Report on making sales pitch for Video Games through social networking sites.

Brief Introduction about Social Networking:

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called
"nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of
interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange,
dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of network theory

consisting of nodes and ties (also called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the
individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the
actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be
many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has
shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of
nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved,
organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving
their goals.

People have used the idea of "social network" loosely for over a century to connote
complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from
interpersonal to international.

With close to 1200 million users worldwide and with growth rate 27% of number of
users per year it is one of the fastest means of communication.

Brief Introduction about video games:

A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to
generate visual feedback on a video device. The electronic systems used to play
video games are known as platforms; examples of these are personal computers
and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers
to small handheld devices. Specialized video games such as arcade games, while
previously common, have gradually declined in use.

Social Aspects
Demographics:
The November 2005 Nielsen Active Gamer Study, taking a survey of 2,000 regular
gamers, found that the U.S. games market is diversifying. The age group among
male players has expanded significantly up into the 25 - 40 age groups. For casual
online puzzle-style and simple mobile cell phone games, the gender divide is more
or less equal between males and females. Females have also been found to show
an attraction to online multi-player games where there is a communal experience.
More recently there has been a growing segment of female players engaged with
the aggressive style of games historically considered to fall within traditionally male
genres (e.g., first-person shooters). According to the ESRB almost 41% of PC
gamers are women.

Multiplayer:
Video gaming has traditionally been a social experience. Multiplayer video games
are those that can be played either competitively, sometimes in Electronic Sports,
or cooperatively by using either multiple input devices, or by hot seating. Tennis for
Two, arguably the first video game, was a two player game, as was its successor
Pong. The first commercially available game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had
two controller inputs.
Since then, most consoles have been shipped with two or four controller inputs.
Some have had the ability to expand to four, eight or as many as twelve inputs with
additional adapters, such as the Multitap. Multiplayer arcade games typically
feature play for two to four players, sometimes tilting the monitor on its back for a
top-down viewing experience allowing players to sit opposite one another.

Benefits:

It has been shown that action video game players have better hand-eye
coordination and visuo-motor skills, such as their resistance to distraction, their
sensitivity to information in the peripheral vision and their ability to count briefly
presented objects, than non-players. Researchers found that such enhanced
abilities could be acquired by training with action games, involving challenges that
switch attention between different locations, but not with games requiring
concentration on single objects. It has been suggested by a few studies that
online/offline video gaming can be used as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of
different mental health concerns.
Learning principles found in video games have been identified as possible
techniques with which to reform the U.S. education system. It has been noticed that
gamers adopt an attitude while playing that is of such high concentration, they do
not realize they are learning, and that if the same attitude could be adopted at
school, education would enjoy significant benefits. Students are found to be
"learning by doing" while playing video games while fostering creative thinking.

Commercial Aspects

Game sales:

The three largest producers of and markets for computer and video games (in
order) are North America (US and Canada), Japan and the United Kingdom. Other
significant markets include Australia, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Mexico, France
and Italy. Both India and China are considered emerging markets in the video game
industry and sales are expected to rise significantly in the coming years. Irish are
the largest per capita consumers of video games.
Sales of different types of games vary widely between these markets due to local
preferences. Japanese consumers tend to purchase console games over computer
games, with a strong preference for games catering to local tastes. In South Korea,
computer games are preferred, especially MMORPG games and real-time strategy
games. There are over 20,000 Internet cafés in South Korea where computer games
can be played for an hourly charge.
The NPD Group tracks computer and video game sales in the United States. It
reported in 2004 that:
• Console and portable software sales: $6.2 billion, up 8% from 2003
• Console and portable hardware and accessory sales: $3.7 billion, down 35%
from 2003
• PC game sales: $1.1 billion, down 15% from 2006
PC games that are digitally distributed either directly or by networks such as Steam
are not tracked by the NPD, and Steam does not list sales numbers for games
downloaded through their service. Unauthorized distribution is also rampant on the
PC.
These figures are sales in dollars, not units; Unit shipments for each category were
higher than the dollar sales numbers indicate, because more software and hardware
was discounted than in 2003. But with the release of the next-generation consoles
in 2006, these numbers increased dramatically. The game and film industries are
also becoming increasingly intertwined, with companies like Sony having significant
stakes in both. A large number of summer blockbuster films spawn a companion
game, often launching at the same time to share the marketing costs.

Why making sales pitch for video games through social networking site:

There are several reasons why social networking sites is better option than other
means of marketing like telemarketing, direct marketing etc.
• Social networking sites have huge number of users (close to 1200 million)
and about 40% of them are regular visitors who check their profile or page on
an average once a day. That gives us a large consumer base for marketing
our product (video game).
• Most of the users of social networking sites are between age group of 18-30.
This is the age group where users have interest for video games. So we get
large numbers on these sites and they are easily approachable.
• Pages of social networking sites are easier to understand and this makes
selling through social networking sites much easier.
• Except for few social networking sites the ad cost on social networking sites
are fairly low and hence product can be advertised at cheaper cost.
• The demo version of the game can be also provided through social
networking site which gives user a chance to have hands on with the game.
• 3 out of 4 P’s of marketing specifications can be met at the same place and
at same time. They are Product specification, place and promotion.
• Product sold through social networking sites will be cheaper as compared to
sale through other medium as advertisement cost is reduced and also
transportation and ware housing cost is reduced because we need to have
centralized warehousing from where the product can be shipped.
• Criteria for both niche marketing and broad marketing can be fulfilled.
• It’s easier to do segmentation and differentiation of product based on the
price and specification just by providing the relevant details that saves the
time for consumers.
• In case of any issues with the product specification it the product can be
easily removed from the social networking site which is little difficult in case
of other means of marketing. The cost of doing this will be minimal.
• The most important things with the selling through social networking site is
that we get real time feed backs from the users regarding the products and
what all the improvements needs to be carried out along with their
suggestions that reduces the lead time in delivering the modified or
customized product.

How to market a video game through social networking sites:

We need to have a recognizable domain name for our site where we will have all
the details of the video games. This needs to be maintained in-house. We need
to make sure that our site is up and running all the time and it has latest
updated details of the video game whose promotion is being done through social
networking site. The web page needs to be simple for user to understand and
navigate easily with much hassle.
Now we will have to contact the owner of the social networking sites through
which we will be putting the advertisement. We need to negotiate the price and
location of the link that can be seen easily to the user. The negotiations for the
price can be based on per click (where we have to pay only if the user clicks the
link) or the time based contract where we pay lump-sum amount for certain
period of time.
Once the deal is negotiated we need to create the link and post it on the social
networking site. We can also specify some rewards for the users like if they refer
this to certain number of friends they get something in return.
References

http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/a7fe9b8a0a010408019ac931643ebf2c/pg0.ht
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