MCV 816 December 5th 2014 by Biz Media Ltd

HOW PLAYSTATION WON EUROPE

THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAMES ISSUE 816 FRIDAY DECEMBER 5TH 2014

EUROPEAN BOSS JIM RYAN SPEAKS HIS MIND TO MCV

BONUS + M 0 15 £ ’S T E K R A M UK GAMES , ARGOS V M H , A D S A , O C S E T AM, GAME, AMAZON, STE 0 PER CENT 5 R E V O Y B S E IC R P AND MORE SLASH AMES SOLD G D E X O B M 6 9 1. S E HUGE WEEK SE TOP 240,000 E N O X O B X D N A 4 PLAYSTATION OW £280 L E B P O R D S E IC R P S SALES COMBINED A XBOX 360 N O Y T U D F O L L A C E: NEW BEST-SELLING GAM

PLUS MCV AWARDS 2015: GUIDE ON HOW TO ENTER

HALO 5 SNEAK PEEK

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HOW PLAYSTATION WON EUROPE

THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAMES ISSUE 816 FRIDAY DECEMBER 5TH 2014

EUROPEAN BOSS JIM RYAN SPEAKS HIS MIND TO MCV

PLUS HOW TO ADVERTISE BETTER ON FACEBOOK HALO 5 SNEAK PEEK

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CHEAT SHEET

THE PUBLISHER

BLACK FRIDAY – WINN

BLACK FRIDAY: A NEEDED NEW PLOY FOR GAMES RETAIL?

hen I was a kid any ‘Black’ weekday was, thanks to gloomy ‘80s TV reports and my sketchy GCSE history lessons, traditionally a Very Bad Moment. In 2014, however, it is a marketing term, a call to action, an invitation. Black Friday ‘when retailers go into the black after 11 months trading in debt’ via pre-planned retail price slashes. The definition changes, but perhaps the meaning does not. Whether Black Monday (Oct 19th, 1987), Black Tuesday (Oct 1927) or Black Friday (Nov 28th, 2014), surely it signifies some sort of economic failure? Clearly, there was over £150m of pent-up demand in games this past weekend. Should we really herald such a drastic leap on Q4 trading if these are the efforts we have to go to unlock it? That’s not to talk down the efforts of the games business in the run up. The pre-planning, budgeting, deal-cutting and negotiation needed to get so much stock ready for such a quick strike is no mean feat. Well done to the format-holders who doubling their footprint week-on-week. Especially Xbox One, which took this past week’s bargain hunting as a chance to redefine demand and perception versus steely PS4. But I doubt Black Friday means much to smaller publishers or indie retailers who haven’t got the margin flexibility to exploit the consumer stampede. Only the big boys can play the Black Friday game, where the prizes are notoriously fought-over off-brand flatscreen TVs and mouth-watering Xbox bundles.

December 5th 2014

Deﬁnitions change, but the meaning doesn’t. Aren’t ‘Black’ weekdays meant to signify economic failure?

GAME opened its stores at midnight for Black Friday

ALMOST 2m games and over 300,000 consoles were sold in this year’s biggest week for retail. GAME, Amazon, Argos, Tesco, HMV and more held huge sales, which saw the prices of PS4 and Xbox One plummet to below £280, meanwhile hit titles such as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Assassin’s Creed Unity were

And it’s still an alien sensation seeing a US-driven retail device cut and pasted on the UK retail landscape. (Although, yes, this is barely diﬀerent to Boxing Day sales, and I imagine much momentum stems from big US-led ﬁrms who turn their local quirks into global strategy.) And yet, while celebrating this outlandish consumerism might trouble you – valuing the act of purchasing, not the product itself is a slippery slope – perhaps it’s at least better to commemorate prosperity instead of despair. *** The ink was barely dry on the pages of last week’s MCV before we had questions about the changes to 2015’s MCV Awards. The lobbying feature on page 28 should answer most of them. But we’ll happily be corrected further. If you really think we’ve missed something, let us know. It’s not just an evolving event, but a responsive one, too. As Black Friday teaches us, sometimes you can invent new traditions. MFrench@nbmedia.com

subject to huge discounts and surged up the charts. In total, based on Chart-Track data and retail reports, more than £150m was generated by games and hardware last week. Most stores ran promotions all week, and on Friday GAME and Tesco opened at midnight to those hoping for a pre-Christmas deal.

Market Data Games were ﬂying oﬀ shelves last week in Black Friday deals. Almost half a million more, week-on-week £80m

£40m £57.4m 1,486,145 units

£62m 1,960,751 units

£36.9m 1,022,296 units

£0m

Week Ending November 17th

Week Ending November 24th

Week Ending December 1st

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CHEAT SHEET

ERS AND LOSERS “This year the whole industry got behind Black Friday. It was great to have an event at the end of November, like last year’s console launches,” said Tesco games buyer Jon Ferdenzi. Shop Direct games merchandiser David Firth added: “Black Friday massively exceeded expectations, and was the biggest trading day in our history. Our gaming deals were particularly well-received and contributed to a 134 per cent year-on-year surge in orders with Very.co.uk alone. Black Friday has secured its place as a staple of the UK retail calendar.” Here are the big winners (and losers) from Black Friday 2014: MICROSOFT AND SONY Xbox One and PS4 sales spiked over 120 per cent this week. Between them, 240,000 consoles were sold, roughly split equally. But this success came at a cost. Both machines were on sale for under £280 in some stores.

DOWN Far Cry 4 sales drop 54 per cent, and it falls two positions to fourth place

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ONLINE RETAILERS The High Street ﬁnally has a sales day to combat Cyber Monday, which this year was weaker due to the success of Black Friday. Also, with the notable exception of Amazon, most online stores fell over or forced consumers into a queue during the busier periods.

UBISOFT Week-on-week, Assassin’s Creed Unity sales were up 28 per cent, AC IV: Black Flag rose 353 per cent, AC: Rogue increased 55 per cent and Watch Dogs sales grew 150 per cent.

Software data courtesy of GfK Chart-Track.

UK RETAIL TOP 10

FIFA 15

Grand Theft Auto V

1 Future will close CVG 2 30 Under 30 2014 3 The Secret Games Designer - The making of Xbox One 4 Now £299.99 DriveClub and Last of Us PS4 Black Friday bundle rumoured 5 £300 four game Xbox One console bundle rumoured for GAME’s Black Friday Sale

PRE-ORDER TOP 10

CALL OF DUTY: ADVANCED WARFARE

Our biggest stories for the week ending Dec 3rd

INDIE SHOPS One independent retailer asked MCV this week: “How do we take part in Black Friday?” Good question. Without the scale or buying power of the chains, indie retailers had to watch hopelessly as margin was gutted and all the consumers ﬂocked to the big outlets. Next year, don’t forget the little guys, eh suppliers?

THE LEGO GAMES LEGO Batman 3, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, LEGO Movie Video Game and LEGO The Hobbit rose four per cent, 261 per cent, 115 per cent and 209 per cent respectively AMAZON The online giant has been running Black Friday for several years now,

1 UP Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare shoots back to No.1 following the Black Friday sales

but this year was its biggest yet, with 5.5m sales recorded, and 64 items sold per second.

NINTENDO Wii U and 3DS were all but absent from Black Friday deals. But Super Smash Bros for Wii U and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire for 3DS launched on Friday, and Wii U and 3DS sales increased signiﬁcantly. It was also the biggest week ever for a new Pokémon launch.

SPONSORED BY

DARK SOULS II: SCHOLAR (PS4)

BANDAI NAMCO

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (Wii U)

Nintendo

Rockstar

Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix (PS3)

Square Enix Nintendo

Assassin’s Creed Unity

Ubisoft

Amiibo Captain Falcon (Wii U)

FIFA 14

Ubisoft

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (XO) Bandai Namco

Pokémon Omega Ruby

Nintendo

Amiibo Luigi (Wii U)

Nintendo

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire

Nintendo

Amiibo Zelda (Wii U)

Nintendo

DriveClub

Sony

Amiibo Pit Kid Icarus (Wii U)

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Ubisoft

Lara Craft: Temple of Osiris Gold Edition (PS4)

Minecraft: Xbox Edition

Amiibo Little Mac (Wii U)

Microsoft

Nintendo Square Enix Nintendo

December 5th 2014

INTERVIEW JIM RYAN, PLAYSTATION

PLAYSTATION’S JIM RYAN ON... On the first anniversary of PS4, PlayStation Europe boss Jim Ryan shares his thoughts on European domination, broken games, angry consumers, PS4 vs Xbox One and 2015

….PS4 BECOMING THE NO.1 CONSOLE OF 2014 IN EVERY SINGLE EUROPEAN MARKET “PlayStation has always been strong in Europe. Even with PS3 where we started late and were too expensive, we still ended up comfortably ahead. So when you go back to a world where we launched on time and at the right price, the underlying strength and popularity of the PlayStation brand has come back to the fore, whether it’s Northern Europe, France, Germany, Benelux or Scandinavia or Southern Europe

where we were hugely dominant. It’s been great. The competitor launch wasn’t until September in some of these markets, which helped. I’ve launched late and know how difficult it can be. “Germany is one market where we’ve achieved some sort of step change. We sold more in the FIFA week in Germany than we have in many Christmas weeks on PS3 and PS2. It was frankly unbelievable.”

….GAME DELAYS AND A QUIET SOFTWARE MARKET “From generation to generation the games development arms race increases. Budgets go up and as they go up, the time required to make games increases. With each generation things get a bit

You shouldn’t launch a game before it’s ready. We’ve made mistakes, and we apologise for that.

more complicated. There’s certainly been a fair amount of games that were either planned for 2013 and slipped to 2014, or planned for 2014 that have slipped to 2015. Would we have liked to have seen a greater number of games? Yes, consumers would, retailers would and we probably would. But when you look to how the games that have been published have been performing, there’s nothing too much awry with that.”

Jim Ryan, PlayStation Europe

Interviewed by Christopher Dring December 5th 2014

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JIM RYAN, PLAYSTATION INTERVIEW

….VOCAL, ANGRY GAMERS “We had the two platform launches last year and that raised the temperature level in the relative communities. People got interested and excited again and that’s kind of flowed through to behaviour this year. Organisations such as ours need to be big enough to be able to deal with it, and if you can’t

deal with it, go find something else to do. The passion and energy of the gamers is one of the things that separates what we do from something less exciting. We don’t complain when that passion is something positive that helps us on the rollercoaster. You have to take the rough with the smooth.”

