MKTG 3800 Blane Interview Gaming Su21

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In a lively discussion with Triple Point's Blane Humphreys, Tyra Burton delves into the dynamics of PR in the gaming industry. Covering Blane's transition from freelance journalism to becoming an account supervisor at a leading PR agency, they explore the nuances of strategic communication, client relationships, and the industry's recent trends. Highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on gaming and fascinating campaigns like the ARG for 'Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2,' Blane shares insights into game PR, the importance of storytelling, and the evolving landscape of influencer marketing.

Highlights

Blane Humphreys moved from Georgia to California to further his career in gaming PR. 🌍
The gaming industry thrived during COVID-19, becoming a pivotal social outlet. 🕹️
Successful PR in gaming involves strategic storytelling and brand building, rather than direct sales. 📊
International campaigns require careful compliance with diverse regulations like GDPR. 📜
EVE Online's initiative, Project Discovery, contributed significantly to COVID-19 research. 🧬

Key Takeaways

Games have been a social lifeline during COVID-19, fostering community and connection. 🎮
PR in gaming isn't just about press releases; it's about building a brand and strategic storytelling. 📝
Crafting tailored messages for diverse media audiences is key in game marketing. 🎯
Innovative campaigns, like ARGs, can boost engagement and exceed expectations. 🚀
The rise of influencers highlights a shift in marketing strategies towards more direct consumer engagement. 🌟

Overview

Blane Humphreys' journey in the gaming industry is marked by strategic growth and adaptation. Starting as a freelance reporter, he quickly integrated into the gaming community through various associations in Georgia. Eventually, this path led him to a prominent role as an account supervisor at Triple Point, a leading games PR agency. Here, Blane emphasizes the importance of strategic counsel over traditional PR tactics.

During his chat with Tyra Burton, Blane shares captivating insights into some standout campaigns, such as the ARG for 'Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.' This inventive campaign not only engaged players through a fake dating app but also highlighted the vital role of creativity in PR strategies. Meanwhile, Eve Online's Project Discovery showed how games can contribute positively to real-world issues, like COVID-19 research.

Blane observes the growing influence of games as a service model and influencer marketing in modern game PR. By focusing on brand building and community engagement, rather than just pushing sales, the gaming industry continues to grow and innovate. Despite challenges, the increased acceptance and coverage from mainstream media signal a promising future for gaming's reputation and influence.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Guest Background The chapter begins with a musical introduction, followed by the host Tara Burton welcoming listeners to the podcast 'Entertainment Marketing.' The focus of this episode is on games and the gaming industry, featuring guest Blaine Humphreys from Triple Point. Tara initiates the conversation by asking Blaine how he is doing. Blaine expresses his enthusiasm for being on the podcast, highlighting the enjoyment of opportunities like this during the confinement of the COVID-19 pandemic. He appreciates the chance to interact with others despite being physically separated.
01:30 - 06:30: Blaine's Career Journey The chapter "Blaine's Career Journey" begins with a discussion about living in California, specifically the Bay Area, and a reference to Georgia, particularly Kennesaw. The conversation touches on Blaine's relocation from Georgia to pursue his career in the gaming industry. Blaine provides a brief background about himself, mentioning that he has been working in the gaming industry for approximately eight or nine years.
06:30 - 14:30: Public Relations in Gaming The chapter titled 'Public Relations in Gaming' explores the journey of an individual who started as a freelance reporter and became heavily involved in the gaming industry by joining local organizations such as the Georgia Game Developer Association and the International Game Developer Association in Atlanta. The narrative details their career progression, beginning with a PR role at a small indie games agency based in Santa Monica while working remotely from Atlanta. In 2017, the individual moved to the Bay Area to work at the agency Triple Point, marking a significant step in their career.
14:30 - 30:00: The Role of Gaming Influencer Marketing This chapter discusses the role of gaming influencer marketing, starting with an introduction from a leading games PR agency. The conversation includes a brief mention of a 2012 graduate from Georgia Southern, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations. The discussion highlights the strategic nature of combining gaming with PR, setting the stage for understanding how influencers contribute to the marketing landscape in the gaming industry.
