Specifics of the digital marketing strategies in the video games industry in different countries exemplified by Ubisoft

Figure 2.4 - Regional Breakdown of Global Game Revenue Toward 2022. Source: Newzoo, 2018

And even though gaming industry market is represented in all regions around the world, but the intensity of its development has significant differences.

Table 2.1 - Top 7 Countries / Markets by Game Revenues. Source: Newzoo, 2019

The table illustrates revenue estimates for the top video games markets for 2019 in descending order. We shall see that China is having a leading position in the ranking with the estimated revenue of about 36,5 million dollars. USA, on the other hand, is holding a close position with 35,5 million dollars which is about 2,8% smaller than in China. However, it is important to note the Internet population in those top two countries with China having this number slightly more than 3 times higher than the U.S. This indicates that each internet user in China generates considerably more revenue than in the U.S.

Having a look at the European countries, we may clearly see Germany, United Kingdom and France holding the leading positions accounting for approximately 14,9 million dollars all together.

The following Figure illustrates the value of the video game consumer market, in package and digitally distributed within the time period of 2011 to 2018 including the forecast till 2021:

Figure 2.5 - Video game consumer market value worldwide from 2011 to 2021, by distribution type (in billion U.S. dollars). Source: Statista, 2019

We can clearly see the upward trend of the digital distribution value throughout the years observed, with the increase of slightly above 3,5 times from 2011 to 2018. Package market, in contrast, descents within the same period taken being nearly equal in value to the DLC market in 2016. This statistic also confirms the trend for users going digital which highlights the importance of the digital marketing for the companies in the video games industry.

For further research it was decided to select the largest markets in Asia-Pacific, America and Western Europe, which are China, the U.S. and Germany, consequently. In line with Germany, we are also going to be analysing another Western European country, which is France. Such a decision can be attributed to a few reasons. First of them boils down to the fact that Ubisoft was initially originated in France and even by this day, all the EMEA guidelines, including marketing strategy, come from the Paris office. Apart from that, according to Statista (2017), Ubisoft is a top video game publisher in France by the end of 2016, demonstrating the annual revenue of € 1.475 million, which is about 5 times more than the result of its competitor company (Gameloft) placed the second. Apart from those 4 countries mentioned above, Russia will also be included in the further research as well.

Now, let us go deeper into details on what the current state of the industry in these 5 countries are, what the perspectives and the main industry drivers are. In this chapter, we will first have a look at China and the U.S.

We will first take a look at how the industry has been evolving in China. Video gaming in China is a large industry which involves different stages of production, sale, import and export of video games. According to Newzoo previous forecasts, in 2019 China generated about $36,540M in revenues. Statista research dating April 2020, however, provide with a lower number: 230.88 million yuan which equals to approximately $32.7M. We can also witness quite a drastic year-to-year rise throughout the 2008-2019 period.

Figure 2.6 - Video game industry revenue in China from 2008 to 2019. Source: Statista (2020)

At the same time, almost 619 million people consider themselves gamers (just under half of the total population of the country), and 94% of them make in -- game purchases (Newzoo, 2018).

It goes without saying that legal legislature and systematic censorship can directly affect creative media including video games by severely limiting the content. Despite having lots of restriction on media usage like Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram ban, video games can also get banned in China in case of blackening the name of the nation. A few examples have already been witnessed. One of them is the game Battlefield 4 (developed by EA DICE and published by Electronic Arts, released in October 2013), has been banned in Chine as it presented the ruling communist party in a negative light, favouring someone pushing for democratic reform in China. Another explanation to such a decision was that nearly most of the China Rising maps occur in places, which have great cultural importance to China.

Another game that has been declared illegal was Command & Conquer Generals due to smearing the image of China and the Chinese army. The same happened in case with the game Hearts of Iron and the reason happened to be distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity (Tibet was portrayed as an independent state).

The U.S. is the second largest video games market after China. By 2018, the market generated around $30.4 billion (Newzoo, 2018).

In regards with online population split by platform, Newzoo (2018) reports that the majority of men and women play mobile games at least once per month, with 46% of men and more than 35% of women play PC games.

Figure 2.7 - Share of online population by gaming platform in the U.S. Source: Newzoo, 2018

2.2 Analysis of the video games industry in Germany, France and Russia

The video games market in Germany experienced a boom. In 2017, experts recorded a record growth in sales: the turnover of the industry market increased by 15% and amounted to 3.3 billion euros, for the first time crossing the border of 3 billion. This growth, according to experts, is due to the fact that Germany remains the largest market for gaming software in Europe. The trend continued in 2018, too. According to Newzoo (2018) game revenues in 2018 reached 4.7 billion dollars, which is about 4.45 billion euro, by the end of the year.

