thePutty

Unreleased APB Trailer - STEAM edition

2011-10-21T07:42:00.001-07:00

No Rest for Steve

2011-10-21T07:00:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

2011-10-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Rest in peace Steve. You will always be my hero.

Why listening to your customers will keep the brand alive till you are a grey haired Grandpa !

2010-12-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

My team (Global Markets and PR)at GamersFirst has been through a whirlwind of Interviews with key gaming media across the world in the last few weeks. Almost all the media folks asked us this question:

“How will GamersFirst recreate the APB Brand, given that the first edition of the game did not live up to its full potential?”
• To me, simply put, this question reads as “How do you market a game which failed to sell 10 million copies the first time around ?!!”

The traditional retail driven gaming industry has been trying to answer this question since the failure of the arcade classic, Sundance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundance_(arcade_game)) The answer still evades some of the brightest execs in the games business. The traditional gaming industry has relied on internal brain trusts, media consultants and self proclaimed marketing experts for the answer, and 30 years later they continue their quest .

When we started this company, we sought to make a bold attempt to look elsewhere for this answer. In complete defiance of the traditional industry we sought this answer from the lowest common denominator – You, The Gamer. We were building a community of gamers around our flagship product, Knight Online World and the gamers were passionately telling us the What, Why and How of the marketing process. By putting the gamer first we started unraveling the true potential of the gaming ecosystem. Getting answers from you was a very liberating moment for us as marketers. You told us what you liked to read, what you liked to watch and more importantly what you thought was fun and cool. We didn’t always listen very well but we were eager and willing to learn. Over the past several years, with your help, we have built a community of 30 million gamers around our games like Knight Online, War Rock, Sword2, Hukumdar Online, Sonsuz Marcera and Aventura Eterna. We interact with you every day – We accept your brickbats and bouquets as an integral part of our marketing process.
As we evolved, your passionate involvement also became a critical piece in our content acquisition plans. In 2010 we acquired 2 exciting games – 9Dragons and APB. Both these acquisitions were driven by the simple premise – “how passionate and involved is their existing community?”

In the past couple weeks we have built up fan pages for these games on Facebook, Twitter and created forums as a way to open two-way communication with thousands of gamers who are communicating with us. When the 9Dragons community was abandoned by their publishers (http://www.gameindustry.com/ih/item.asp?id=3063 ) we had very little time to bring the game back up. The previous publisher of 9D did not hand over the player or game database to us or to the developer. We brought the game back to life in under 2 weeks. Now as we hit the 12 week mark since the re-launch of 9D, we have started the tedious process of character restorations which we will accomplish one player at a time. The 9D community was instrumental in this process as they told us what they wanted and albeit painfully, we are putting their ideas to action.

Like in the case of 9Dragons, we encourage you and all former APB players, to come aboard and start telling us what you want. Again, we may not get it right all the time but we will listen and make our best efforts to ignite your ideas into reality. You, our gaming community, define our marketing strategy for us. You will be the driving force behind making APB:Reloaded a successful brand. Despite the thousands of man-years of collective experience, which resides internally at GamersFirst we see ourselves as enablers and catalysts and not as marketing gurus. True knowledge resides in the community of gamers who experience the games on a daily basis.

The traditional box driven gaming industry and gaming media is very skeptical about our approach. That skepticism stems from fear! The traditional gaming industry has stopped growing – The Free2Play online games industry will be growing at 50% every year. All we did differently is remove the layers between the publisher and the gamer. We did this because we believe that all the answers we would ever need as a publisher and marketer reside in our community. All we have to do is listen and execute.

Free2Play - Not for Haters !!!

2010-04-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Warning - THIS IS A RANT !!!!

I have been reading quite a few blogs and articles, manufactured by some old school gaming journalists who like to beat down the Free2Play industry. (http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/3901/Whats-in-a-Name.html )
Their pet peeve seems to revolve around how Free2Play games are not really Free and ofcourse the hackneyed argument about how Free2Play games are not of the same quality as their surgically altered, plastic encrusted, retail cousins !!!

Free2Play Games are exactly that – Free to Play. You do not require to dish out any cash for a box and then, in some cases, get hit with an additional subscription fee – All this before you can shout WarCraft !! The Free2Play model has slowly yet surely changed the landscape of the video game industry. Last year saw a blood bath in the “traditional” “Cardboard-Plastic” packaged games market as gamers migrated in droves to the Free2Play model. Players can download a game like War Rock (www.gamersfirst.com/warrock) or Sword of the New World (www.gamersfirst.com/swordofthenewworld) , for free, and enjoy hours of fragelicious fun, without reaching for that other piece of plastic. Parents, struggling with an economy in a freakish Gran Turismo Tailspin, do not have to buy a $300 piece of Equipment to get that few hours of peaceful solitude while their kids indulge in some serious role playing !! Free2Play games offer the same escape, the same raw fun and the same indulgence as their bloated Pay to play cousins.

I am surprised the nomenclature of Free2Play gets a lot of the old school journo’s all worked up – Only because these games offer an option for a player to shortcut their level up process by spending a small amount of money via Microtransactions. I also do not see these “previous gen” bloggers giving any credit to the Free2Play industry for developing the offer based payment model which offers further options to gamers to “buy” items and premiums without actually having to pay for them. I do feel that the old school gaming industry still believes that Vinyl offers a more “Warmer” sound than the music you could download from iTunes !! These folks are dangerously poised to become another relic like the very industry which seems to be fading away in the sunset. Free2Play games are the future for this industry; an industry which seems to be struggling in doing what should have been done in the first place – Putting Gamers First !!!