….GOING BEYOND THE CORE GAMER WITH PS4 “It’s one of the things that I’m going to be watching with the keenest of interest as we start to get data as to who is buying and what they’re playing and doing over the course of this Christmas. “There have been a couple of interesting pieces online recently about how you must not desert the core market too early. That’s absolutely right, but we certainly will look to broaden the audience because we have to do that if we’re to get anywhere. You can’t do the numbers that PS2 managed by just talking to the core. It’s a question of how and when you do it. We will typically go that way earlier in Europe than we do in other parts of the world, and typically we have been successful in doing that while at the same time not alienating the core audience. “It’s not easy. You have to have two different conversations with two different groups of people.

….THE CLOSER FIGHT BETWEEN PS4 AND XBOX ONE IN THE UK “You can see a difference between the UK, US and Australia markets, and continental Europe. The situation in the former is more difficult in the latter. In the UK we posted our 1m number in September. It’s a tough market. Retailers like to slug it out and platform holders and publishers like to put paraffin on that fire and there are deals and discounts and numbers go up and down from week to week. We’re happy with our momentum and performance going into Christmas.”

“We’ve got our business objectives, which are to obtain a certain level of install base and profitability. I’ve been public that we needed to make a step change and do better in the UK. With the size of the UK market and the patch that I manage, you have to do well in this market. If I’m to stand any chance of doing what I need to do, be it from a total install base or from a market share perspective, I have to do well in the UK. It is a considerable area of focus for us.”

It’s a considerable marketing challenge. It’s all a question of degree. Whether we look to broaden out in a meaningful extent in 2015, or whether it’s 2016, I won’t really know that until we know exactly what’s happened this Christmas and done some in-depth analysis. “Of course, on PS1 we had all sorts of stuff like Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. And PS2 we had lots of Disney IP, very young-end licensed properties. All of that was going on while GTA was quite cheerfully doing its stuff with a different group of people. Even with PS3, we had The Last of Us and GTA coming very late in the life-cycle while we were already talking to a different, broader audience. I’m totally relaxed about being able to do both. It’s just a question of when you start to shift the emphasis. It’s a bit of a wishywashy answer, but it’s a very nuanced topic.”

When DriveClub launched in October it suﬀered online problems

….DRIVECLUB AND SINGSTAR SUFFERING TECHNICAL ISSUES “We have to acknowledge that there have been problems and we’re really sorry to anyone who has suffered from those issues. They shouldn’t happen. But in a world that’s becoming more and more technically complicated, it’s getting harder to deliver stuff. That’s not an excuse, because you shouldn’t really launch a game before it’s ready. And clearly we’ve made mistakes and we apologise for that. Has it dampened

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our momentum? No. Has it damaged our reputation? I don’t think so. People understand that mistakes do get made so as long as you apologise and make them right. That’s the main thing. “When you spend £50/£60 on a game you’re entitled to expect that it works. If we or anyone else in the industry makes mistakes you should fess up to it and then put it right as soon as possible.“

December 5th 2014

INTERVIEW JIM RYAN, PLAYSTATION

….HOW PLAYSTATION WILL MANAGE THE LAUNCH OF MORPHEUS, PLAYSTATION TV AND PLAYSTATION NOW ALONGSIDE PS4, PS3 AND VITA “It’s a really high class problem. If we didn’t have all these things coming I’d be looking to the future and thinking it doesn’t look so good. It’s less than year since we launched PS4 and we’re doing SharePlay, PlayStation TV, which just launched, and longer term there’s Morpheus and PlayStation Now. Who knows quite what direction they will take us in? I don’t. But it’s very interesting and intriguing to start to plot a future that considers all these things.

….WHAT’S NEXT FOR PS3 “Will PS3 last as long after the launch of PS4 as PS2 did after PS3 came out? No, I don’t think so. The final production of PS2 was in March 2013, which is six years after we launched PS3. There are a number of reasons [it won’t happen this time]. When we launched PS3, it was at €599, and the PS2 was at €99, so there was this massive difference that continued for quite a while. And there was headroom. Now this time round PS4 launched at €399 and PS3 is anywhere between €199 and €299. That price gap is massively eroded. That is something of a factor.

“PlayStation Now is a very interesting and seductive longterm vision. The thought of PlayStation content potentially being streamed – and I stress the word potentially – to any networked device with a screen, when you think about it, it’s quite something. But as we start to learn about this business, and it’s a very new business, it’s not at all easy. We don’t need to worry about conflict with our existing business models for some time.”

“Also, generally, technology cycles are shortening. There is an increasing consumer willingness to make the jump from one generation’s technology to the next. Maybe that’s a consequence of the way people transition from one smartphone to another. “That said, you probably see this issue at its most acute in the UK, which is one of the early adopter markets and therefore the quickest to move away from the old generation. There are parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa where PS3 is still really robust and will continue to be for some time.” ….2015 “There’s a lot of confidence going into next year. I made the comment that it would have been nice to have had more games in 2014 than we ended up with. The flipside is that some games have slipped into 2015. Whether it’s Batman or Bloodborne, there’s a whole lot of good stuff in the first half,

and that’s before you get into the second half. I’m really quite excited by our line-up in the first half of 2015. At the moment I’m only thinking about the next four or five weeks. But when I start to think about next year, and people ask about next year’s budget, I believe the first few months could be pretty interesting.”

….THE FUTURE OF VITA “There’s a lot of indie content continuing to come, and the usage of the device as a Remote Play client or companion for PS4 continues to be very well accepted. It will continue to

December 5th 2014

play a significant role in our ecosystem – perhaps a different one to that was originally envisaged, but it’s still there. We love the Vita and we look after it best we can.”

Bloodborne is one of Sony’s big launches of the ﬁrst half of 2015

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Call our specialist retail team 01279 822 822 exertis.co.uk/home exertis.co.uk/home/store

MARKETING

CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK THIS WEEK: THE CREW

UBISOFT has booked an extensive marketing campaign for its brand new social driving IP The Crew. Ads will be appearing on television and radio, as well as online. A high proportion of these promotions will appear next to music and football shows. The Crew’s two closed betas have been a source of promotion for the game, too, and the recent open beta has resulted in an increase in coverage and interest, according to the publisher. Ubisoft has also been working with Premiership Football endorsements, as well as YouTube personalities, ahead of the launch.

[INFO]

Developer: Ivory Tower/Ubisoft Reﬂections

Released: Out now

Distributor: Exertis

Publisher: Ubisoft

Contact 01279 822 822

IN THEIR OWN WORDS The Crew is an exciting new brand that dares to do things diﬀerently. The game has already seen success – it was named as critics’ Best Racing Game of E3 2014. Its launch on December 2nd, several months after ﬁrst-party competitors, and without any other new driving games, means that there’s nothing else like it on consumers’ horizons this Christmas. We are investing in a new brand with The Crew and expect it to perform exceptionally well at the right time of the year.

ALAN DYKES Group Marketing Manager, Ubisoft

Without doubt the sheer scale of the game is what impresses us and most other commentators most. Over 10,000km of roads, offroad fun and major US landmarks, towns and cities recreated provide serious value for money. Car customisation is also a key aspect and, with up to five different configurations - for cities, tracks, off-road and other types of missions - and real-world car brands, we’re very proud of this too. Layered over these features is the story and persistent multiplayer online gameplay that truly marks The Crew out as an original new brand.

ACTIVISON DOUBLES-DOWN ON ADVANCED WARFARE TV ADS This week, GameTime examines the TV marketing campaign behind the latest Call of Duty title

+1 Percentage Coverage

per week. However, it must be noted that Activision started the Call of Duty: Ghosts campaign earlier last year, accruing more male 16-34 TVRs overall. In total, 65 per cent of all UK males aged 16 to 34 have seen the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

which is commonplace behaviour for triple-A titles. In terms of weekly weights, this year’s campaign has been heavier than last year’s launch for Call of Duty: Ghosts, with the campaign averaging just over 65 male 16 to 34 TV viewer ratings (TVRs)

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WITH the ﬁrst four weeks of consolidated TV audience data available, we examined the impact that Activision has made across the launch period for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The game’s TV campaign started two weeks prior to its launch date,

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television commercial at least once since the campaign has been on air. However, the volume of advertisers in the market was further illustrated by the fact that Activision maintained a mere nine per cent share of the market across the campaign period with its eﬀorts.

MCV GameTime is provided by Generation Media 0207 255 4650 | www.generationmedia.co.uk

December 5th 2014

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1+ Percentage Coverage

Individual TVRs

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M16-34 TVRs

350

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APPOINTMENTS

NEW EDITOR FOR EUROGAMER Welsh promoted and Wilson hired as video producer O King chairman leaves O New Board member for Razer EUROGAMER | There have been a number of changes at the online publication. OLI WELSH (top) has stepped up to the role of editor following the departure of TOM BRAMWELL. Eurogamer has also hired AOIFE WILSON (above) as a video producer. Wilson was a staff writer at Future’s Official Xbox Magazine. She has previously written for Eurogamer, as well as Vice. “Oli has been an integral part of the Eurogamer team for the past few years and I’m delighted that he is now stepping up as editor

KING | MELVYN MORRIS, the chairman of the social gaming firm behind Candy Crush Saga, has left King. Morris, King’s second largest shareholder, departed for ‘personal reasons’ only a few days after the launch of new title Candy Crush Soda Saga. He is to be replaced by Board member and former EA executive GERHARD FLORIN. “I’d like to thank Mel for his leadership and support over many years,” King CEO RICCARDO ZACCONI said. “His belief, energy, experience and insight have helped to make King a successful global business with hundreds of millions of players.”

of the website,” Gamer Network boss RUPERT LOMAN said. “Following a record-breaking year we have some exciting developments planned for 2015 and we’re pleased to welcome Aoife Wilson to the team as the first step in rebooting the Eurogamer video proposition.” Welsh added: “Aoife’s a very talented writer and presenter who’s equally comfortable working in text or video. As we look to make a thorough expansion and overhaul of Eurogamer’s video offering in the coming year, she was an ideal choice to help build a bridge between the immediacy of YouTube and the journalistic values we always strive to embody on the website.”

RAZER | Former Facebook and YouTube CFO GIDEON YU has joined the hardware firm’s Board of directors. Yu is the co-owner and former president of American football team the San Francisco 49ers. As well as having held roles at internet giants Facebook and YouTube, Yu was also SVP and treasurer of Yahoo between 2002 and 2006. “I’m thrilled that someone with Gideon’s remarkable financial and operational experience and track record across a wide range of iconic tech, media and entertainment brands is joining Razer,” said MIN-LIANG TAN, co-founder and CEO of Razer.

AROUND THE INDUSTRY NORDIC GAMES | The publisher has opened a new studio in Munich. Nordic has set up Grimlore Games, which will be working on the SpellForce series. The studio is to be staffed by experienced developers, graphic artists and designers who have worked on the likes of The Settlers 2, Knights and Merchants, Cultures and SpellForce 2. “The rich talent pool in Munich was a key factor in deciding the new studio’s location,” Nordic Games said. “Many young and highly skilled developers gather in Munich who, in the coming months and years, will complement the core team at Grimlore Games. The studio will focus on PC games for core gamers, specifically the role-playing and real-time strategy genres.”