30:00 - 38:00: Impact of COVID-19 on Gaming Industry The chapter explores the transformation within the gaming industry due to COVID-19 from a professional perspective, illustrated by a personal career progression from an account executive to an account supervisor. It distinguishes between the tactical nature of entry-level roles and the strategic responsibilities of higher-level positions, reflecting on broader marketing and communication strategies within the industry.
38:00 - 40:00: Networking and Career Advice In this chapter, the focus is on the career progression from engaging in tactical tasks to eventually creating strategic plans. It highlights the transition one experiences in their career, moving from executing tasks to devising them. In college, there's a dual focus on both strategic and tactical training, but entering the workforce often requires relearning and recalibrating one's approach from academic teachings to practical applications. Initially, individuals execute tasks, but as they gain experience, they progress to higher-level strategic planning roles.
40:00 - 43:00: Tips for Breaking into the Gaming Industry This chapter focuses on the importance of gaining hands-on experience in order to break into the gaming industry. Being involved in day-to-day tasks such as communication and execution provides valuable insights into strategy formulation. The speaker emphasizes that engaging in all levels of work, from talking to reporters, clients, and studios to performing execution tasks, equips individuals with the knowledge necessary to understand and accomplish various strategic objectives. The practical, on-the-ground experience is crucial for anyone looking to enter and succeed in the gaming industry.

MKTG 3800 Blane Interview Gaming Su21 Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hi i'm tara burton and welcome to entertainment marketing we're going to be talking about games today and the gaming industry with blaine humphreys from triple point so how are you doing today blaine i am doing very good uh thank you for having me on to do this it's a lot of i've been looking forward to do things like this especially you know being trapped in the house during uh the coveted time so opportunities like this are always fun it's like you can talk to other people it's like an exciting part and right and we're in separate sides of the
00:30 - 01:00 country you're living out in california and yeah maybe the bay area um and i know you're out in the georgia area we refer to it as kennesaw it's awesome but you moved out there from from georgia to be to continue your job in the gaming industry i did um yeah so i guess to give a bit of background about me uh so i have been in the games industry for oh god like eight or nine years at this
01:00 - 01:30 point um so i started as a freelance reporter and then i also joined a couple local organizations in georgia like the georgia game developer association and the international game developer association atlanta chapter uh got really involved in the industry and then i started at a small indie games pr agency uh they were based out in santa monica but i worked remotely in atlanta uh and then in 2017 i moved out to the bay area to my current agency which is triple point uh one of
01:30 - 02:00 the leading games pr agencies uh and yeah i've been here ever since and you graduated from georgia's southern if i remember correctly yep graduated in 2012 with uh bs and pr which is quite a combination of letters if you think about it an accurate combination of letters might be uh i'd say they are strategic [Music] yeah we'll go with that that works really well
02:00 - 02:30 um it's yeah but no it's been a lot of fun yet so you know and since joining the current agency i'm at i started as an account executive and have now worked my way up to all of an account supervisor uh which is definitely like two ends of the spectrum in terms of the type of work you're doing it's all pr and it's all part of like broader marketing and comms but uh one's much more tactical and one's much more strategic and high level absolutely so yeah that's very common
02:30 - 03:00 most people start off in a job where they're doing tactical tasks you know they're doing the strategic plan and then you move up and one day you're actually creating the street strategic plan which is interesting because like you know in college at least at southern you know we were learning everything right it was like here's how you do something strategically and here's how you would do something tactfully but like when you start the job you realize like you have to sort of recalibrate yourself and go back to like okay now that like
03:00 - 03:30 i'm talking to reporters and talking to clients talking to studios i'm not doing all the strategy you know i'm doing the the day-to-day stuff that needs doing and it in and what i've learned is when you're doing all of the strategic all the day-to-day stuff and the like comms and the execution of everything it informs how you will approach a strategy because like you know you don't have all the hands-on experience you need you actually get your hands wet and know what it means to actually accomplish those things so what are some of the
03:30 - 04:00 things that you do in terms of pr and marketing or comms for the gaming industry and if you want to talk about any of your particular games that you're a part of that's fine or if you can't that's fine too yeah um so i could give like some high level examples and call out some highlights obviously i can't go into all of the strategy for that highlights are great like you know even five years ago highlights we like we take yeah no so um basically we so as an agency our role is to
