THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAMES ISSUE 891 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 9TH 2016
GAMES MEDIA SPECIAL SEVEN PAGES DEDICATED TO THE GAMING PRESS
THE NEW A-LIST YouTube stars talk scandals, legitimacy and the future
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THE EDITORS SPEAK Media leaders on the new age for the games press
Meet the man behind IGN Peer Schneider on surviving 20 years in video games’ most turbulent sector
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INDIE INTERVIEW: THE SEXY BRUTALE Lionhead veterans return with a bizarre murder mystery
‘YouTubers are the next generation’s Justin Bieber’
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Sega reborn Why the Sonic publisher is on the hunt for new games
P 23
P 19
NEWS
UK consumers: In-app purchases damage game enjoyment However, British players think free-to-play as a concept is a good thing, latest GameTrack data reveals by Christopher Dring BRITISH consumers believe that in-app purchases reduce the enjoyment of games. However, the latest data from Ipsos Connect’s GameTrack survey also shows that gamers believe that the free-to-play model is a ‘good’ thing, because it allows people to sample a wide variety of products. 48 per cent of British consumers were agreed with this sentiment, with just 14 per cent who disagreed (the remaining 38 per cent either had no opinion or were unaware of the topic). In terms of value for money, 30 per cent of UK players feel that free-to-play games offer better value than premium titles, with 25 per cent that disagreed with the statement.
47 per cent of UK players think microtransactions reduce enjoyment
However, the perception amongst consumers in Britain is that in-app purchases are rarely implemented well. 47 per cent said that microtransactions ‘reduce the enjoyment of playing these games’,
with just 13 per cent disagreeing with that statement. The survey was also carried out for France, Germany and Spain, all with similar outcomes. However, German and French consumers
differ slightly as more disagree than agree that free-to-play games offer better value for money than premium titles. Across all four markets, 43 per cent of consumers agreed that freeto-play is good for allowing users to sample games (versus 13 per cent who disagree). 24 per cent of people said that free-to-play titles offer better value for money (versus 23 per cent who disagree). Meanwhile, 40 per cent of respondents said that in-app purchases negatively impact game enjoyment (versus 13 per cent who don’t think that). In total, there were 8,088 respondents to the questions across the four countries. The research was conducted by Ipsos Connect’s GameTrack project. For a more detailed analysis, check out next week’s MCV.
Sega Europe boss concerned by Brexit result by Christopher Dring BREXIT has ‘definitely caused issues’, says Sega’s European boss Jurgen Post. Sega is a major investor in Britain. It owns three UK studios and its European operations are based here. Post says the major concern is with its high number of European staff, and whether it will be able to comfortably bring in foreign talent in the future. “Brexit has definitely caused issues, in the sense that our workforce is very international,” he said. “Between Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive, Sega Europe and Hardlight, we have a workforce that is about 27 per cent from Europe. I’m one of them, right? So there was
September 9th 2016
definitely a bit of a panic and people are concerned about what will happen. “I don’t think it’s a short-term issue. I think people working within the studios and within Sega, they will be safe, I am confident about that. It’s more
People are worried about coming to the UK. Jurgen Post, Sega
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about the future. How easy will it be to get people from Europe? We are constantly trying to find people for our growing studios. Creative Assembly has 450 people right now and is still growing. We are constantly looking for people, and from that point-of-view, looking at the future, I am a bit concerned.” Post adds that the EU vote has already had a negative effect when trying to win over talent from abroad. “You can definitely feel that people are concerned about coming to the UK,” he said. “You also have people who are, maybe, unhappy with what happened in the UK and are thinking about moving back to wherever they came from in Europe.” For more from Post, turn to page 19.
www.mcvuk.com
NEWS
THE EDITOR
No Man’s Sky conquers August Sony was the UK’s No.1 boxed publisher last month by Christopher Dring PLAYSTATION’S No Man’s Sky rescued August and was by far the best-selling game of the month in the UK. The GfK data, which only counts physical boxed sales, shows that No Man’s Sky beat its nearest rival by more than 100,000 units. The No.2 game of the month was F1 2016. As a result of the overwhelming commercial
success of Hello Games’ space exploration game, Sony was the most successful publisher in terms of games sold and revenue generated. Nintendo was at No.2, with sales of 3DS software continuing to perform strongly during the Summer. Overall, August was marginally down by 1.2 per cent year-on-year, in terms of the number of games sold. Yet in terms of revenue, sales are up by almost 25 per cent.
CALL OF DUTY’S BIGGEST THREAT IS CALL OF DUTY
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t was COD XP this week, where a plethora of journalists, fans, YouTubers and other ‘influencers’ (shudder) were flown to LA to discover the latest title in what will surely be the second biggest game of the year. The reports are good, just as they were at Gamescom and E3, which will hopefully help rectify that ill-received launch trailer. It will still have a big fight on its hand against Battlefield 1, which is enjoying a (on the whole) positive reaction to its new setting – plus there’s Titanfall 2 in the mix, to further complicate matters. Yet the real threat to Call of Duty this year might actually be Call of Duty. Infinite Warfare’s various special editions come with a remastered version of 2007’s Modern Warfare. It’s a great idea. Not just because it will sell more special editions, but it will also help Activision to engage with some of Call of Duty’s lapsed fans. I am one of those fans. I’ve not properly played a new Call of Duty in almost five years – I just got a bit bored of it after a while. But the idea of going back and discovering that game I loved when I was still in my early 20s... where do I sign? No wonder Activision is making me buy the new game in-order to get it. It doesn’t want me to simply wallow in nostalgia, it wants me to return to the series permanently. Yet there is a risk behind this Modern Warfare remake. What if
THE UK AUGUST TOP TEN
1
NO MAN’S SKY
2
F1 2016
3
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
4
Overwatch
5
Grand Theft Auto V
6
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
7
Uncharted 4
8
Rocket League
9
FIFA 16
EA
10
Doom
Bethesda
SONY
Codemasters Square Enix Activision Blizzard Rockstar Warner Bros Sony 505 Games
SPONSORED BY
PRE-ORDER TOP 10
1
FIFA 17 (PS4)
EA
2
Battlefield 1 (PS4)
EA
3
PlayStation VR (PS4)
4
Final Fantasy XV Day 1 Edition (PS4)
5
Gears of War 4 (XO)
6
FIFA 17 (XO)
7
Mafia III: Family Kick-back Pre-order Bonus (PS4)
2K
8
Battlefield 1 (XO)
EA
9
PlayStation VR & Camera (PS4)
10
CoD: Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition inc Zombies in Space & Terminal bonus (PS4) Activision
www.mcvuk.com
Sony Square Enix Microsoft EA
Sony
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There’s a risk behind the Modern Warfare remake. What if some people prefer it to Infinite Warfare? Is there not a risk of splitting the audience? some people prefer it? Today, keeping players engaged over a long period is almost more important than hitting those day one numbers. This is a business model that Activision Blizzard pioneered in many ways. The more gamers that are playing the game months, even years, after launch, the more DLC and merchandise you can sell them. So is there not a risk of Modern Warfare splitting the audience? Making the game unavailable separately might be an astute move here, but there will be a big audience that will end up with two Call of Duty games this Christmas. It’s hard to predict. And this is the sort of thing that could even impact some of Activision’s eSports ambitions - what if the eSports community decides that it would rather play Modern Warfare over Infinite Warfare? Call of Duty’s biggest rivals this Christmas may come in the form of Titanfall and Battlefield. But as we head into the New Year, Activision might find its fiercest competitor is itself. cdring@nbmedia.com
September 9th 2016
CHEAT SHEET
UP & DOWN
Market Data A lack of big releases sees software revenue drop by 16 per cent last week
£10m £15m
£8.2m 253,432 units
£30m £5m
£5.9m 188,953 units
Week Ending August 20th
Week Ending August 27th
DEUS EX falls from No.1 to No.2 with sales dipping 72 per cent
£6.5m 238,680 units SALES OF Blizzard’s shooter Overwatch rose by 68 per cent last week
Week Ending September 3rd
EVENT CALENDAR SEPTEMBER 2016
OCTOBER 2016
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LEGENDS OF GAMING LIVE 2016 Alexandra Palace, London Saturday, September 10th – Sunday, September 11th Q For two days next month, fans will be meeting the stars of YouTube. Almost 20,000 gamers are expected to be in attendance Q YouTube personalities such as Ali-A, DanTDM, Spencer FC and LDShadowLady will be at the show Q Organiser Endemol says that tickets for this year’s show are being sold four times faster than 2015’s event
PLAY EXPO EventCity. Manchester Saturday, October 8th – Sunday, October 9th Q Play Expo returns for its fifth year at Manchester’s EventCity exhibition centre
EGX NEC, Birmingham Thursday, September 22nd – Sunday, September 25th Q EGX returns for its second year at NEC Birmingham Q This year’s expo features panel discussions, a career fair, a cosplay stage, retro and board game ones, and merchandise to purchase
September 9th 2016
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GAMES MEDIA AWARDS 2016 Sway Bar, London Tuesday, October 11th Q This year’s Games Media Awards will be held at London’s Sway Bar Q 12 prizes are up for grabs, including Journalists’ Journalist, which is voted for on the night Q The GMAs 2016 are being hosted by The Miller Report’s Simon Miller APPS WORLD ExCel, London Wednesday, October 19th – Thursday, October 20th Q Europe’s largest gathering of developers, mobile and marketing professionals is taking place next month Q Representatives from Microsoft, Facebook and Time Inc will be speaking at the show
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CHEAT SHEET
PRESENTS
5 SECOND FACTS
THE NEWS IN 140 CHARACTERS The Tweets you might have missed in the last seven days
Your shortcut to sounding clever in the pub, we take you around the industry in under 30 seconds
YOUTUBE STARS IN UPROAR AS PLATFORM PENALISES EDGY CONTENT
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Online giant YouTube has angered some of its users by withholding ad revenue on videos with content flagged for ‘inappropriate language’ and ‘controversial topics’. The site claims there hasn’t been a change in policy, but that it is just changing how users were notified.
