Games Developers and Brand

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Brand Does it matter? Ed Daly
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Introduction

• Ed Daly
• Studio Head, Zoë Mode
• Formerly known as Kuju Brighton
• Wholly owned part of Kuju Studios

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This talk

• Define brand
• Apply to games developers
• Case study Zoë Mode

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Define Brand

• Brand
• Image, identity, associations
• Strategy
• Foundations, positioning
• Communications
• Who, what and how

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Truth

• The foundation of the brand is truth, not spin
• Find something about (people, founders, company)
  that is
• True
• Unique
• Adds value, competitive advantage

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Vision

• Take the core unique truth
• Develop it into beliefs and vision
• What does the company believe?
• About the industry
• About itself
• About the future (vision)
• Framing and communicating answers to the big
  questions

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Application

• Take the core unique truth
• Permeate it through everything you do
• Branding is not just your logo, it cant be skin
  deep

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Example Core Unique Truth

• Start-up founder has a freak genius IQ
• Many developer bosses are bright
• Your founder has a unique (or a scarce) intellect
• This can easily be seen as adding value and
  competitive advantage
• This is the core unique truth

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Example - Application

• Call your self IQ
• Only hire staff with IQ of 120
• Specialise in deep, clever games
• Hang pictures of Einstein in the board room
• Have a really hard pub-quiz at work parties

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Strategy and Communications

• Youve found your core unique truth
• Youve applied it to everything you do
• To complete the brand you must communicate it
• The questions are to whom and how

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Audiences

• Who are your audiences?
• Staff, potential recruits, customers, prospective
  customers, platform owners, trade press,
  mainstream press, investors, suppliers,
  competitors
• How much do you care about each?
• What do they think of you now?
• What do you want them to think in the future?

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Execution

• OK you need graphic design, website, PR, external
  consultants, press packs, colour schemes, logo,
  t-shirts, mouse-mats, launch party, mugs and
  business cards etc.
• If your brand has a good foundation this is easy
• Rather than discuss this, back to strategic
  issues with developers

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Development Market

• Many hundreds of independent developers
• 10s of publishers
• Maybe 100 games released a year that were worth
  the trouble
• Are many flavours of developer
• Yet little overt differentiation
• Very few strong brands

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Brand space

• Market positioning
• Product
• Genre
• Platform
• Price
• Quality
• Publisher
• Consumers

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Brand space

• Culture
• Professionalism / delivery / process
• Creativity / innovation
• Elite / discriminating
• Communal / egalitarian
• Maverick / unconventional

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Brand space

• Attributes
• Small
• Large
• New
• Old
• Location

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Positioning Product

• Genre
• Clear identity, specialist, best-of-breed
• Platform
• Specialist technology
• Works when platform is new and barriers are high
• Are there sustainable benefits in price or
  quality?

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Positioning Price

• Developers dont tend to consciously push price
  as a differentiator
• Reassuringly expensive
• Cheap and good value
• Cannot stop customers tagging developers as cheap
  and expensive
• Developers associate cheap with desperate and
  expensive with successful
• But success can lead to economies of scale and
  low cost that kills the competition

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Positioning Quality

• Linked to price, quality is a natural
  differentiator
• Most developers would consider themselves focused
  on quality
• However few really have a convincing, stand-out
  brands based on exceptional quality

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Positioning - Publisher

• Reduces conflicts of interest
• Set-up for an acquisition
• Need to mitigate risk of break-down

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Natural Brands - The Creatives

• Applies well to culture, process and product
• Like quality, most developers would claim to be
  particularly creative or innovative
• By definition most developers cannot be
  exceptionally anything, including creative
• Most developers are averagely creative
• And as many are below average and as above

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Natural Brands - The Professionals

• Strong process and project management
• Corporate style
• On time, on budget, every single time, always
• Like creativity, often claimed
• Questionable as to how often exceptional
  professionalism is achieved
• Is it true and fully applied, permeating all
  activity
• If not the brand wont stick