December 5th 2014

IRRATIONAL GAMES | The BioShock studio is hiring new staff, following layoffs earlier this year. The developer is looking for an IT manager and senior programmer. DOUBLE FINE | Adventure game developer Double Fine has laid off 12 members of staff following the loss of a publishing deal for an yet-tobe revealed project. The title was cancelled by its publisher, and so the studio was forced to reduce its staff body by 12 people GFINITY | The UK eSports firm is preparing for an IPO, hoping to raise £3m with a market value of £13m. Gfinity is also hoping to build the UK’s first dedicated eSports arena, with a seating capacity of 500 people.

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EDITORIAL CONTACTS

EDITORIAL CONTACTS WE ARE PLAYING... Just to be diﬀerent, this week I played pool and bowling. No, not the Wii versions. Actual, real pool and bowling. Christopher Dring, Editor

This week I’ve been slowly massacring the wildlife of Kyrat in Far Cry 4. Not sure what that says about me as a person. Alex Calvin, Staﬀ Writer

cdring@nbmedia.com

acalvin@nbmedia.com

I’ve been so focused on Far Cry 4 that I’ve not even touched the many games I bought in the Steam sale. Ben Parﬁtt, Associate Editor

I crashed a quad bike into a grizzly bear, rode an elephant and wingsuited off a cliff. Then I played Far Cry 4. Matt Jarvis, Staff Writer

bparﬁtt@nbmedia.com

mjarvis@nbmedia.com

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CALL ALEX BOUCHER ON 01992 535 647 FOR MORE INFORMATION OR EMAIL ABOUCHER@NBMEDIA.COM

Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street, Hertford, Hertfordshire, England SG14 1JA Newbay Media specialises in tradededicated print and digital publishing for entertainment and leisure markets. As well as MCV, Newbay publishes Develop, PCR, ToyNews, Music Week, MI Pro, Audio Pro International and BikeBiz. It also has two onlineonly brands: Mobile Entertainment, dedicated to the growing mass market smartphone sector, and Licensing.biz, for everyone in the global licensing industry. It also runs a number of events including the MCV Industry Excellence Awards, the London Games Conference and the Games Media Awards.

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Special Projects: Lisa Carter lcarter@nbmedia.com

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THE RETAIL ADVISORY BOARD MCV takes soundings from its Retail Advisory Board on the biggest issues in the industry. The current members are...

Charlotte Knight GAME

Steve Moore Simply Games

Jon Hayes Tesco

Ketu Patel Amazon

Sarah Jasper The Hut

Phil Moore Grainger Games

David Firth Shop Direct

Don McCabe CHIPS

Gurdeep Hunjan Sainsbury’s

Steve Thomas Xbite

Simon Urquhart Microsoft

Robert Lindsay Games Centre

Igor Cipolletta ShopTo

Dermot Stapleton Get Games

Niall Lawlor GameStop

Phil Browes HMV

Stephen Staley Robert Hennessy Gameseek John Lewis

Paul Sulyok Green Man

James Cooke Argos

Craig Watson Dixons Retail

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December 5th 2014

DATA NOVEMBER

MONTHLY CHARTS New entries in the Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed IPs, alongside GTA V’s arrival on PS4 and Xbox One made November a pleasing month for games retail. Alex Calvin investigates

THIS MONTHS UPS

THE games market had a big month in November with the blockbuster launch of Call of Duty and re-release of GTA V. 4.5m units were sold during this period, a 3.5 per cent increase on 2013, while software revenue was up nine per cent year-on-year. Last year games retail was slightly quieter prior to the launches of the PS4 and Xbox One, so it’s unsurprising to see the market up.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare launched this month, and roughly one in four units sold this month were that title. This game also pushed ACTIVISION BLIZZARD up in the publisher rankings to No.1. And sales of ROCKSTAR’s Grand Theft Auto V rose 999 per cent month-on-month following its launch on PS4 and Xbox One. It is now the biggest-selling video game in UK history, surpassing 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops.

INDIVIDUAL FORMATS TOP 40: NOVEMBER (OCT 26TH - NOV 22ND) REVENUE generated by software sales rose to £159m – a nine per cent increase year-on-year

CALL OF Duty helped Activision rise up the publisher rankings

3.5 PER CENT more games were sold this November when compared to last year

THE XBOX One outsold the PlayStation 4 in November for the ﬁrst time since the duo launched last year

December 5th 2014

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

TITLE Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Grand Theft Auto V Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Grand Theft Auto V Halo: The Master Chief Collection Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Assassin’s Creed: Unity Assassin’s Creed: Unity FIFA 15 Far Cry 4 FIFA 15 FIFA 15 Sunset Overdrive Far Cry 4 Minecraft: Xbox Edition Football Manager 2015 FIFA 15 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition Minecraft: PlayStation Edition Destiny Dragon Age Inquisition Forza Horizon 2 Tomodachi Life Assassin’s Creed Rogue WWE 2K15 LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Disney Inﬁnity 2.0 Skylanders Trap Team WWE 2K 15 Super Smash Bros Dragon Age Inquisition Far Cry 4 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Assassin’s Creed Rogue Alien Isolation Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag DriveClub Mario Kart 8

FORMAT PS4 XO PS4 360 XO XO PS3 PS4 XO 360 PS4 XO PS4 XO XO 360 PC PS3 PS4 PS3 PS4 PS4 XO 3DS 360 360 360 360 360 PS4 3DS XO 360 Vita PS4 PS3 PS4 XO PS4 Wii U

PUBLISHER Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard Rockstar Activision Blizzard Rockstar Microsoft Activision Blizzard Ubisoft Ubisoft EA Ubisoft EA EA Microsoft Ubisoft Microsoft Sega Microsoft Sony Sony Activision Blizzard EA Microsoft Nintendo Ubisoft 2K Games Warner Bros Disney Activision Blizzard 2K Games Nintendo EA Ubisoft Sony Warner Bros Ubisoft Sega Ubisoft Sony Nintendo

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NOVEMBER DATA 01

SOFTWARE MARKET SHARE BY PUBLISHER [UNITS] LM 03 07 10 01 05 04 02 06 08 11

TM 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TITLE Activision Blizzard Take-Two Ubisoft EA Microsoft Nintendo Warner Bros Sony Sega Disney

MARKET SHARE 29.4% 13.3% 13.2% 11.0% 7.0% 4.7% 4.6% 3.7% 2.9% 2.1%

SOFTWARE MARKET SHARE BY PUBLISHER [VALUE] LM 03 09 10 01 04 02 05 06 08 07

TM 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TITLE Activision Blizzard Take-Two Ubisoft EA Microsoft Warner Bros Nintendo Sony Sega Bethesda

MARKET SHARE 33.5% 15.2% 14.8% 11.6% 6.8% 3.9% 3.6% 2.1% 2.1% 1.4%

SOFTWARE MARKET SHARE BY FORMAT [UNITS] LM 01 03 02 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TM 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TITLE PlayStation 4 Xbox One Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Nintendo 3DS PC Wii U Wii PlayStation Vita Nintendo DS

MARKET SHARE 28.8% 27.1% 19.3% 10.9% 4.0% 4.0% 2.0% 1.6% 1.2% 1.1%

SOFTWARE MARKET SHARE BY FORMAT [VALUE] LM 01 02 03 04 07 05 06 08 09 10

TM 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TITLE PlayStation 4 Xbox One Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 PC Nintendo 3DS Wii U Wii PlayStation Vita Nintendo DS

PRESENTS

£70

MARKET SHARE 33.1% 31.9% 16.9% 9.1% 3.0% 2.8% 1.5% 0.8% 0.6% 0.4%

ALL FORMATS TOP 40: NOVEMBER (OCT 26TH - NOV 22ND) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

TITLE Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Grand Theft Auto V FIFA 15 Assassin’s Creed: Unity Far Cry 4 Halo: The Master Chief Collection Minecraft: PlayStation Edition WWE 2K15 Dragon Age Inquisition LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Destiny Sunset Overdrive Skylanders Trap Team Minecraft: Xbox Edition Football Manager 2015 Disney Inﬁnity 2.0 The Evil Within Alien Isolation Assassin’s Creed Rogue Forza Horizon 2 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 Tomodachi Life Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Watch Dogs Super Smash Bros LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Just Dance 2015 The LEGO Movie Videogame Frozen: Olaf’s Quest Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare Borderlands: The Pre Sequel DriveClub Mario Kart 8 The Sims 4 World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Lords of the Fallen Call of Duty: Ghosts LEGO The Hobbit Terraria

5 SECOND FACTS 14

FORMAT PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PS4, XO, PS3, 360, Wii, 3DS, Vita, PC PS4, XO, PC PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC XO PS4, PS3, Vita PS4, XO, PS3, 360 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC PS4, XO, PS3, 360 XO PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, Wii, 3DS 360 PC PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC PS3, 360 XO, 360 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC 3DS PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, PC PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, PC 3DS PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, Wii PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC 3DS, DS PS4, XO, PS3, 360 PS3, 360, PC PS4 Wii U PC PC PS4, XO, PC PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, PC PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC PS3, 360, PC

PUBLISHER Activision Blizzard Rockstar EA Ubisoft Ubisoft Microsoft Sony 2K Games EA Warner Bros Activision Blizzard Microsoft Activision Blizzard Microsoft Sega Disney Bethesda Sega Ubisoft Microsoft Warner Bros Konami Nintendo Ubisoft Ubisoft Nintendo Warner Bros Ubisoft Warner Bros GPS/Avanquest EA 2K Games Sony Nintendo EA Activision Blizzard Square Enix Activision Blizzard Warner Bros 505 Games/Merge

Read and remember these stats so you can sound clever at the next Monday morning meeting...