Smartphone giant Samsung has recalled its new Galaxy Note 7 handset amid reports that 35 devices have exploded
@Laralyn The current YouTube brouhaha is another reminder that users don’t always grasp the fact that a commercial platform is allowed to curate. Laralyn McWilliams, Skydance Thursday, September 1st
German games firm Wooga has laid off 40 members of staff due to an internal restructure
40 @JimSterling As expected, nobody is quite sure what’s going on. YouTube needs to f*cking communicate with the people it keeps pulling rugs from under. Jim Sterling, The Jimquisition Thursday, September 1st
3DS GAMES HEADLINE NINTENDO DIRECT
CARNIVAL GAMES TO RETURN AS VR SERIES
Nintendo announced a number of 3DS titles in its latest Direct. Wii U titles Super Mario Maker and Yoshi’s Woolly World are coming to the platform, as well as a new Pikmin release.
Casual series Carnival Games is making a come back as a VR title. Simply called Carnival Games VR, it is being developed by Cat Daddy. This is being published by 2K and is the firm’s first foray into VR.
@ArcadeGirl64 Good Nintendo Direct. But it emphasises something I’ve been saying for two years now. 3DS and Wii U game libraries feel redundant/ too similar. Emily Rogers, Arcade Girl 64 Thursday, September 1st
@smcowley Carnival Games VR in production, presumably for that potentially lucrative casual VR market and its affordable hardware
@Toadsanime The Nintendo Direct is basically a lengthy reminder that the 3DS is worth having.
@KyleOrl On the one hand, VR would be lucky to become as popular as the Wii. On the other hand...
Simon Cowley, NCSoft, Wednesday, August 31st
Ryan Brown, Daily Mirror Thursday, September 1st
$5m Vive maker HTC has invested $5m in Steel Wool Studios, a developer founded by Pixar, LucasFilm and Telltale veterans
3 Just three days after launch, developer Arcen has moved In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor to a free-to-play model
2017 Gran Turismo Sport has been delayed from its November 18th release date until 2017
Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, Wednesday, August 31st
AG Prismatic Controller - PDP Design and manufacture the Afterglow Prismatic Controller for Xbox ONE Officially licensed by Microsoft europesales@pdp.com
www.pdp.com
GAMESAID THIS WEEK .................................................... PLAY YOUR PART BECOME A MEMBER AMBASSADOR TRUSTEE WWW.GAMESAID.ORG
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GAMESAID GOLF DAY RAISES £30,OOO
GAMESCOM TO BRIGHTON CYCLE RIDE
GAMESAID CHEQUE GIVING 2016
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The annual GamesAid Golf and Spa Day returned for the ninth time on Thursday, July 14th. The event raised a whopping £30,000. This year it was once again held at The Grove in Watford.
A number of GamesAid members cycled 352 miles from Cologne to Brighton for charity, raising £3,430 in the process. You can still donate here www. justgiving.com/teams/ gamescomtobrighton2016
On September 15th at London’s Warner House, GamesAid will announce which charities will receive funding this year. Last year, GamesAid raised £564,000, which was donated to eight different organisations.
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September 9th 2016
MARKET MOVES
APPOINTMENTS
Develop deputy joins Tabletop Gaming magazine Jarvis departs after three years O Indigo Pearl promotes account manager O Future hires new Media MD TABLETOP GAMING | Develop’s deputy editor MATT JARVIS has departed MCV’s sister title to become editor of Tabletop Gaming magazine. Jarvis had joined Develop nine months ago as senior staff writer and was soon promoted deputy editor. Prior to this, he had been working as a staff writer for MCV for a year-and-a-half, and for PC and technology trade magazine PCR for one year. Jarvis commented: “It’s been an incredible three-plus years living my childhood dream as a professional video games journalist in my first real job. I’ve met plenty of heroes, a few villains and made some great
September 9th 2016
friends – hopefully for life. While I may be departing the virtual space for the world of tabletop gaming, I hope to bump into friendly faces at some of the same events – and continue to talk ears off about Morrissey, J-pop and Metal Gear Solid.”
Stone joined Indigo Pearl in May 2015, after being a freelance writer for over a year. He commented: “As a hardcore gamer this job is a dream come true for me, working alongside some of the biggest publishers in the world.”
INDIGO PEARL | PAUL STONE has been promoted from digital account executive to account manager within Indigo Pearl’s digital department PressXtra.net. This tool is responsible for hosting and managing global press sites for some of the biggest publishers in the world, including Sony, Warner Bros, Activision and Ubisoft.
FUTURE | The publishing group behind GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and Edge has hired JULIAN MARCH as the new managing director for Media. He will be responsible for the firm’s Media division and its digital transition. March will initially be based in New York before relocating to the UK in early 2017.
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He used to be SVP digital at NBC News, having previously worked at ITV and Sky. March said: “Future is in an exciting place right now and I am thrilled to be joining such a talented team. They have already made a successful digital transformation. I’m looking forward to keeping up the momentum and taking it to the next level.” Future’s CEO ZILLAH BYNGTHORNE added: “I’m extremely pleased to welcome Julian. This is a key role in our strategy, allowing us to capitalise on the ever-changing market. I can’t wait to see him apply his international outlook while leading our rapid growth in digital.”
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a
Company
Call our specialist sales teams North 01282 776776 South 01256 707070 store.exertis.co.uk
WEEKLY SALES CHARTS
WEEKLY CHARTS OVERWATCH is impressively back at No.1 this week. The MOBA, which launched in May, had a 24 per cent growth in sales following a recent price drop. It is the fourth time the title has been the best selling game in the UK. Blizzard also takes the third spot, thanks to the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Legion. However, The title’s sales fell short compared to the previous expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Meanwhile, last week’s No.1, Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, has fallen to No.2, with sales decreasing 72 per cent. There are also two new entries outside of the Top Ten this week and
both are from Bandai Namco: the Game of the Year Edition for The Witcher III debuts at No.17, and God Eater 2: Rage Burst enters the charts at No.21. Elsewhere, some titles have seen impressive growth thanks to retailer promotions, such as Disney Infinity 3.0 (No.11), which sales went up 194 per cent. Rock Band 4 also re-enters the listings at No.27 with sales increasing 215 per cent. Over on Steam, the first expansion for Studio Wildcard’s ARK: Survival Evolved, Scorched Ark, tops the listings, while God Eater 2 and The Witcher III: Game of the Year Edition debut at No.4 and No.8 respectively.
GLOBAL STEAM CHARTS (UNITS)
01 TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
LW 01 07 NEW 10 06 RE NEW RE 06
ARK: SCORCHED ARK EXPANSION PACK DEVELOPER: STUDIO WILDCARD PUBLISHER: STUDIO WILDCARD
TITLE PUBLISHER Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Square Enix Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Valve God Eater 2: Rage Burst Bandai Namco A.O.T. Wings of Freedom Koei Tecmo Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar ARK: Survival Evolved Studio Wildcard The Witcher III: Wild Hunt GOTY Edition CD Projekt Red Prison Architect Introversion Software Dead by Daylight Starbreeze
TOP 40 UK PHYSICAL RETAIL 02
01
TW 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
LW 04 01 NEW 02 06 09 03 07 11 05 30 12 14 13 15 10 NEW 08 17 22 NEW 24 23 19 16 20 RE 25 39 26 RE 21 29 34 18 27 28 33 40 36
04
05
Title Format Publisher Overwatch PS4, XO, PC Activision Blizzard Deus Ex: Mankind Divided PS4, XO, PC Square Enix World of Warcraft: Legion PC Activision Blizzard F1 2016 PS4, XO, PC Codemasters Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End PS4 Sony Grand Theft Auto V PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Rockstar No Man’s Sky PS4 Sony LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens PS4, XO, PS3, 360, 3DS, PC Warner Bros Rocket League PS4, XO 505 Games Madden NFL 17 PS4, XO, PS3, 360 EA Disney Infinity 3.0 PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, PC Disney FIFA 16 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC EA Call of Duty: Black Ops III PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Activision Blizzard Doom PS4, XO, PC Bethesda Minecraft: Xbox Edition XO, 360 Microsoft A.O.T. Wings of Freedom PS4, XO Koei Tecmo The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - GOTY Edition PS4, XO, PC Bandai Namco Assetto Corsa PS4, XO 505 Games LEGO Marvel’s Avengers PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, PC Warner Bros Far Cry Primal PS4, XO, PC Ubisoft God Eater 2: Rage Burst PS4, PC, Vita Bandai Namco Tom Clancy’s The Division PS4, XO, PC Ubisoft Star Wars Battlefront PS4, XO, PC EA Fallout 4 PS4, XO, PC Bethesda Quantum Break XO, PC Microsoft LEGO Jurassic World PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC Warner Bros Rock Band 4 PS4, XO Harmonix Minecraft: PlayStation Edition PS4, PS3, Vita Sony Worms WMD PS4, XO, PC Sold Out New Super Mario Bros. 2 3DS Nintendo Dark Souls III PS4, XO, PC Bandai Namco PS4, XO EA EA Sports UFC 2 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege PS4, XO, PC Ubisoft WWE 2K16 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC 2K Games Mirror’s Edge Catalyst PS4, XO, PC EA Forza Motorsport 6 XO Microsoft Minecraft: Story Mode PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Telltale Games/Avanquest Halo 5: Guardians XO Microsoft Heavy Rain & Beyond Two Souls Collection PS4 Sony Tomodachi Life 3DS Nintendo
Source: Steam, Period: August 29th to September 4th September 9th 2016
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Source: UKIE/GfK Entertainment, Period: Week ending September 3rd 08
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WEEKLY SALES CHARTS
UK IPAD PAID
01 TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
LW 05 NEW 02 NEW NEW RE 10 RE RE
UK IPHONE PAID
(UNITS)
01
MINECRAFT: POCKET EDITION DEVELOPER: MOJANG
Title Athletics 2: Summer Sports Danse Macabre: Lethal Letters Reigns Cartoon Network Superstar Soccer: Goal Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-tale Heart Terraria Geometry Dash The Sims 3 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
Developer Tangram3D Big Fish Devolver Digital Cartoon Network Big Fish 505 Games RobTop Games EA Rockstar
LW 04 01 07 05 06 03 09 RE RE
Source: UKIE/Refl ection, Period: August 22nd to August 28th
(UNITS)
MINECRAFT: POCKET EDITION DEVELOPER: MOJANG