Although PC and console games account for a large share of turnover in Germany, last year they accounted for 1.2 billion euros - only 1% more than in 2016. And the market owes its breakthrough to consoles, which added about 25%. Such a solid turnover was largely provided by the Nintendo Switch consoles. Even more turnover was made on microtransactions with virtual peripherals for video games: this sub-market grew by 28%, providing a turnover of approximately 845 million euros. But German gamers spent 166 million less on game subscriptions last year. However, paid subscriptions fees for the services such as EA Access, PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold have grown significantly: this market segment has grown by 57 % (179 million euros).

Considering online viewers distribution by platform, 46% of men and 49% of women prefer mobile games and nearly 30% of men and 20% of women play PC games.

Figure 2.8 - Share of online population by gaming platform in Germany. Source: Newzoo, 2018

The catalyst for the growth of the German gaming market is largely attributed to the world's leading computer and video game exhibition Gamescom, which annually attracts industry grandees and hundreds of thousands of gamers to Cologne. Government also tried to support digital game manufacturers, one of examples is the German video game award (Deutscher Computerspielpreis), which has been awarded by the Federal Ministry of transport and digital infrastructure since 2009. Nevertheless, the country has not yet developed a comprehensive concept of supporting the game industry. So far, grants have been made mainly at the regional level through state governments (Bundeslands) like in the example of the internationally popular Hamburg publisher Deadalic Intertainment-Software, which develops its software mostly abroad.

It has also been noted that the sales boom does not reflect the development of the national gaming industry. So, amongst the whole German spending on gaming software, subscriptions and virtual goods, German manufacturers account for only 7%, and in the segment of consoles and games for PC this figure makes up for just 0.5%. A promising step was taken in February 2018 at the “Grand coalition” in Berlin. “The Digitales” working group came to an agreement on projects aimed at developing the gaming industry, which suggests government involving in developing a program to support the game industry at the Federal level. Creation of an assistance model that would allow Germany to compete in the market with other European countries was set amongst the priority goals.

Just like in case with China reviewed before, censorship takes place in Germany, too. Since 1945 all the unaccepted media has been censored in Germany.

One of brightest example can be the case with the game Wolfenstein 2 developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks. This new part of a game series of futuristic shooters about the fight against the Nazis was published in October 2017. However, in the German version of the game, the swastika on the Nazi flag was replaced with a fictitious symbol, and Hitler was not called “the Fьhrer”, but the “Chancellor” instead. Even his appearance has undergone censorship: Hitler had his moustache completely removed. All these measures occurred due to the ban in Germany on the use of Nazi symbols. The game also had many characters who would scream German phrases at different circumstances. The right-looking eagle (the emblem of the German Reich) was swapped to the way it looked to the left. The next game in the series, Wolfenstein Youngblood, that was released in June 2018 also had all the swastikas in it replaced with a different triangle-looking shape. Distributing and exporting materials with those forbidden symbols could result in three years of prison. In addition, all characters of Jewish origin were removed from that version of Wolfenstein. In order to market a game internationally, developers have to consider translation in a country-specific title regardless of content. Censorship becomes a part of that process when a developer intends to market a game in a culture sensitive to specific content, such as Germany.

In August 2018, The German rating organization USK decided to allow the display of symbols of prohibited organizations in computer games. Since then, swastikas and other forbidden symbols could only appear in games where those events are presented critically.

Before that, using banned symbols would prevent a video game from getting a compulsory age rating, it would just be completely banned from being sold in stores. The ban on extremist symbols is still taking place however the ban will now be decided based on each particular case. In case the use of those symbols is justified from the point of social adequacy, the game will receive a corresponding rating but will not get totally banned.

In 2003, the Youth Protection Act (JuSchG) established a rating system. USK ratings originally defined four categories and the fifth USK 16 was added in 2009. Germany is the only country in continental Europe that has its own rating system for video games. The rest of the continent acknowledges PEGI rating system (Pan European Game Information).

Another case we can consider is Team Fortress 2. The game was rated M by ESRB for violence and gore and rated 16 by PEGI for realistic looking violence. Though before USK classification Valve decided to minimize the existed risks and made a different version of the game by cutting and censoring certain things in the game. Thus, blood animation has been made less realistic, blood splashes were removed and swapped either to the black liquid or oil. Apart from that, the German version of the game also had an unusual way of presenting the flying body parts. After-shot explosions would consist of different non-violent objects like wheels and screws, fish bones, balloon and other things not related to a dead body.

