DSA Online | New Media Updates

Question: We asked DSA network staff if they could name their favourite gaming console (ps3, xbox, ds, wii, computer etc.) and their favourite game.

Alexander Bunkowski:

Console -Xbox 360
Favourite game – That would be Punisher for the XBox. It’s a great game play with lots of versatility. For its time, the game felt like there was a variety of ways to get through levels, and had many imaginative “special kills” (Not for the squeamish). The controls were easy to master, despite the variety  of game play options, and there was a great replay value for trying to unlock various secrets and skills.

Like many gamers, my other favourite game is Portal for the XBox 360 (look for the sequel out soon!) This is one of the best reviewed games of all time. (Great review here that starts at the 3:30 mark – though be warned, the reviewer is incredibly vulgar, though is well known in the industry for his candor)

Honourable Mention: Trials HD for the XBox 360 Arcade. This is the ultimate party game among my friends, and is essentially the modern equivalent of Excite Bike. The levels are all very short, usually 1-2 minutes long, and have infinite playability for trying to one-up your friends with better tricks and times.

Kristina Gaudet:

Console – PC (computer) and the wii.
Favourite game – Starcraft.

Jacquie Anderson:

Console – Playstation 3
Favourite game – God of War and Assasin’s Creed. I love the graphics. I haven’t actually played Assasin’s creed, but the graphics are so amazing that I loved just watching it. I’ll probably play it one day. The controls are easy for me to get a handle on. I like these games because they have great and complicated story lines. I hate games that are like “let’s shoot the aliens because they’re bad”. Why are the bad? What is the story behind why I am doing this?

Question: We asked DSA network staff if they could name their favourite gaming console (ps3, xbox, ds, wii, computer etc.) and their favourite game.

Kathryn Slater:

Console – My favourite console is the PS3. Other than a PSP, I own or have had the opportunity to use all the modern consoles & popular gaming handhelds systems. While most of them have duplicated service offerings (in Canada), the PS3 is the one that most supports my lifestyle. I am an “adventure gamer” and don’t tend to do as well with first person shooter games. The PS3 store offers more of the kind of games that I like – granted, I haven’t gone back at looked at the Xbox Live arcade offerings for some time. The Xbox controller always messes me up (even after 40hrs struggling through Mass Effect on easy…), not to mention when I pulled the Xbox out of it’s packaging, I found that I needed to spend another $50+ to add wireless to the system. Since I wasn’t really keen to spend more after buying a $350 system, my husband and I hacked a solution through our computer. This means downloading anything from the Live offerings is usually 4-10x longer than it should. The PS3 was ready out of the box, as was the Wii, and I started buying arcade games immediately. The only reason I give the PS3 a leg up on the Wii is because of the movie & game downloads.  Well…also, sometimes I just want to sit on my bum and play a mindless game that requires little movement; not really the experience you want when playing a Wii.

Favourite game – This may have been the hardest question I have been asked in over a year. I started writing a novel of my favourite games broken out by console, but then realized that I was going a bit overboard… I really can’t break it down into a single all-time favourite, so I have chosen a fairly recent game that can still be picked up in one form or another that I would recommend to any beginner gamer:

Katamari Damasi is one of the oddest games available to the modern gamer, with strange case art and an even stranger intro video, but it rolled its way into my heart. Whenever I have someone over that is unfamiliar with console games, I put this one in both to watch their reaction and because I haven’t found a single person that doesn’t love it after a few rounds. The concept of the game, boiled down, is that you are the prince of the KING OF THE COSMOS, a genealogy that includes an oddly shaped head and a predisposition for busting stuff up. Your task in this game is to “roll up” earth “stuff” using your giant sticky ball (called a Katamari) until it is big enough to be blasted into the sky and made into a star. However, it’s not the game that usually trips people up – it’s the catchy Japanese soundtrack and dancing pink pandas that distract people from the simplistic game play. There is enough eye candy to satisfy even the most caffeine-filled twitchy gamer, but enough replay action that I still go back and play the original game from time to time. Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na nahhhhhh.

My current favourites (summarized from my best-selling blog novel): Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, Scribblenauts, Monkey Island (franchise) and pretty much any adventure game authored by Lucas Arts. Mass Effect was pretty freaking awesome too. :p

Mary Stanger:

Console – Has to be Wii and DS for me, since I don’t have PS3 or XBox.
Favourite Game - For Wii: Any Rabbids or Raymond game, Wii Play, Wii Music, Just Dance, and Super Mario Brothers. (Even thought I keep getting killed). For DS: Any Rabbid game which I have all three, Senses (both Rain Forest and Oceans), Rooms, both Pros. Layton games, Puzzler, Sudoku, and Bejeweled Twist. Just getting into Pi cross and Harry Potter 1-4.

I was invited to hang with some local online-industry professionals at the Mill last Wednesday. I’ve been invited a few times before, but I kept having to cancel at the last minute due to schedule conflicts and I’ve been bummed to not get to attend. With my DVD copy of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long blog in tow, I headed out to meet the gang (for reals) this time.

As I arrived with Jacquie & Alexander, I carefully negotiated traffic with my head lowered, intent on checking-in on #foursquare. I was disappointed to find that someone else had beaten me to the designation of mayor (if you are the Mayor at the Mill – you get a free beer!!) but I soldiered on. I had met (or recognized) most of the people at the table before being introduced since it’s such a small industry. I’m also not that hard to pick out as I’m always the “noisy” kid in seminars & events. You remember the kid that sat at the front of the class and would answer every question (even the rhetorical ones)? I’m afraid that was me – and growing into an adult hasn’t rid me of my gregarious nature.