Title Heads Up! Reigns Monopoly Game Plague Inc. Athletics 2: Summer Sports Football Manager Mobile 2016 Geometry Dash Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.ipa Backflip Madness
Source: UKIE/Refl ection, Period: August 22nd to August 28th
UK IPAD GROSSING (REVENUE)
UK IPHONE GROSSING (REVENUE)
01
01
TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
LW 01 03 04 05 07 08 RE RE 06
MOBILE STRIKE DEVELOPER: EPIC WAR
Title Candy Crush Saga Game of War - Fire Age Candy Crush Soda Saga Clash of Clans Roblox Hay Day Clash Royale Township Pokémon GO
TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
Developer King Machine Zone King Supercell Roblox Corporation Supercell Supercell Playrix Niantic
LW 04 02 03 05 06 10 09 07 RE
Source: UKIE/Refl ection, Period: August 22nd to August 28th
POKÉMON GO DEVELOPER: NIANTIC
Title Mobile Strike Game of War - Fire Age Candy Crush Saga Clash of Clans Candy Crush Soda Saga Clash Royale Episode - Choose Your Story, feat. Mean Girls: Senior Year CSR Racing 2 Marvel Contest of Champions
UK IPHONE FREE (UNITS)
01
01
LW 01 NEW 04 09 RE 03 08 RE 06
FLIP DIVING DEVELOPER: MINICLIP.COM
Title Pokémon GO Gardenscapes - New Acres Zootropolis Crime Files: Hidden Object Roblox Bingo Pop Rio 2016 Olympic Games Slither.io FarmVille: Tropic Escape Taxi Sim 2016
TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
Developer Niantic Playrix Disney Roblox Corporation Uken Games Neowiz Games Steve Howse Zynga Alexandru Marusac
Source: UKIE/Refl ection, Period: August 22nd to August 28th www.mcvuk.com
Developer Epic War Machine Zone King Supercell King Supercell Episode Interactive NaturalMotion Kabam
Source: UKIE/Refl ection, Period: August 22nd to August 28th
UK IPAD FREE (UNITS)
TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
Developer Warner Bros Devolver Digital EA Ndemic Creations Tangram3D Sega RobTop Games Telltale Gamesoul Studio
LW 01 01 05 RE 08 06 NEW 09 RE
FLIP DIVING DEVELOPER: MINICLIP.COM
Title Pokémon GO Ketchapp Summer Sports Fit The Fat 2 Bingo Pop Color 6 Rio 2016 Olympic Games Six! Talking Tom Gold Run Rolling Sky
Developer Niantic Ketchapp Five Bits Uken Games Tigrido Neowiz Games Gram Games Outfit7 Cheetah
Source: UKIE/Refl ection, Period: August 22nd to August 28th 09
September 9th 2016
MEDIA SPECIAL PEER SCHNEIDER, IGN
Evolve or die: IGN turns 20 When it launched two decades years ago, IGN was a Nintendo fansite that was updated once a day. Now it is a media giant with offices around the globe. Its content is available everywhere, from its site to YouTube to Snapchat. Alex Calvin speaks to co-founder and GM Peer Schneider about the IGN story
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oday, IGN is one of the largest and most influential games media brands around. There are 29 editions of the site across the world. Its content is read in 22 languages and in 112 countries. In total, IGN attracts 75m unique users a month. That’s just from its website, too – the brand has massive userbases on other platforms outside of its portal, including YouTube and Snapchat. But back when it launched on September 29th 1996, it was just a Nintendo-focused sited called N64.com, and its way of doing things was more than a little bit different to how the games media operates today. “The approach was to create a website that would update once a day at a set time, so it was like a daily magazine,” IGN’s co-founder and GM Peer Schneider explains. “People would know when to tune in. We eventually settled on a midnight automatic update, thinking everyone would be asleep. Readers would wake up in the morning and they’d have all this new content. But everybody waited until midnight and if you were five minutes late, people were shouting: ‘Why is the site not updating?’. “That was our first encounter with really figuring out that when you create a website, audience expectations change over time and you really have to adjust your format and timing in order to serve the audience rather than the other way around.” THE TIMES ARE A’ CHANGING Over time, the games media has changed the way it covers the news. And Schneider believes that IGN’s coverage of E3 1997
September 9th 2016
When Schneider first helped found IGN, it was a Nintendofocused site called N64.com
influenced how other publications approached future events. “When we launched, sites behaved very differently,” he says. “When media went to E3, they all sat down, played the games and then the magazines would assemble an E3 issue that would come out three months later. The website guys, many of whom had come from print, took the same approach. About a week or so after the event, they’d put up articles about all the things they saw. There was no sense of timeliness. “When we approached E3 1997, we started a terrible thing: we started doing round-the-clock coverage. We were going to update every hour. It’s funny to say that now. We worked ourselves to death, we stayed up all night and kept on writing stories. Maybe they didn’t get that much traffic, but we created this cadence and level of excitement where you can really experience a show like E3 at home. “The numbers exploded on the site. IGN just became so much
Loads of people still use the games media. If the audience is shrinking, they could have fooled me. Peer Schneider, IGN
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bigger through that style of E3 coverage and next year everybody covered the show like that. We created something special.” Today, one of the biggest reasons people know IGN is for its video content. But this was not an easy transition to make. “It was a really interesting time when a lot of content was moving into video,” Schneider says. “We started by writing news, previews and reviews and reached a point where half the audience was just watching the trailer and making up their mind about what the game is going to be. We were wondering whether we even needed to write previews and how we can shift this content for a new generation. We decided we would put editors on camera, the staff who wrote the reviews would be reading them out or sitting in a chair and talking about them. “The early content was terrible. Nobody was media trained. There was some fun content where people were having a lively
www.mcvuk.com
PEER SCHNEIDER, IGN MEDIA SPECIAL
IGN’s UK team. (Front row, left to right): Tilly, Judge, Murphy, Powers, Krupa. (Back row left to right): Driver, Skrebels and Simmons
discussion but all the scripted stuff sounded awful. We decided to media train everyone, develop how everybody speaks and sort out how they sound on camera. There were certain people that I never thought would be a voice and perform on camera, so we were going to get voice actors in. But people shifted so quickly and really surprised me, so we never had to do that. It’s really credit to the writers and the creators that we brought on that we really defined this.” NEW FRONTIERS Whether it was with event coverage, or moving into video, IGN has never sat still. Even recently, the brand launched on Snapchat, and since June this has become the publication’s biggest userbase outside of its website, eclipsing its monthly reach on the likes of Facebook and YouTube. “[Moving to new platforms] is more difficult than users realise,” Schneider says.
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“Usually, if a user commits to a social network, that is their prime social network. They don’t see all the work that goes into the other communities that have sprung up on those platforms. “Twitter is a good example where IGN has more than 4m followers and for the longest time our approach was to announce the news there and get users back to the website. We asked ourselves whether we should announce the news before the article is ready – is that wasting it? People share the news and you don’t get any benefit from it. It took a while for us to realise that the benefit is that you gave them the news and that they follow your brand. We’d love to always jump in head first with new platforms – even something like [video platform] Vessel for example, or PlutoTV. We put our content there and after about three months it wasn’t performing so we dialled back our effort a bit. It’s about being there when things first get popular.
CH-CH-CHANGES SINCE the foundation of IGN back in 1996, the games media has changed a great deal. The site’s co-founder and GM Peer Schneider takes us through what he considers to be the biggest shifts the gaming press has seen in the last two decades. COMMUNITY VALUES “There was an age before wikis or YouTube. The audience expressed itself within our website, through the letters they wrote, through content that they contributed where they would tell us about games they played at public shows, for example. They would email us and we’d assemble articles with their voices in it. It was the emergence of forums, there were no comments on articles back then, and the editors were the most active forum users of all.” PEOPLE MATTER “We realised that single voices mattered, that
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people wanted to hear what a team member thought about a game. That was the push behind the podcasts. We wanted to make sure that people had a way to hear opinions from everyone. You can’t have ten people review the same game or we’d be out of business. But they all play them at home and are competent at giving an opinion.” BE EVERYWHERE “In the last two years, there has been a shift from trying to get everybody to your site to making sure that content goes where your audience is. Our biggest growth has been on social media. It’s no longer about linking people back to the website. We put all our big videos on Facebook and Twitter. We are doing the same with Snapchat Discover – it’s a huge audience. You are getting millions and millions of views in a 24-hour period.”
September 9th 2016
MEDIA SPECIAL PEER SCHNEIDER, IGN
IGN has teams presenting content around the globe
in the ‘70s and ‘80s, actors or musicians were the stars. That has transitioned to YouTube. My kids’ biggest stars are YouTubers. That probably has supplanted some of the power games media sites had. But it’s taken more away from traditional stardom. PewDiePie is the Justin Bieber of the next generation.” Looking towards the future, Schneider’s vision for IGN is very similar to its past – to go to new platforms and be where its users are. “I see the future of IGN as a brand that travels to whatever device, every country and platform. We have started that journey, but we don’t know what’s happening with new tech like VR. When the VR headsets were announced, we said we were going to do 360-degree video. We knew it was gimmicky if you put it on the set of the Daily Fix and see Naomi [Kyle, presenter] in the front and the production crew in the back. But we wanted to play around with the format. Something is coming and it may be awesome and it may be an opportunity for us.” He concludes: “IGN stands for voice, for personality, for fun, for entertainment and we want to take that and put it everywhere. IGN has never been on television for example; we’ll see what happens with linear TV. If traditional TV is still around in 20 years, I’d hope we’re there, too.”