04:00 - 04:30 help assist our clients you know we we provide them we're not just doing uh you know what i consider normal pr right and and so one of the core components that at least we believe in that triple point is we are more than just a media list you know we're we're not just going to say yes to everything and blast out a press release to our database of you know contacts and call out a day that's just that's not good work uh our value
04:30 - 05:00 is providing strategic council recommendations uh putting together an actual plan and then executing on it and also providing higher level business guidance and counsel um you know beyond just like here's how we get press it's thinking about like why are we doing this thing or here's a stunt or an activation we can do to help meet other business objectives and so there's two components to it there's you know the product stuff and then there's the corporate level stuff and both have very different approaches
05:00 - 05:30 and there's a lot of different factors you have to consider ranging from you know what's happening in the industry at large you know we had e3 last week which is the largest like series of press conferences in the industry that's a jam-packed schedule if you're not part of it maybe don't announce something in that window because reporters will hate you but then separately there's on like the business side you have to factor in things like what is required by law that you have to announce what does stakeholders want you know what do the investors like
05:30 - 06:00 what do you what obligations you have to them how can you plan strategically and like message the things that you want to do and then even to go and i know i'm like jumping way ahead here but then like going further into that when you have to work with like international clients and international pr partners they have a whole separate set of needs um so one of my big accounts is paradox interactive and they're based in sweden and we have to work a lot with me making sure they're meeting like the swedish
06:00 - 06:30 financial regulations whenever we're making an announcement so uh there's there's a whole lot to think about and a lot that you don't really learn until you're doing it right and very client specific too like every industry has its different types of privacy issues because privacy issues are huge all over the place now and so i know that gaming has its own set and you probably have to deal with some of those so yes so one of the things that
06:30 - 07:00 often gets overlooked or maybe not a really extra word that okay one thing that when you are in the industry and you're working in games it's obvious but it's not obvious to people from the outside is people are very passionate about their hobbies and that manifests in a wide range of ways uh it's good ways to put that a perfect example of this is the epic uh versus apple lawsuit that is still ongoing um that court
07:00 - 07:30 in the u.s court system was not ready to have thousands of you know people from the general public listening right so when they first started those trials and their call system got like flooded and they uh they didn't know how to like mute the things they weren't ready for you know gamers to start screaming at the judge so uh so there was that whole component you know but they they were very passionate about
07:30 - 08:00 what it was that they were believing they were supporting and so they uh you know those things you have to adapt to and then but with that came a lot of uh things that would normally be part of the like discovery process or the legal proceeds you know like sharing um documentation about like all the various parties involved but as the trial unfolded you know uh apple and epic were like trying to get documentation from all of their different partners which
08:00 - 08:30 involved a lot of studios right and i know some of like our accounts got involved in it because you know they were trained they're trying to pull records from the epic game store and and so like the judge as they were getting ready to like release documents you know our company's lawyers were like no like you don't release that lock that away and it's it turned into like a whole separate thing but on the pr side we're having to monitor it because if something gets out that our client was not ready to get out we got to be
08:30 - 09:00 ready to respond to it right and that's a big part of like if we talk about the differences between like a marketing department quote unquote and pr is that you guys are the ones that are responding to and dealing with the media yeah and so there's a few ways you know you can approach it and i feel like you know the the media is sort of the blanket term that gets lost around and there's different levels of media right so you've got
09:00 - 09:30 your mainstream media like your cnn and your nbc and your new york times and washington post but then you've got your enthusiast media like your igns your game spots pc gamers kotaku's and then even further into that you've got the very niche media so like if you're a game or studio making up or vr games you've got upload vr and like vr focus and you know so and they all have varying degrees of interest and you would also need to target each one of them differently with
09:30 - 10:00 a different message depending on like where what appeals to their audience yeah absolutely and that the the language changes too like when you get into a niche market you can use very specific language that you can't use for the general public exactly not just the language but the entire strategy so um one of the games i work on is is eve online and it is yeah i forget that too so i'm just like oh yeah i work on this that's pretty awesome so eve online is