The planned conversation for the evening was primarily focused on social interaction, the latest games/apps that were currently being used heavily and how they effected the industry. I admitted to checking-in as I arrived as the talk turned to foursquare and twitter. The table was still pretty divided about whether or not twitter and social check-ins were a good idea. In fact, yesterday, @Miss604 was on CKNW discussing the implications of Twitter & social games and echoed many of the same points that we brought up in our round table. I still feel that common sense is the best tool that anyone can use when navigating the world of social media – but it is ignorant to assume that everyone has a ready supply of that available. However, let’s not blame a lack of intelligence for the problems with social media. I believe the biggest hurdle for social media is the disadvantage of trust.

I’m always talking about how p2p is so powerful. Our friend recommends a brand & we’re more likely to give it a try. A Facebook friend hated a movie & we’re less likely to want to go. The influence of peer to peer communities is mind boggling and I’m shocked at how often I, too, fall prey to a social recommendation. By that same token, I believe some people fall victim to a mindless trust that makes fools of people that we would never think to label as unwise. Our friends or family are doing something – so they must have thought it through, right? Consider how fast the social world is growing and how many new people are added to networks due to a peer association. If everyone is thinking that someone else must have taken the time to ensure this network, action or game was secure or safe, it’s not difficult to believe all the silly mistakes people make online.

My favourite part of the evening was when we started to talk about conversion rates as it related to mobile & display. We were all sharing case studies with each other (minus brand names – which is more difficult than you might imagine) and when I started to talk about how frustrated I was that one of my campaigns was going really well, but that my client didn’t want to credit any of the search conversions to display, Tricia and Josée both raised their hands and shouted CONVERSION FUNNEL! I was so tickled. I wish I had filmed the moment to post in future presentation decks. How awesome would it be to be in a meeting, talking about how display drives clicks lower down the conversion funnel only have this echoed by the enthusiastic cheers of industry professionals?

I find that this has been a reoccurring topic in most of my campaigns of late and I thought I would take a moment to talk about driving clicks. Everyone is excitedly taking advantage of the proliferation of CPC offerings and are disregarding CPM as a antiquated and inefficient way to buy online. This is starting to become a bit of a pain in my butt as I have to repeatedly explain that running CPC is all well and good to drive inexpensive blanket coverage, but that it is inefficient as a stand-alone tactic – especially if you need a quick awareness campaign for a specific demographic. Just as you can get inexpensive tonnage in TV or Radio, remnant space in Print and RON in out of home, there is a time and place for each tactic. Throwing out CPM with the bathwater and only looking to clicks is limiting your options and potentially hamstringing your media. As I am always pointing out, no medium is an island (hoo boy – I’m full of clichés today) and they all work together towards your planned goal.

Three cheers for the conversion funnel!

I have found that one of the fun parts about entering into the world of Media is the ability to indulge yourself in trashy magazines. We all see them, standing there, staring at you while you wait at the checkout at the local grocery or convenience store… Always teasing you to look inside and see if Jennifer Aniston really is having a baby or if that’s just how the tabloid twisted her words to sell the magazine. You know it’s not real but you have to know what it says! (She’s not pregnant, but she says she wants to have a baby someday). I’m usually really good at laughing at the cover and moving on, but since what the celeb world is doing out there can have such an impact on media and there is a pile of them sitting on the counter in the office kitchen…

I started innocently enough, flipping the pages while waiting for my lunch in the microwave, but I got sucked in last week. I blame it on Twilight. I’m not a Team Edward or Team Jacob kind of girl, but the romance in the story gets me and I loved the most recent movie from the saga: Eclipse. It is for this reason that I picked up the July 2nd Issue of Entertainment Weekly and took it outside while I lounged in the sun. Bella (Kristen Stewart), Edward (Robert Pattison), and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) are all on the front cover which obviously meant there was some brain candy for me to read about the movie inside.

The kids are sweet (though Kristen has quite the potty mouth) but the thing that stood out most to me in this interview is Robert and Kristen’s take on the “Key to Marketing”.  Our favourite Vampire/Human couple believe that it doesn’t matter what you say, just have your face everywhere. Have your face in everyone’s face all the time and that’s all.

WOW THAT’S EASY. I am heading right to the mall this afternoon to get some headshots printed out and I’m just going to start postering my face places. I’ll be famous tomorrow and probably won’t even finish writing this blog post.

Alright.so not so much. But at the very least they were able to pick up on some very basic Media 101 rules.

1. Know your Audience and where they are – yes, you will be a blockbuster if your movie is like Eclipse, Ironman 2, Clash of the Titans etc. and advertised on a My Space homepage take over because that’s where the people who watch these movies are! You won’t see As Good As it Gets being advertised on My Space, because that’s not where you would find the people who want to go see that movie
2. Use Reach and Frequency – after you know who your audience is, be where they are. It’ll do you no good if you reach every person in the world just once. Find the right mixture of reach and frequency. Kristen said that My Space is where you want to advertise if you want to be a blockbuster; to a point this is true, but you need more than one publisher to reach your full audience, plus, the more places you advertise, the higher chance of reaching a frequency that will keep your advertisement lingering in the users mind.
3. Have a strong, but simple message – The Twilight Saga uses the faces of their stars to speak to their audience. It’s not the storyline that racks in the girls (they all know it by heart); it’s the package that the story comes in. All Taylor has to do is flash a stern but sexy glance and the tweens go wild. He’s saying (with his eyes) “your fantasies from the book are being shown on the silver screen, come watch me melt your heart”. That is why so many girls are seeing this movie! They want to fall into the deep romance and passion it shows. (Replace Taylor with Robert for the girls on Team Edward).

Those are the three most basic things you can do when you’re advertising.  Although packaged a little differently than my point form above, these kids have a simple understanding.  Just be careful with the literalness of “everywhere, all the time”. You don’t want to make your audience sick of you.