“We saw that with YouTube – there’s no games media brand that has 7m subscribers like we do because early on we decided to put our content here and see what happens. At the time, we thought it might take some views away from the site and we couldn’t monetise videos back then. But if you don’t do it early, someone else will. We staked our claim and that certainly worked out.” US AND THEM One of the narratives emerging around the games media is that it is losing in the face of growing competition from new rivals, such as YouTube personalities. But Schneider says this simply isn’t true. “This year we are going to do 3bn video views,” he says, “That’s just our produced content, that’s not affiliate partners or anything like that. That’s a small number compared to all the text views we generate. The numbers certainly for us have gone up. “There’s a huge audience that uses the games media and they’re consuming it on more platforms. There’s an audience that listens to our podcasts when they’re in the car, people who come to the website for a quick read. If the games media is shrinking, it could have fooled me.” He continues: “There are certainly more options now. And back when I was growing up
September 9th 2015
If you don’t move to a new platform early, someone else will. We staked our claim on a site like YouTube and that certainly worked out. Peer Schneider, IGN
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KEEPING PEOPLE HAPPY HAVING existed for 20 years, IGN has seen highs and lows. But unlike some media companies who fall upon hard times, GM and co-founder Peer Schneider believes that shedding talent is not the solution. “It’s true that when media companies are in trouble they think editorial is easily replaceable and that they can dial it down,” he says. “In our history, we have seen the dotcom market crash and ad revenue going away. But our approach was not: ‘Let’s pay some freelancers for some content’ or: ‘Let’s republish articles from Europe for the US’. Our approach was to realise that the content was inherently valuable because the views are so big. It’s the ad dollars that have dried up, not the audience. “So we tried subscription, we created IGN Insider, now IGN Prime, where we put a lot of content and some community tools behind a subscription wall. We built a relationship with a part of the audience that would pay for that content: what you are seeing on Patreon now. “We’ve certainly dialled up and down the size of the teams but hopefully not at the expense of any particular group.”
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MEDIA SPECIAL THE RISE OF YOUTUBERS
Growing pains A decade ago, YouTubers were kids in their rooms speaking to a webcam. Today, they are the dominant voice of a generation, reaching more people than even the biggest games media outlets. Alex Calvin meets some of the platform’s most popular stars as they come under a new level of scrutiny
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t this point, it’s hardly a secret that YouTube is a force to be reckoned with. The platform is a huge part of the media with personalities like PewDiePie attracting audiences that dwarf the biggest shows on traditional television. It’s a huge part of promoting pretty much anything new, with the views of these stars sometimes making or breaking a product. “It’s grown unbelievably,” says Tom ‘Syndicate’ Cassell – whom MCV was prohibited from talking to about his involvement with the CSGO Lotto scandal. “Back in the day if someone got 50m views a month, that was considered amazing, on par with TV. Now some YouTubers are getting 350m views a month. We’re really rivalling every sort of media. We’re now considered respectable in this industry. It’s cool to see how people are taking it seriously.” Though games coverage on YouTube started out being very centered on core gamers, Alastair ‘Ali-A’ Aiken believes the audience watching YouTube has become more diverse over time. “It’s a lot more mainstream now and that’s really highlighted with the release of Pokémon Go,” he says. “When I started out doing videos, it was me and a few pretty nerdy friends who would watch a few Call of Duty videos. Now I make a lot of Pokémon Go videos which are watched by teenage girls, mothers, men who work nine-tofive job who you wouldn’t expect them to go onto YouTube. It’s just such a broad thing now: so many people consume media through that platform. It’s blown up, and is still blowing up. I keep thinking it’s going to flat line or slow down but it continues to get bigger.”
September 9th 2016
PewDiePie declared the press ‘insignificant’ after he was embroiled in a scandal about disclosure by the FTC
TV has one advantage, football and FIFA-focused YouTuber Spencer ‘Spencer FC’ Owen argues. YouTubers may have a larger audience, but their recompense is far lower than that of TV shows. “Take a massive YouTuber like DanTDM,” Owen says. “He has 3m or 4m views a month, which is more than Game of Thrones. I’m not saying that’s comparable, but the money he earns pales from ads in comparison because TV cost per impressions are huge.”
I keep thinking YouTube’s growth is going to slow down but it continues to just get bigger.
MEDIA WAR As a result of YouTube’s growth, a narrative has emerged where the ‘traditional’ games press and YouTubers are in conflict, with the latter claiming a larger audience. “It used to be very much ‘us vs them’,” Cassell says. “Now it has changed for the better. Someone like Outside Xbox [run by former Official Xbox 360 Magazine and GameSpot staff] has an amazing channel with over 1m subscribers. It’s cool to see people change from being: ‘Oh, these YouTubers are
Alastair ‘Ali-A’ Aiken, YouTuber
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taking our opportunities to review or play games’ to being: ‘This is the new form of media’. Magazine writing is still around but it’s not as big. If anyone wants to argue with it then go look at the numbers.” Aiken adds: “A lot of people from the more traditional media hate on us and don’t like that we have such a voice despite not being in the industry that long. We do get along though. We’re always nice to each other. But there is a bit of jealousy due to how many people we can reach and how magazines and such are just dying out.” Yet YouTube has had a massive impact on the traditional games media. This new media helped prove that consumers weren’t just interested in the news-previewreview cycle, and that there was a demand for coverage about a game well after its launch. And, as Cassell observes, traditional outlets are investing heavily in video. “Through YouTube, you don’t just have that whole ‘a game has come out, here’s what it is’ and you leave it,” Aiken says.
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THE RISE OF YOUTUBERS MEDIA SPECIAL
(From left to right): Alastair ‘Ali-A’ Aiken, Ashley Marie ‘AshleyMarieeGaming’ Surcombe, Brandon ‘Messyourself’ Temasfieldt, Spencer ‘Spencer FC’ Owen and Tom ‘Syndicate’ Cassell
“You build up interest and you continue to cover something. That’s now the angle that sites like Kotaku have taken because that’s how people want to consume it. If they are interested in something, they won’t just watch a review and click off: they want to see more content. We follow up and make sure there are always things going on. It’s not just one hit and done.” LEGAL TROUBLES As their influence grows, YouTubers have come under scrutiny. Recently there was the CSGO Lotto scandal, in which YouTubers Syndicate and TmarTn promoted a CounterStrike skin betting site that they owned (but pretended that they did not). Then there’s YouTubers’ handling of paid promotions. In the past, networks like Machinima have had run-ins with the FTC for not disclosing paid-for videos promoting Xbox One. Recently, the FTC lambasted Warner Bros for paying ‘hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars’ to YouTubers to promote 2014’s
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Shadow of Mordor, with some channels not disclosing this deal. One of the YouTubers embroiled in this was PewDiePie, despite the fact he actually did disclose he had been paid by Warner. In a video following the FTC ruling, PewDiePie said that it was a bit of a grey area in 2014 when it came to disclosure. But is it clearer now? “I would say so,” says Brandon ‘MessYourself’ Temasfieldt. “YouTube is really new, so guidelines are only being put into place now. Some companies ask you to put ‘ad’ in the thumbnail before viewers even watch the video; some ask you to put a disclosure in the top of the video description and then there are others that ask you to say something at the start of the video. Then it isn’t a big deal for a lot of companies and it really should be. It’s all a bit new and in a few years time it’ll just be the standard thing to have this implemented into every bit of sponsored content.” But Cassell says it’s up to the advertiser to make it clear what YouTubers need to disclose.
“It’s definitely clearer,” he says. “There are still a lot of questions. I worked with Machinima in 2013 on the Xbox campaign. It was a grey area then. It’s not like we’re going to sit there and read 500 pages of FTC guidelines. It comes across from whatever business is advertising with you to make it clear for the YouTuber.” Ashley ‘AshleyMarieeGaming’ Surcombe says it is clearer, largely because consumers are more aware about what should be done. “People like to point out whether a YouTuber does something wrong,” she says. “In 2014 or 2015, when not too many people knew about the FTC, you could get away with not putting ‘ad’ or ‘sponsored content’ and not many people cared. But by the time 2016 came around, it seemed that a lot more people wanted to attack a YouTuber and they would find the smallest things I guess there are rules, so people really should abide by them.” But Aiken says the need to follow the rules is important. “That area is still tough,” he says. “Back then, when I was sent
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a game or paid me to promote something, it was a grey area. I never had to openly say anything. But it never changed what I was trying to put across in those videos. That was the case for anyone who was doing this stuff back then because there were no rulings. “Now, it is much stricter – YouTubers need to disclose the fact it’s a sponsored video in the description. You need to make sure your audience knows that. That’s done before people click on the video. Really, you should have something that says ‘ad’ in the thumbnail or at the start of the video so that viewers go into that content knowing it’s a paid piece. It’s not like someone sees that straight away and hates you straight away. It’s just making them aware that this piece of content has had paid promotion behind it, which is fair enough. “It’s going to happen; YouTubers are always going to be paid to play games, and as long as they are putting across a fair opinion that is theirs, and as long as the audience knows it’s paid-for, then everyone is in the best position.”
September 9th 2016
EDITOR’S ROUNDTABLE
The editors’ roundtable Marie Dealessandri discusses the state of games media with Matthew Castle from OXM, Keza MacDonald from Kotaku UK, Tom Orry from Videogamer, Dan Pearson from GamesIndustry and Alex Simmons from IGN
What are the biggest trends affecting you right now? Matthew Castle, OXM: The PR hype cycle has shortened, which makes it hard to milk lots of lovely covers from the bigger crowdpleasers. A more difficult trend is the continued shift away from print. With so few magazines on shelves, publishers create fewer materials to support their production. It has a major impact on what we can cover.