500

In late October, Nintendo The BFI has revealed that eSports firm Gfinity has slashed the trade price of 14 games have been plans to build the UK’s first the Wii U Basic 8GB conole approved for tax relief in the dedicated pro-gaming by £70 in attempt to clear UK so far. To date, 30 titles arena in London, with a out stock of the hardware have applied seating capacity of 500

£4.99 Resident Evil Revelations 2 has been priced. Each episode will cost £4.99, with the entire ﬁrst season costing £19.99

PDP design & manufacture the Afterglow Communicator PlayStation europesales@pdp.com

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December 5th 2014

MARKETING ON FACEBOOK

NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE FACEBOOK Why are so many consumers reacting badly to video game Facebook advertising? The social network’s global director of gaming sales, Rick Kelley, tells Christopher Dring why publishers ought to cover up their salacious stars

At London Games Conference, you described Facebook as being a personal newspaper. What did you mean? Your experience on Facebook will be very different to mine, because it is the content you have chosen to friend or follow. Your friends are different to mine. The things that you have liked and are following are different to mine. So the content you get is for you; all the news you are seeing, in the palm of your hand, is unique to you. You also said on stage that video games within Facebook is treated as its own region. How does that work? We have a North America region, EMEA and APAC. But the gaming business is not part of those regions; it has been pulled out and centralised. Why? It is obviously a huge part of Facebook’s business. Games are different for a couple of reasons. First, we have a product; we are inviting developers to build on our site so that they can help us create a sticky environment and get people coming back to Facebook more frequently. So the partnership we have with the team that recruits developers to make games for Facebook is quite tight. Secondly, when you look at the games themselves, the advertising products that we need to build differ – whether it’s mobile appinstall ads, or ads where, for example, if you buy virtual goods on a Facebook game, we can show you a virtual goods ad for that game. Those types of products that we are building

December 5th 2014

for the developer community are unique to our business. So my relationship with our engineering team and our platform partnerships team is much tighter than it is for other product categories, like autos or travel, where they may not have those customisable advertising needs. Another reason is that these video game advertisers are global. You might be King.com, but you’re not looking for a UK audience just because you’re located here; you want to reach the world. So our team would work with you to launch global campaigns. That’s different than if you’re [global firm behind the likes of Fairy Liquid and Gillette] Procter & Gamble in the UK, because if you’re advertising on Facebook you are still looking to target a UK audience. Our team in games thinks a little bit more about how we can, for instance, take what Ubisoft is doing in the US and apply that to Ubisoft in France etc. We try and consolidate a lot of those efforts.

There are a lot of images being used in gaming ads that are risqué, or show scantily-clad women. That is not working. Rick Kelley, Facebook

content, all these new games and articles and so forth, but only so much of it can be consumed on a place like Facebook. So what we try and do is deliver to people the most interesting and relevant content for them, based on what they like, what they have engaged with and the things their friends have engaged with. Now, all of this content that is being created; some of it is better than others, some of it is quite commercial, or uninteresting. So we are de-prioritising that and not surfacing that on people’s news feeds as much as we are, say, the John Lewis penguin Christmas advert. John Lewis paid for some of it, but the organic distribution of an ad like that was really great on Facebook because it was interesting and what people wanted. If you’re not producing good content, we will dial down the distribution of it. One thing that surprised me was when you said that video game advertising has the lowest performing ads – based on consumer reaction – than any other industry out there. What are publishers doing wrong? We are doing a lot of homework to figure this out. The first thing we’ve noticed is that there are a lot of images being used in gaming ads that are risqué, or show scantily-clad women. That is not working. That might generate a click, but for every click that that generates, people are X-ing out of it, suggesting they don’t want to see it any longer. That means to surface that type of ad in the

PlayStation community manager Sarah Wellock was on stage before you. She said she wasn’t getting organic and free distribution as much now as she did in the past. She suggested Facebook changed their policy. What’s happened? Well, we haven’t changed our policies – that’s a misunderstanding. There are a couple of things here. Number one: the amount of content that is out there is doubling every 18 to 24-months, but your ability – the time you have – to consume it is pretty static. So you now have all this

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MARKETING ON FACEBOOK

MAD MARKETING

EA’s Facebook campaign for Madden utilised the platform’s ability to target speciﬁc users

newsfeed, you have to overcompensate with money. Yes, we can still surface your risqué ad, but you will have to pay more in order to compensate for the people that are saying they don’t want to see it. The industry needs to think about the images they are putting in front of people, and make sure they are not offensive or sexually explicit. We are trying to educate people to not do that so much. It’s also about how frequently publishers and developers are refreshing ads. Are they just taking a screen shot from the game and launching it in the newsfeed, thinking that’s an engaging piece of content? Because it’s not. It needs to be more customisable and engaging. Like what EA did with Madden (see Mad Marketing). How are you educating publishers about doing Facebook advertising properly? For 2015 we have invested in creative heads specific to the games industry, to work with developers to think about how they communicate with our audience. They are dedicated folks that all come from

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creative agency backgrounds, and will specifically work with games developers to build bespoke advertising campaigns or to simply say: ‘You know what? These images work better in Asia versus Europe versus North America.’ These people will help developers think about factors like the colours they are using and the amount of text that is in the ad. That is our investment back into the games community.

The console business has to think about how to organise itself in a more nimble way.

Analyst Nick Parker said at LGC that there’s been a lot more advertising from the likes of King and Supercell, while traditional publishers appear to be reducing their activity. How can these firms keep up with mobile? In some ways, the console business has to think about how to organise itself in a more nimble way. Take King, for example; they have one office and one team that buys for the globe. They are starting to think about localised offices in Japan and Korea, and content creation on a local level is very important – at least in terms of ads that speak to a local audience. But your centralised buying, planning and execution

Rick Kelley, Facebook

FACEBOOK says one great example of a company that has promoted games well via its network is Electronic Arts. Rick Kelley, Facebook’s global director of gaming sales, gave an example while speaking at this year’s London Games Conference of the firm’s Madden campaign in the US. EA created a Madden video especially for Facebook featuring US celebrities. Anyone that watched that video was presented, the next day, with a second video ad specifically aimed at individual Facebook users. That video was a Madden trailer that contained the favourite American football team of the Facebook user. Anyone who viewed that trailer was then presented with a third ‘call-to-action’ video designed to drive pre-orders.

can happen centrally. When you think of console advertisers, all the countries have their own P&Ls and they’re all trying to figure out how to market the game in their local environment and not necessarily taking advantage of the practices that companies like King are using. One of the things that we are starting to do for these console developers is have a single-point of contact within Facebook that is working with the German team, the Italian team, the North American team... bringing them together and making sure we are the conduit where the best practices are being shared. Sometimes we assume there is a lot of communication going back and forth between publisher offices, but it’s not necessarily the case. The reason mobile developers do so much is because mobile app install ads just work so well. You discover it in the newsfeed, then you download it and play it right there. It’s up to us to ask the console developer what their objectives are. Is it to drive people to GAME? Is to drive pre-orders? Create awareness?

December 5th 2014

THE BIG GAME HALO 5 BETA

THE LAST BIG RELEASE OF THE YEAR Microsoft has a late Christmas present for Xbox One owners this year in the form of the Halo 5 multiplayer beta, which hits almost a year before the launch of the game. What’s it like and what was the thinking behind it? Christopher Dring speaks to the game’s developers Tim Longo and Josh Holmes

o we’re done for the year now, right? Oh sure, there’s that isometric Lara Croft game that looks pretty good. And Nintendo has some more Amiibo toys to drop on us. But when it comes to the big, triple-A super-launches, we’ve had our Call of Dutys and Far Crys. We’ve even had The Crew. So now it’s time to sit back and watch the festive cash roll in. Except there is actually one last big one to hit. And it’s not coming until December 29th. Halo 5: Guardians is one of the most anticipated games of 2015. It will certainly be Xbox One’s biggest blockbuster, and – as long as they all keep their release dates – it will go head-to-head with PS4’s Uncharted and Wii U’s The Legend of Zelda in a real battle of the system sellers next Christmas. So what has that got to do with this year? Well Halo developer 343 Industries has managed to pull together some early gameplay and is letting its fans go handson with Halo 5’s multiplayer in an early access beta. Make no mistake, even in this early stripped-down state, this is as big a launch as any we’ve had this Christmas. And it’s looking good, too. MCV only managed to get about an hour with the game when we visited a special Halo press event, but what we played we certainly liked, with a number of new moves and modes (see What we thought of Halo 5). But what surprised us the most was not what 343 has done with the game, but the fact we were

December 5th 2014

even able to play the game a year before it’s due to hit stores. It seems ludicrously early for a beta.

The beta isn’t a marketing vehicle for the game. It’s about getting Halo 5 in the hands of fans.

GUARDIAN OF THE GALAXY “The main reason is to give us time to react to the feedback,” says Tim Longo, creative director at 343 Industries. “Often, because the teams are so busy, you don’t get access to the beta until later in development. And once the feedback comes in, you haven’t got time to do much with it. For us it’s important to do it early so we have time to react and actually instil that stuff into the game itself before it ships.” Josh Holmes, studio head at 343 Industries adds: “It’s so early. It’s the earliest we’ve ever done a beta for Halo. It’s early to the point where this is just a snapshot of a game in the midst of development.” Of course a beta offers more to 343 and Microsoft than a means to get this valuable feedback. As we have seen with Titanfall and Destiny this year, a great beta can be all the marketing you need for a new launch. Destiny’s pre-orders went into overdrive once Activision let its fans get its hands on it, and was more effective than any E3 showing or press clipping or TV ad. Yet 343 says the marketing benefits of a beta

Josh Holmes, 343 Industries

is not something that drives this project. “It’s definitely not a marketing vehicle for the game,” insists Holmes. “It’s truly about getting the game in the hands of fans, receiving feedback on gameplay and on balance, tuning of weapons, new abilities, map layouts, weapon placement within maps, as well as being able to stress test a lot of new services and the dedicated servers we have running. All of that will allow us to make improvements to the game before we launch next year.” THE FUTURE The Halo 5 beta is set to run until January 18th and each week will feature new content for gamers to enjoy. The easiest way to get on the beta is via purchasing The Master Chief Collection – the recently released compilation of Halo titles. It means that the game is likely to be quite popular as the beta nears. In fact, Holmes believes the Halo 5 beta and The Master Chief Collection can be another system seller for Xbox One. “Definitely this is a great moment if you haven’t already picked up an Xbox One to jump in with the Master Chief Collection coming out,” said Holmes. “You’re getting four great games, the whole legacy of Master Chief’s adventures and that’s just leading you right up and dropping you off at the door for Halo 5: Guardians next year.” That blockbuster shooter will be the culmination of a year-long campaign for Halo. We’ve just had the aforementioned Halo: The Master Chief Collectiom, the

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HALO 5 BETA THE BIG GAME

Halo 5’s beta is running from December 29th to January 18th

mobile game Halo: Spartan Strike launches imminently, while the Ridley Scott-produced TV web series – Halo Nightfall – is currently airing now. And a lot of this can be accessed by the new Halo Channel on the Xbox One dashboard. And next year there’s Halo 5 and a Steven Spielberg-backed TV series. It’s clearly a busy old time for the Halo universe. “It’s a little mind-blowing when you see all of the great stuff that’s going on across the Halo franchise,” said Holmes. “And

for us we made a decision early on at 343 that we wanted to connect everything and create a vibrant, cohesive universe. You’re seeing that with Master Chief Collection, leading up to Halo 5: Guardians, the introduction to Nightfall which sets up a new character in the universe who will pay off in Halo 5. There’s so much going on and it’s a great time to be a Halo fan.” Longo concludes: “I’m so humbled to be working on Halo now. To be a part of that now is amazing. There’s nothing out there quite like it.”

