2K Games – Top Spin 4
Objective
To identify discussion around the upcoming Tennis title Top Spin 4, including core requirements and expectations of the game and comparisons to the upcoming competitor Virtua Tennis 4, resulting in an understanding to benefit Top Spin 4’s PR campaign ready for launch and beyond.
Client Need
2K Games are a large international computer games development company with many leading titles. The upcoming release of one of the top tennis titles, Top Spin lead to the opportunity to commission a research project to help understand discussions around the game, around the competitors game and identification of key influential tennis bloggers. The ultimate requirement would be to understand what features are expected from the game before the launch and target the PR strategy around these requirements leading up to the game launch, maximising Social Media discussion and the exposure of the game.
How we did it
2K Games had never conducted any Social Media research before so it was left to No Pork Pies to use their understanding of Social Media and advanced tools to lead the way. We worked with 2K Games to identify areas of interest and began monitoring discussion around the game (Top Spin 4) and the competitor’s game (Virtua Tennis 4).
The biggest obstacle was data analysis, with three previous versions of each game No Pork Pies had to spend time analysing with our own in-house tools to filter the results down to be able to draw accurate conclusions from the data.
The Solution
No Pork Pies began by using market leading Social Media monitoring tools to collect data around Top Spin, Top Spin 4, Virtua Tennis and Virtua Tennis 4. Filtering focussed on semantics such as the use of the term ‘top spin’ within a game of tennis as oppose to the computer game. This data was split into recurring phrases to identify topics of conversation, sources of information and medium of communication.
The data could then be analysed to understand requirements for the new game, excitement around the new game, and the best locations to talk to people about the new game, as well as overall sentiment and mentions to compare results against the competitor.
The Result
Top Spin
Virtua Tennis
Immediately we could see more people talking about Top Spin but a higher positive sentiment targeted towards Virtua. It is important to understand where people are talking and what they are saying to identify if the lower positive sentiment is an issue.
Top Spin
Virtua Tennis
Twitter is a very powerful media tool for both games but we noticed that news, blogs and forums were far higher on Top Spin than Virtua, showing a higher level of engagement around the Top Spin brand (Twitter is limited to 140 characters, news, blogs and forums offer a lot more content and publicity).
The key opportunity was identified when categorising core topics of conversation around the two games. Top Spin’s key feature was the ‘legends’ aspect of the game, the ability to play as great players of the past. This was a key area of discussion as people were discussion who should be in the game. This offered the key strategy for PR for the game, allowing people to discuss who the legends are. This resulted in on-going engagement around the game within spaces such as forums and blogs.
Client Story
Founded in 2005 the 2K label has some of the most talented development studios in the world today, including Firaxis Games, Visual Concepts, Irrational Games, 2K Marin, 2K Australia, 2K Czech, Cat Daddy Games, and 2K Chine. In just a few short years, 2K launched the 2007 Game of the Year – Bio Shock; continued the award-winning Sid Meier’s Civilization series; delivered the number 1 rated and number 1 selling basketball franchise with NBA 2K9; and broke new ground in the family entertainment market with its multi-million unit selling hit Carnival Games.