10:00 - 10:30 known for having these like huge space battles uh and these like this very tight-knit community right and so mainstream media they are very much into community stories uh so as an example eve online did this thing what they call project discovery it is a citizen science in-game initiative you know where uh players basically help classify data
10:30 - 11:00 um and so in 2020 eve online pivoted project discovery to be part of covet 19 research and they at scale we just announced this uh about a month ago um at scale they saved scientists over 300 years worth of research in covid 19 income 19 research and so the purpose of it was not to
11:00 - 11:30 you know find the the cure that we're all taking now but it was to develop treatments for future versions of the virus and and that data that's already being used and like by scientists right now uh now taking that to the media they don't care about project discovery they do care about the 300 years worth of research right all about framing we were able to get placed in the new york times daily like corona virus brief with that which is
11:30 - 12:00 crazy to think about you know because it's a it's an mmo spaceship mmo right but now it's contributing to covet 19 research and you have to be able to explain this in a way that lots of people can understand um eve online also had uh the biggest battle in video game history actually twice last year they had uh one in july and then one again on new year's um and it wasn't just this big battle as
12:00 - 12:30 part of this big war that's been going on among the place but it's all it's all entirely player driven again mainstream media doesn't care about this big in-game player war right right that doesn't matter to them enthusiasts media loved it they ate it up mainstream media loved some of the player stories that came out of it though like um players making real life uh like promotional like propaganda campaigns to try and recruit players to their side and like having recruitment stuff uh there was an actual us senator who
12:30 - 13:00 was like using his diplomatic skills in the eve online so that's awesome uh you know and those are the kinds of stories that like that mainstream media eats up but then on more enthusiast media you can talk about all the various in-game updates you know like this event's happening in game does this other thing is happening this update's coming soon you know like that stuff even broader enthusiast media doesn't care about but your core
13:00 - 13:30 mmo targets you know the people that are actually buying and playing your game they're gonna read and be into that well i think that's that's a real important thing to keep in mind from a marketing perspective pr is just that know your audience and target your message to the audience that you're going for and have a reason for doing it absolutely yeah and and especially with like like games at large kind of really blew up last year because everyone was stuck at home during covet you know it was like as a lot of industries were struggling to get by the
13:30 - 14:00 games industry was just blowing up and you know animal crossing is a good example of this oh yes not only did you have a game you could play you also had a way for people to stay connected with each other which was very nice to have i might i might have a nintendo switch with an animal crossing on it right and a lot of those and it helps foster a lot of community stories you
14:00 - 14:30 know that that on the pr side that's just pr ammunition you can take to anyone right and get them to focus on i think that people stories like i teach social media as well and we talk a lot about storytelling and how important it is to be able to tell your brand story or the consumer's story to connect people into what you know you're selling yeah well and it's it's not just trying to push a product you know like it is you're trying to build a brand and so one of the core differences
14:30 - 15:00 whenever we're approaching pr remember we're trying to pitch our agency to a prospective client is like you're not investing in pr to generate sales you know that's what marketing and like influencer budgets and everything or for you're investing in pr to build a brand so that you know when people think of say paradox or blizzard or eve online or whatever they have a certain mindset that goes along with it i agree so i'm interested do you know how eve's um usage did it grow during coven
15:00 - 15:30 yes exactly i can't go into numbers i i was feeling like it probably went up given two epic battles but i could have been wrong no it's actually kind of funny because um uh our agency also is the agency of record for blizzard and so it's i like to compete with our world of warcraft team i can understand that being a worker i'm
15:30 - 16:00 still a warcraft player so my niece just started playing my my our god child just started playing world of warcraft so we were chomping to get in there and and help her with her little druids it's it's i mean like they have better brand and name recognition there's no telling that but uh but if you're a gamer you know eve online i mean as an mmorpg i definitely do so it's it's what i would consider like wow was mainstream uh eve is gamer
16:00 - 16:30 famous yes i i would that's a good way of putting it now you're definitely two different markets um so how have you enjoyed working with a company in stockholm and and does that complicate things being in two different countries or has it been fairly seamless uh it's it's been pretty seamless i mean every account is different so you know like ccp's in iceland paradoxes and stockholm we also work with uh board gaming company in paris you