Still, apart from the case with banning certain symbols, German versions of video games are often made far less violent compared to the ones released in surrounding European nations. Blood saturation is sometimes made slightly duller and human characters might just be switched to robots as elimination of robots is perceived as less violent.

The reason for Germany's intolerance for violent entertainment content can be attributed to the general national sensitivity to violence. Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, suggested the phenomenon of “collective guilt” that described a feeling of guilt for the crimes against humanity by the Nazi party's Third Reich in the Second World War. The author explains that the German nation wanted to “distance” itself from its crimes therefore it tried to create a new nonviolent national identity. This phenomenon, according to Hannah Mueller (2015), still carried over the modern times and manifested in media censorship, video games included.

Censorship does not just affect the content of the game itself but also has a direct influence the marketing. There is a need for dedicated assets adjusted with respect to the specificity of the local legislation. As in case with Team Fortress 2, “Meet the Soldier” promotional video which was an introduction to one of the games characters.

Apart from that, Germany has its own age rating system that is different from the one is other EU countries.

The French Video Game Trade Association (SNJV) together with IDATE DigiWorld made a research on what the game development market looks like in France in 2020, by carrying out its annual survey.

Figure 2.9 - Main activity of the video games companies in France. Source: The French Video Game Trade Association (SNJV), IDATE DigiWorld, 2020

The most interesting figure in the study is the number of gaming companies. In total, the analysts counted 1,130 teams. These are publishers, developers, distributors, and technical and service providers. Among the total number of companies, half are engaged in development. The second largest group are companies responsible for providing services or developing any technology for video games. It has also been noted that a significant part of French developers (19%) have been working on the market for more than 10 years.

At the time of the study, 565 game studios were creating 1,200 games, most of them (63%) are based on new original intellectual property (IP). It is not specified how many people are involved in development but based on researches' previous forecasts, by the end of 2019, the number of vacancies created within the industry were from 800 to 1200 positions. Of these, between 500 and 850 were directly related to development. There are not many women in French design. There are only 14% of the total number of employees. The largest share of women in two segments: in graphics and in management (15% in both).

The prerequisites for France being attractive in a competitive and globalised market existed even before. Thus, A SNJV - IDATE Digiworld collaboration (2016) reported that 56.5% of the companies that took participance in the survey reckoned France to be an attractive market for the video game industry. This figure has increased since 2015 and 2014 showing 50% and 38.2%, respectively.

Apart from that, it was reported that the platforms such as consoles and PC are attracting more and more attention from development studios with more than a third of them targeting home consoles as their preferred platform and slightly above 70% of them consider PC as a platform of choice. It has also been noted that by 2016, more than 40% of turnover of studios in France was made abroad indicating the country's orientation for export.

Continuing speaking of the video games publishers in France, Ubisoft was reported to be the highest earning video game developer in 2016, with around 1.48 billion euros revenue, according to Statista (2017).

Unlike Germany, France recognizes and supports PEGI rating system.

Continuing with some consumer insights presented by Newzoo in 2018, we can notice that 44% of men and 45% of women play mobile games at least once per month, in comparison to the 33% of men and 23% of women who would prefer console games instead.

Figure 2.10 - Annual revenue of French video game publishers in 2016. Source: Statista, 2017

Figure 2.11 - Share of online population by gaming platform in France. Source: Newzoo, 2018.

Apart from that, 29% online population in France watch video content related to video games, with 47% choosing to watch on PC. Interestingly.

In France, the production and export of video games is supported by the state. The Ministry of foreign Affairs also participates in the promotion of French video games abroad with the help of the National centre for cinematography and animation. It is also planned to create a “national platform” on the Internet to inform users about French products.

Much attention is paid by the state to the problem of protecting intellectual property rights in the field of video game production. Employees of the National Institute of industrial property help young authors to correctly apply legal legislation in practice. A system of tax credits for research also assist video game developers which is another advantage for France in this area.

The state credit and tax policy also provide considerable assistance in conducting research and creating innovative technologies. That is also a contributing factor to the video game industry in France developing at a high rate, coming out to the top positions in terms of profitability relative to other industries. In terms of video game production, the country ranks second in the world, after the United States. Today, the profit generated in the computer games market is more than three times higher than the revenue from the rental of French films.

The Russian gaming industry began its formation in the late 1990s. But only since the mid-2000s, thankfully to the spread of MMO games, the pace of development of the gaming market and stable growth in the revenue of the gaming industry began to accelerate. In 2014, the growth rate of the Russian gaming market was 13.3 %, providing the country with the 12th place in the world (1.14 billion dollars) (Global Games Market Report, 2015).