Keza MacDonald, Kotaku UK: It’s how we continue to cover games in a way that’s more interesting than the endless information that publishers are now producing about their own games.
each content platform in a unique and interesting way. We spend a lot of time adapting and creating original content for all of our platforms, and that’s paying off in a huge way. What are the big challenges? MacDonald: There’s just a lot less money around. And we don’t have the time to cover a tenth of the things that are out there. Despite the constraints, though, games media is way more varied and interesting now than it was ten years ago.
Tom Orry, Videogamer: It’s an old one, but ad-blocking is still a major issue that affects pretty much every form of online media. With the reliance on YouTube as a platform, we’re also keen to make video more integrated into the website.
Orry: Building a returning audience is the biggest challenge we face. We also face an ongoing challenge in convincing publishers that we aren’t out to ‘get’ them. Part of our vision is to be humorous and entertaining. That can make us seem like we are actively attacking publishers. We’re not. We are making fun where fun should be made and we treat everyone equally.
Alex Simmons, IGN: Our biggest focus is ensuring we approach
Dan Pearson, GamesIndustry.biz: The ever-increasing breadth of
September 9th 2016
the industry makes it more and more difficult to produce enough content to cover the full scope of what’s happening. Ensuring our writers are comfortable covering everything from eSports to hardware tech development is a concern, but one which offers its own rewards. We’ve seen a rise in the media covering games for a long time after launch, does this mean you cover fewer titles? Castle: We’ve always given a large chunk of the magazine over to talking about games that are out – that’s when they become interesting, after all. That said, we do try to avoid the tunnel vision that occurs with the likes of Destiny or The Division – the spatial limitation of a magazine means we can’t focus too much on any one game.
MacDonald: This has been our approach for years now: focusing on covering what people are actually playing rather than games that aren’t out yet. At many
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outlets, however, there is pressure to only cover what traffics. This can mean that you’ll end up with 30 posts on one game whilst another goes uncovered.
Orry: If prolonged coverage of long-tail games make more financial sense than dedicating time to mid-tier titles and our audience wants to read that coverage, that’s the choice we’ll make. How can smaller games get attention from media outlets? Castle: It’s really no more complicated than getting the game into our hands as early as possible – if we like it, we’ll cover it.
MacDonald: Nowadays you have small teams of massively overworked journalists trying desperately to find the time to cover things they have to cover, and it can feel like it’s impossible to get their attention for smaller developers. This is absolutely true. I think it requires a change in strategy. Good indie games
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EDITOR’S ROUNDTABLE
tend to bubble up through things like YouTube, Reddit and Twitch now; it’s once they’ve built grassroots interest that the press starts taking notice. Focus your efforts on getting people playing, and the games press will amplify that.
Orry: They need to have a strong hook and remove the barrier to coverage. That might mean visiting our office to demo games, bringing the dev team over for interviews and generally making saying ‘no’ incredibly hard. In our case, do something fun that is new and interesting. Pearson: For us, it’s often about the studio having a useful narrative for our readers. Whilst we love to write about games that are fun, our readers don’t come to us for previews or reviews, so a business angle is generally what we look for. Having an interesting solution to a difficult problem is a great start. Simmons: The popularity of a game isn’t always the deciding factor over what we cover, although naturally we try to cater for the huge appetite our audience has for the blockbusters. But for us it’s more about what’s interesting - what can we create that’s compelling, for any game regardless of size or popularity. Some of our biggest stories in the last year have been for games that aren’t blockbusters – we’re
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looking for games to excite and intrigue us.
Above, from left to right: Dan Pearson, Keza MacDonald, Matt Castle, Alex Simmons and Tom Orry
How is the growing focus on video impacting the written side? Castle: I find that we have a loyal, core audience that has stuck with the mag for years and – hopefully – will continue to do so. They seem to have decided that print is what they like, and are unlikely to be tempted away by newer forms. As a result, we haven’t taken any noticeable hits from the shift of focus towards video. Where it does affect us is when we can’t get access to a game because video makers are prioritised over writers.
Despite the constraints, games media is way more varied and interesting now than it was ten years ago.
MacDonald: You still need good writers to make great video. You need people who can write a great script. But really, younger games media hopefuls would do well to develop a range of skills - writing, scripting, video editing and audio.
Keza MacDonald, Kotaku UK
and screen-tests are part of the interview process for every position on the editorial team. Take reviews as an example – traditionally these were primarily in written form, but our video reviews have been increasingly popular because you’re able to show off the game as well as critique it. What are your views on this year’s Gamescom and E3? Are they still important? Castle: Everyone important in the same place at the same time – what’s not to like? We get about three months of stories/previews from each event, so they’re incredibly useful.
MacDonald: For us, they’re decreasingly relevant. You rarely get anything from those shows, coverage-wise, that you wouldn’t get from watching at home. Orry: This year I felt both events were pretty flat in terms of ‘wow factor’. We didn’t even attend Gamescom this year. The return on the cost to send our team over just isn’t there.
Orry: Video is increasingly popular and a key part of building our brand, but monetising website pages featuring excellent written content is far easier. As such we look to hire staff that can edit video but are equally capable of producing high quality written content.
Simmons: E3 is still a big traffic play for us, but it’s interesting how EA, Sony and Nintendo are seeing value in doing their own events. What E3 and Gamescom do is provide a focus for our audience, not just for news but also for showcasing games they already knew were coming.
Simmons: I think the two go hand-in-hand. The idea of having separate writers and video hosts is outdated – on IGN our editors work across both mediums,
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September 9th 2016
JURGEN POST, SEGA EUROPE INTERVIEW
The return of Sega After a period of consolidation, the Sonic publisher is growing its release slate by acquiring studios and signing indie games. Christopher Dring speaks to Sega Europe COO and president Jurgen Post
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tormrise, Viking: Battle of Asgard, Condemned, Planet 51, The Golden Compass, Iron Man, Let’s Tap, The Incredible Hulk... there was a period in Sega’s recent history where it released a seemingly endless number of (often not very good) games. Financially, the strategy worked for a while, specifically during the Wii era, but the firm’s failure rate became too great. So over the last five years, Sega has spent its time focusing on fewer ‘pillar’ franchises. “We were a little bit opportunistic, signing a lot of titles and doing things that were not necessarily very good,” acknowledges Sega’s European boss Jurgen Post. “There was a time when you could sell a lot of products, for example on Wii, but that market has gone. Today if you want to survive, you need to focus on quality. We want to create games that are very good and have a long tail. “We scaled down to the very bare minimum. For us to restart, we needed to set-up a new strategy, and that is now paying off. So we can start to add more pillars to the structure.” PILLAR TO POST In 2012, Sega cut back to focus on three key series – Sonic, Football Manager and Total War – and has been gradually adding additional franchise ‘pillars’ ever since. In 2013 it acquired Relic, along with the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War IP. This year, it has added Endless Space creators Amplitude to its family of studios. Then there’s an altogether different pillar – one devoted to independent games. “It’s called Sega Searchlight,” explains Post. “It looks into new creative opportunities, the sort of
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Total War: Warhammer was the fastest-selling title in the franchise’s history
titles that could be a standalone pillar in the future. One example is Motorsport Manager by PlaySport. When it was released on mobile, it did 1.6m downloads... OK, it’s a $3 product, but it shows there is an appetite for something different. Now we are bringing it to PC this autumn. That’s a Searchlight product, and we have more of those with announcements due over the coming months.” Continues Post: “We are always looking for content. We have IP that we are trying to make bigger – whether that is Football Manager, Total War or Dawn of War. We just want to build upon them by adopting new business models, going into merchandising, movies, all of it. But we are constantly looking for new opportunities. We are pretty good with that.” Part of the firm’s transformation four years ago included a reduction in its retail business. Sega’s focus has become increasingly PC and digital-only, although it does still release boxed titles with the help of Koch Media. “We don’t necessarily make a choice about whether it is boxed or digital. It depends on what
We scaled down to the bare minimum. For us to restart we needed a new strategy, and that is now paying off. Jurgen Post, Sega Europe
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the consumer wants,” Post says. “Total War: Warhammer was a game that was still in a box, and we are working with Koch, and quite successfully so. The same is with Football Manager. Motorsport Manager, however, which is kind-of a new start-up, that will be digital first. But talking to Koch at the moment, they’re saying that they really like the game, and they’re asking if they could do a boxed version in limited territories where it makes sense – like Germany, where there is a strong PC boxed market. So where there is an opportunity, we will do boxed.” POST BREXIT PlaySport’s Motorsport Manager is yet another Sega product created in the UK. The publisher actually owns three UK studios: Sports Interactive, Creative Assembly and Sega Hardlight, while its European HQ is also based in Britain. So you can understand it if the company is feeling nervous following the decision by the UK to leave the European Union. “Brexit has definitely caused issues. Our workforce is very international,” Post admits.
September 9th 2016
INTERVIEW JURGEN POST, SEGA EUROPE
Sega has partnered with PlaySport for a PC version of Motorsport Manager
“About 27 per cent of our UK workforce is from Europe. I’m one of them, right? So there was a bit of a panic and people are concerned about what will happen. It’s not a short-term issue. People working within the studios and Sega will be safe. It’s more about the future. How easy will it be to get people from Europe? We are constantly trying to find people for our growing studios. Creative Assembly being one of them, which has 450 people right now and is still growing. We are constantly looking for people, and from that point-of-view, looking at the future, I am a bit concerned. “People are also worried about coming to the UK. Then you have people who are unhappy with what happened in the UK. People may start thinking about moving back to Europe. It is certainly an issue.” Yet despite Brexit, Post is clearly feeling confident about Sega’s position after a few subdued years. The current release slate is bigger than it has been in a long time, and although these games are not all as diverse or high profile as the firm’s 2008 line-up, they certainly seem more reliable (and, frankly, better). Next year also marks Sonic’s return in the console space – following a period as a Nintendo exclusive. While the latest Total War game (Warhammer) is
September 9th 2016
the fastest-selling title in the franchise’s history. And then there are partnerships with Xbox on Halo Wars, Warner Bros with LEGO Dimensions, and a whole host of new initiatives in merchandise, movies and VR. “VR has caught the whole company’s attention,” Post explains. “We have a lot of VR kits in the office and people are playing with it. We are exploring ways to release games. We’ve not announced anything, but we are very close to making an announcement. We did Alien: Isolation about three years ago on Oculus Rift, it was a demo that was bloody scary. To bring that back to VR would be a dream and dreams can come true. “VR will take time, but we will start releasing some titles just to learn. It is a platform for the future. “And then we are exploring opportunities in regards to film. The Sonic feature movie is coming out. And we have our other IPs that lend themselves very well to feature films “Another area we are focusing on is China. We have launched Football Manager Online in China, and we believe there is a big opportunity for strategy games in the territory, so we’re looking into that.” He concludes: “It is an exciting times with lots of opportunities.”