16:30 - 17:00 know like we've we've worked with a pokemon company in japan um we've got you know when you have such a strong international presence you just get really good at juggling it one of the things that i never thought especially in school that i would get really good at doing is time zone conversions so always specifying time because like you know yeah i like you because when
17:00 - 17:30 you're managing an international team you have to to list out like oh the press embargo on reviews lives at 3 p.m and it's like oh 3 p.m what what right it's like oh 3 p.m pacific so i never thought of times until jenna moved to portugal and i was like okay now i have to actually try to figure this out on a constant basis is she awake what's going on here so i have a an elgato stream deck that i bought specifically just so i can have all the
17:30 - 18:00 different time zones of my clients on it it's like a very specific niche use for that product that's not what it's meant for but it works for me no that's all that matters so what's been thinking about your career in gaming what's been something that you've seen or something that you've been a part of uh that really like said to you that that that's magic that's something that just worked and was a great success so
18:00 - 18:30 there's been a few moments um so i would think that one of my favorite i guess campaigns i've ever done and been a part of uh so we we also worked on um vampire the masquerade bloodlines too which um and everything from the world of darkness bran but uh and i know bloodlines two has had its ups and downs there's no secret about that but the announcement we did for it was
18:30 - 19:00 incredible it actually won an award for like one of the best um like announcement shows ever done so we um in december um actually it was in january of 2019 we kicked off an arg and so we were having this uh we worked with this separate company the separate arg company who created a fake dating app called tinder but it was t-e-n-d-e-r and the logo looked like
19:00 - 19:30 kind of like a lopsided blood drop but uh and but with tinder there was a uh there was like this ceo who had been like kicked out from the company because she found out about like their secrets and so when we kicked off the the press outreach for it i was role playing as this like conspiracy theorist ceo and i had like a fake email account set up that i was uh emailing press and was like oh my god
19:30 - 20:00 what is what is tinder what is going on here you know and it was and we had we had a website that like a fake news website that she was writing like publishing every time we were pointing media at and i remember some of the media were like what is going on here what why why are you talking to me and like i couldn't break character right and uh but what ended up happening is so there's actually a very relevant lesson here is you when you're working with different international
20:00 - 20:30 companies and you have different rules and regulations we had to deal with gdpr and so when we were doing this tinder campaign at one point during the campaign we were going to drive people to the tinder website so they could make an account and start solving the puzzles but when you make an account you have to disclose everything like from gdpr you have to disclose who the account is going to all the information you're collecting and everything so we had to reveal that it was paradox interactive that was behind this tinder
20:30 - 21:00 thing but we baked it into the uh the outreach you know for as this conspiracy theory i was like who is paradox interactive why are they behind tinder what do you know about this and but that moment that was when it clicked with a lot of reporters of like is this a masquerade game and it hyped we blew past all of our kpis the moment that that clicked because like with an arg you tend to get like one major news beat out of it but
21:00 - 21:30 then everything else just kind of follow on hype uh and then this went on i said this went on from january until march while i'm role playing as this like conspiracy theorist and trying to like lead media down this rabbit hole i am separately like as me reaching out to reporters putting them under embargo to start booking demos for the game for its big reveal at gdc and uh the game developers conference that's in san francisco and so
21:30 - 22:00 we uh when i started doing that outreach like because there was some overlap in the media list they were like you and i was like no i don't know what's going on there some crazy stuff because yeah it because like the moment it clicked and then my you know when all the articles hit this paradox working on the vampire the masquerade game and then i am in their inbox saying like hey paradox is revealing a new game do you want to check it out
22:00 - 22:30 um i think it's great that the gdpr a general data protection regulation for everybody out there it's um european unions everybody's got to know who you are thing on the internet uh really worked in your favor yeah they i mean only because we made it [Laughter] you know because when the the arg agency was trying really hard to like they're like how do we deal with this how did you know they didn't know um and so and i remember i was like
22:30 - 23:00 sitting in my room i was like what if we did this and that's what we did and it worked um good job we we had a big event so after after we had the um we got to gdc and we did demos with media you know for the whole week and then we had this big announcement event um it was like a mile away from the san francisco convention center and it was at night so we were like we don't even know who was going to show up to this thing but people who were participating like the general public who was participating