For a long period, the Russian gaming market has been significantly behind the video games markets of developed countries. During that time this was attributed to the fact that the small volume of digital product sales was held back by high piracy levels.

According to the global piracy report of the analytical company MUSO (2018), in 2017 the total number of visits to pirate websites was about 300 billion, which is 1.6% higher compared to 2016. In Russia, the number of visits accounted for approximately 20.6 billion, which set it on second place in the rankings. The United States with about 27.9 billion pirate websites visits took the first place, and third place turned out to be India (17 billion visits).

However, in order to have a fairer look at the piracy situation, the statistics mentioned shall be counted along with the number of active internet users in those countries. According to Internet World Statistics (2018), by the end of June 2017 there were about 287 million (286,942,362) internet users in the US and around 110 million (109,552,842) internet users in Russia. Given that, let us carry out some simple calculations using this and the previous numbers in the statistics: 27.9 bln / 287 mln ~ 97 visits by each internet user in the U.S. versus 20.6 bln / 110 mln ~ 188 visits by each internet user in Russia. This short analysis shows us that, in reality, the number of pirate sources visits in Russia per 1 internet user nearly doubles that in the U.S.

The situation with Internet piracy in Russia remains rather complicated - once over Russia hits the Priority Watch List of the Special Report 301 of the US Trade Representation (2018) - a list of countries having significant shortcomings in the field of intellectual property rights protection and requiring greater attention. According to the report, it is attributed to the lack of penalties, including criminal liability, against distributors of illegal content. In their report, they have highlighted that Russia, alongside some other countries, “do not have in place effective policies and procedures to ensure their own government agencies do not use unlicensed software. … Stakeholders report significant piracy of video games, music, movies, books, journal articles, and television programming. … Russia took some positive steps in 2017, but the overall IP situation remains extremely challenging. The lack of enforcement against intellectual property crimes is a persistent problem”.

In recent years, we have seen the development of Russian anti-piracy legislation. Thus, the Federal Law on protection of intellectual rights in information and telecommunication networks was passed in 2013 followed by certain amendments in it in 2015. Two years after that, that Federal Law faced the new changes directed towards blocking “mirrors” (multiple copies of the same websites on other servers) whereas copyright holders were able to block those within 24 hours in accordance with an out-of-court procedure.

However, the attitude of Russians towards piracy has not fundamentally changed. According to WCIOM research (2018) that was carried out in August 2018, 81% of Russians do not consider visual or audio materials to be an actual product, hence, do not reckon they are obliged to pay real money for downloading, viewing, and generally consuming such content.

The majority of respondents (62%) believe that, when fighting against online piracy, it is necessary to provide lower prices for viewing or downloading licensed copies of materials, rather than to keep toughening punishments against the creators and distributors of unlicensed copies.

As of video games piracy, it is extremely difficult to assess the exact scope due to the difficulty of measurement. There are millions of piracy websites as well as their “mirrors” emerging and closing every single day. There are just a few recent studies; one of them is the online opinion poll made by the leading digital publisher “pcgamer.com” stating that approximately 36% of the total number of respondents (50742 people) do currently pirate PC games. The participants were people from various countries but still the audience in the survey was primarily American, which is also reflected in the survey.

Another poll we would like to mention is the one made by a DTF (a Russian web-portal devoted to video games and movies) user in March 2019. Among the multiple different questions, it contained one same question regarding whether the respondents pirate games nowadays. Among the 2181 respondents, 57% answered positively, which confirms that Russians are still actively immersed into video games piracy.

We have also examined commentaries under different posts related to video games piracy on DTF, VC.ru, Playground.ru (2017) in order to get a clearer picture of what in particular motivates people to pirate games and stops them from purchasing licensed copies. The majority of comments highlighted the pricing of the video games, especially in recent years and supported the statement of paying for somethings they can get for free.

Additionally, people expressed unwillingness to pay for something they are not sure they will like («Пиратство - не дикое желание не платить вообще, а нормальное желание не покупать кота в мешке»), so they prefer to test it out at first with the help of a pirate version and only then consider buying it in case they enjoy the game. Some people also noted they would be happy to have some kind of “demo-versions” of the games, which would allow players to decide whether they want to buy it or not («Считаю, что разработчики просто должны давать тест-драйв», «По-моему, сначала надо померять, перед тем, как купить»). Some people also drawn their attention to the fact they are never going to purchase a licensed game if there is no Russian localization as they reckon it as a sort of disrespect towards them and their money («Локализация = лицензия», «Авторы иногда даже не переводят их на русский язык, куда уж там до озвучки! Разве интересно играть в игру где непонятно сути основного сюжета?»).