WHAT WE THOUGHT OF HALO 5 WE managed to get a brief hands-on with Halo 5: Guardians, and for a game that’s almost a year from launch, we were impressed. The focus is on the thruster pack which (a bit like Advanced Warfare and Titanfall) allows users to dash into whichever direction they’re moving – this includes whether they’re jumping or moving on the ground. What’s more, Spartans can now clamber up onto surfaces, which is a first for Halo. Players can slide, too, and even pound the ground – which is difficult to pull off but killing an opponent in this way was hugely satisfying. One of the more unexpected and exciting features was the stabiliser, which automatically lets gamers hover in mid-air. It makes them exposed but also puts them in a prime position to pick off opponents. This, combined with the Spartan charge, gives Halo fans

343 Industries’ Longo (above) and Holmes (above) say the team has done the beta this early to ensure they can take onboard fan feedback

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a complete set of new skills to learn. The overall experience was still distinctly Halo, of course. And most of what we played was effectively the classic Team Deathmatch mode. But one new mode we particularly enjoyed was Breakout. This mode sees teams of five complete in a series of rounds where everyone has just one life. We played this on a new map called Crossfire, which made for some interesting strategy. And the to and fro as one team takes the lead, only for another to pull back, can make for tense firefights. Players who die can watch the match live, which means if they’re the last alive and somehow manage to defeat the entire opposing team, they’ll be treated like a hero by the group. It will be interesting to see what fans think when the Beta goes live to the public.

December 5th 2014

GAMING MERCHANDISE TRENDS

VIDEO GAME VOGUE From posters and apparel to figurines, accessories and books, merchandise is quickly becoming the latest trend for gaming fashionistas. Publishers, distributors and creators tell Matthew Jarvis what’s hot

Gaming is now a fashion in its own right. T-shirts, cufflinks, lamps and even toasters – the possibilities are endless for products branded with and inspired by titles. And the hunger for a wider range of spinoff merch only continues to grow. “In the last five years the world of gaming merchandise has evolved from a single shirt to a whole new lifestyle consisting of high quality products,” recounts Leon van der Made, channel manager for gaming at manufacturer Bioworld Europe. “At the moment, our hoodies are getting a lot of attention. We are also seeing a big increase in smaller accessories like wallets, socks, beanies and caps, due to the coming holiday period. We have also just started on a new category: lounge pants. This is a segment that gamers have been asking about for quite some time.” Sandra Arcan, senior manager for licensing and merchandising at Konami, has seen a number of product types take off among fans. “Clothing is always popular,” she states. “We are extending from basic ranges such as t-shirts into jackets and so on, because our research shows us that there is

huge interest in the right garments. Clothing is definitely a growth market. “That said, though, figurines – especially limited runs – are growing in popularity, and the quality of the figures makes them extremely collectible. Spin-off books – particularly collations of art and design elements – are also growing in interest, as people are fascinated by what goes into developing big games.” Luiz Ferreira, founder and director of Gaming Merchandise UK, adds: “Throughout the year, sales on clothing such as t-shirts and core products like wallets, key rings and dog tags are pretty consistent. “As we move towards peak, we certainly see more interest in gifting products such as mugs and practical items – for example, beanie hats. We are also seeing high demand for collectible statues; particularly those based on key franchise characters, such as Ubisoft’s UBIcollectibles range.”

We see high demand for collectible statues; particularly those based on key franchise characters. Luiz Ferreira, Gaming Merchandise UK

THE REAL DEAL Partially thanks to the increasing mainstream presence of gaming alongside entertainment mediums such as film, the market for merchandise continues to prosper

– the sector grew to over £100m in the UK last year, according to MCV’s games market valuation. It seems that this success is also being sustained by growing consumer interest in official products, rather than the unofficial items that have flooded the industry in the past. For example, book publisher Egmont revealed earlier this year that its bestselling official Minecraft book has now sold one million units in the UK, with the best-selling unofficial book – Minecraft for Dummies – only selling 20,000 units. This has been helped by many publishers and manufacturers investing more effort into the creation of unique products, designed to pique the interest of gamers. Dan Long, co-founder and head of communications at Insert Coin, comments: “An increasing number of gamers want more than just a logo or box art slapped on their chest. “The products that perform best are always those that hook into the heartbeat of a game – designs that are synonymous with the title, or worn by characters in the game. Those give gamers the chance to add to their experience of a game – it really does make all the difference.”

Left to right: Ubisoft’s Chris Marcus, Insert Coin’s Dan Long, Bioworld Europe’s Leon van der Made, Gaming Merchandise UK’s Luiz Ferreira and and Konami’s Sandra Arcan December 5th 2014

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GAMING MERCHANDISE TRENDS

Products based on in-game items and characters – such as Arno’s wristblade from Assassin’s Creed Unity – are more popular than just a branded toy

Arcan agrees that merchandise has moved beyond simple representation to become a style of its own. “At first it was fairly limited in terms of output, but now, as the art and creativity of games expands, so does the quality and variety of the merchandise,” she states. “People no longer want a blindingly obvious t-shirt with a game name on the front; they want something a little unique that isn’t so blatant. “Similarly, as gaming and its characters become more iconic, and people are more aware of them and their traits, so the possibilities for figurines and the like grow.” Ferreira observes that many publishers have moved towards enticing consumers with a more in-depth take on a title’s style, rather than pushing products designed primarily to serve as wearable advertising. “Five years ago only a handful of publishers and developers

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understood the value of merchandise other than using it strictly for promotional purposes,” he says. “What we have seen since then is companies considering merchandise earlier in the game development life cycle and manufacturers of licensed products actively acquiring licenses to design and produce items, as well as the demand from retail to add such products into their ranges.”

People no longer want a blindingly obvious t-shirt with a game name on the front; they want something a little unique.

BROUGHT TO LIFE So knock-offs and advertising out, style and ingenuity in. But how do publishers and creators go about teaming up to bring something fresh to the catwalk? And what should retailers be looking to stock? Chris Marcus, commercial manager at Ubisoft, says that balancing the need for something unique and something that can appeal to the diverse player base of a game should be chief among publishers’ concerns.

Sandra Arcan, Konami

“We always seek to find a balance between the creative vision our studios have for the brand and the desire of the gaming audience for products they would want to purchase,” he explains. “To achieve a large scale licensing programme, we need to use this framework and develop goods that licensees are confident to make and retail are excited to sell.” Arcan echoes Marcus’ sentiment that style and suitability must go hand-in-hand. “It’s not just about a strong visual aesthetic,” she comments. “It’s about working with partners that are reliable, reactive and are invested in developing a range which fits in with the brand ethos and with our overall brand marketing strategy.” Long agrees that harmony with the entire franchise – and with partners – is vital. “The key part of any marketing is to be true to your brand – and to make sure that your brand is the

December 5th 2014

GAMING MERCHANDISE TRENDS

one people always remember,” he says. “By working together – and pooling resources and ideas – the impact is so much greater when you can connect more effectively with your audience.” “The best thing is that the majority of video game companies completely get that gamers want – and deserve – much more than basic, off-the-peg and by-thenumbers merch. “By working together, playing to each other’s strengths and trusting each other’s judgement, we are able to make some really cool stuff, which leads to happier gamers who are even more tuned in to their favourite franchises.” Meanwhile, Ferreira observes that merchandise often provides another way for a range of fans – from die-hard enthusiasts to series newcomers – to celebrate their passion for a title. “Not every fan is able to purchase a £150 premium edition,” he says. “However, they may want to buy a t-shirt, mug, keyring or guide book. For publishers merchandise is a viable additional revenue stream which starts off as a simple style guide.” Van der Made agrees that the popularity of merchandise has expanded to gamers outside of the ‘core’ demographic. “Gaming merchandise has reached its ‘2.0’ phase and the target group has broadened from just the fan base of the game towards a complete lifestyle with a bigger target group,” he states. MERCH MOMENTUM Spurred by a new generation of hardware, games continue to grow in terms of visual style and detailed world building. As virtual worlds become more real, fans are bound to increasingly copy the dress codes of their in-game avatars. “More gaming merchandise from a wider number of publishers is inevitable,” says Marcus. “The games sector continues to create outstanding and engaging products. It makes sense that gamers are offered the options to continue engaging with properties they like in the same way other entertainment sectors currently explore.

December 5th 2014

“With publishers continuing to make new and innovative products, the desire from the gaming audience for related products should provide more opportunities to continue the upward trend we are currently experiencing.” Arcan predicts that the growing popularity and quality of games merchandise will mean an increasing presence in nonspecialist retail outlets. “The market will evolve both in terms of depth and the breadth of ranges available, as well as the type of retailers which list them,” she suggests. “Whilst it has started happening already, fashion and lifestyle retailers increasingly have well-designed games merchandise on their radar. “Certainly with the right brand and with strong levels of demand, there is scope to introduce new categories of merchandise – diversifying from the traditional categories of apparel, accessories, books and collectable figures, into themed novelty collectables and even brand collaborations.” Ferreira says that he expects merchandise to intensify its ties with titles, with more products coming bundled with digital in-game content. “Over the next five years we will see more franchises support a merchandise range at software launch as well as new ranges on previously released games, including retro brands,” he states. “More retail partners will

Figurines are a large growth point – and remain highly collectable

Owning a piece of cool merch is definitely the way to share your passion in style. Dan Long, Insert Coin

Many art books allow players to explore the development of their favourite titles

see the benefit of merchandise and give space to merchandise ranges in store and online. This will contribute to growth in the category over the next five years. In-game content included with merchandise will also increase.” Long similarly sees a future in more niche segments, and adds that the sector will continue to adapt to new trends. “The next stage is for the industry to realise that it might not be the latest, biggest or brightest game that may have the biggest impact for merchandise. Indie games and retro titles have plenty of potential too.” He concludes: “Style – both in terms of fashion and the games themselves - is constantly evolving and will always provide unique and interesting challenges. One thing that is certain is that all aspects of the industry will need to be adaptable and proactive - seeking out new products that make a real connection with fans. “Everyone wants to share their passion with the world. Owning a piece of cool merch is definitely the way to do that in style.”

www.mcvuk.com

INDIE INTERVIEW DRINKBOX STUDIOS Sponsored by

FROM CANADA WITH LOVE Alex Calvin speaks to Chris McQuinn of Canadian developer DrinkBox about why it’s still making 2D platformers and why it’s essential for government to get involved with games development

so for the updated Super Turbo Championship Edition we took out all of the memes from the world and put them in one secret room.”

