mktg@msft

Raising the Stakes in Viral Video

EA is one of the videogames that understands their customers, has a sense of humor, and is able to create video content that actually is worth sending around. 

This video is in response to customers reporting a "glitch" in the game that caused Tiger Woods to appear to walk on water...

On Being Human

Sometimes we struggle on how much authenticity we can exhibit online.  As an organization, Xbox  is commited to the WOMMA ROI code, and we won't ever say we like something if we don't. 

Today, I posted this to Gamerscore Blog, in an effort to provide my opinion on some new features coming to the Xbox 360.

I’m a Daddy Gamer…

One of the great things about having a blog is that it offers us each a place to give our opinions, and hopefully in a way that allows us to show that we’re more than corporate robots.  Most of you reading posts from this blog understand that we’re employees of a corporation, but we’re also members of the gaming community.  Because of that, we’re going to agree on some things, disagree on others, like some things, and dislike others.  I think it’s what makes our community great.

As a community team, we get to participate in the communities we love: Tony, Chris and Sara live and breathe harcore gaming, Nelson is the poster child for mainstream gamers, and I get to play Daddy gamer both at home, and at work.  Sometimes, we offer our opinions about things we like, or don’t like, to people who are like us.  And as a team, we’ve committed to being honest, authentic, and never say something we don’t mean.

Funny thing is, some of the things I once questioned have grown on me.  When I first heard the concept of GamerScore, it didn’t appeal to me—to my style of gameplay.  I’m not competitive, I won’t play something I don’t think is fun.  Before the Xbox 360 launched, I usually played without signing in at all.  Fast forward a few years, and I’m playing hours longer than usual, just to get a few Achievement Points so my GamerScore isn’t the lowest on our team (see the sidebar of the blog). 

When I first saw a demo of the new Xbox experience, I immediately felt drawn to it.

Because I’m such a visual person, the style appealed to me.  I love the idea of browsing my game library visually, and getting information about new games or PDLC in such a visual way. 

I like the idea of MMOGSGs (massively-multiplayer-online-game-show-games, my own made-up term for live server-based games), though it drives my wife crazy when I watch 1 vs. 100 and run the statistics after every decision. 

I really love the Party System, so I can hang out with my friends or family through several experiences, or chat as I walk through a slideshow of my photos with them (they may not love seeing 300 pictures of our latest weekend outing, but that's another issue). 

Because I have four “pre-teen” kids (and I can’t handle watching Camp Rock one more time), I love being able to watch a variety of NetFlix movies on my Xbox 360.  In fact, I already have Windows Media Center hooked up to NetFlix, so I can watch movies on my Xbox 360, but the new Xbox experience will make it even more seamless.

I like the idea of Avatars.  As I spend time with the developers, I sense the passion they have for every new feature, and I caught the vision they have for extending someone’s persona online.  I’m a Facebook junkie, because it allows me to present myself to my community in such a personal way, and learn so much about my friends.  So I really like the idea of a persistent, visual presence, that I can customize from day to day. It seems like it’s going to hit the sweet spot between being too cute and being too realistic.  Avatars should say something about me, in a fun, personal way, but not be so serious I have to spend hours tweaking to get it right. 

For more about the new Xbox experience, check out an article that was published today by Dean Takahashi, of an interview with John Schappert, where the Xbox LIVE VP describes more about the new Xbox experience. 

"VB: What was the thinking behind the changes to the (newly announced) Xbox Live dashboard interface? It’s your biggest change to what gamers see on the console since you introduced the Xbox 360 in 2005.

JS: We’re happy with the “blade” metaphor that we used in the original Xbox 360 interface. It was the first video game box where you could turn it on and enjoy games right from the hard drive through Xbox Live Arcade. You could buy games on Marketplace. As we added more and more content, it became more difficult to navigate. As we added more features — video marketplace, instant messaging, and video chat – we started to think of where we wanted to go in the future. We wanted to have it be more fun, simpler to use, easier to navigate, and more social. We wanted to think about features like Netflix. We have 20 million people now. They enjoy playing “Call of Duty 4,” “Halo 3″ and “Gears of War.” When we think of the next 20 million, they may enjoy those games but they also might enjoy a different level of experience. What we hoped we accomplished is an interface that the core will enjoy – because of its visual style, better search, more functionality — and more appealing and inviting for the new users buying our console. To me it is part of the puzzle. It’s about approachability, it’s about content, and it’s about price. We will go after all of those areas aggressively.

