Kliuless? Gaming Industry ICYMI #33
Hi, my name is Kenny Liu, and I work in Revenue Strategy at Riot Games. Each week I compile a gaming industry insights newsletter that I share broadly within Riot. This edition is the public version that I publish broadly every week as well. Opinions are mine.
See more or subscribe at: https://tinyletter.com/kliuless
How China Is Upending Western Marketing Practices
- HBR: How China Is Upending Western Marketing Practices
- "Most of the time, we’d think about what type of promotion, dollars and cents promotion, location in the store promotion, could we create to drive volume? She said what the Chinese would do instead is that they would think about creating seamless content across multiple platforms that were temporally relevant. And what she meant was, that would be relevant in two weeks. That’s relevant right now
- So, they create, they co-create consent, and they would try to air the content immediately. And so, all of a sudden, you see this planning, plotting, methodical, we’ve got to do things in two or three years, competing with a system where they recognize that if I know what’s happening next week, and I build systems that are really agile and really fast, then I can actually be, I can potentially win
- When you look at China versus the Western mindset, the Western mindset has been really around scale and efficiency. Be slow, risk-averse, create systems, reduce from five plants to one plant, create one global product platform, and the China system is a growth mindset. How quickly can we grow our market share? And these two contrasting approaches are colliding"
Art / Design
- The Beauty of Parallax
- Brief history of 3D texturing in video games
- GDC 2019 microtalk on games & cognitive science of learning
PC / Console
- Discord’s Nitro Games adds 11 Star Wars and LucasArts classics
- CCP Games: EVE Online's tech is "absolutely at its breaking edge"
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is keeping fans engaged better than WWII did
- Overwatch lets players create custom modes with in-game scripting tools
- Epic buys Rocket League developer Psyonix
Mobile
- App Annie: The State of Mobile 2019
- NetEase launches Cyber Hunter, a sci-fi battle royale on iOS and Android
- Game of Thrones: Conquest revenue grows 90% thanks to TV show’s final season
- Samsung delays Galaxy Fold indefinitely: ‘We will take measures to strengthen the display’
XR: AR / MR / VR
- a16z Pitch Room: Sandbox VR
- Magic Leap gets $280m investment from Docomo
- Valve reveals Index, its top-of-the-line virtual reality headset
- Oculus Quest interview — Standalone VR built for value-conscious gamers
- Microsoft announces the $3,500 HoloLens 2 Development Edition
- Microsoft’s TORC will let you feel squeezable objects in AR and VR
-
Pokemon Pass mobile app, which grants digital rewards when visiting retail stores, launches in the U.S.
Asia
- China gaming regulator to introduce new approval process this month
- Related: Tencent extends its digital lock age cap to 16
- Newzoo data on South Korean mobile gaming market
- South Korean FTC examining consumer regulations surrounding in-game purchases
- Nepal Supreme Court suspends ban on PUBG
Esports
- Nielsen: Big brands dive into esports to court youth market
- Immortals raises $30 million for esports expansion, acquires Brazil’s Gamers Club
- Fnatic raises $19 million to expand its global esports brand
Tech / Entertainment
- Walmart Bets on TV Shows for Families, Date Night in Media Push
- Amazon & Google launch free music services in challenge to Spotify
- Tencent-backed live-streaming firm DouYu files for $500 million U.S. IPO
- Snapchat is launching an SDK to let devs use Bitmoji avatars in their own games
Overtime
- Razer Is Making a Gamer Toaster
- Podcast: Interview with Shuhei Yoshida of Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Meet Matt Calkins: Billionaire, Board Game God And Tech's Hidden Disruptor
- The Saga Of 'Star Citizen,' A Video Game That Raised $300 Million—But May Never Be Ready To Play
- OpenAI’s Dota 2 bot defeated 99.4% of players in public matches
- Behind the scenes with Perfume, Japan's most futuristic pop group
- How Amazon created the Prime membership program
- Will Artificial Intelligence Enhance or Hack Humanity? [KL: fascinating philosophical discussion with Yuval Noah Harari & Fei-Fei Li]
- Related: Mark Zuckerberg & Harari discuss the future of the internet and society
- NYT: Profile of Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube
- Why contactless cards haven’t caught on in the U.S.
- McKinsey: How young Chinese consumers are reshaping global luxury
See more or subscribe at: https://tinyletter.com/kliuless
Twitter: @kliuless
LinkedIn: @kliuless