SAY HALO
A game being worked on at one of Sega’s internal studios is a title that will be published by Microsoft. Total War maker Creative Assembly is currently working on Halo Wars 2, an RTS game that is designed to appeal broadly on both PC and Xbox One. “To be able to work on one of the biggest IPs in the world is just proof that we are doing something right,” says Sega Europe COO and president Jurgen Post. “We made a choice four years ago to focus on quality. Maybe we are a bit in the niche segment with Relic,
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Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive and Amplitude... these studios are making games that are PC based, they’re strategy, they’re hardcore, but they’re quality. Microsoft is now working with us because of that choice we made a couple of years ago.” He continues: “As a nonstrategy gamer, Halo Wars 2 is very easy to get into. It also plays very well on console. It is a great opportunity to bring the RTS genre to a wider audience, but also to bring RTS to console... these are all great learnings for all of us.”
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CAVALIER GAMES INTERVIEW XXX XXX
INDIE INTERVIEW Bringing Sexy back Former Fable makers have reunited to build a unique and very British adventure. Christopher Dring speaks to Cavalier’s Charles Griffiths and Tequila Works’ Raul Rubio about one of our favourite games of Gamescom
I
f there was one positive to take from the loss of Lionhead, it’s that - inevitably - a load of indie studios would emerge from its ashes. Cavalier Games isn’t one of those outfits. It was founded in 2013 by Lionhead alumni Tom Lansdale and Charles Griffiths, along with ex-Mediatonic writer (and Charles’ brother) James. But as their first game entered full production, Tom and Charles turned to their former colleagues for help at just the right time. “We have an animator from Lionhead, a couple of programmers and a VFX artist, too,” Charles says. “We were looking to ramp up just at the point Lionhead unfortunately closed, so we managed to recruit talent from there.” Cavalier’s first project is PC and console game, The Sexy Brutale. On the one hand, it’s nothing like Fable (the series Lionhead is best known for). It’s a puzzle adventure game set during a masquerade ball at an English mansion. Players must re-live murders over and over, spying on guests, and uncovering ways to save victims. Imagine Groundhog Day crossed with a pointand-click adventure and the visuals from Luigi’s Mansion... which is our way of telling you, it’s like nothing we’ve seen. However, the game has a certain Britishness to it that feels distinctly Fable. “It’s very British, but Fable shows that’s no bad thing,” says Charles. “The idea that Americans only want to play stuff set in the US is a discredit to them.” Tequila Works boss Raul Rubio adds: “We believe in those cultural roots, it adds spice and soul. It is refreshing to go to the English countryside and experience something super decadent.” A SPANISH COMPADRE We should have mentioned Tequila Works by now. Cavalier had sent the Spanish studio (famous for Deadlight and Rime) a prototype for The Sexy Brutale, asking for feedback. Rubio recalls: “I said: ‘It’s ugly as hell, but fun’. And their response was: ‘What sort of feedback is that?’ Seriously, I begged them to let us help. “It was a shame publishers didn’t see just how beautiful this game was going to be. We are helping with production and financing, Cavalier is doing everything. They already had the game.”
www.mcvuk.com
Cavalier’s Griffi ths (top left) and Tequila Works’ Rubio (above left)
We have creative freedom. No publisher is telling us to make a character’s boobs bigger or hair blonder – as apparently that’s what people like. Raul Rubio Munarriz, Tequila Works
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These two indie studios have decided that, together, they have no need for a publisher. “You can describe it as the indie spirit,” says Rubio. “When we started, we had help from Tim Schafer [Double Fine] and Sean Murray [Hello Games], and we learnt so much, we learnt how to self-market. So why not self-publish? “We have creative freedom. No publisher is telling us to make the boobs bigger or the hair blonder - as apparently that’s what people like.” Typically, publishers offer studios more visibility when going to market, something that’s become crucial in an industry saturated with content. Yet Charles is bullish over his title’s chances. The Sexy Brutale was one of the more delightfully unique games at Gamescom, which will help it stand out against the glut of 2D platformers. “There are always going to be loads of people making stuff,” Charles concludes. “The question is: do you have anything unique to contribute? That doesn’t guarantee success, yet this is the only way to differentiate yourself and achieve creative satisfaction. “There will always be loads of games, and the only way to win is to not play. Do something nobody is doing. If nothing else, you’ll be proud of it because it is something you wanted to do.”
September 9th 2016
THE BIG GAME RECORE
When Mega Man met Metroid The creators of Mega Man and Metroid Prime have teamed up to make a brand new IP that combines the best parts of those two series. Alex Calvin speaks to lead writer Joseph Staten to find THE pitch for Microsoft’s latest new IP ReCore is a simple one. According to its lead writer, Bungie alumnus Joseph Staten, it consisted of Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune and Mark Pacini, a veteran of Metroid Prime maker Retro Studios, wanting to combine the best parts of those series for the new generation. The result is an open-world title with a focus on combat and exploration – the essence of the Metroidvania ‘genre’. 2D entries in this area have been rather common, including the likes Guacamelee, Axiom Verge, Ori and the Blind Forest and Song of the Deep. But 3D entries have been fewer and further between. “A lot of it is because – and this isn’t an pejorative comment – 2D platformers are relatively easy to make,” Staten says. “It’s a familiar kind of game and there’s nostalgia for designers who grew up playing those titles, fell in love with them and have always wanted to make projects like that. It’s not surprising that you see developers jumping back into that genre. “But there hasn’t been a great 3D platformer in a while and that was very much Mark and Inafunesan’s pitch: a 3D slightly openworld great Mega Man/Metroid Prime mashup.” The Metroidvania genre is rather niche, but Staten believes that ReCore has a broader appeal. “We want to make a game that’s great for core players,” he explains. “It’s a pretty challenging game once you get into encounters with multiple enemies. There’s no cover: players need to dodge and move. It’s not like Gears of War where you can hide behind a wall. To survive, you need to move
September 9th 2016
In ReCore, players take on the role of Joule and have to explore the open world of Far Eden
quickly. From a mechanics point of view, it’s really a core game. “At the same time, we want to make sure the title appeals broadly. Like with any new IP, you have to go out and get as big of an audience as you possibly can. The art style, the characters, the humour, the charm... that’s hopefully what willl make it more attractive to a broader audience, too. It’s core first and then broad.” EXTRA TIME When it was announced at E3 2015, ReCore was set for a spring 2016 release date. The title missed this and was pushed back until this month, September. This time allowed the team to flesh out some modes within the project. “A lot of it has just been polish and just making sure that the things we wanted to do are as good as they can be,” Staten says. “But also we wanted to invest in systems that we weren’t originally planning to. We haven’t shown much of it yet, but there’s a really deep crafting and upgrading
When I worked on Halo, my goal was to make a game that was good enough that people want a sequel. I have the same goal for ReCore. Joseph Staten, Microsoft
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system, and we wanted to spend more time and effort making sure that was great. Beyond the 12-hour campaign, there’s a whole set of open-world areas, hidden dungeons and we wanted to make sure players could come in and really have a good time. “That allowed us to bring on another partner, Asobo, a studio in France that has helped Microsoft out on a number of different titles, including Quantum Break and a HoloLens launch title. We were able to bring them on board, with a little bit of time and extra money, to flesh out the dungeon crawling and loot grinding part of the game.” Being delayed until September also gave Microsoft the chance to promote ReCore over the entire summer period, something that Staten says was worth it. “It’s been nice, frankly, to be able to spend this summer going to E3, doing a press tour, going to Gamescom,” he says. “It just gives us a little bit more time to build up momentum and awareness,
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RECORE THE BIG GAME
Protagonist Joule is accompanied by a robot dog called Mac who can help her take on foes
which if we had launched in the spring we wouldn’t have had necessarily. That has been a great part of releasing in September.” FORGET ABOUT THE PRICE TAG The game’s price tag is also an advantage. In the UK, ReCore will set consumers back £30, lower than the typical price of a triple-A title. “It really came down to us thinking about what we can do pricing-wise to give this game the highest chance to succeed,” Staten says. “For us, this is an experiment and seeing if it helps ReCore as a new IP. Everybody is smart about the money and tries to spend it wisely. Our hope is that by reducing the price a little bit, it just lowers the barrier to entry and people who wouldn’t normally try a new IP, maybe someone who is a little bit unsure about the action/platformer genre, is more willing to jump in. That’s really the goal – to make it as easy to jump into as possible.”
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Being a new IP, it can be hard to accurately gauge how well the game will perform. But Staten is dreaming big with his expectations for ReCore. “The simple answer is as with any new IP: we’d love to earn a sequel,” he says. “I felt the same way when we shipped the first Halo. There was a time when Halo was not a big franchise and my goal back then was the same as it is now: create a game that’s good enough and touches people well enough that they want a sequel to it. “It’s the same goal with ReCore. That’s hard. The games industry is littered with the bones of new IPs that didn’t make it. But for me, that’s the challenge – how do we put enough quality and enough heart to give it a lasting appeal? We certainly have plans for post-launch content to support the first release. “But it would be great to earn a sequel.”
