Idea Ninja - Rob Riopelle and the future of Nano Gaming

July 15th, 2008

I had the chance to chat with Rob Riopelle, Founder and Vice President of Business Development of LiveHive Systems about a really cool thing they’re developing called NanoGaming.

NanoGaming is a technology platform that lets viewers interact with live television and steaming video. Basically if you’re watching a certain show, you log on to the portal via your computer and  instantly join a live community of other users who are watching the show at the same time as you. You can meet new people via chat,  answer trivia questions, predict what’s going to happen next, and test your memory recall. The questions and answers are live and flow with the content. So if you’re watching a game and a really unfair call is made by the ref, you know that LiveHive community will be over it- instant debating! The more questions you answer correctly the more points you can win, which you can later redeem for prizes ranging from game tickets to cars!

They’ve worked on everything from Hockey on the CBC, Big Brother and even the Much Music Video Awards! (Someone has to keep those preteens occupied, otherwise things like this happen. Seriously, LiveHive is doing us all a public service.)


I like it because it creates an instant social community around content and provides sponsors with an unobtrusive way for users to interact with their brand without interrupting the viewing experience.

On “tackling” their newest venture:

(pun totally included because I’m awesome like that. )

RR: That project, we’re working with Nissan Canada and in conjunction with Capital C we’re working with all them to provide an interactive experience for the CFL (Canadian Football League). We’re offering it for all 70 games plus playoff games, it’s CFL.NISSAN.CA and they can engage in online competition. At the end of a contest you can win a trip to the Grey Cup with some spending money.

On false Interactivity:

I mentioned that on a recent trip to the States, I had seen some interactive capability through television digital cable boxes, where viewers could participate on live polls during their local news. I asked him how this interactivity compares with LiveHive.

RR: I think that’s a great example of interacting just to interact. People see that, and it’s sort of cool and then you try it. You have a $600 box, so they want to do more with it. They give their opinion once on a poll. How much fun is it to be counted in the poll? The fun comes in the chance that they used the new technology, but that’s a one shot deal. After that, they stop doing. With our platform it’s about creating value during the experience, where they are in a social environment, meeting people and winning prizes.

RR: We have tons of metrics behind our stuff, they come back and do it again and again and again. Not everyone is there every game, but other people come back every second or third game, but we do see high return rates compared to an on-air poll.

Why Two Screen Viewing is the Way to Go:

RR: If you look at typical interactive, people think of your typical set up, where you press the button on the set top box, but there are so much limitations. Limited functionality and real estate mean the interactive experiences are basic or light weight. How deep can you go by pressing up, down, left or right?

RR: When you get on to a two screen environment, you have a dedicated, powerful machine to provide a graphically rich experience and great content. Suddenly you can communicate via keyboard and talk to other people, meet and make new friends.

On live television and the battle over PVRs/Tivo’s

(Although, Canada doesn’t have Tivo up here, just one more little snubs in our rich history of technological shafts. I know I’m feeling sassy this interview!)

RR: We actually work to combat those things [PVRs, timeshifting], where we draw people back to live content because that experience is only available when it’s live. Especially the real-time components. Outside that window we do provide a limited experience for people. Before each event/show there are a series of questions that are trivia related so that people can jump on during the day, check in and comment on what is going to happen.

RR: So with PVRs and DVRs, this is something that the broadcaster has seen as positive because you can use this to ensure users are watching live, and for the full duration of the show. We glue people to the tv and to the computer. On average people are playing for 45 minutes for every hour of watching. So they can participate live.

On the Future of Television, and what LiveHive’s Future Mission:

RR: In five years, we’ll be the center point to interactively enable every show on TV. Instead of thinking which shows are interactive it’s just assumed, all shows are interactive. So no matter what show you’re watching you can just jump on, connect, and socialize withp eole who are watching the same show. Creating a central spot for every program

The Future of TV Advertising

RR: If you look at the advertising, it’s definitely clear, that the traditional 30 second spot are becoming less effective and you can see that most of the dollars are going online. So that does open the opporutnity for us to be a great advertsing platform. And that’s what we are, all of our projects involve a sponser, because they can get a lot of data as a result of peole sitting with your brand for a long time. So if there’s a touchdown, you can say “touchdown brought to you by nissan.” You can do other things as well, you can ask questions about the viewers themselves, you can ask in a poll “are you thinking about buying a car? ” That’s hugely powerful to be able to extract those questions, that’s highly valuable to the sponsers in volved in our porjects. You don’t overload them with questions, but you can definitely ask one or two questions per game to get that extra information about preferences or buying status.

