Category Marketing | Philo Stuff

March 30, 2015 by Philo

ETH game and SGDA work

No theory lessons today, horray
Instead we met up and worked on our ETH game.

The evening was spent mostely on SGDA organisation things aka Fantasy Basel and Swiss Online Marketing tasks

Edit: Totally forgot to mention the awesome First Strike infographics that came out today! I had the pleasure to work on them during my internship and they have been tweaked and released now. Take a look at it: First Strike, year one in numbers

in ETH GameLab Collaboration / Marketing / SGDA 0 comments

March 26, 2015 by Philo

Zoomz

The Zoomz festival for film and media is premiering this week. It takes place in Luzern and the target audience are schools. Teachers can sign up their classes for different movies and presentations. Game Design is one of them.

Gemma, Robin, Markus and me were invited to present our games Drei, Tower Offense and Elarooh. Additionally to offering a glimpse behind the development process we also talked about possible game related careers in Switzerland. We felt like missionaries, talking about the different Swiss studios, game history, education and so on. It was a great experience telling the students about the path we chose and invite them to join us
At the end of the presentation we were interviewed by the students radio 3Fach. You can listen to the interview here.
There is only one downside to the whole story: The festival organizers told us about their attempts to invite schools to our presentation and It seems that game design is still a topic that many teachers reject. We need to improve that until next year when the festival takes place again!

To end the day perfectly we were invited for dinner. We were sitting at a table with the Vloger and Youtuber manniac. He’s a really nice guy and we had a great time talking about animation and other stuff

Thanks a lot Zoomz for having us! We wish you the best of luck with your future program!

in Marketing / SGDA 0 comments

March 22, 2015 by Philo

Finding a job in game marketing and Pitching

In the morning I spent some time looking up upcoming festivals and events and shared them around. I also tried to gather ideas for the upcoming Koboldgames marketing, but my head played tricks on me. Really need to start working harder on that soon!

After lunch I metup with Cynthia at the ZHdK. Cynthia has worked in the advertising industry for several years and got bored with it recently. She now wants to find a job in game marketing and asked me for advise (as if I knew xD).
Alice joined us as Ubisoft came into discussion. We talked over different options together and found that staying in Switzerland was not one of them. Working at Blizzard would make Cynthias dream come true, but she’s also fine with starting smaller, with an internship at a medium-sized studio for example. Alice had the GREAT idea to just look all the contacts up in the latest Keyplayers magazine. Now Cynthia has a LOT of emails to write

*Random page of Keyplayers magazine*

Later in the afternoon I headed over to the Inkubator for a lesson in marketing & communication. Daniel Frei joined the event as an external mentor. We had to pitch our concepts again, this times focusing on the lesson topic. It went quite well and motivated me to work on the game even harder >=)

in Inkubator / Marketing 0 comments

March 9, 2015 by Philo

Master model & Shelter 2 review

This week we have a special master course, which means school lessons every day…
In this course we pretend to finish our master thesis within just one week. We even have to present a product in the end, the real deal. Today we had to build a 3D model of our project idea. Here is a snippet of mine, still very undefined:

During lunch break, I published my FIRST REVIEW EVER on our site about nature and biology games, Playful Oasis. Thanks Andi and Isa for spell checking! Go reeead it

In the evening a friend of mine went live with his game kickstarter.
Really? Again? I have too many friends running kickstarters
The game is called Dino System. I had the pleasure to try it a few weeks ago. This game is so full of love, perfectly worked out systems and potential. Daniele, the project lead, has spent countless nights to bring the project this far. The Kickstarter goal is only 5000$, seriously this has to work out!
Support <3?

in Marketing / Master Theory Lesson / Playful Oasis 0 comments

February 27, 2015 by Philo

Kobold visit & Happy hunting

I’m not a mornings person. Seriously, I’m not.
When I was a kid, getting up early for school was horrible. Some things never change.
On my way to visit Koboldgames in Olten this morning, I feel asleep in the train and woke up just in time to get out. Luckily, after arriving at the office my mood cleared very fast. Well, how could it not if you talk about funny story twists and discuss beautiful mockups for a brandnew game project? We also set up all my accounts and logins for the collaboration.

Back in Zurich we had visitors from Samsung Switzerland. They gave us an insight of their current working fields and we discussed possible cooperations. Let’s hope some of them come true
A bit later another visitor joined us at the ZHdK, Filip Kostovic. He’s currently working on an app for ice hockey coaches. So if YOU are an ice hockey coach, contact him right away!
René treated us to dinner (as he always does, he’s way too generous).

And after that… oh man, I haven’t been to the Real Life for ages. Last year, we often ran playtesting for several games at this location. So if YOU are a game designer who wants to have a playtesting session for his/her game, let me know. At the Real Life, there are plenty of people interested in games, so playtesters are just flying by one after another
We played some rounds of Monster Hunter together and after that it was time to go home.

PS:
If YOU are an ice hockey coach AND a game designer, you won.

in Kobold Games / Marketing 0 comments

February 24, 2015 by Philo

ETH “Party Evolution” & Cadence Marketing

After a short intro to blogging this morning, we headed over to the ETH again.
As you already know, the ZHdK Game Design Master student are collaborating with the ETH GameLab.
During the weekend, our group prepared a rough concept.
Our plan is to make a multiplayer party game about four animals that need to survive together.
The environment is constantly changing and confronts you with new dangers. Hmmm, sound kinda….familiar….
But but but! It’s all physics-based now! You can climb on top of each other and stuff. You’ll see!

Today, we had to pitch our ideas to the other teams and teachers.
Here we see team Andi / Diego / Manuel <- he worked on Overcoat
Please pay close attention to Andis faboulous presentation pose.

When I got home and started up my computer to play a relaxing round of Binding of Isacc, I suddenly became aware of something.
Cadence, a beautiful music puzzle game two friends of mine are making, went live on Kickstarter today!
After throwing in all my remaining money for this month, I started to write mails. Lots of mails. And tried to figure out different sites and people I could reach out to. Our teacher René Bauer was a great help, answering my spontaneous questions in the middle of the night! Thanks René.
Well now, if you’ve got an idea how to promote/push the game, please let me know
Please spread the word and if you have a cent to spare, please back their Kickstarter!

in ETH GameLab Collaboration / Games / Marketing 1 comments

February 23, 2015 by Philo

Pro Helvetia Business Workshop

Today, the Niche and Tower Offense Team (and all the other Call for projects finalists) gathered in Bern to attend the Pro Helvetia Business Workshop.
The day started of nerdy, as we played Tower Offense in the train.

After a small breakfast we split up into different groups, all attending the following lectures by turns:

Accounting & Finance (Dr. Alexander Fust)
Business Model (Jasmin Mastnak & Marco Busse)
How to generate users (Erinrose Sullivan)
Market Analysis (André Bernhardt)
Pitch Training (Jan Fülscher)

I want to thank our teachers for their interesting insights and inputs!
Really enjoyed listening to the different perspectives on business models and strategies.
Especially interesting for me was the business André Bernhardt is running.
He would be a great fit to mentor my master thesis. *Getting in contact*

And THIS is were we had our Apéro.
Super fancy location and even fancier food.

Thanks a lot Pro Helvetia and Tech Bridge (hope I’m not forgetting anyone!) for today

in Marketing / Niche - a genetics survival game / Tower Offense 0 comments

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