Saturday Morning Reads: Do Marketers Really Need to Understand Gaming?
Obviously gaming has been a round for a long time. And social gaming isn’t really that new either. But for those marketers that are still not convinced that social media is really relevant to their organization, gaming might be a little tough pill to swallow. And just like social media, whether we like it or not, gaming is a very important element in consumer behavior.
So, is gamification the next word to be added to the marketer’s lexicon? Or is it destined for Buzz Word Bingo? I can hear it now… “We need gamification!” or “Our site has been gamified!”
Okay, I’ll stop…like I said this is serious business. As serious as an Angry Bird flying into FarmVille only to get whacked by a mobster, right?
I’ll be honest with you, I am not a gamer (if you couldn’t gather that already). I have however played Angry Birds on my iPhone and iPad. I am not sure I’ll ever understand the lure of gaming as a consumer (as a marketer, heck yeah!). Is it stress relief to blow up little pigs? Well, sure! Is it social to get a pig from a friend? Of, course! But will I be playing FarmVille or Mafia Wars just to understand that community aspect that exists with gaming? I am not so sure. And yet, I feel like I’d be a failed marketer if I didn’t deeply understanding the draw, the community, the vernacular and the gaming levels in order to best serve clients. Is understanding social media enough to understand gaming? From an ethnography and technology standpoint, I don’t think so. Just like anything social, not understanding these important elements can backfire on a brand. Only understanding social media is how organizations will best understand why the same thing applies to the gaming community.
Look at this! Even the Smithsonian has been gamified! Perhaps it is time to move beyond Angry Birds?
Thankfully, according to Seth Priebatsch, we have some time on our side. For now.
TEDx Boston: Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world
“…the social layer is all about these connections. The game layer is all about influence. It’s not about adding a social fabric to the Web and connecting you to other people everywhere you are and everywhere you go. It’s actually about using dynamics, using forces, to influence the behavior of where you are, what you do there, how you do it. That’s really, really powerful, and going to be more important than the social layer.”
[Thanks to Michelle Tripp for sharing this TedX talk, it inspired this morning’s readings.]
Renée Warren: The Rise of Social Gaming in Marketing
“Understanding the psychology of the gamer is vital to using gaming as a marketing strategy. This is where ‘game mechanics’ come into play. It is important to build a game that is enjoyable and encourages the gamer to continue playing. Businesses that can use game mechanics successfully, and develop a good game as part of their social gaming marketing strategy are the ones who will be successful.”
ClickZ: Old McDonald’s Has a Farm… Burger Chain Mixes With FarmVille
“Joining forces with FarmVille is an incredible opportunity for us to engage with millions of players in the most popular social game… What makes our FarmVille effort unique is that it reinforces important features of the McDonald’s brand while enhancing game play for FarmVille players.”
“Social campaigns like this are about re-thinking the delivery and reception of advertising… It’s a way to engage where you’re relevant, not irrelevant.”
Planoma: Gaming – the next step for social marketing?
“…communication can occur between more than 2 users, sometimes up to 12 users can be connected in the same conversation at the same time). Immediately you have a situation where discussion about your marketing can take place between these users as they are interacting with it.
“The opportunities to place marketing messages within these environments, as always, must be accompanied by consideration for the environment where they are being placed. As this has been an underused channel for marketing up until now, the user of that channel is likely to be hostile towards marketing that detracts from their experience or saturates what was before a fairly desolate marketing space.”
Happy Watching & Reading!
Even More Goodness! Related Posts:
Tags: Angry Birds, FarmVille, Gaming, Gaming Marketing, Mafia Wars, Smithsonian, Social Gaming, Social Media
9 Responses to “Saturday Morning Reads: Do Marketers Really Need to Understand Gaming?”
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This touches on something I’ve been thinking about lately. (A bit of a tangent, so please forgive me.) What’s the difference between understanding customers to serve them, and understanding them to manipulate? What’s the best way to communicate that your intentions are honorable?
I think the reason I’m asking is this… you can either be part of a community, or outside of it looking in. In order to build relationships with customers who are gamers, you’d have to become a gamer. But then, could you remain objective enough to include everyone’s experiences in your recommendations, as opposed to extrapolating your own experiences to the rest of the community? Is it important to remain objective at that point, or instead to understand the community to the extent that not manipulating them becomes personal to you as part of them?
I am a firm believer that consumers don’t want to be sold and that the new sales pitch is a brand that is willing to listen and talk with consumers online. When I was in charge of the online marketing for Cialis when the brand was launched we used a basketball game on Yahoo sports to communicate the key points of the brand (i.e. 36 hours). I was really amazed at the engagement time with the brand and on top of this subsequent research showed that over 70% of people who played the game “retained the key brand messages”.