An analysis of the dynamics of the gaming industry market suggests that this sector is in the stage of active growth, the pace of which will remain high due to the specifics of the product and its penetration into people's lives.

Now, let us quickly see what in-games anti-piracy protection systems are mostly used by modern game developing companies.

With the shift of video games online, it is getting way harder to pirate them. The multiplayer games suppose many people playing together connected via the same online server provided by the game developer. Obviously, if the game does not respond to the central server (and the response is only established once it is an official licensed copy) one will never be able to connect. Even if there are certain unauthorized pirate servers, they are normally unstable and have a very high latency (the delay between a player's action and the game's response to it), which is a critical parameter for any online game.

With the effectiveness of such a game anti-piracy approach, lots of other offline games head online, making even single-player games require internet connection. Meaning that without periodic server response, the gaming process shuts down making it impossible to play if the server does not respond in a certain period of time. Of course, people learned how to get around this, but it is a much harder procedure now than it used to be before and it would never ensure a smooth gaming experience. Moreover, if the game spots an illegal game copy activity, the person's IP-adress will most likely get permanently banned and all of his exiting progress in this and other games of that company will be irretrievably lost. One of the companies exploiting such a protection system is Blizzard Entertainment and its games like «Overwatch», an online-game protected with DRM (digital rights management) that first authenticates a player as legitimate user and then connects them to the central server.

What is more, when trying to search for “pirate overwatch” we found just 1 website request devoted to this topic in Engish (on Google search) versus 4 requests in Russian (on Yandex search) within 3 first search pages.

Another interesting factor important when analyzing the industry within the framework of a certain country involves the way the company addresses the audience. According to Hofstede , USA is a low-PDI country meaning it is more open to an informal relationship between different subjects having different status or difference in power. Russia, in contrast, having a high-PDI culture, respects structured hierarchical order and a more formal way of official communication. It also manifests in the way key messages are communicated in Russian reality. Video games industry is not an exception. To a large extent, it is also about language peculiarities. In English, the “you” pronoun is not differentiated depending on formal or informal language style. It is going to be “you” in any case. In contrast, in Russian language, the company would need to clearly understand whom they are addressing and how they position their relations with the target audience. However, despite the target audience in the video-games industry being relatively young, the game developing companies still choose using the formal addressing style when talking to their customers via emails, social networks and other communication channels. Players tend to express their disappointment on being addressed with an informal “you” («ты»). They often consider it as a demonstration of impoliteness and familiarity. Another example we may mention - a guy speaking of the shift of addressing manner in the game “Warspear online” . A similar sentiment was highlighted there: dissatisfaction of such an update, which is reckoned as a sign of impoliteness; willingness to have it changed back to how it had been before.

2.3 Analysis of Ubisoft digital marketing strategy in different countries

Before starting our analysis, it is important to understand how the company is structured. Ubisoft global market is split into two major markets which are EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and NCSA (North, Central and South America). China, however, is also referred to EMEA when it comes to marketing, including digital marketing strategies forming and implementation.

Ubisoft is a leading creator, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and services, with a rich portfolio of world-renowned brands, including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, For Honor, Just Dance, Watch Dogs, Tom Clancy's video game series including Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and The Division. For the 2018-19 fiscal year, Ubisoft generated net bookings of €2,029 million.

The EMEA general marketing strategy, including social media plan, digital marketing KPI's etc. are spread throughout all the countries that are under EMEA regulation. Now, let us speak of what digital marketing tools are normally used at Ubisoft in order to promote their products.

It is essential to have an understanding of the company's financial aspect. According to Newzoo (2019), Ubisoft is placed 13th in the top video game companies ranking that is based on analysis of annual and quarterly financial reports.

One of the main distinctive feature of the marketing strategy at Ubisoft Russia is that it concentrates most of its marketing budget on digital channels considering them to be the most efficient whereas some other countries of EMEA segment may also allocate considerable budgets to traditional marketing such as TV and cinema ads promotion, as it happens in Poland. At Ubisoft Russia these traditional channels are not not used.

In order to make audience understand the key characteristics of the game, it is crucial to build a proper marketing strategy, which does not simply boil down to the fact that there is the game to buy but rather to explaining the whole spectrum of value one can receive by playing the game, how it is different from other games and what unique experience one can go through by playing. So, with the help of marketing it is important to tell about the game's genre, genre's specifics, what is the in-game setting (the explanting of the idea of the world, time), what would be the main plot about.