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The Games

• A strong long term brand should be more than just
  the games
• A single IP specialist can work but for most the
  objective should be
• A brand which can be reflected in the games
• playful dynamic interactivity
• emotional stories
• back-to-basics fun

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Kidding ourselves

• The tendency for most developers would be to
  claim to be
• Highly creative/innovative
• High quality
• Very professional (on time / on budget)
• Market rate price
• Some loose product type specialisation

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Reality

• Therefore brands communicated are very similar to
  each other
• In reality developers have indistinct positions,
  poorly defined brands, badly communicated

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Reality

• Jack-of-all-trades
• Opportunity driven
• Cant say no
• Survival mode
• Strong brand needs
• A differentiating core truth
• Ability to say no to everything that doesnt
  fit
• Willingness to try and fail

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Analysis

• About 18 months ago I tried to analyse
  positioning of 4 Kuju Studios
• Hereby follows part of the internal analysis
• Was interesting exercise in visually mapping
  territory

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Studio Venn
DATA FROM 2005
Brighton
Sheffield
Surrey
London
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Studio Venn - Genre
DATA FROM 2005
Brighton
Sheffield
Lifestyle
Sports
Ports
Surrey
London
Action
Online
Tactics
Turn-based
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Studio Venn - Platform
DATA FROM 2005
Brighton
Sheffield
Surrey
London
PSP
PS2
DS
PS3
Xbox360
PC
Wii
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Studio Venn - Publishers
DATA FROM 2005
Brighton
Sheffield
SEGA
SCEE
Codies
Marvellous
LucasArts
Surrey
London
Atari
Ubi
Nintendo
VU
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Studio Venn
DATA FROM 2005
Brighton
Sheffield
SEGA
Lifestyle
Sports
Ports
SCEE
Codies
Marvellous
LucasArts
Surrey
London
PSP
PS2
DS

Action
PS3
PC
Xbox360
Turn-based
Wii
Atari
Online
Ubi
Tactics
Nintendo
VU
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Venn Analysis

• These attributes are all facts of project line-up
• Could be extended to map other brand attributes
  (professionalism, creativity etc.)
• And a competitive analysis of different studios
  done
• I suspect pattern would be
• Reality would differ from self-image
• Vast majority clustering in the intersections
• Lots of whitespace to exploit for specialists

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Weak developer branding

• Lifestyle businesses
• Lack of marketing/business education
• Financial weakness
• Identify with current projects

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Survival of fittest

• For these reasons developer brands are weak
• A mature industry would evolve into all niches
• The positioning Venn would be well spread
• As technology and other external changes impact
  new spaces would open and be colonised
• Evolution takes time and games are young

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Marketing bullst

• Tendency in development to see marketing as
  evil
• Its antithesis of game design, code, art
• Its publisher stuff
• Yes much marketing is bullst
• But a strategic brand, communicated to those you
  care about is not

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b2b / b2c

• In marketing theory a key concept is
  business-to-business and business-to-consumer
  brands
• b2c brands are characterised by
• Small windows of attention
• Impersonal communications (logos and strap-lines)
• b2b brands contrastingly have
• Large windows of attention
• Personal communication
• The correct observation that b2c branding is
  pointless for most developers, often obscures
  fact that b2b branding remains important

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b2c

• Developer as b2c brand?
• Holy grail, selling games by logo
• Access to consumers
• Digital distribution
• Online communities
• Connotations for publishers
• A threat
• And opportunity, lower risk projects

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b2c

• Challenges
• Infrequent releases, memories are short so
  consistency vital
• Totally different interface to b2b brand, 95
  through the game experience
• Visible credit important
• Non trade PR for developer, newsworthy?