Why I like it:

1) Making TV social again.

There used to be a time when we would all gather around the TV to watch our favorite prime time shows. I remember in University we used to reserve one of the lecture halls so we could watch LOST in agonizing suspense. Somehow it was always better when it was in a group. Then, we got the Apple Store, and time-shifting and PVRs so people got less inclined to get together and started watching TV in a more isolated way. I think LiveHive’s technology is cool because it brings some of that real time social elements. This could make watching live TV engaging again, because it’s the social aspect of the community that is drawing you in. Very cool.

2) Evolving the User/Brand experience

This is a much better way to interact with users, because you can target show demographics more precisely and be engaged with a large amount of people at once. So if you’re a car company targeting men, what better place to have them engage with your than through a hockey game platform? Forget a 30 second spot, they will be looking at your Logo for 45 minutes per every hour watched. Now there’s some bang for your buck!

3) A better TV Experience

This is the first step in eliminating commercials completely. One would hope at least. If the networks got involved - and they should- then they could shift interactivity with content online and use the sponsors to facilitate interaction. Everyone wins. Networks get people to watch their content without the temptation of channel surfing, viewers get engaged on connect because it’s a topic they care about, and advertisers get access to valuable information without interrupting. Win/Win. If they did this properly I bet you could make the same amount of money if not more via advertising maybe causing the evil Viacom to back off on all this copy righted material crap, allowing everyone to make funny Youtube videos in peace.

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ICE08 - Worlds at Play: Virtual & Gaming worlds

March 27th, 2008

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About the Panel:

This panel is examining the online gaming phenomenon that continues to sweep across Asia and EUrope and are now surging in North America. What are the emerging trends? What are the business models? Will these avatar based networks soon replace 2d experiences like Facebook?

Moderated by Lucie Lalumiere (VP Interactive, Earth Rangers), the panel consists of Leigh Alexander (Editor, WorldsinMotion.com), Adrian Crook (Freetoplay.biz), Matt Daly (Co founder, Metaversatility Inc) and Barbara Lippe (Art Director/VP International Relations, Avaloop)

 Heads up everyone: my laptop is about to die, so we’ll see how far along we get! 

About the Panelists 

Adrian Crook: Producer & Designer by trade, has worked for EA, over the last few years has gravitated towards casual MMOs. Currently doing consulting on free to play projects.

Barbara Lippe: Wrote PHD thesis on the gaming scene. At the small startup in Vienna, doing a self funded project called Paperpint.  It’s in closed beta international. It’s an online virtual world where you can interact and play games with other people.

Matt Daley: We do virtual world development in existing worlds like secondlife.com, we have been around for about a year. Our clients range from car companies to organization interested in experimenting in 3d business items.

Lucie Lalumiere: Should we care about virtual world? Are they going to change how we socialize and how we do business?

Adrian Crook:  From a social perspective we already do care, and many of our kids do care. I’m not as convinced it will alter the way we do business. But there is a big entertainment channel for social virtual worlds. There is a business context, I guess I’m just not sold on it.

Matt Daley:  We’ve seen a lot of profound experience illustrating the fact that the framework is there for the game approach, and a lot of the enabling factors aren’t there yet. Either the technology isn’t there, or there is a lack of desire/literacy/interest.  I’m not sold on it either, right now.

Lucie Lalumiere: Who do you think will want to be in your world?

Barbara Lippe: 40/60 male/female split.  We want to keep people busy through games. There is a child making game, that takes a lot of commitment. You have to find a player, fall in love, buy a flat, buy a bed, show you are good at this game, and then you are pregnant with a papermint baby. (Rahaf says: LOL. Sounds like a lot of work!)

Lucie Lalumiere: Who has the time for this?