Table 2.1 - Top Public Companies by Game Revenues. Source: Newzoo, 2019

So, a game has its unique selling points. For example, one of the recently announced Ubisoft games Assassin's Creed Valhalla, has several unique selling points which are as follows: it is an RPG game with its own unique features, an engaging story line, a large gaming world taking place in the IX century in the times of the Vikings. So, the task is to convey those key ideas to the audience with the help of digital marketing tools such as dynamic (video) and static (image) assets, social media and PR posts, press and influencers. Influencers can tell the potential players about those selling points often more effectively, for example via a unique platform as Twitch. Unlike on YouTube, where the main emphasis is placed at videos on demand format (VOD) when a person can reach the video any time, on Twitch everything is happening online only, in form of the stream (video broadcast) and an overwhelming majority of the channels are dedicated to playing video games. Twitch having a really large audience on the daily, is a really attractive platform for video games companies.

This channel (Twitch) is also actively used by Ubisoft. The company reaches out and builds relationship with the streamers and influencers. During the expert interview, Daniil noted that Twitch influencers and bloggers are split up into 3 main categories: paid, earned and organic. Paid category includes influencers that Ubisoft works on the commercial basis by paying for streaming or publishing content on a certain Ubisoft video game on a certain date. Normally, this happens at the new game's release in order to boost “hype” and interest around it right at the very start. Appealing to this category of influencers ensures the fact that he or she will certainly play the game guarantying additional visibility for the game.

Earned category defines Twitch influencers that receive certain benefits from Ubisoft, such as viewer rewards on Twitch Drops, for streaming a particular game. It means that people would have an extra incentive to watch that streamer due to the opportunity of receiving an in-game reward via Twitch Drops system. At the same time this is also favourable for a streamer as he or she can get the new audience and familiarize it with their channel. Another way of interaction with “earned” influencers is by providing them a key for the new game, which again is beneficial for both sides: a streamer engages a lot of people to the channel by streaming the newest game and Ubisoft is getting extra visibility for the new title.

Finally, organic Twitch influencers are the ones who Ubisoft has not contact in advance and has not offered to provide any particular content. The choice game for their streams merely depends on their own interest and motivation.

There are also other community platforms gamers activity use and interact via, like Discord or Reddit. Communities are people of similar interests brought together online to discuss video games, hot industry news etc. So, Ubisoft also utilizes those channels by creating dedicated Discord services for particular games (like The Crew 2 Discord server) or official Reddit accounts (like Rainbow Six Siege account, which is normally used to inform the players on the most recent or urgent servers maintenance or Assassin's Creed official account). Players actively share their thoughts, tips and victory or playthrough hints and other relevant info and even post their pieces of art / screenshots / any other type of user generated content by posting on a dedicated Discord server or creating a new Reddit thread. This is the example of how Ubisoft has been building loyal community around its games on those dedicated gaming platforms. Surely, Ubisoft ensures direct communication with their customers via other social networks, like Instagram, Twitter or YouTube, but those are universal channels that cannot be exclusively referred to the video games industry. Nevertheless, a more informal, close and friendly relationship management with the community via the dedicated social channels like Twitch, Reddit or Discord can be named a specific feature of the video games industry and Ubisoft is actively utilizing those.

According to the expert interview carried out, the paradigm of interaction with consumers in the video games industry has a different model compared to many other industries: it is more about interaction between “video game developers and players” rather than “business and its customers”, which highlights the idea of maintaining active and diverse interaction with the community.

It goes without saying there is the basic set of key digital marketing channels that are actively used by other industries too, however there are still some exclusive ways video games industry can effectively utilize. One of the unique features of the video games industry is a very close and thorough interaction with the community.

Another aspect that highlights the abovementioned idea is that Ubisoft has an extensive Star Player program. Ubisoft looks for the most active and passionate players / content creators that dedicate lots of their work to different Ubisoft titles (by making cosplay, paining its games characters, drawing fan-arts, actively playing Ubisoft video games etc) and invites them to partake into the Ubisoft Star Player program. It means that the members of the program would be invited to the vast array of games events and exhibitions around the world (like Igromir or Gamescom) having a unique VIP experience, would receive various branded merchandize (T-shirts, hoodies, bags, other accessories and pieces of clothes, multiple gifts etc.), receive a year of free access to all of the Ubisoft games and many other pleasant rewards. By that, Ubisoft gives public appreciation to the most passionate fans for their work a great interest in the company's products. In return, star-players continue creation of user generated content of different kind and keep boosting visibility around different titles. Although it is fair to mention that such a program is a global initiative and it takes place in all of the main Ubisoft markets, not only in Russia. However, it is worth mentioning that in Russia, no other video games companies provide such an extensive community work. Many other companies have to appeal to financial rewards when inviting invite cosplayers or content creators to their events. This approach has more of a commercial type of relationship more resembling of a service provision for a certain price rather than community relationship building.