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT INAFUNE RECORE is being developed by a number of teams. There’s Armature – formed by veterans of Metroid Prime maker Retro Studios – alongside Keiji Inafune’s outfit Comcept, as well as Asobo and Goldtooth. Earlier this year, Inafune and Comcept launched a spiritual successor to Mega Man named Mighty No.9, a title that was wildly successful on Kickstarter in 2012 raising $3.8m (£2.9m). But when the final product hit shelves, many consumers were disappointed and said that the game did not live up to their expectations. Thus, Comcept and Inafune have had their fair share of negative press. And while this is something that concerns ReCore’s lead writer Joseph Staten, he points out that the way the title is made – and Comcept’s involvement – is very different compared to Mighty No.9.
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“Yeah, I am [worried about the negative press Mighty No.9 has received],” he says. “But they’re really two different games. And the thing to keep in mind is that they’re made in very different ways. ReCore is a joint effort between Comcept and Armature. The way the work breaks down is that Comcept is really in charge of story, setting and characters – the big fundamental ideas. “Yet when it comes to the grunt work of actually making the game fun and perform well, that’s all Armature, bolstered by some really great partners, like Asobo Studio, Goldtooth, which is doing our cinematics, and us on the Microsoft publishing side. “ReCore has a tremendous amount of support across the board. Really it’s like comparing apples and oranges from a development perspective.”
September 9th 2016
MARKETPLACE
SHELF LIFE Gareth Mottershead just opened Games N Gear with friend Mark Coxon, in Llandudno, Wales. He tells MCV about the challenges of launching his store and why he wanted to do it Just to get bigger and better really. Keep it growing. At the moment, just invest in stock, and just keep the shop going forward and expand.
How has business been since you launched? We opened at the beginning of July and business has been very good, very positive. We’re currently the only games shop in my local town of Llandudno, so that’s a good thing. Places where people get games now are like Smyths, and it’s the reason why I wanted to do it really - because the local town needed a decent games shop. I’ve been wanting to do it for years anyway. We were organising a
charity event called Retro Rewind, so we sort of went from that really.
PRE-ORDER CHARTS
PRICE CHECK: WAKEFIELD
What games have been selling well since your opening? We got a lot of retro stuff, because that’s what I like. Our stock basically goes from Atari to the new gen - PS4, Xbox One and so on. But pre-owned stuff is what performs the best.
Is there any particular challenge you are facing? It’s just the bounce really – being careful not to spend too much and choosing the right titles to get in. What games are you looking forward to? FIFA is not my sort of thing but it’s
What are your expectations for the store?
TOP 10 PRE-ORDERS 1. FIFA 17 EA, PS4
2. PES 2017 Konami.............................................................PS4 3. FIFA 17 EA ..........................................................................XO
MINECRAFT: PLAYSTATION EDITION
MINECRAFT: XBOX EDITION
4. Battlefield 1 EA .......................................................................PS4
Sony, PS4
Microsoft, XO
Telltale, PS4
Nintendo, Wii U
£16.99
£20.90
£29.99
£16.99
£16.99
£22.99
£24.99
8. Battlefield 1 EA ..........................................................................X0
£17.99
£19.99
£19.99
£17.99
9. Forza Horizon 3 Microsoft ..........................................................X0
N/A
N/A
£18.95
£17.50
10. NBA 2K17 Inc Early Tip-Off 2K .......................................................................PS4
£18
£21.25
£23.61
£27.17
7. Xbox One Console S 1TB + FIFA 17 Microsoft............................................................X0
UPLOADING The latest digital releases coming to market
BINARIES
RAPPELZ: THE EXPEDITION
GEAR GAUNTLET
Scottish studio Ant Workshop brings its platformer to PS4 and Xbox One
Popular MMORPG Rappelz will have a new expansion at the end of the month
Debut title from Nottingham-based Drop Dead Interactive is coming to Wii U
OUT: SEPTEMBER 20TH
OUT: SEPTEMBER 15TH
OUT: NOW
September 9th 2016
ONLINE
£16.99
6. BioShock: The Collection 2K .......................................................................PS4
IN STORE
5. Mafia III: Family Kick-back Pre-order Bonus 2K .......................................................................PS4
MINECRAFT: WII U EDITION
MINECRAFT: STORY MODE
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MARKETPLACE
Games N Gear 25 Madoc Street, Llandudno, Conwy, Wales LL30 2TL
coming out quite big. And then obviously you have Call of Duty, Battlefield 1, Last Guardian... There are a lot of new releases coming out. We do midnight launches as well. We did No Man’s Sky and that went really well. We did a demo in the shop, got some good feedback and sold pre-orders up until midnight on the launch night. Have your seen an impact of Pokémon Go on your sales? Yes, and we’ve got the Pokémon
Phone: 01492 339090 Website: gamesngear.co.uk Facebook: /GamesNGearWales
Go Plus ‘watches’ as well, that launches in September. We’ve got all those pre-ordered and we get as much Pokémon things in as we can. And what about virtual reality? Do you think it will sell well? Yes and no. I mean it’s quite expensive, isn’t it? We’re going to do demos – I’m not sure it’s going to do amazingly well but it’s different and it’s new, so possibly.
INCOMING TITLE
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Ubisoft’s Just Sing is hitting shelves today, just a few days before Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 and a much busier line-up for next week FORMAT
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01279 822 822
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September 9th Just Sing Realms of Arkania
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Warner Bros
September 15th PES 2017
September 16th Batman – The Telltale Series BioShock: The Collection
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2K Games
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Dragon Quest VIII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past
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Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness
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Open
ReCore
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01279 822 800
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01216 253 388
CentreSoft
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September 20th Destiny: The Collection
September 23rd Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors
September 27th Forza Horizon 3
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September 9th 2016
FREE-TO-PLAY
FREE-TO-PLAY Everyone wants a piece of the free-toplay market and, for retailers, merchandise is a good place to start. Marie Dealessandri has chased the best items based on the most popular free titles
FREE-TO-PLAY titles appear to be the new Eldorado for publishers. The latest core games company that switched to free-to-play is CCP Games with its popular space MMO EVE Online. After 13 years of existence, the title will drop its monthly subscription fee in November. The number of players and the income generated by the game have been consistently decreasing these past few years. In 2015, EVE Online revenues reached $53.7m,
Evolve’s player base increased by 26,000 per cent when the game transitioned to free-to-play on PC.
compared to $64.1m in 2012. So CCP’s foray into free-to-play can be seen as an attempt to revitalise the title. Players who keep their subscription will be rewarded with a more rapid progression, so the move to free-to-play could attract players who will then be keen to pay a subscription if they enjoy the game. “It’s one of the biggest changes to the EVE universe ever,” CCP said. “We’ve been doing everything
SMITE - BELLONA STATUE Smite is the latest hit in the free-to-play universe – it launched in March last year and passed the 10m players mark as soon as July 2015. Developer Hi-Rez spares no expense to promote its MOBA, and that includes loads of tie-in items. This high-end statue of Goddess of War Bellona is amongst them. It stands 30cm tall and is hand-crafted and hand-painted. SRP: €249.99 (£209) Manufacturer: Hi-Rez Distributor: Hitpoint Contact: info@hitpoint.tv
DOTA 2 – SVEN MUG
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS PREMIUM HOODIE
HEARTHSTONE T-SHIRT LOGO NAVY
Dota 2 fans will soon be able to have their own Sven, in mug form. It launches on December 16th and is available for pre-order.
There are around 67m League of Legends players worldwide and most of them would certainly pay for this hoodie.
Blizzard’s Hearthstone recently released its Whispers of the Old Gods update, hitting the 50m registered players mark on the way.
SRP: $25 (£18) Manufacturer: Soylent Distributor: We Love Fine Contact: valvestoresupport@welovefine.com
SRP: €65 (£54) Manufacturer: Riot Merch Distributor: Riot Games Contact: info@riotgames.com
SRP: €19.99 (£16) Manufacturer: Gaya Entertainment Distributor: Gaming Merchandise UK Contact: hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com
September 9th 2016
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FREE-TO-PLAY Sponsored by
O
gaming merchandise uk
we can to bring more people into our spectacular sandbox.” CCP certainly hopes to re-enact some recent successes linked to free-to-play, such as 2K with online shooter Evolve. The latter launched on PS4, Xbox One and PC at the beginning of 2015 and transitioned to free-to-play on PC earlier this summer, resulting in an impressive 26,000 per cent increase of its player base. The game will also become free on consoles in due course.
All these core game publishers making the move to free-to-play hope for their titles to be able to compete with the big games of the genre, the happy few: Valve’s Dota 2, Riot’s League of Legends, Wargaming’s World of Tanks and Blizzard’s Hearthstone. Due to their huge audience, these titles also represent big merchandise opportunities, for both retailers which wish to boost their sales, and publishers which can thus increase the monetisation of their free games.
WORLD OF TANKS LOADER With its 60 million registered users, Wargaming’s World of Tanks is one of the biggest free-to-play games. It’s so popular than even trendy games apparel label Musterbrand has its World of Tanks collection, which includes this weekender bag that can be converted into a backpack. It’s water-repellent and has a separate shoe compartment. SRP: £59 Manufacturer: Musterbrand Distributor: Musterbrand Contact: karrie.shirou@musterbrand.com
TEAM FORTRESS 2 DOG TAGS
DOTA 2 PLUSH REDPAW
HEROES OF THE STORM WALLSCROLL
This stainless steel necklace displays embossed dog tags featuring The Scout and Team Fortress 2 logos from Valve.
This cute plush comes with a code to unlock the Redpaw as a courier in Dota 2.
Some of the most popular heroes from Blizzard’s brawler Heroes of the Storm are featured on this poster.
SRP: $12 (£9) Manufacturer: We Love Fine Distributor: We Love Fine Contact: valvestoresupport@welovefine.com
SRP: €44.99 (£37) Manufacturer: Gaya Entertainment Distributor: Gaming Merchandise UK Contact: hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com
SRP: £24.99 Manufacturer: Gaya Entertainment Distributor: Gaming Merchandise UK Contact: hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com
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September 9th 2016
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Tel: 0207 688 6789 www.oklogistics.de ........................................................................................................