THE IMITATION GAME Guacamelee is DrinkBox’s loveletter to old-school platformers such as Metroid and Castlevania, but its 2D style was also the result of the limitations of such a small team working on the title. “Essentially making a 2D game is just cheaper,” McQuinn explains. “Technically a 2D game has fewer things to worry about than a 3D

XBOX’S INDIE PUSH The game initially launched for PlayStation platforms, but earlier this year the firm released an updated version of Guacamelee, the aforementioned Super Turbo Championship Edition. This was released across a number of platforms, including the Xbox One. “Working with Microsoft with its ID@Xbox programme is a lot more pleasurable now,” McQuinn says. “It’s great that Microsoft realises the importance of indie games now and it’s done a really good job of facilitating and bringing games to their platforms. “Both consoles have come and gone in terms of how they embrace smaller games. PS2 was the big console on campus so didn’t care about the small games, so maybe Microsoft was more into them. Originally on XBLA with games like Braid, Microsoft has really been on the forefront of bringing smaller games. Maybe there was a lapse for a while, I don’t know.” And like many indie studios, DrinkBox has found that it’s initially harder to get noticed. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem for the developer now that it has made an indie hit in Guacamelee. “When we started off it was hard. You’re really putting everything on the line – all your investments, all your time,” McQuinn says. “Luckily we found a bit of success, so it’s easier for us now people know the name of the studio. But starting off it’s definitely hard – and very scary.”

oronto-based developer DrinkBox is best known for its self-published colourful platformer Guacamelee, which launched on PS3 and Vita last year. The studio was formed from the ashes of Cel Damage creators Pseudo Interactive, which closed in 2008. And designer Chris McQuinn says he’s enjoying life as part of a smaller outfit. “One of the biggest differences when working at an indie is you’re more intimately involved with the project, because the teams are smaller so you’re a lot more involved with the different aspects of every project,” he tells MCV. “You feel more hands on. There aren’t so many people who do all the tasks, so you end up doing a bit of everything.” Whereas some studios turn to Kickstarter or investors to help get started, DrinkBox turned to the Canadian government for funding. “Having government involved, or some small level of funding, was imperative to the success of our studio, without a doubt,” he says. “Now we’re established enough that we don’t have to worry about that as much anymore, we’re not as dependant on government funding. It was a lifeblood for the studio initially. Having government involvement at this level is crucial.”

December 5th 2014

Metroidvaniastyle platformer Guacamelee was DrinkBox’s debut title

game, so for a small team it makes sense. Then again, we are also big fans of that genre. We love the old Metroidvanias, but we also love the new, like Shadow Complex. We really wanted to take our stab at it. There hasn’t been a good Metroidvania in a while. We wanted to contribute to that genre. “And it was important for us to have an art style that was unique. There are a lot of games out there, and you want to do what you can to stand out.” Part and parcel of this art style is the prolific use of internet memes throughout the game’s environment. For example, posters appear for ‘Gato Grunon Cat Food’ – a reference to the Grumpy Cat meme. But this is something the team had issues with over time. “At the time, we hadn’t thought too much about it, he explains. “A lot of the memes are all done by our environmental artist, Stephane Goulet who just loves them. As he’s making the art he’s coming up with these ideas. He’s the only guy making the art so he gets to do what he wants. After we realised we were dating it,

State funding was our lifeblood to start. Government involvement in development is crucial. Chris McQuinn, DrinkBox

www.mcvuk.com

MCV AWARDS 2015 LOBBYING GUIDE

MCV AWARDS 2015: HOW TO ENTER AND GET INVOLVED The MCV Awards return on Thursday, April 16th. But the journey towards a prize starts with making your achievements known to us. Here, we detail the criteria for each accolade and explain how you can get involved. And read carefully - we’ve changed a number of categories, how they are judged and what materials you need to submit

The market for computer & video games

THE AWARDS Games Retailer Independent Retailer New Games Brand Peripherals and Accessories Brand Buying Team Marketing Team Digital Marketing Team Trade Marketing Team PR Team Agency Team Community Team Distribution Team Sales Team Indie Games Label Game Campaign Games Publisher SPECIAL AWARDS Store Manager of the Year Unsung Hero Person of the Year

PlayStation UK cleared up at last year’s MCV Awards

KEY DATES

HOW ARE THE AWARDS JUDGED? For the 16 main awards we will be assembling speciﬁc panels with specialism/interest in key ﬁelds – retail, marketing, publishing, development and so on - to judge groups of awards either via email or face-toface (schedules depending). All judges will be invited to read the supplied lobbying/entry

Lobbying is open NOW Friday, January 16th: Lobbying closes Friday, January 23rd: Finalists announced in MCV Thursday, April 16th: MCV Awards 2014 night

December 5th 2014

documents, so please mark up if any conﬁdential information MUST NOT be passed on. Store Manager of the Year will require nominees to attend an interview in central London. Unsung Hero and Person of the Year are selected by MCV after soundings from the games industry.

www.mcvuk.com

LOBBYING GUIDE MCV AWARDS 2015

GAMES RETAILER

Previous retail winners include Argos (pictured) and GAME in 2014

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any retailer - mainstream or specialist, digital, online or physical, or a combination thereof - which champions video games and prominently features them in its product range. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Customer service Q Product knowledge Q Range and merchandising

design and layout Q Commitment to street dates Q Games-speciﬁc marketing and

INDEPENDENT RETAILER HOW DO I ENTER? You can enter by emailing MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with ‘Games Retailer: [YOUR NAME]’ in the subject. We require information on how your brand excelled in the listed criteria in the last year. Please provide any relevant commentary, timeline, images/assets, and/or stats and ﬁgures you feel necessary to support this nomination.

Previous winners: SimplyGames.com (pictured) and Games Centre

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying or recommendations you want to make for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com. Make sure the subject says ‘Games Retailer’.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any independent retailer mainstream or specialist, digital, online or physical, or a combination thereof - which sells games and prominently features them in its product range. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Customer service Q Product knowledge Q Range and merchandising Q Commitment to street dates Q Games-speciﬁc marketing and

promotional activity

NEW GAMES BRAND

BUYING TEAM

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Originality, innovation and creativity Q Sales success Q Long term potential Q Marketing support and impact

www.mcvuk.com

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

promotional activity Q Vision & strategy

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? A new game brand introduced over the past 12 months that has made a signiﬁcant impact at consumer level within the UK marketplace - regardless of whether the game is a physical release, digital release, hardware brand, or even company brand.

design and layout

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

Q Vision & strategy

Disney Inﬁnity scooped the 2014 prize

HOW DO I ENTER? You can enter your store by emailing MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Independent Retailer: [YOUR NAME]’ in the subject. We require information on how your brand excelled in the listed criteria in the last year. Please provide any commentary, timeline, relevant images/assets, and/or stats and ﬁgures you feel necessary to support this nomination.

HOW DO I ENTER? You can enter your new games brand by emailing MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com with ‘New Games Brand: [NAME]’ in the subject. We require information on how your brand excelled in the listed criteria. We recommend some commentary plus a timeline of brand milestones from the last year. Feel free to supply any relevant images/assets, and/or stats and ﬁgures that support this nomination.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This new award is for any team that manages buying and procurement for retail operations in the UK serving video games - be that for physical games or digital games across any format.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Product knowledge and

industry commitment Q Range and versatility Q Commercial strategy Q Reputation

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

NEW AWARD HOW DO I ENTER? You can enter your buying team by emailing MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com with ‘Buying Team: [NAME]’ in the subject. For team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been in the last year Q Assets of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant timeline from the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? Email any suggestions – be it a partner, competitor or someone you admire – to MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com. Make sure the subject says ‘Buying Team’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

December 5th 2014

MCV AWARDS 2015 LOBBYING GUIDE

PERIPHERALS AND ACCESSORIES BRAND

Turtle Beach picked up the 2014 prize

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This award is for any company that designs, distributes and/or manufactures its own brand of peripherals and accessories for use with home consoles, handhelds or PC JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Innovation Q Quality of products Q Marketing Q Retail strategy Q Sales success

MARKETING TEAM

HOW DO I ENTER? You can enter your peripherals and accessories brand by emailing MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Peripherals Brand: [NAME]’ in the subject. We require information on how your brand excelled in the listed criteria. We recommend some commentary plus a timeline of brand milestones from the last year. Feel free to supply any relevant images/assets, and/or stats and ﬁgures that support this nomination.

2014’s winner: PlayStation UK

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any UK-based marketing team or specialist company that has worked on more than one product or project within the interactive entertainment market over the past 12 months.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Eﬀective communication of

product or brand messages Q Creativity Q Inﬂuence on sales performance Q Impact vs budget and

resource level

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

DIGITAL MARKETING TEAM

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any UK-based digital marketing team or specialist company that has worked on more than one project within the games market over the past 12 months. This award focuses solely on achievements in digital marketing (not marketing of digital-only or digital-ﬁrst games). JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Eﬀective communication of

product or brand messages Q Creativity Q Inﬂuence on sales performance Q Impact vs budget and

resource level

December 5th 2014

NEW AWARD

HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Marketing Team: [NAME]’ in the subject. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been in the last year Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant information from the last year Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board lobbying for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Marketing Team’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

TRADE MARKETING TEAM

HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Digital Marketing Team: [NAME]’. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant commentary covering the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award - A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team

PlayStation UK won 2014’s award

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This award is for any company or team that worked on campaigns dedicated to in-store and retail support, inclusive of trade advertising, POS, distribution and merchandising.

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying you want to make for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Digital Marketing Team’.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Eﬀective communication of

product or brand messages Q Creativity Q Inﬂuence on sales performance Q Eﬃciency and customer service

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Trade Marketing Team: [NAME]’ in the subject. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant commentary covering the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying you want to make for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com. The subject should say ‘Trade Marketing Team’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

www.mcvuk.com

LOBBYING GUIDE MCV AWARDS 2015

PR TEAM

PlayStation UK had 2014’s top PR

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This award is open to all PR staﬀ who worked on UK games campaigns during the past 12 months. Inclusive of in-house teams and retained or projectbased agencies’ below the line activity. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Originality and imagination Q Eﬀective use of assets and

creation of new materials

AGENCY TEAM HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘PR Team: [NAME]’ in the subject. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been in the last year Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant information from the last year Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any UK-based agency or external contributor that has worked for a UK games business to deliver inﬂuential marketing activity that raised brand awareness and help achieve commercial goals. Above the line activity handled by thirdparty ﬁrms will also be considered.