VB: What was the genesis of the Xbox Live avatars you introduced at the show?

JS: We are all gamers ourselves and we’ve enjoyed our own avatars in a multitude of games. We have had achievements on Xbox Live from day one. We’ve had gamer scores. We’ve had the (single identification) gamertag. People have their own web sites with XML links to our data. To me, avatars are a logical extension to give us countless ways to personalize our own styles. It’s not like we are using avatars to recreate the perfect human body. And it’s not too cutesy. It’s in the middle. It dresses up the core first-person shooter, who can be edgy. And the more casual player can dress up to look friendly."

Company Blogs in the Videogames Industry

Kotaku, a Gawker blog dedicated to videogames, did a nice article on the role of company-sponsored blogs in the videogames space.  Our blog, Gamerscore Blog, was mentioned.  Interesting read for anyone involved in company-written blogging. 

Hey, You Got Video Game Companies In Our Blogosphere

Marketing BY Blogging (vs. Blogging About Marketing)

Just when I think nobody's paying any attention to this languishing blog, I'm notified by a co-worker that I'm listed in Peter Kim's list of "Top Marketer Blogs."  Thanks, Peter!  And thanks to all you who still have a subscription to the feed or are watching this space. 

About once a week I think about posting something here, but with four kids at home, another blog (www.gamerscoreblog.com) that gets jeleaous when I cheat on her, and my extraordiarily busy work schedule, I don't get around her often enough. 

Something about "practicing what you preach," I guess.  I'm having an awesome time actually using all these fancy-schmancy Web 2.0 tools to do some real live brand marketing for Xbox.  I'm working with a passionate group of employees dedicated to supporting bloggers/podcasters who love our products.   I started with this blog, and have been lucky to actually get to be paid to do all the things I'd probably do anyway.  But I'm kind of stuck in "walking the walk" instead of "talking the talk."   

Feel free to watch the blog for my near-daily posts, though most of those are product-specific.  And if you're interested, you can catch our weekly podcast, our nearly-weekly video podcast, and my occasionally-updated Twitter feed. 

Speed Dating Exec Interview Commuinty Mashup

We're always trying to come up with new ways to involve our gamer community bloggers and podcasters.  I wrote up one thing we did at a recent trade show, E3, to get some face time for independant bloggers/podcasters with our executive staff, who normally only speaks with mainstream press.  Originally posted on Gamerscore Blog.

On Wednesday night, we held our first ever “speed interviews” sessions. Because E3 is such a short time with a lot of journalists and analysts, our executives were booked doing interviews or demos from 8am to 6pm, and every night there were meetings, parties, and other events that our executives were expected to attend. There just isn’t enough time in such a short period to include everyone who wanted one on one time with our execs.

We’ve done a few successful “blogger breakfast” sessions in the past, but we decided that doing a big, formal roundtable with several different might not be the best way to give our community members time with our execs. To keep it intimate, only a few sites were invited to the breakfast meetings, and even that format didn’t allow for much of a personal touch. Our community members didn’t get any one-on-one time with the executives, and didn’t let each site ask the questions for their particular communities (or were afraid of getting scooped if they did). The sites we invited tended to be the largest sites that really should be getting full appointments during the day (like Joystiq, Engadget, Kotaku, etc.), leaving out some of our most passionate community podcasters, bloggers, forum posters, and fan site owners. We know we invite everyone we can to our C3@E3 party, and our execs all love hanging out and chatting with community members there, but even a long conversation at a party doesn’t substitute for a formal interview.

We thought through the options, and figured that if speed dating could give you a feel for a possible “love connection” in a few minutes, maybe it would work for us not the love part, but maybe the “personal connection” part ;) ). Whether “speed interviews” was going to be a boom or a bust was anyone’s guess, but everyone liked the idea (at least in principle), so Tony, Chris, and April from our events staff set it up, and our executive staff agreed to give it a try.

Xbox.com posts a 360 degree panoramic view of the room.

We set up eight tables across a room, and had eight executives from different parts of our business sit at each one. The list included Peter Moore, Jeff Bell, Peter Molyneaux, Chris Early, Kevin Unangst, Aaron Greenberg, John Rodman, and Bungie’s Brian Gerard and Frank O’Connor.