Another way on how Ubisoft Russia engages communities are the creative contests where participants of one or another game's community are offered to make up a certain story, post their best screenshot on particular thematic etc. Some of the examples is a recent contests in official VK Ubisoft community devoted to men's and women's day where participants were to come up with the best and most interesting description of their favourite male and female characters out of all existing Ubisoft gaming worlds. There were 10 places and 10 sets of prizes. The contest received nearly 65 000 reach and got a large number of participants in the comments section. Another example is a creative contest in the official Assassin's Creed community on VK dedicated to St. Valentine's Day. Participants were offered to think of the best place for a romantic date in all the existing worlds of Assassin's Creed series, describe it in an original way explaining the choice and attach a screenshot of that place. Earlier in the same community group in the end of 2019, there was a New Year contest where members were to tell their stories about how their Assassin's Creed journey began.

The ability to provide a game with a proper “welcome” phase and greet its potential consumers in the highly competitive industry of video games is one of the key tasks for the publisher. You can also assign independent organizations to promote the game, so the developer should evaluate the relative costs and advantages of both options. In any case, it is very important to maintain control over the image of the game and the main focus of its advertising, and therefore the presence of a reasonable agreement and control over the activities of the marketing group are of key importance.

It is worth mentioning that there are not so many local representatives of the largest video games developers apart from Ubisoft, those being PlayStation, Microsoft (Including Xbox), Bethesda and Nintendo. All other game developers carry out their activities through agencies, such as SoftClub, for example.

As it has also been noted in the sub-chapter before, Chinese market has a lot of restrictions and censorship for the game to be released there. One of examples can be the game Rainbow Six Siege that had to had their operators' icons changed so that they do not contain violent-looking symbols and sculls. The image below illustrates the differences between Rainbow Six Siege operators' icons in China compared to all the other countries the game has been released in:

The EMEA marketing strategy (including digital marketing) is global for all of the EMEA country participants. Thus, the strategy is developed by EMEA PR and Brand managers and it is then distributed to other countries. Those strategies include the communication points schedule throughout the whole launch stage of the game, with pre-determined recommended budget split.

Figure 2.12 - Differences between the default version of Rainbow Six Siege compared to its Chinese version. Source: Twitter, ResetEraNT, 2018

Despite the key strategic points being made globally, each country has its right to adjust it to their local specifics, in a way they consider more suitable or relevant for their particular country. For example, as Facebook is not a really popular social network in Russia, according to Mediascope (2018), and as it is in many respects analogous to VK, Ubisoft often applies the Facebook social media strategy to VK prioritizing it instead.

Figure 2.13 - Social networks with the highest reach in Russia: daily active users vs Monthly active users. Source: Mediascope, 2018

Apart from that, unique digital media channel for Russian region to highlight is Yandex. Yandex integrates a lot of useful tools for digital marketing such as SEO, Yandex advertising network, video advertising, location-based advertising and many others. So, apart from allocating budget for Google advertising, Ubisoft Russia also actively utilizes Yandex advertising tool set as considers it a crucial digital marketing channel, as was highlighted during the expert interview.

Ubisoft Russia does not narrow all its marketing activities down merely to the global strategy. Apart from the assets included in the original EMEA Ubisoft digital marketing strategy, we shall mention some local initiatives (special projects and local partnerships), locally produced assets, local community contests etc. Thus, one of the examples of such an initiative can be collaboration between Ubisoft Russia and the Russian football club Spartak. Right after the launch of the game Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Ubisoft Russia published a video on YouTube named “Spartan kick” featuring Georgi Dzhikiya, a Russian professional footballer wearing Spartan armor at some parts of the clip and scoring a goal with a famous Spartan kick movement. The video's description contains the following text: “That kick could not be repeated by anyone... until today…”.

Another example is local collaboration with the Russian forge named “Vyolunda” («Вёлунда») in November 2017. Master blacksmiths forged the Egyptian khopesh, which is the signature weapon of medjay Bayek from the game Assassin's Creed Origin. The videos received positive feedback from the Russian community and enhanced interest towards the game. Therefore, it is crucial to conclude that even though Russia does definitely follow the general global digital marketing strategy made in Ubisoft office in France, it still place a great emphasis on localization aspects, assets adaptation, intense work on building friendly and close relationship with the local games communities and content creators.

3. Key findings and recommendations

3.1 Results of the study and key findings

Overall, it is vital to mention that most of the marketing policies described in the paper are mainly related to Ubisoft EMEA region based game developer companies and their marketing strategies are extrapolated towards Russian markets with the account of some limitations and cultural, legal and political peculiarities. Let us get down to those specific features.