23:00 - 23:30 in the arg because we had breadcrumbed the the clues leading up to this event and so people who knew that it was going to happen could come in and participate and so we had like this big finale like show like this whole like we had like actors uh and we had you know they would like mingle in the crowd like dressed as vampires but like not obvious because you know you can't you can't break the masquerade and we had all these like arg like or these
23:30 - 24:00 like stations set up around the thing to like do different parts of the experience and like it was it was a whole thing the production was incredible uh and when we made the announcement it was like the best they got to live up to the hype that you gave them yeah no it was great it was i said to this day is still one of my like favorite campaigns i have been a part of um and it definitely like set the bar pretty high
24:00 - 24:30 you can role play while you're working is awesome yeah that's what that is just so some of the media figured out that it was me and still call me by my like fake name oh that's awesome oh well let's jump to modern day what do you think are some of the latest trends that are happening in in gaming and in games so we're at a bit of a crossroads right
24:30 - 25:00 now a lot of games are going to more games as a service um which is a game that's either free or freemium or has a price tag to it but is constantly updated with content and that you can then purchase things like battle passes um which is i realize that throwing a lot of like as crazy we might want to put it in english for those who are not gamers so so something like a uh
25:00 - 25:30 fortnight is an example okay yes it's a great one night is an example of games as service it's a free game but it's got cosmetics and these like big events that encourage you to participate you can buy a battle pass that encourages you to play more so battle pass is like you get a month's worth of content that you have to unlock but you have to purchase the ability to unlock it and we don't have to i mean it doesn't well in theory it shouldn't affect the
25:30 - 26:00 game at all uh but it's all just for cosmetic stuff uh and so that's that's where a lot of games are kind of pivoting to right now is that model because it's hugely lucrative i mean fortnight's one of the biggest games in the world after four years now you know it's um huge revenue stream you know among us as another example that that game wasn't intended to be as
26:00 - 26:30 popular as it is but you know uh uh also a big shift in terms of promotions as has pivoted towards influencer marketing oh and and this is you know apex legends uh is an example of this where they they paid a huge chunk of money to all the top twitch streamers and youtube content creators so that the day the game launched they had
26:30 - 27:00 all of the big content creators go live with videos right there and they had the streamers you know they had been playing for like a week or two weeks or sometime in advance so that when they started streaming that day they already had like a whole series of like professionals well and i i actually hadn't thought about twitch but it definitely makes a lot of sense in terms of influencer marketing and and getting that what the gameplay is actually like out there to your gamers yes exactly and and it's
27:00 - 27:30 they're among us as a is the perfect example of this that game had been out for like two or three years and then some big streamer somewhere just stumbled into it and then it just blew up you know that that's how it happened um you know so we're what we're seeing on the and this going back to why pr is an investment in brand influencers and like other marketing is what you use to generate sales
27:30 - 28:00 uh even at triple point you know we recognize that influencer marketing is where a lot of big publishers are putting a lot of money into so we've created an entire influencer platform called wovit which is to let influencer managers manage manage influencers at scale so the thing with influencers is you get a lot of crap i mean i get hundreds of emails a day from random people either pretending to be pewdiepie
28:00 - 28:30 or or they are uh you know some small channel but like you know i i don't have time and no influencer manager has time to verify all of those things so what we we created a platform that lets publishers they create a campaign for their game they set qualifications for that game like you must have this many youtube subscribers or this many average viewers this many twitch viewers you know whatever and it gives you a link when you get a
28:30 - 29:00 request you send them that link and the platform will verify qualify and if you've uploaded keys on it it'll give them a key and it'll attract content it'll track deliveries that's awesome and we're seeing a lot of interest in that yeah i would think that would be that's just fabulous because it takes a lot of the the grunt work out of it it does and this is the thing with pr is you have to be involved or at least be smart and know how to interact with all stages of the marketing pipeline
29:00 - 29:30 so because we're we're so integrated into all of it you know you're you're crafting the messaging you're crafting the plan you're trying to align with all of these different teams to make sure it all makes sense you know the the most well-crafted marketing strategy doesn't mean anything if you get a negative headline and you know ign or kotaku or polygon or whatever right you've got to be able to you have to incorporate all of these things well and