PLAY DISTRIBUTION info@playdistribution.com www.playdistribution.com ........................................................................................................
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QA & LOCALISATION, PAYMENT & SOLUTION
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RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION & MANUFACTURING
Tel: +44 [0] 1206 214421 http://opmjobs.com/ ........................................................................................................
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GAMING MERCHANDISE UK LTD
Tel: +44 (0)1295 817617 www.ragtagdev.com ........................................................................................................
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LA MARQUE ROSE Tel: +33 1 43 14 88 00 info@lamarquerose.com ........................................................................................................
Tel: +49 (0) 89 / 210 205 70 http://www.r-control.de/ ........................................................................................................
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PERFORMANCE DESIGNED PRODUCTS LTD
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RAGTAG DEVELOPMENTS LTD KEY CONTACTS:
ADDRESS: Innovation Centre Mewburn Road Banbury OX16 9PA
Rich Hancock Creative Director contact@ragtagdev.com
RAGTAG DEVELOPMENTS LTD is an independent, award-winning, interactive software development studio based in Oxfordshire, specialising in high-end interactives, apps, games and the use of video game technology in other business sectors. In 2012 Ragtag were proud to win an innovation award for an in-development internal project which is going live later this year. The core team consists of 4 professional developers with a combined games industry experience of over 60 years. Their expertise covers all major mobile, desktop, server, web and console technologies, using an in-house custom graphics engine. The same technology is being used to power the soon to be released amazeballz pool game, for which Ragtag is building an online community to help shape future content. The game will be available on desktop, mobile and TV platforms, with a beta version playable via the website. • Pick up and play 3D Pool – intuitive, fast and fluid • Real cue interaction – feels like playing pool for real • Dynamic challenge system to test your skill level • Play on iOS, Android, PC, OS X, and tvOS • Cross platform competition via play by mail • US 8-Ball, 9-Ball, UK 8-Ball, 6-Ball, and Crazy-Pool • Customise your own blank canvas environment • Shot replay system with slow motion and reverse play To get involved visit www.amazeballzgame.com
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(above middle) and Reflection’s Leksell (above)
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DIRECTORY
WHO?
INSIDER’S GUIDE GLOBAL STEP
Specialism: QA and technology services Location: 5956 Sherry Lane, Suite 1850, Dallas, TX 75225. USA
Contact: E: info@globalstep.com W: www.globalstep.com
Global Step CEO Gagan Ahluwalia discusses games testing and his new facility, which includes a VR test lab Tell us about your company. GlobalStep is a technology services firm focused on the media and entertainment industry. We have a large game testing practice with over 500 professionals. Our solutions include games QA, customer support, QA engineering and IT infrastructure management services. What successes have you seen recently? We have recently built a brand new 40,000 square foot facility, doubling our operational capacity.
What are the biggest trends affecting you right now? Frequent updates to live products have blurred the line between QA and live product support. In response, we have developed an integrated solution that includes both games QA and customer service. The underlying game IT infrastructure is a key contributor to the customer experience.
Our VR test lab has been very well received by our customers. We work with most of the top developers and publishers in the games industry, as well as many small and mid-size studios. What are you currently working on? At any given time, we manage over 80 game projects simultaneously. About 40 per cent of our work is on mobile platforms and the rest is on consoles and PC. We support our clients through the entire software development lifecycle.
What are you looking forward to over the next 12 months? Virtual, augmented and mixed reality will revolutionise games.
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CLD DISTRIBUTION Rue du Grand Champs 14 , B 5380 Fernelmont Belgium Tel: +32 81 83 02 02 Fax: +32 81 83 02 09 Email: infos@cld.be Web: www.cld.be home of www.dragonwar.eu & www.mawashi.eu
BRAZIL Sony Music Entertainment Brasil # 1 Physical Distributor in Brazil Rua Lauro Muller n°. 116 – 40°. Andar Salas 4001 a 4003 Botafogo Rio de Janeiro RJ CEP. 22.290-160 Tel. +55 21 2128-0771 Fax: +55 21 2128-0747 Email : rodrigo.altieri@sonymusic.com Website: www.sonymusic.com.br | www.day1e.com.br
IRAN
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September 9th 2016
FACTFILE FINLAND Sponsored by
INTERNATIONAL FACTFILE: FINLAND Population: 5,524,000 Capital City: Helsinki Currency: Euro (EUR) GDP (Per Capita): $49,677.6 KEY RETAILERS Konsolinet, GameStop, Discshop, CDON, Expert, Gigantti, Puolenkuun Pelit TOP DISTRIBUTORS Koch Media, Nordic Game Supply, Amo Oy, 3H Distribution, ALSO, PAN-Visions
TOP DEVELOPERS Draconus, Grip Studios, Housemarque, Kuuasema, Nitro Games, Reforged, Rovio, Remedy, Supercell, Kukouri Mobile, Colossal Order, Frozenbyte, Ubisoft RedLynx, Secret Exit, Teacher Gaming, Team Jolly Roger, Uphill Games PUBLISHERS IN THE REGION Ubisoft, Rovio, Supercell, Sony, Microsoft, EA, Warner Bros
THE Finnish games market has enjoyed impressive growth. The turnover of the industry has been multiplied by almost ten in just three years: it jumped from €250m (£212m) in 2012 to €2,4bn (£2bn) in 2015, according to Finnish games industry organisation Neogames. The market has grown by 33 per cent compared to 2014. 95 per cent of games revenue in Finland comes from export, Neogames further says. That’s thanks to triple-A developers such as Supercell, Remedy and Angry Birds creator Rovio. On a global scale, games revenues reached $92bn (£70m) in 2015. “Remarkable part of the growth of the global and the Finnish games market came from Asia,” Neogames says. Foreign investment is also a big part of the market’s growth, the organisation explains. The development industry received a
September 9th 2016
Mobile gaming is the driving force of the Finnish industry. total of $40m in 2015. The largest investment, $18m (£13.7m), was given to studio Seriously, created in 2013 by former devs from Remedy and Rovio. The firm made mobile hit Best Fiends. Mobile is definitely the driving force of the Finnish industry. “The absolute majority of sales and the biggest financial successes in 2015 came from mobile games,” Neogames confirms. The sector grew by 20 per cent in 2015. But the Finnish industry is not limited to big mobile players, as it comprised a total of 290 companies employing around 2,700 people in 2015.
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FINLAND FACTFILE
MEANWHILE IN... IRELAND Apple could face an £11.1bn tax bill after the European Commission ruled that its tax arrangement with Ireland was illegal APPLE should repay €13bn (around £11bn) to Ireland, the European Commission has ruled. The Commission reckoned that Apple’s tax breaks in Ireland were illegal, with tax rates sometimes as low as 0.005 per cent. Irish standard corporate tax rate is 12.5 per cent. Apple has reacted strongly to the demands: “The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process,” the firm said in a statement. “The Commission’s case is not about how much
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37
Apple pays in taxes, it’s about which government collects the money. It will have a profound and harmful effect on investment and job creation in Europe.” Ireland’s finance minister
Michael Noonan said he was disagreeing “profoundly” with the Commission. The Irish government will appeal against the ruling.
September 9th 2016
OFF THE RECORD You take 30 hour naps? Dude, get to your GP, sharpish
OFF THE RECORD We review the No Man’s Sky Steam reviews h 115 We hope to one day have enough free time to ploug bad” y kingl “shoc hours into a game that is
Whereas we bet he loves you
BREAKING NEWS: Game s sales to reach permanen t and eternal zero at any mo ment We bet the founders of change.org are delighted at what their platform for social change has become
And that would take less than 66 hours, too!
Man’s Sky by promoting Hang on, you’re criticising No e has actually been Star Citizen? Remind which gam
released again?
But sadly we’d guess not the worse sentence you’ve ever written
No giant snakes? WE TAKE IT ALL BACK THIS IS HORRENDOUS, SEAN NEEDS TO BE SHOT Mate, wait until you finish school , leave the basement, get a joyless job, share a house with a vegan and an amphetamine addict, hav e your heart broken, get cheated out of a security deposit on a flat, have someone key your car, lose 300,000 souls in Ithryll Valley, find yourself in negative equity, slavishly care for your kids only for them to hate you anyway when they turn 13, have the boiler break down in mid-winter, overhear your parents getting it on, step in a puddle of your cat’s vomit in a dar k bathroom at 3am, lose a loved one to illness, have the Game of Throne s finale spoiled, realise that we’re actually going to lose the NHS and spend endless hours alone at nig ht sobbing alone, longing for the sw eet embrace of another – that’s unfair
So you got around 50p an hour’s worth of entertainment out of it AND you’re going to carry on playing it but you’ve left a negative review because you believe that it was falsely advertised as havin g absolute all-encompassing universal appeal?
64 cents an hour
September 9th 2016
38
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OFF THE RECORD
Green Man Gaming Asks...
Hot on the heels of Nintendo’s 3DS Direct, when do you predict that it’ll ȴ QDOO\ DQQRXQFH WKH 1;" #GMGasks
Each week Green Man Gaming asks the Twitter community what they think about the biggest gaming topics trending today.
Most likely January so it doesn’t hurt their Christmas Wii U sales
Well, I waited long enough to have lost all interest :/ Their recent outings are an absolute farce.
@greenmanaIishi
@SplendidMaChao
Hopefully at Tokyo Game Show, but not holding my breath. Smart to announce before holiday to steal some thunder from XOS/ Neo over Xmas.
Jokes aside, I am predicting it will be in November, the month the Wii (that “revolutionised gaming”) was released
@qwpeoriu
@blackmidkn1ght
The day before its release date, or if they’re really evil, the day of release.
I think they will wait until after Christmas to announce it, when everything has died down.
#JUDɝ WLULS
@ascully
Tag your reply with #GMGasks to have your say!
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