Adrian Crook: Most of the opportunities in this world are casual MMOs in the under 25 space.  That’s the generation to whom there is no distinction between online/offline lives. So as they age, they’ll be the bulk of our older demographics.

Matt Daley: You see 11 year olds managing guilds on WOW, because they are the only ones with the time to do that. But it’s only a matter of time that we see these games become less game oriented and more enveloped in daily life.  I see virtual worlds going in that direction as well. WOW players, for instance, that are older and have jobs, you see that a lot of them take a lot of their time with a strict schedule so they can incorporate it into their lives.

Adrian Crook: So there is a benefit and draw in asynchronous play, and not necessarily need to spend so much time online developping yoru characters. Fitting it into your own schedule without having to spend hours a day.
Lucie Lalumiere: What are some differences across cultures &  geographies

Barbara Lippe: I think there are defintely different. WE already see different quarters in certain cities and differences among the cities themselves.

Lucie Lalumiere: And in Austria, is there a higher level of engagement?

Barbara Lippe: I think everyone has similar needs, but certain services fit better culturally.

Matt Daley: I think it’s interesting that these spaces are supposed to collapse borders, but we still are at a point where cultural literacies are still different as are technological capabilities. You have a huge percent of Asian gamers that are relegated to cybercafes that might not have system specs that you might want to run on your computer consistently. So you see a lot of interest in low system requirements, browser accessible games.

Adrian Crook: A lot of the free to play sector started in Korea. It did grow out of this need to have games accessible on the fly. So you do have browser based games that you can take where you are. Mobile games are huge.

Barbara Lippe: You have to aware that when you speak about Asia you still have to break it down in smaller regions. Maybe that’s why WoW didn’t take off in Japan because they didn’t like player killings or that.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Is there any sort of development for virtual worlds where soemone doesn’t have to commit that block of time?

 Adrian Crook: Travion, is a not bad example. It’s based on X number of turns that you can take during the day whenever you want. Games with small compulsion loops are great too because you can play them in 2-3 minutes if you want. It’s smart to drive the compulsion loop now.

Matt Daley: Mobile and casual gaming is really taking off. A lot of clients want easy accessibility and better experience.  WoW did it in an excellent way by providing instant rewards, and you can provide an easy way for users to grasp your world in a small amount of time, then it works. Because then as they go through the world the time and difficulty increases, but it eases them into it.

 Lucie Lalumiere: How can we make money?

Matt Daley: A lot of the development is soft revenue.  Where the value is in stickiness, where users can interact in manifestations of the product. Marketing value: attract users and empower them to have some sort of functionality.

Lucie LaLumiere: how do clients pay for this?

Matt Daley:  It’s like ad Adspend, there’s no revenue coming out of these activities, a small part is virtual merchandise, but it’s like an Ad Buy

Adrian Crook: As far a revenue model go, top three are virtual merchandise sales, advertising sales and tiered subscriptions. You can also buy information. There is also opportunity in virtual gifting.

Barbara Lippe: Because it’s a social space, everything that pimps up your avatar is great for you. You have to look the best to get the most flirting items. We work with designer to make outfits which go for 60E. I never thought people would spend so much on virtual items. Giving things is also very popular. It’s important that gifts you give are seen by others.  Professions are good, if people can do something in that world and then sell that capabilities.  We do advertise, but only if can be meaningfully connected to game play or the world. We have an island shaped like a coke bottle, but you’d never see it unless you were using a bird’s eye view.

Matt Daley:  The difficulty is in the congruence, where you can have these beautiful places, and then user generated content where they create ugly worlds.

Adrian Crook: There was a good book called “Paradox of Choice” where essentially he says that too much choice is a bad thing.  People want some nice focused way to contribute and that’s it. Another revenue model is actual merchandising, like webkinz.

Audience Question: What are the possibility of a Grand Theft Auto like game?

Barbara Lippe: There is a game like that. I was disappointed in the choices- you can shoot someone, or drive on the street. It’s extremely limited and American.  If I want a game like this then i want all the choices available, not just three things.
Matt Daley: Spore is a good example of open ended sandbox typed games. It mixes social networking, UGC and defined game mechanics in a clever way. If you give users the ability to build their own content then you immediately have Manhattan developed by RockStar.

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