29:30 - 30:00 it's important that you're sending the same message out too right exactly well the same message in in the right message for the right segment you know it's if somebody's never heard of your game before they don't need to know all the mechanics you know they need to know at a high level what it is no it's true so if uh let's drop my brain just left my building i got so excited about influencer marketing and you having that program that i just forgot who i was
30:00 - 30:30 um so we've been living through covid at obviously exciting times um can you talk a little bit about kovit's impact on the gaming industry that you've seen i mean it's games has been one of the few industries that's exploded because of it i know i mentioned this a bit earlier but it's it it had a lot of effects that i don't think people were quite expecting like it makes sense in hindsight you know of course people are stuck at home they're going to play games but not only are they playing
30:30 - 31:00 games they're playing games online and when you're playing games online you're still getting that human connection and human interaction so that you know you're not just becoming a shut-in for a year no i i i do think i think sometimes we some people who are not gamers don't understand the depth of relationship you can create with somebody playing online yeah and there there was a i mean i know eve so
31:00 - 31:30 going back to eve online um they commissioned an entire study um what they ended up calling the eve effect and and the friendship machine uh because and this actually they got all this data right before covet hit oh february 2019 or 2020 february 2020 they they got all of this data about how uh it was like 73 of eve online players had made a lifelong friend like real life friend i would be
31:30 - 32:00 like that i forget the exact percentage but a huge percentage of eve online players had developed skills in the game that they then carried to their jobs and like ended up getting promotions um you know there's an article actually uh on kotaku about um this entrepreneur who started a multi-million dollar like logistics business using skills he learned in eve online he was he was just like yeah i basically
32:00 - 32:30 got an mba in business you know like by playing eve online and now i'm like the ceo of this like multi-million dollar company well we i actually have a friend whose son is autistic and he played um wow world of warcraft was what his dad played so he played and it actually taught him people skills in a safe space where you know he wasn't going to get ridiculed to his face but he learned how to cooperate with people to get tasks done that he wanted to do
32:30 - 33:00 and now he's amazing he has a master's degree he lives on his own and it's it's awesome i mean what you can learn in a game is amazing and on the pure side of that story is media love those oh yes yes that is absolutely true well and i think about it i have three at least three like good friends that i met in world of warcraft i've gone and met in person and i have others that i haven't met in person but i still
33:00 - 33:30 we still chat all the time on facebook or in the game i mean i have a guy in california who still goes can you heal for us and i'm like sure yeah i mean that's so so one of the things that covet i think did for games is it like games games have been inching towards mainstream like i would argue games have been mainstream for a while just i didn't want to accept it right when you've got i think it was like 67 60 to 70
33:30 - 34:00 of the population that plays games it's mainstream oh it's huge the number that plays games so what kovid ended up doing was it destigmatized a lot of the associations that come with playing games which is is nice to finally have that you know everybody who plays games is like duh can we talk about this publicly now is it okay can we not be like stigmatized right and so um that is this is one of the things that we've seen a lot more of and coming now that things are starting
34:00 - 34:30 to return to normal i mean games industry is still growing and people are now just more open about it the washington post created an entire segment for video game coverage it's called uh launcher like they have a whole thing now that didn't like it was starting to exist a few years ago but it really took off last year not that i'm taking notes but i am um viking including sp covers esports now yes absolutely there's a was it the new
34:30 - 35:00 york times you know they they cover they had a games and tech reporter uh you know they they have uh a lot of freelancers that roll through that are regularly writing games writing about games yeah well and i have a good friend who's an esports coach for pickens county high school and they've been state champions twice got the first state championship for their school in like decades
35:00 - 35:30 it's um it's it's wild i mean like esports is definitely still in a weird spot but it's growing and it's getting more accepted uh which is great you know they there's a whole documentary i saw just go live no no no it was sports illustrated yeah the cover of sports illustrated this month is actually an esports team it's faze clan yeah like that's really cool that is super cool i i think that i
35:30 - 36:00 think whatever you enjoy enjoy you know and if it's if it's a local sports team or if it's playing a video game who cares just have a good time yeah it's you know and there were there have been studies you know there was a uh recently a study that was conducted over the course of like 20 years that showed uh video games helped children with cognitive development you know because it encourages teamwork and communication and you know when you have like an