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Sum-up

• Key is a core unique truth (that adds value)
• Developed into a vision
• That exploits niches in the brand space
• Applied to everything you do
• Consideration of audiences and interfaces
• Communicate the brand to those audiences
• (Of course, execute the business plan)

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Case study

• Before Re-branding
• Part of Kuju (long established)
• Specialising in social/casual games
• Based in Brighton

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• Zoe Logo / image

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Why Zoë

• Re-branding out of Kuju meant we had to be
  noticed
• Deliberately decided to take a risk
• Be provocative
• Accept a love/hate response

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Why Zoë

• Before re-brandeding we had most of the strategy
• This was helped by being part of a group
• It forced the differentiation question on us from
  day one
• Re-framed key questions, taught us to permeate
  deeper and wider

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Why Zoë

• Core Unique Truth
• Myself and founding team dont like clichéd,
  narrow games
• We like social, party games
• Decision to be defined by our target consumers
• Fresh new games for new audiences

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Why Zoë

• We wrote down our beliefs
• We believe there is a game for everybody
• We believe games exclude audience groups due to
  content
• Our vision
• In the future families and friends will spend
  more time playing games together than watching TV
• Our values
• Humanity, inclusiveness, style, fun, socialising

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Why Zoë

• While brainstorming names to fit these core
  beliefs we realised we needed more than a name
• We needed an idea from which the execution of
  the branding would fall-out
• Instead of making 100 individual decisions
  whats the name, the logo, the website like, the
  stationary, the business cards etc...

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Why Zoë

• We wanted a single idea that would answer all our
  questions
• Hence the idea of the person-brand
• This fits with the key to our strategy, its the
  audience, the people

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Why Zoë

• A great brand is full of virtuous circles
• we make games for Zoë (and ff), not just regular
  gamers,
• we attract diverse staff who arent just regular
  games,
• we make better games for that diverse audience

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Why Zoë

• This answered all the execution questions
• Logo as signature
• Real photos of Zoë (emphasis on audience)
• A website in first person
• Website to include non gaming activities
• Zoë Home Brighton pad
• If you just pick a random cool sounding name you
  still have 100 questions to answer

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Why Zoë

• Zoë is our conscience that signs off on what we
  do Would Zoë like that?
• Hence the brands value pervades everything

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Why Zoë

• Has potential for a consumer brand, or even a
  brand that extends beyond games
• And also Zoës games are fun
• So why not have a brand that is inherently fun
• Brands needs to evolve and remain fresh,
  person-brand helps with that too
• A work-in-progress, lots to do

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Why Zoë

• It didnt all go smoothly
• The Crush dilema, positioning timing vs. PR and
  gamerankings.com
• A cautionary tale

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Why Zoë

• It didnt all go smoothly
• The Crush dilema, positioning timing vs. PR and
  gamerankings.com
• A cautionary tale

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Why Zoë

• Followed the very next day by

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Why Zoë

• Zoeecho.com
• Zoe-echo.com
• Zoeecho.co.uk
• Zoe-echo.co.uk
• Zoe-echo.biz
• Are all going cheap

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lessons learned

• Staff buy-in is the hardest and most important
  thing
• Being noticed by people several steps removed
  means being extreme with those closest
• Not everyone will like it at first but
  associations will change over time

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lessons learned

• Logistics a pain
• Clashes (URLs, Companies House, localisation,
  Mark frigging Ecko)
• Day zero

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lessons learned

• Re-branding wins
• Opportunity to refocus strategically
• Inspires new IP generation
• Creates opportunities
• Profile boost

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Conclusions

• Branding, in the sense of being distinctive,
  should matter to developers
• Most developers have weak brands that are
  indistinct and unfocused
• There is lots of space for owning solid brand
  niches
• The key is a core truth, deep application and
  audience specific communication
• Industry changes may allow developers to build
  consumer facing brands

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Conclusions

• Zoë Mode still feels risky, but I cant imagine
  still being Kuju Brighton
• The re-branding exercise forced tough strategic
  questions to be answered, this alone justified
  the risk

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Ends

• Applause
• QA
• More applause
• Have lunch