Marketing conference kicks off in SF

SAN FRANCISCO--While the industry has plenty of conferences directed at the people who make games (Game Developers Conference, D.I.C.E. Summit), it's now getting one aimed squarely at the people who sell them. The inaugural Game Marketing Conference kicked off yesterday with a series of panels and a lot of discussion about the transition to next-generation consoles and the road ahead for the industry.

Before a standing-room-only crowd of roughly 200 industry professionals, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter moderated the first panel discussion between Stormfront Studios CEO and president Don Daglow, Intel segment manager for consumer software and solutions Arne Peters, and Foundation 9 CEO Jon Goldman.

While the conference was focused on marketing, this session seemed focused on giving attendees background information on why the industry is in the state it is, more so than the brass tacks of selling games.

"2006 is gonna' be a mess," Pachter told the crowd in his opening remarks. "I think '06 is a mess, because I don't think most of the constituents in the video game business planned out '06 very well."

While many would point to Microsoft's supply problems with the Xbox 360 launch as a primary example, Pachter fingered the game publishers as a major part of the problem. Publishers' insistence on mitigating risk by going with proven franchises, known licenses, and sequel after sequel is only giving consumers more excuses to not buy games, Pachter said.

"If you want a proxy for what the game business was last year, look at the movie business for the last 10 years," Pachter said. "They give you crap and more crap--sequels and movie games...[Electronic Arts'] The Godfather is The Dukes of Hazzard with Marlon Brando, to me. How the h*** are they going to make that game and have it resonate?"

Pachter didn't directly address how game marketers can fix the problems with the industry, but he certainly tried to make the audience see how a steady flow of rehashed games that consumers don't want would affect their lives. He warned, "You guys are going to lose your jobs because your bosses are going to say, 'Why can't you sell games to people?'"

While Pachter's call for innovation might not change the face of the industry, it did change one of his fellow panelists' remarks.

"I originally intended to frame my comments around the success of The Dukes of Hazzard as a franchise," Goldman joked as he took the microphone, "so I gotta pull this together on the fly."

Goldman also saw a dearth of innovation in the industry and cited the difficulties of keeping up with changing hardware as a primary reason. To remedy the problem, he advised publishers to invest more in research and development, with the hopes of hitting the ground running when the new hardware arrives.

"Unless you can invest ahead of the curve, you're more likely than not going to be behind the curve," Goldman said, "and the area that's going to affect the most is innovation."

Peters also took the hardware manufacturers to task, saying they were rushing to release new hardware before it was practical to do so, and he wondered aloud why the industry is "holding back innovation on the gaming side when there's a lot of innovation on the hardware side."

Daglow also indicated that the next-generation shift might have been premature. Stormfront is working on a pair of next-generation games now, and Daglow said the budget for them is two to three times current-generation fare (somewhere in the $15 million to $20 million range). However, he also said that there's a danger in being too focused on making the most of the new hardware's features.

"The vast majority of work [Stormfront developers] do in the studio is on current-gen TVs," Daglow said. "Then after getting that right, they try HD."

While the following session was rife with dry discussions of data-gathering services and PowerPoint-presentation pie charts, the first day's colorful presentations weren't limited to the initial panel. Specifically, former LucasArts vice president of sales and marketing John Geoghegan gave a light-hearted talk about the industry's current woes in the court of public opinion.

"I don't know if you're up on current events, but we are getting our a**es kicked out there," Geoghegan told the crowd.

The first example he gave was that of Utah's HB257, the bill that would group violent video games with pornography as material harmful to minors. He acknowledged that game-restriction laws have failed to stand up to judicial review but warned the audience not to feel too good about that.

"We are winning on a technicality, people," Geoghegan said. "We are not making friends with this. I haven't seen this much animosity since big tobacco said cigarettes weren't addictive."

Geoghegan then brought up New York senator Hilary Clinton and lawyer Jack Thompson (whom he described as "the ambulance chaser down in Florida"), completing a triple threat to the industry.

Then came the analogies. This was "a perfect storm of circumstances." Game marketers are "fat, dumb, and blind, like a turkey the week before Thanksgiving." The industry is in a defensive crouch, "like a boxer against the ropes." And finally, the call to action.

"Now's the time for us to get out of our spider hole and come out fighting," Geoghegan said. "I'm basically mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any longer."

To that end, Geoghegan proposed a 12-step self-esteem-recovery program for the industry. Instead of admitting that it has a problem, this program would start with promoting the ratings system and also include preaching moderation and good parenting, comparing the objectionable content in games to that on prime-time television, increasing lobbying efforts, and doing a better job of demonstrating the industry's most creative offerings, specifically games like Katamari Damacy.

"We need to show people that it's not all about guns and boobs," Geoghegan said.

The Game Marketing Conference concludes today with another slate of panels discussing various opportunities and issues currently facing the industry.