeared from the planet, but you can still find just about every single game they provided a home for with a quick search online.

Going over a recent post at Engadget, I was surprised by the recent results of the latest Nielsen report on “The State of the Video Gamer.”  David Hinkle however, seemed to take this in stride (see his review at Joystiq). This caused me to take pause and reflect a little bit about what I thought I knew about the gaming industry. I used to be a very avid gamer, and as one of many hobbyists who still build my own machines, I still like to keep a close eye on the general state of the industry.

After reading the report, a couple of points stuck with me. Firstly, especially after the last 2 years, I’d always thought of the Wii as the undisputed king of the console market. Gauging press, reaction, and the general clamor for Nintendo’s darling, it’s easy to see why. But according to Nielsen, the Wii is trailing behind in terms of popularity and sales. While I’ve always been a fan of the PC as a gaming platform, everything I’ve experienced with the Wii speaks to its superior ability to cater to a market that was crying out for attention; groups of players (in the same space) looking for socially-oriented gaming experiences. No other console is as party/gathering/birthday-friendly. No other console features game franchises that have dominated the lucrative “family-friendly” market forever. And quite frankly, no other console can get away with releasing games that just do not compare to the PS3 or Xbox360 when it comes to pure graphics capabilities. Now these stats were mostly relevant to December 2008, a time when the Wii was particularly hard to find on store shelves, but is that the only reason for this discrepancy in market share?

Second, and this is straight from the report: “Females 25 years of age and older make up the largest block of PC game players…in December 2008.” Now before you fire up your email client, let me clarify that this surprises me for a number of different reasons. Even given my previous assumptions about the popularity of the Wii, it would not have surprised me as much to see a sharp increase in the numbers of female console gamers. The number of titles that appeal to both genders are incredibly vast. Conversely, the number of new PC games has been on the decline in the last 5 years or so. There just isn’t as much money to be made producing new PC titles anymore. Is it possible that MMO titles like WoW and their kin are responsible for holding onto the increased gamerGirl demographic?

These are questions I don’t really have answers for, but I think are still worth discussing. In a climate where everyone’s had to rethink their business models, it would be interesting to get some insight into the marketing plans of companies in industries where we once thought we were comfortable in. Assumptions that were once valid are now worthless. Strategies to capture the right audience are most likely outdated.

Oh, and one final note from the report. The most popular PC game played by both men and women (25-49)? … Solitaire.

Further, you can now access the site using either of the following 2 urls:

http://www.approachingtheta.com

http://www.apptheta.com

Whether or not you want to pronounce that “Approaching the T.A.” is entirely up to you.

More on theme, there’s a great post over on The Social Capitalist by Karl Long entitled “The Medium of Business is Behaviour” that explores the relationship between Design and Business and how both have the ability to influence behaviour (through power and empathy). Purely speaking, companies use a blend of business and design to accomplish this. It’s caused me to think about the response that both of these entities evoke from the public at large. Consumers have just as much ability (if not more) to influence the behaviour of business, though this manifests itself almost purely through [purchasing] power. Consumers don’t really have to put a whole lot of effort into empathic decision making when they’re engaged in a transaction.

It’s a good read. Hop on over and take a look.