One of the key specific features is attributed to the existence of the unique digital channels that can be either exclusively or most effectively used in the video games industry. This include social media made for gaming community such as Discord that, as a research has shown, has more than 90% users interested in video games and most recent game releases, in-game events and interesting offers. Discord is also a great community booster. Discord server boosts visibility for other company's digital channels it has presence in. Communities are people of similar interests brought together online to discuss video games, hot industry news etc. So, Ubisoft also utilizes those channels by creating dedicated Discord services for particular games. Another unique channel actively used in the video games industry is Twitch. The research has shown that streamers are watched by people who are interested in games on computers and game consoles, those who are interested in developing games and creating soundtracks for them, as well as modern popular culture. Another unique channel actively used in building a digital marketing strategy in the video games industry is Reddit. Since its existence, Reddit has formed a community of active users highly interested in video games. They are young active audience passionate about games and user generated content creation. There are definitely other topics discussed on Reddit apart from video games related content, however the latter occupies the majority of the most popular and viewed topics. Therefore, we may conclude that our Hypothesis #1 has been approved and Most of the digital marketing strategy's specifics in the video games industry are attributed to the use of unique digital channels.

The second hypothesis about legislative aspect being the only one to be taken into account when building a digital marketing strategy in the video games industry is national censorship of creative media has been rejected. Nation censorship does play crucial role in terms of local law and legislation, however, the specifics about the local video games rating system is also a significant factor as oftentimes, as the research has reviled. The games sometimes may receive a completely different rating in one or another country due to higher restrictions on violence or blood demonstration and many other aspects, and it would greatly affect how and to what audience the game will be able to get targeted to. Hence, rating system makes up for another crucial point in terms of legal aspects to take into consideration at the stage of building the marketing strategy as the company may require completely different assets and would have to change its target audience due to the age group.

Finally, the third hypothesis on the digital marketing strategy of Ubisoft Russia being the strategy of glocalization has been proved. Despite the fact that Russia does definitely follow the general global digital marketing strategy originally made in Ubisoft office in France, it still place a great emphasis on localization aspects, assets adaptation, intense work on building friendly and close relationship with the local games communities and content creators. Apart from that, it also has an opportunity to adjust and change the global initial digital marketing strategy and even budgets according to its local specifics and preferences in terms of digital channel or influencers choice.

3.2 Recommendations for digital marketing strategy development

The examination of the main specific features of the Russian video games market opens up an opportunity for us to move onto recommendations for digital marketing strategy development in Russia.

First off, bearing in mind the piracy issue in Russia that has been discussed in the second chapter, one of the recommendations may be closely related to how to make potential customers actually purchase the licensed copy of the game instead of search for ways on how to pirate it. One of the possible solutions can be increasing the impact of the advantages one can get once he or she uses a licensed copy as well as rising awareness of those benefits among the customers. In other words, a person should be well-informed of all the advantages of owning a licensed copy. The company, on its side, should make those advantages more vital and more appealing, enhancing a player's gaming experience. Such befits usually are daily / weekly in-game rewards for activity, various rewards for in-game achievements, low ping (latency) if it is a multiplayer game, different skins and customization options as gifts, full Russian localization and one of the most important - regular updates and patches fixing existed bugs and errors in the game so that a player is always up-to-date receiving the latest improvements.

To sum the mentioned up: given the online piracy problem existence in Russia, game developing companies, when adapting their global digital marketing strategies to the Russian market or launching a product in Russia, may pay closer attention to not just promoting a game itself but also popularizing the benefits the licensed copy will bring.

Apart from that, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of the key political and cultural specifics of the region (Russia, in our case). Those factors can boil down to homosexual-related content distribution ban, sensitivity to certain political and social topics when used in context of video games basis (like Ukrainian crisis, annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, terrorism etc.). It is also important to be aware of the local video games rating systems, which often differ from the rating systems in other countries.

Another aspect we shall pay attention to is the way of addressing the audience. Due to certain cultural differences as well as language specificities explained in more detail in the previous chapters, in Russia it might be much more significant to stick to a more formal style when speaking to your audience. Unlike in the U.S. or other European countries, people in Russia are more sensitive to the way they are appealed to in the official social media or in the product's content itself. It might provoke the emergence of some unpleasant situations with seeming rude or impolite, which has a high potential risk to undermine the customers' loyalty and the company's reputation. Therefore, in order to avoid any conflicts of such kind, when operating in the Russian market and applying a global digital marketing strategy to the Russian reality, it might be useful to implement a formal communication style. Or, if a company is absolutely certain on addressing their customers informally, it shall make sure their target audience will take it appropriately.