36:00 - 36:30 objective to do you're going to work to complete that objective and so you know a lot of the stuff the old stigmas of like gamers or shut-ins or they promote violence a lot of that is just not true when we now have the data to show it show it well and i had a friend who did his uh graduate research on using actually world warcraft as a mechanism of teaching reading skills and reading and comprehension because as they would go through and do quest and they would have to read the quest
36:30 - 37:00 amazingly their reading skills increased yeah now they're interested right right now it's like something that's important to them and the reading level and wow is not too low so it helped um him be able to do that so i he couldn't play because he's also addicted to mmorpgs so he's like i can't watch you play but go do this it'll be great get him to play eve that's not i like him i want him to lose
37:00 - 37:30 his wife so we'll just leave that over there so our time is just about wrapping up and i wanted to kind of touch with you any suggestions you had for somebody who was interested in working in the gaming industry because i think you really worked at um getting in there and networking and meeting people what would you suggest so presumably everyone who is watching this is going to be in georgia or at least possibly we are we are a
37:30 - 38:00 spread out group now because of covid i had students last semester in california florida and arizona so if you're in georgia well let's say georgia well i i i this will be more broadly too but if you're in georgia look at joining all of the local games groups there's three of them three or three big ones uh there's the georgia game developers association run by actually a mutual friend of ours uh greenberg there's the local
38:00 - 38:30 international game developers association those are actually per like region so if you're in the atlanta area it's igda atlanta and if you're in like south georgia there's a south georgia chapter okay but uh and then there's the local dave and bus or not dave and busters well maybe this david buss was like it's like a beer and games like bi-weekly meet-up thing it's probably the is it through meet-up though uh it's on facebook now but it's run by
38:30 - 39:00 a guy named uh joe cassiball he's always trying to encourage people to come check it out but uh those are the three like big big core groups in georgia but taking that and going more broadly like outside of georgia networking is the you know you know the thing to do um you know you know the phrase it's not what you know it's who you know but also who knows you and why do they know you uh i like that and you know that's
39:00 - 39:30 something that's really stuck with me uh at the meetups be you know a generally nice person uh don't go there with the objective of getting a job because people don't want to be like handed resumes every day you know like just be it just be yourself um but go to if you get a chance go to gdc you know they have an entire career fair um it's it's a hybrid event now
39:30 - 40:00 so you know it's a bit more accessible than having to come out to the bay area but uh strongly check that out and we have siege here in at ksuq that um development focused um yes check it out you know but it's definitely more game development uh having spoken at a few sieges now um you know they there are a couple marketing people there but it's if you had to pick
40:00 - 40:30 uh right among things like definitely like pick your priorities uh so yeah no that that's really it is i i got here mostly by networking a ton uh and also like freelancing right just saying like i know the basics um part of the reason why i became a freelance reporter was to meet pr people which worked it doesn't matter how it makes complete
40:30 - 41:00 sense that's your target job audience let's go talk to them yeah you know um but in in games pr uh one of the hard lessons that i've learned a lot like repeatedly and that i try to pass along is you've got to be able to write well but write briefly and and so like all of the things you do
41:00 - 41:30 in college to fluff up your papers to meet some arbitrary page or word count just ignore all of that toss it all out the window you know it's okay if your press release or media alert is only a couple paragraphs that's actually encouraging that's great your pitch shouldn't be more than a couple sentences so yes it's important i mean i and that's partly why i don't have a lot of page length requirements because fluff
41:30 - 42:00 is fluff yeah it absolutely is uh and and it will actually hurt you you know it's clients see through it media sees through it you know i remember one time i delivered a coverage recap report to a client and it was super fluffy because i didn't have much to show and i was just trying to like beef it up as much as i could and they responded with can you please cut this in half and give me something i can use and i was like yep give me a minute i'll just tell you the truth now here's
42:00 - 42:30 here's here's all we got here's your five seconds right so no it works so what are you excited about what do you leave here today if they wanted to connect with you are you over on linkedin are you twitching what are you doing these days or do you not like people that's also fine no i am uh i'm on linkedin but i rarely use it but sure you can add me there uh but i'm mostly twitter so just lean humphreys on twitter awesome uh my my display name is snakes
42:30 - 43:00 on a blaine that's so bad a really good pr skill is coming up with puns by the way so which is why i went into marketing and not pr i am not funny well plane thank you so much for being here today and i wish you and triple point great success in the future thank you thanks for having me