"Star Wars Kinect is the ultimate, inevitable expression of the new commercial truth of Hollywood that began with little plastic versions of Luke Skywalker"

"I asked on Twitter how game journalists imagine the perfect press kit."

"rest assured that if you hear a guy actually say it out loud, you’re never gonna challenge his world view. He doesn’t have a world view. Not really. He’s just leasing one from Viacom."

"The majority of people have a basic desire to be honest - and I mean actually honest, rather than some limited definition based strictly on the law. People will go to reasonable lengths to be honest. It makes us feel good about ourselves, and it confers a certain immunity from legal problems."

"Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”"

"So what went wrong with the Nano? An Indian consumer study by a brand strategist from Venturethree, Sandeep Dighe, came to a clear conclusion: Indian consumers don’t want a cheap car; they want a car to flaunt. For Indians, as for people in all other countries, a car is as much about status and identity as it is about transport."

The problems only started once they’d passed Quarrel up the decision tree to their finance and marketing teams – the bit more commonly known as “The Industry“. “This game is fundamentally broken – how can I possibly win with only 3 letters when my opponent has 8?”; “We could never sell this because it’s English language only”; “It looks like a kids game, but it’s way too hard for kids” and everywhere (trust me – everywhere) in between. We heard the same justifications for passing on it over and over again ad nauseam. However, one signal came through clearer than any other among the general noise of reasons why Quarrel wasn’t for them, and that was this: “Gamers don’t buy word games”.

Coombs agrees, calling project updates "essential," and Octodad 2 designer and writer Kevin Zuhn says updates let them build a relationship with backers. "We made sure to post updates at every major milestone, thanking our backers constantly and revealing more information about ourselves as a team," he says. "We felt that sharing more about us as people was important to make a connection with our backers, so we put up images of our office and our trip to the aquarium."

"LAST STEP IS SMASH CAGE, LIGHT BARN ON FIRE."

"The audience might be detrimental if it becomes the main reason for doing the thing we do, if that brief burst of virtual applause becomes our only aim. If the audience makes us forget how much we don’t know, and think our public dabbling means we’re on a par with those who have dedicated their lives to this particular skill. But often it’s simply nice to share something, to quietly show off our abilities and interests and to learn from others."

Piece on non-monetary, symbolic incentives used to motivate socialist workers. Criticised as "Capitalism with trinkets". Interesting bit: Author argues on the basis of this that gamification has a much longer heritage than designers/salespeople claim.

"Large publishers appear to think that because they haven’t been able to establish a viable business model on the Internet, which reaches hundreds of millions of users, somehow they will be able to develop a viable business model on a proprietary gadget that reaches a few million eccentric and eclectic users."

Disastrously low budget launch event: "Knitted characters from the game were left hanging from the railings alongside a crumpled up press release blowing in the wind". It makes me sad that someone at Nintendo Europe was probably very keen on this, but didn't have the time/budget to make this amazing. Also: Wrong location.

"A brand on Facebook should be like a casual friend or neighbor and not try to suck people into heavy levels of interaction. What do you do with a friend? Comment on their photos, like their status, vote on their outfit. These types of interactions take seconds, not minutes, and definitely not hours."

“And there are parts of the mod community who are just completely anti-commercial,” explained our friend on Twitter. “For those, making a mod and then going commercial with it is as bad as it comes.”

"When advertising efforts focus on registration (and ticket sales), they are a liability rather than an asset to the marketing plan because they require the most difficult type of commitment from our target audience: a financial decision."

"drinking a Diet Coke in public could land me in the gossip column of my hometown newspaper." "“But aren’t you your own brand?” clever interviewers would ask me endlessly. “Probably,” I would respond. “But I try to be a really crap one.”"

"Regret is a huge emotion, and people will pay huge sums to avoid it. You just need to watch Deal or No Deal to see this."

"Simon Talbot, the head of corporate affairs at Kraft Foods Australia, said the company had taken only 72 hours to decide that the iSnack 2.0 name was “not worth defending,” given the level of outrage."

Two interesting things: Embargoes fading fast, and press releases more accurately called "news releases". Hmm.

Fantastic news. I hope this takes root and spreads.

What the fuck Capcom?

Weirdest game promotion I've ever seen.

"for a long time, these corporations have been pitting their customers - usually young people in search of an identity - against one another as a marketing tactic."

Hehehe

It's a bit ".biz", "epenis" and "strategy chocolate", but has some good advice on credibility in social media on slide 15.

as objects informationalise, communication channels are getting built in.

Probably viral marketing, but nonetheless: oh em eff gee :0

"they’re trying to learn from ARGs to see what an affordable, practical interactive campaign, made by advertising/digital media agencies (rather than ARG agencies) might look like."

Nice. Obviously marketing, but well done marketing taking the piss out of Apple more so than the rest.

"The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks."

"magazine website" :)