Social Gaming, Exclusives & Other PR Lessons from GDC 09 |

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I recently attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Thousands of gamers descended upon the Moscone Center for a week of discussions about the gaming industry.

It was my first GDC, and it helped clarify my interest in gaming. For me, a key focus is social gaming. Social games are a new frontier (I was going to use the word “compelling” but in a GDC rant session Stephen Totilo at MTV News comically put it on his list of words to avoid along with “very” and most adverbs) for marketing and PR professionals. They have the ability to engage users, build community and extend the brand experience.

At its most basic social games are about social interaction, as opposed to playing one on one games like solitaire and gamer against game. Check out Nick O’Neill’s post for a great more complete definition. In short, they are, well, social — easy to play, based on social platforms, and accessible to the general public.

Need proof of their growing popularity? Look no further than Facebook and iPhone. Gareth Davis, the program manager for games in Facebook’s platform marketing division, said in an interview that “Games are by far the biggest application on Facebook. We have more than 5,000 games and hundreds of thousands of developers.”

And according to Jeff Scott, as of March 26, one third of the approximately 30,000 active or inactive apps on iPhone were games and entertainment. It’s time to take games seriously.

Meet the (Gaming) Press

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Among the panels I attended was Meet the (Gaming) Press with journalists Brian Crecente of Kotaku, Sam Kennedy of 1up, Brandon Sheffield of Game Developer Magazine. It was moderated by Frank Cifaldi. (Here is another perspective on the panel: Michael Thomsen) The turnout was good, but nothing like the session: The Cruise Director of Azeroth: Directed Gameplay within World of Warcraft. The line to get in for that talk was at least a football field long.

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Most of the discussion at the gaming press panel was pretty basic – advising people to read the publications they are pitching and that emails are often a better way to reach them even if they just skim most of their messages.

What most interested me was the social media piece. Culling Twitter feeds and Facebook pages for information are now part of the morning ritual. In the age of Google, they were less enamored with exclusives – which has long been a mainstay of journalists. Today the number of channels for leaks is too great to hold water. Brian Crecente doesn’t use them. Also in a global market with a 24/7 news cycle, embargoes are hard to keep with international editions factoring in.

I did find it amusing when Brian recounted how he tried to get confirmation from a PR person on story he was writing. While the PR rep looked for a spokesperson, he went on Twitter and spoke to his contact at the company. The PR rep later informed him that a spokesperson was not available, about the same time the story went live. So much for controlled messaging,

PR nightmare or part of the new world of media relations? If we embrace decentralized centralized communication, we need to anticipate unexpected sources. But as one journalist (and I can’t remember who it was) said, you need to keep tighter controls on employees if you don’t like leaks. Easier said then done.

Blogger Meetup

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I was sorry I couldn’t clone myself later that day. There was a blogger meet up at the same time a social gaming session was being held. Social gaming won out, but I wanted to at least give a shout out to some of the bloggers including Ian Schreiber, James Stevenson, Adam Niese, Andrew Armstrong, and Brenda Brathwaite who attended.

I plan to post a lot more on social gaming because I think social gaming for marketing and PR professionals is still in its infancy and affords both great opportunities and challenges for PR.

So stay tuned, and let me get back to you.

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