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying for partnesr, competitors - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with the subject ‘PR Team’.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Creativity and innovation Q Effective communication of brand’s messages Q Influence on sales performance Q Influence on audience Q Impact vs budget

Q Responsiveness and relations

with the media

COMMUNITY TEAM

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any UK-based community relations/engagement team working for a UK games business. You can be internal or external, but we expect you have kept in regular contact with the audience to raise brand awareness and help achieve commercial goals. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Creativity and innovation Q Eﬀective communication of brand’s messages Q Inﬂuence on audience Q Impact vs budget

www.mcvuk.com

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

NEW AWARD

NEW AWARD HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Agency Team: [NAME]’ in the subject. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been in the last year Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant information from the last year Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying for a partner, competitor or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Agency Team’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

DISTRIBUTION TEAM

HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with the subject ‘Community Team: [NAME]’. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been in the last year Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant information from the last year Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team

CentreSoft came out on top in 2014

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any distributor active within the interactive entertainment industry serving outlets large and small across the UK.

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Community Team’.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Speed of service Q Order fulﬁlment Q Customer service Q Product condition Q Commitment to an orderly market

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Distribution Team: [NAME]’ in the subject. For all team awards we require: Q Three case studies that detail how eﬀective your team has been in the last year Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant to the above Q Any relevant information from the last year Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will also take on board any lobbying for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Distribution Team’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

December 5th 2014

MCV AWARDS 2015 LOBBYING GUIDE

SALES TEAM

No.1 for sales in 2014: PlayStation UK

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any UK-based sales team or specialist sales force, including in-house staﬀ and outsourced service companies, that focus on sales inside of the UK. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Product knowledge Q Depth of advance information Q Telesales customer care Q Trade relations Q Field sales reliability Q Sales performance

INDIE GAMES LABEL HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with the subject ‘Sales Team: [NAME]’. For this team award we require: Q Any relevant commentary covering the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award Q A picture of the team, or photos of all individuals on the team

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any company publishing games in the UK on behalf of a smaller development partner – and achieved notable commercial or critical success over the last 12 months.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Sales development Q Publishing choices Q Product quality Q Trade relations Q Marketing agility

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any company that ran a significant marketing campaign in the UK supporting products or services within games. This is for an overall campaign covering TV, online, radio, outdoor and print, plus trade. You can enter as many campaigns as you like. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Effective communication of product or brand messages Q Creativity and execution Q Influence on sales performance Q Impact vs budget available Q Media strategy

December 5th 2014

HOW DO I ENTER? Enter your team by emailing MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Indie Label: [NAME]’. We recommend you send us: Q Any relevant commentary covering the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q Testimonials from partners (where relevant) Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant Q A list of all the individuals on the team (where relevant) to be considered for this award, plus individual pictures or a team picture HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will take on board any lobbying you want to make for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com. Make sure the subject says ‘Indie Label’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

GAME CAMPAIGN

GTA V helped Rockstar win in 2014

NEW AWARD

GAMES PUBLISHER HOW DO I ENTER? Enter by emailing MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com with the subject ‘Game Campaign: [NAME]’. We recommend you send us: Q Any relevant commentary covering the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q Any information that proves the eﬀectiveness of the campaign Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant Q A list of all those on the team to be considered for this award, plus individual pictures or a team picture

Ubisoft was 2014’s best publisher

WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Any company publishing games in the UK market that has achieved notable commercial or critical success and generally high levels of performance over the last 12 months.

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will take on board any lobbying you want to make for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com. Make sure the subject says ‘Game Campaign’.

JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Sales development Q Product quality Q Trade relations Q Customer service Q Marketing agility

HOW DO I ENTER? You can enter your team by emailing MCVlobbying@nbmedia. com with ‘Games Publisher: [NAME]’ in the subject. We recommend you send us: Q Any relevant commentary covering the last year, organisation structure, facts or ﬁgures Q Any assets and images of campaigns/creatives you think are relevant Q A list of all the individuals on the team (where relevant) to be considered for this award, plus individual pictures or a team picture HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will take on board any lobbying or recommendations you want to make for a partner, competitor - or someone you just admire. Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@ nbmedia.com. Make sure the subject says Game Publisher’. DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

www.mcvuk.com

LOBBYING GUIDE MCV AWARDS 2015

STORE MANAGER OF THE YEAR WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This new award will honour any store managers running key games outlets across the UK. You must have been a manager for at least 18 months by the time of the awards ceremony on April 16th. JUDGING CRITERIA: Q Speciﬁc projects and initiatives Q Market knowledge Q Reputation

Q Sales performance

other areas like career and team development, how you work with head oﬃce and customer satisfaction Q Any assets and images you think are relevant to the above

Make sure the subject says ‘Store Manager of the Year’.

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? We will take on board any lobbying for a partner, competitor, colleague, boss - or someone you just admire. Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com.

HOW IS THIS AWARD JUDGED? MCV will compile a list of ﬁnalists after January 16th who will be invited to London for an interview with senior industry execs plus a member of the MCV team.

regularly nominated for an MCV Award but missed out - maybe they are low proﬁle but deserve cheer and thanks. This is not speciﬁc to activity from the last year, and is ideal for those with committed long-service records in the games business.

HOW IS THIS AWARD JUDGED? The MCV team will pick the winner based on lobbying and soundings from the games business.

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES AND LOBBYING IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

past year and key successes in 2014.

sure the subject says ‘Person of the year’. And tell us why this person deserves it.

HOW DO I ENTER? Email MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com with ‘Store Manager of the Year: [NAME]’ in the subject. We recommend you send us: Q A personal statement and bio no longer than 500 words summarising your work as manager Q Feel free to highlight how this relates to the criteria above, plus

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

UNSUNG HERO WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This new award will honour an individual from the UK games industry who, frankly, hasn’t had a moment in the spotlight but should have. This is your chance to put forward someone who has been instrumental in the success of a company, product or campaign, or the wider games industry, but simply hasn’t had the credit. Maybe they have been

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com. Make sure the subject says ‘Unsung Hero’. And tell us why this person deserves it.

PERSON OF THE YEAR WHO IS ELIGIBLE? This new award will honour an individual from the UK games industry who in the last year has been a stand-out achiever - either in terms of driving forward a product, raising awareness about an issue or topic, inﬂuencing at all levels, or simply being a notable games industry professional. This is speciﬁcally for activity in the

www.mcvuk.com

HOW IS THIS AWARD JUDGED? The MCV team will pick the winner based on lobbying and soundings from the games business.

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES AND LOBBYING IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH

HOW DO I MAKE A RECOMMENDATION? Email your suggestion to MCVlobbying@nbmedia.com. Make

December 5th 2014

MARKETPLACE

SHELF LIFE MCV speaks to Insane Games’ Richard Barrie about GAME’s Black Friday deals, what has been selling well in the build-up to Christmas and how the Xbox One has been faring How has business been for you in the last few weeks? It’s been pretty good recently. Considering the level of competition we have here, it’s been great. We have Asda and GAME close by. We hold a lot of seperate lines of products. But we’ve been rushed off our feet with Black Friday today. Have you been doing any deals or offers for Black Friday? No, we just can’t match GAME with its offers. That Xbox One and

PRE-ORDER CHARTS

huge store, which helps us stock it all.

four game deal is insane – we can’t compete. We are looking into doing something for Black Friday next year, though. We were going to do a pre-owned oﬀer but it was too last minute.

The merchandise must be selling quite well in the build-up to Christmas? Yes, the t-shirts inparticular are selling very well. Which is funny because it’s winter time and freezing cold.

When you say quite a lot of lines, have you diversiﬁed outside of games? We do a lot of new and preowned games. But we also stock plushies, t-shirts and DVDs. We also do Warhammer. We have a

How are you setting yourself away from the other stores selling games in your area?

PRICE CHECK: BIRMINGHAM

TOP 10 PRE-ORDERS 1. POKÉMON OMEGA RUBY Nintendo, 3DS

2. Wii U GameCube Controller Super Smash Bros Ed Nintendo............................................................ Wii U 3. Wii U GameCube Controller Adaptor Nintendo............................................................. Wii U 4. The Crew Ubisoft ....................................................................PS4

TLOZ: A LINK BETWEEN WORLDS

MARIO KART 8 SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD

Nintendo, Wii U

Nintendo, 3DS

£49.99

£39.99

£34.99

£42.99

£39.99

£34.99

£39.85

£37.85

£36.40

£28

9. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D Nintendo............................................................... 3DS

£33.95

N/A

10. Captain Toad Treasure Tracker Nintendo............................................................. Wii U

£49.99

£39.99

6. Wii U & Super Smash Bros GameCube Controller Nintendo............................................................. Wii U

IN STORE

5. Kingdom Hears 2.5. HD Remix Square Enix..........................................................PS3

POKÉMON X Nintendo, 3DS

7. Minecraft: Xbox One Edition Microsoft ..................................................................XO

UPLOADING The latest digital releases coming to market

December 5th 2014

ONLINE

8. The Crew Ubisoft .......................................................................XO

HATOFUL BOYFRIEND

ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST

THE TALOS PRINCIPLE

PS4 and Vita fans will be able to date pigeons next year. Um.

Xbox’s beautiful indie platformer has been delayed until 2015

Devolver’s puzzle title is on Steam now and lands on PS4 next year

Q2 2015

OUT: 2015

OUT: NOW (PC), Q1 2015 (PS4)

www.mcvuk.com

MARKETPLACE

Insane Games 7 E Quay, Bridgwater, TA6 5AY

We deﬁnitely are more competitively priced when it comes to new stock and tradeins. We also stock more – we have a massive DVD collection in-store, as well as retro and merchandise. GAME doesn’t have as big a retro selection. Have you been doing any events for the bigger games launching? We did midnight launches for the likes of GTA V and Far Cry. They deﬁnitely help drive pre-orders.

Phone: 01278 433 554

And with our pricing, we’re very close to Amazon. How have Xbox One and PS4 sales compared recently? The demand for Xbox One has skyrocketed since Microsoft dropped the price and ditched Kinect. It’s a bit come and go. When there’s a big Microsoft title out everyone wants Xbox One. But when it’s quiet, it’s all about PS4. It’s deﬁnitely closer, but PS4 is still leading.