We then chose leaders from several community sites, including Xbox360Fanboy, Evil Avatar, GamertagRadio, Achievement Junkie, and active forum posters from sites like TeamXbox, and Xbox.com.

Each group met for four minutes, then took one minute to move to the next table. After a round of eight interviews, we took a five minute break, and brought in eight more groups. I know four minutes doesn’t sound like much, but because each interviewer came prepared with questions, everyone jumped right in, and got to ask some questions nobody else had thought of. I haven’t seen any reports of the meetings, but everyone who participated thought it turned out great.

We hope our community leaders got to know our execs a little better, and gathered some unique information to report back to their community.  We were able to try a format that got as many community members through as we could. Our execs got a break from the journalists and analysts they’d been meeting with all week, and had a chance to get to know some of our community leaders, and hear what their community members are asking.

I hope it gives you a glimpse of the value we all put on the community. We appreciate all your passion, your support, your suggestions, your patience when things go wrong, and even your criticisms. From our executives to all of us who dedicate all our time to supporting community, our games business wouldn’t be where it is without you. For those that couldn’t be there this time, you should know we’re always looking for more ways to involve all of you whenever we can.

I posted a few photos of the interviews on Flickr, and I’ll post links to the stories/write-ups/podcasts as I can.

Gamertag Radio
E307 Coverage: Bungie Interview
E307 Coverage: Peter Molyneux from Lionhead Studios Interview

Evil Avatar
[E3 2007] - 4 Minutes with Microsoft Execs

Xbox 360 Fanboy
X3F interview: 4 minutes in the dark with Peter Moore

Twittering

Oh, ya.  I'm Twittering.  www.twitter.com/johnporcaro.

My reader?  Twitteroo. 

Hanging out at Gnomedex

Ya, I'm a geek, and I can prove it.  Today, I'm hanging out at Gnomedex, Chris Pirillo's gathering of tech enthusiasts, bloggers, and web junkies.

We created a "Games Lounge" for folks to take a few minutes to hang out and play a few games.  Sean Alexander from "Addicted to Digital Media" took a few pictures...

The Games Room, with Xbox and Windows stations

The main session room

WOMMA Basic Training

It's being live-blogged at http://www.womma.org/wombat/.  Good overview of some of the most interesting comments coming from the conference. 

Started out the day talking about ethics.  The Word of Mouth Marketing Association talks about "The Honesty ROI."

• Honesty of Relationship
  Say how you're associated with the company.  Don't say you're not if you're being paid to share your opinion online.
• Honesty of Opinion
  Don't lie, don't say something's great if you don't think it is.
• Honesty of Identity: Say who you are
  I guess "Mini-Microsoft" doesn't score too high here.

I'd say that most Microsoft bloggers adhere to this kind of policy.  And as a company, I'm sure that most of our "word of mouth" marketing does too.  I wonder how something like "I love bees" fits into "say who you are..."  :)

WOMBAT

So for months I've wanted to get more involved with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), so what better way to jump in than to offer to do a case study at the upcoming conference in San Francisco? 

Join me there to hear about what we're doing in Xbox to make sure we're staying close to our best customers.  I'll present a case study about the thinking behind the big launch party we did (Zero Hour), and talk a bit about the Online Community team I lead. 

I think we're doing some really innovative, yet obvious (at least to me) things.  I have a strong position of always being genuine, and to try to make things as organic as possible.  Nothing kills good community participation better than talking "to" customers instead of talking "with" them. 

WOMBAT (WOMMA's "Word of Mouth Basic Training" conference)
June 20-21
San Francisco, CA

Has it Really Been Two Months?

Dang!  I've been a blogging fool over at http://gamerscoreblog.com, and I've neglected this (left brain) blog.  My wife's on a business trip in Nashville, and she ran into someone who mentioned this blog, kind of made me feel guilty about neglecting it. 

So much has happened in my little work world.  I'm doing a job I'm 110% totally passionate about, and it's given me a new lease on my 15-year Microsoft career.  I need to debrief a bit on what we're doing and why I think it's so amazing, yet so logical.  I'd start tonight, but I'm off to LA tomorrow for E3.  It's going to be an exciting/crazy/frenetic/exhausting week! 

Stay tuned to Gamerscore!