Coping with Change - the Case of the Buzzard, the Bat, and the Bumblebee

2009-01-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

If you put a buzzard in a pen six or eight feet square and entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of his ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of ten or twelve feet. Without space to run, as is his habit, he will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.
The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.
A Bumblebee if dropped into an open tumbler will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

Moral

In many ways, there are lots of people like the buzzard, the bat and the bee. They are struggling about with all their problems and frustrations, not realizing that the answer is right there above them.
(courtesy Amit Bhaskar - someone who I connected with after 18 years)

Outsourced Day Care - this is tooooooo funny ...!!

2008-04-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

and you think we have problems with decisions ...

2008-03-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

Immense Change in my Life - the last 18 months...

2008-03-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the enormous change my life has gone through over the last 18 months...and it made my head spin ! After being "relatively" single for nearly 33 years, I got married in October 2006. The East coast was never in my radar for a place to live but I moved from Dallas to New Jersey in March 2007 and changed jobs. I had been settling comfortably at HCL, India's 4th largest outsourcing powerhouse, enjoying the benefits and the "power" of being a senior manager at a $4bn company. However, the risk taker in me made me dive into a startup - Gameshastra. My wife and me had a baby boy, Arjun, in August 2007 and just as we were contemplating buying a house in the Poconos (an Hour from NY in Pennsylvania) , my company opened up a new HQ in El Segundo, CA (Greater Los Angeles). Before anyone could say "baby boy", we packed our stuff and moved to a beautiful apartment in Marina Del Rey. The highlight of course, in all this madness, was meeting my wife and having Arjun. Having a child is absolutely the most amazing life changing experience for any human being. Mita (my wife) and Arjun are the only things which kept me sane in the midst of all this change. Working for Gameshastra is the next best thing !! The opportunities and challenges in a startup are scary and exhilarating - Like the proverbial Roller coaster ride ! Every hour here is unique and since this is "my" company the buck starts and stops at me.

M&A Time: Is this the beginning of a new dawn for the Video Games industry?

2008-03-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

The video games industry seems to have become the darling of the street !! Vivendi and Activision are merging, EA wants to spend a few billions to acquire Take2, THQ acquired Big Huge Studios, Microsoft acquired RARE, Activision acquired Bizarre UK....
I can bet that the offices of these large publishers have more M&A consultants and Bankers roaming the floors than developers and creative folk !!
This frenzied M&A activity will definitely have a huge impact - On consumers, employees and ancillary businesses which provide services to the large players. Just another example of extreme change impacting all the elements in the value chain of this business.
Check out this excellent article http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080316-9999-mz1b16gobbli.html and let me have some of your comments and thoughts on how this would impact the stake holders in the video games business.

Change...The best way is to think different

2008-03-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

The only constant is change….

2008-03-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

I like this cliché! It defines who I am and the world in which we live. Change encompasses every aspect of our life and we experience it, sometimes painfully, every second of our day. This is going to be the first amongst a series of posts I am doing on change.

One of the key factors for success in any business, today, is the ability of its stakeholders to initiate and manage change. “Solid as a rock” may not be a positive trait any more, especially in a business environment. “Flexible like Putty”, though it sounds namby-pamby, is the mantra of this generation. I have been working with Fortune 500 clients and helping them manage their outsourcing strategies over the last 5 years. I now head sales at Gameshastra, one of the leading outsourced services providers to the video games industry. In the outsourcing business change can be your best friend or your worst enemy!! The Video Games industry, where there are new products released every week and companies are constantly changing themselves in order to come up with the next BIG product idea, is even more sensitive to this environment. Game developers who have had difficulties in working with external developers across the street now have to interact and work with globally distributed teams. They have to realign their internal teams, figure out new accents and re-invent their processes in order to fully utilize the benefits of outsourcing.

Service providers in this business are facing the pangs of change as well – With the opening up of India and China, vendors in the Western hemisphere are feeling the pressure from their clients to provide enhanced value at lower prices. Indian and Chinese vendors are trying hard to create an organizational culture which marries strong business and operations processes with a western games culture. They face challenges with communication, quality and overall efficiency. At Gameshastra, the management team was very cognizant of these issues when they started the company. The company’s entire strategy revolved around hiring veterans from the games business in North America and transporting them to head delivery teams in Hyderabad, India. This strategy has obviously paid off but not without its own pains.

Life for an American “born and raised” executive is not easy; especially when they have to adjust to a new environment and culture thousands of miles away (Coach-Class travel does not help either – Especially when it involves being in a airplane for 20 hours, three to four times in a year!!). So, change impacts their lives in a way which can be sometimes hard to imagine!! From a sales perspective, I have to change my pitch with every client in this business. I work with clients who come from a diverse mix; each publishing company has its own processes and “quirks”. Our clients range from multi billion dollar Game publishing giants to small independent studios. There is one message though which does not change in the pitch – Outsourcing is not about short term benefits; “It only gets worse before it gets better.” There is no panacea for the resulting turmoil which accompanies this change; Clients who can internalize this message and plan their journey as partners with their vendor end up benefitting the most.

2008-03-21T11:24:00.000-07:00