INCOMING TITLE

WANT TO FEATURE YOUR OUTLET IN MCV? Contact acalvin@nbmedia.com or call 01992 515 303

We’re now looking into next year with new IP from 2K Evolve joining the schedule alongside The Witcher’s debut on PS4 and Xbox One FORMAT

GENRE

PUBLISHER

TELEPHONE

DISTRIBUTOR

PS3

RPG

Square Enix

01216 253 388

CentreSoft

PS4/XO/PC

Action

Square Enix

01216 253 388

CentreSoft

Wii U

Puzzle

Nintendo

01753 483 700

Open

3DS, DS

Kids

Avanquest

01480 359 403

Open

Action

Rockstar

01279 822 822

Exertis

December 5th Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix

December 9th Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

January 2nd Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

January 23rd Big Hero 6

January 27th Grand Theft Auto V

January 30th Dying Light

PS4/XO/PC

Horror

Warner Bros

01216 253 388

CentreSoft

Saints Row IV – Re-Elected and Gat Out Of Hell

PS4/XO

Action

Deep Silver

01256 385 200

Koch Media

PS4/XO/PC

Shooter

2K Games

01279 822 822

Exertis

Simulation

Excalibur

01869 338 833

Contact Sales

PS4/XO/PC

RPG

Bandai Namco

01215 069 590

Advantage

February 10th Evolve

February 20th American Truck Simulator

February 24th The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

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December 5th 2014

STOCKING FILLERS

STOCKING FILLERS With the holiday season just around the corner, Matthew Jarvis looks at the best stocking-sized gifts to make gamers’ Christmas wishes come true

Christmas: the season for socks, excessive consumption and – of course – giving gifts. With a slew of new titles hitting shelves throughout November, gamers are set to be flooding into stores looking for the latest software to give to their loved ones – or themselves, if they’ve been particularly good this year. This provides the perfect opportunity to retailers to upsell tie-in merchandise and gifts – especially on the lower-priced end

It’s not just about new releases at Christmas – we have seen high demand for merchandise from older franchises. Luiz Ferreira, Gaming Merchandise UK

of the range, which can serve as perfect stocking fillers. “The months prior to Christmas and the holiday period itself are crucial for us,” observes Leon van der Made, channel manager of gaming at Bioworld Europe. “Some of our bigger licenses like Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty always have a release window at the end of the year so promoting these licenses is very important to generate the biggest buzz and optimise sales.”

STREET FIGHTER CHRISTMAS JUMPER Proving that Christmas isn’t all about getting along, this patterned retrothemed jumper sees Street Fighter staples Ryu and Ken pulling the hadouken fighting move pose either side of a snowflake. The rest of the jumper is decked out with Christmas patterns, snowflakes and ‘KO’s. SRP: £29.99 Manufacturer: Numskull Distributor: Rubber Road Contact: 01707 800 881

ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY METAL KEYCHAIN

MINECRAFT DIAMOND PENDANT NECKLACE

MASS EFFECT GARRUS POP! VINYL FIGURE

Ideal for keeping skeleton keys in one place. (MCV does not endorse breaking and entering, unless you are a virtual 19th-century Assassin.)

Minecraft players can treat the diamond in their life with this pixelated take on the precious gemstone.

Based on the popular team party character from EA’s sci-ﬁ trilogy, this mini Garrus will surely protect desks from galactic threat.

SRP: £4.99 Manufacturer: Bioworld Merchandise Distributor: Bioworld Merchandise Contact: +31 251 316 238

SRP: £11.99 Manufacturer: Jinx Distributor: Gaming Merchandise UK Contact: hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com

SRP: £9.99 Manufacturer: Funko Distributor: Underground Toys Contact: kenny@underground-toys.com

December 5th 2014

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STOCKING FILLERS

DIRECTORY

MCV DIRECTORY KEY CONTACTS Sony DADC ............................................ +44 (0) 207 462 6200

CREATIVE Fink ................................................................. info@ﬁnkcreative.com

GAMING ACCESSORIES DISC REPAIR

L3I............................................................................+ (0)1923 471 020

Total Disc Repair ..................................+44 (0) 1202 489500

Venom ............................................................... +44 (0)1763 284181

DISTRIBUTION Click Entertainment ............................ +44 (0) 203 137 3781 Creative Distribution ......................+44 (0) 20 8664 3456 RATES

Curveball Leisure ................................... +44 (0) 1792 652521

£70 per two column box (100mm x 75mm). To run weekly for a minimum of 1 year. Please phone for other size and/or position requirements.

Enarxis Dynamic Media ............................. +302 1090 11900

DISC REPAIR

TOTAL DISC REPAIR

Tel: +44 (0) 1202 489500

December 5th 2014

Web: www.totaldiscrepair.co.uk

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DIRECTORY

ENQUIRIES CONOR TALLON Tel: 01992 535647 ctallon@nbmedia.com

FINK

CREATIVE

DISTRIBUTION

CLICK ENTERTAINMENT

Artworking Mastertronic Brand Identity Ukie Localisation Rising Star Games Advertising BBFC Website Design Deep Silver Exhibition Bethesda Illustration Appynation Digital Media IntentMedia Charity GamesAid Banners & Takeovers Konami Packaging Design Just Flight Email: info@ﬁnkcreative.com CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +44 (0) 208 6643456 ENARXIS DYNAMIC MEDIA

Tel: +44 (0)203 137 3781

Web: www.ﬁnkcreative.com DISTRIBUTION

email: sales@click-entertainment.com

CURVEBALL LEISURE

Web: www.creativedistribution.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1792 652521

DISTRIBUTION

SONY DADC

DISTRIBUTION

Web: www.curveball-leisure.com DISTRIBUTION

Empowering your creative business

Tel: +44 207 462 6200 games@sonydadc.com

www.sonydadc.com Tel: +302 1090 11900

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Web: www.enarxis.eu

Tel: +44 (0) 207 462 6200

Web: www.sonydadc.com

December 5th 2014

DIRECTORY

GAMING ACCESSORIES

L3I

GAMING ACCESSORIES

VENOM

Accessories for use with Xbox OneÂ® Controller Kit

Twin Docking Station

Includes 2 Rechargeable Battery Packs

Tel: + (0)1923 471 020

Web: www.logic3.com

ADVERTISE WITH US

WANT TO ADVERTISE IN OUR DIRECTORY? Web: www.venomuk.com Phone: +44 (0)1763 284181 Email: darren.scott@venomuk.com sam.phipps@venomuk.com tom.hodge@venomuk.com

CALL CONOR TALLON ON 01992 535647 OR EMAIL HIM AT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

Tel: +44 (0)1763 284181 December 5th 2014

Venom UK Gaming @VenomGamingUK

w w w. v e n o m u k . c o m

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INSIDER’S GUIDE

INSIDER’S GUIDE RESPONDEZ

DIRECTORY

WHO? Specialism: Customer support Location: Sovereign Park, Hartlepool, TS25 1NN

Develop is the only dedicated publication for the UK and European games development community. It reaches over 8,500 subscribers every month.

Director of support specialist Respondez, Jay Patel, discusses safeguarding the brands of clients

FOR GREAT ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES, CONTACT ALEX BOUCHER ABOUCHER@NBMEDIA.COM

What is your biggest success to date? Developing a multi-lingual tech support centre in Harltepool with native speakers and attracting staﬀ in from across Europe for life on Hartlepool Riviera. Adding high-ramp-up capabilities in European languages, with a presence in Poland, has made our oﬀering more comprehensive.

THIS MONTH’S DIRECTORY SPOTLIGHT: Epic Games .................................................. www.epicgames.com/careers

What projects do you currently have in the works? We are currently geared up in preparation for the increase in post-release support activities over the Christmas period, particularly with Ubisoft, but also with our other customers in the retail, insurance and banking spaces. On the games side, we are in the process of creating a stateof-the-art gaming lab, which will double up as a ‘let your hair down’ zone for our staﬀ. What are the biggest challenges you face? Our biggest challenge is also the most exciting one. That is the task of remaining contemporary and meeting the support demands of players and a market that is well-connected across social networks and forums, and that requires quick resolutions. The gaming business is about brands, and our responsibility is to always safeguard To be included in the Develop Directory (which appears every month in Develop and now every week in MCV) contact aboucher@nbmedia.com

Respondez is one of the few words in foreign language that is universally understood. Jay Patel, Respondez

and improve our clients’ brand image. How did you choose your company name? The vision was to have a name that describes our services in one word, and is relevant across various channels of communication – whatever the language. Respondez is one of the few words in foreign language that is universally understood.

WANT TO FEATURE YOUR COMPANY IN INSIDER’S GUIDE? PLEASE CONTACT MJARVIS@NBMEDIA.COM OR CALL 01992 515 303

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET www.mcvuk.com

Contact: E: jay.patel@respondez.co.uk W: www.respondez.co.uk P: 07747 797 152

December 5th 2014

FACTFILE PAKISTAN Sponsored by

Wholesaler and distributor of video games, consoles and accessories

INTERNATIONAL FACTFILE: PAKISTAN Population: 196,174,380 Capital City: Islamabad Currency: Rupee GDP (Per Capita): $1,295 KEY RETAILERS Illusions, Pak Gamers, The Plaza, iShopping, Home Shopping, Daraz

TOP DEVELOPERS Mindstorm Studios, White Rabbit Studios, Tintash, We R Play, CaramelTech

TOP DEVELOPERS Zubair Electronics, Milestone Interactive

PUBLISHERS IN THE REGION Microsoft, Sony

PAKISTAN has a rapidly growing games market, driven by mobile, rather than console. While specific games industry numbers are lacking due to the youth of the sector, according to the Pakistan Software Export Board, the entire Pakistani IT industry is valued at $2.8 billion. Those working in the games sector are largely smaller mobile developers, due to the relative ease and affordability to enter the market. However, some firms have managed to break into the wider international games business. This includes Mindstorm Studios, whose 2009 release Cricket Revolution was the first PC game created by a Pakistani studio to be sold in retail stores outside of the country. The move to mobile has been spurred by the consistent presence of piracy in the region. Many local stores stock pirated

copies of games, leading gamers seeking genuine software to import at a high cost. Meanwhile, some games that have made it into Pakistan have then suffered censorship. Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Medal of Honor: Warfighter were banned from Pakistan store shelves in 2013 after retailers complained about the depiction of the country as a haven for terrorist groups. More recently, EA’s Dragon Age: Inquisition was removed from sale in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan in order to avoid a ‘breach of local content laws’. The local distributor for the game said that EA had decided to not sell the game in the countries due to the title’s homosexual sex scenes, which it feared could cause backlash. Homosexuality is a crime punishable with a prison sentence in Pakistan.

Dragon Age: Inquisition was removed from sale to avoid a ‘breach of local content laws’.

December 5th 2014

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PAKISTAN FACTFILE

MEANWHILE IN... FRANCE A French health agency has advised against children viewing 3D games and video, citing a range of worrying symptoms caused by the effect NINTENDO’S 3DS handheld may be set for some difficulty in France, as a health agency has issued a worrying statement on the effect of 3D on children. The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) released a report advising that children aged under six should not view 3D films or play 3D games at all, while kids aged 13 and over should only consume such content in moderation. The chief concern is increased fatigue caused by ‘vergenceaccommodation conflict’, relating to the unnatural

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behaviour eyes adopt when viewing 3D displays. This can result in double vision, dizziness, headaches and reduced concentration and mental performance, among other symptoms.

While ANSES stresses that further research is needed, it should be noted that both the 3DS and its non-3D cousin, the 2DS, have an age rating of seven and over.

December 5th 2014

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION