In recent months, game publisher Electronic Arts has focused on
leveraging its brands through video game tournaments.
The "Best of the Battlefield" in November offered up more than $300,000 in prizes --
the largest cash purse in online tournament history.
We met with Senior Product Manager Rich Briggs to find out about EA's
strategy and motivation behind using tournaments to build brand equity, and why
he thinks more businesses will be teaming up with these competitions
to add sponsorship dollars to the game.
Interview Highlights:
Role at EA
As a senior product manager for Electronic Art's Battlefield franchise in North American, Mr. Rich is responsible for marketing and working with the development teams on PC and console releases.
As the video game industry gets bigger and games gain more notoriety, tournaments have become more mainstream, attracting businesses and sponsorships.
A video game tournament gives bragging rights to the best player of a video game.
Although formats differ, the tournament consists of a series of brackets where players join in a head to head competition to determine a champion. Players are weeded out like in basketball's Final Four, gradually getting down to the top four or eight people and competing in one final game.
When the media claimed that the video game industry profited more than the film industry, everyone took notice. At that point, the game industry attracted attention from businesses, sponsorships, Hollywood talent and colleges.
From this exposure and attention, it is now feasible for a gamer to earn a living from these tournaments.
EA tournaments generally consist of male gamers, 13-years-old and older.
In the Battlefield II Modern Combat tournament, people from all around the world compete, and 80% of players are men. Some participants are in their mid 40s, some are professional players and some are female.
Other tournaments range in age groups, but given the typical video game demographic, are predominantly male.
EA wanted to launch the first version of the franchise on the console in a big way, accompanying the game with a tournament that celebrates its community, competitive spirit and online experience.
This tournament is different than others because clans of 10 people play against each other to take home a grand prize of $250,000.
2500 players joined the tournament; 128 playing on the PS2 and 128 teams playing on the Xbox.
All 128 teams played on each platform, and as they get to the final round, the top four teams on Xbox and on PS2 competed for final spots.
This tournament was all about conquest: capturing and defending territory. Participants can play as different soldier types and must control different points on the map by working together.
There are two ways non-players participated in the game:
Going to the community site after the game, which has a match analysis and top down view of the game's map and how it was played out.
Watching and joining the tournament through a Web cast.
There are a lot of competitive releases, therefore EA wanted to do something to break through the game clutter and prove it has the best multi-gamer experience.
EA referenced the tournament in its TV advertising, online ads and PR outreach, so that the message was ingrained in every marketing vehicle.
This wasn't a one-off event. EA wanted to reward the community and continue to support the tournament.
There is a fine line to walk. Some advertising makes games more authentic, like in the game Madden. In other games, advertising doesn't fit and publishers should refuse the ad revenue.
As long as you have an ad partner that recognized there is a time and place for advertising and a publisher that puts the gaming experience first, in-game advertising makes sense.
Big releases for the franchise will be talked about soon.
If it makes sense for the brand and individual title, EA will run with another tournament.
This wasn't a tournament for the sake of a tournament. It fit with the Battlefield experience and was what the community wanted. EA will take the same approach going forward.