Richard Meyer recently posted..Social media experts- If someone tells you they have the answer- they probably don’t understand the question”
Thanks for this post! I’ve been thinking about the same thing, and from the same direction (meaning not being much of a gamer myself – I’m actually a very bad loser and get frustrated quickly with any game stuff I try that gets too hard for me…)
Beyond the obvious “badge-collecting” aspects of apps like Foursquare, there are lots of game elements being discussed in terms of helping to build private networks – things like flair and rewards for users participating in communities, things like the LinkedIn-style progress bar that helps push people along to completing their profile. Does this stuff work? Is it lasting or fleeting? My instinct says yes it works, but I’m curious and watching to see over time what happens with all of these gaming elements in social networks.
Mitch Joel recommended the book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell that addresses these questions. I haven’t read it yet, but am excited to. Would love to know if anyone has read it and what they think.
Maddie Grant recently posted..Latest from the Open Community Virtual Book Tour
Great find.
I’ve been interested in the subject since watching this Jesse Schell video, earlier this year:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html
…and was happy to find this “Game Mechanics Playdeck” a couple of months ago:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics
I’m secretly hoping for the right opportunity to come along to play with some game theory / mechanics.
It will be a long time before I worry about the gaming aspect of marketing but it’s interesting and unknown to me that the likes of McDonalds and BK are already tying into social games. My concern with all those games is privacy at this point.
Robin recently posted..Advertising Age says the Dirtiest Words of All- We Were Wrong
Oh Beth – you can knock me over with a feather right now.
I’ve been catching up on *my* reading this Saturday night and I was deep into an issue where we were discussing “gaming the numbers” & “gaming the systems” – as in “artificially creating inflated numbers to give the impression that one has achieved a significant metric.” You know, “he gamed Twitter using programs like Hummingbird to follow & unfollow people to make it look as though there were 50k people following him rather than 50k autofollows.”
So I come here and see “gamification” and “gamifying” and well.
Now game theory as it applies to social gaming applications? Oh, that’s a different story. One I like as a matter of fact. I’ve been following Zynga’s progress for a couple of years now. Blame that on the geek in me. I honestly believe that they tapped into the psyche of the same people who used to send you emails with “fwd fwd fwd: fwd: fwd>> the funniest pictures ever!!!1!” in the title. The people who wanted you to know that they were thinking about you – but who didn’t really want to engage as deeply as committing to a phone call just then (who controls how long that lasts?) but also didn’t know what to write in an email, so they sent you a mass emailed collection of pictures that have been around for years. Because that was a way of saying “see? We’re still connected! I still think of you!” without all of the messiness.
But I *am* a gamer. I’ve been one as far back as I can remember. Yes, I played RPGs in high school. I was on computers every moment I could be – but mostly because gaming kept getting better & better on them. I still want to know the solution to a game I never beat & always died on in the early 1980′s on Apple IIe’s (It haunts me.)
Do I think marketers will have to understand the potential applications of social gaming? Yes. But not necessarily those who focus on the Social Media aspects. You know what? The digital marketing crowd is there for a reason. It’s okay to have different elements to a marketing campaign. And while we *call* it “Social Gaming” – it is anything but. It isn’t social. Most of those games are lodged on and spread by social networks – but they aren’t played in a social environment. They are played alone. Scores are posted to Facebook and Twitter. Invitations to play are broadcast on them. But if you want “social gaming” you need multiple user environments. Those are games like World of Warcraft, GuildWars, City of Heroes, Halo… Those are on systems like XBox 360 and on hosted servers.
Even if we’re talking Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, SCVNGR, or any of the Geo-location “social games”? We’re not *really* being social. The game aspect of those is competitive – but the marketing side is not. It’s actually pretty antisocial so far. Few folks read what their ‘friends’ are doing on them – many post what *they* are doing. Even when you are using GLS for gatherings, that is the social aspect, not the game.
Don’t worry too much about learning them inside out. What you need to know? Is how to incorporate them into a campaign and who to turn to in order to develop them. Fortunately for us, there are a slew of coders being raised in the iPhone/droid/smartphone app era – and they are hungry to get into the space.
Marketers don’t have to be coders, or game theorists – they just need to know where to find them.
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Finally someone’s writing this kind of article. Being an iOS developer, and game artist @vectorbloom, I have been able to observe the inevitable trend pointing towards games for iOS being designed for brands, performers as the next level of marketing tool. As more development becomes automated, the pendulum will shift from features back to the concept, the art and the music as the core elements actually engaging and inspiring the audience. It’s an exciting time for game developers and artists! Follow us on our Facebook page to learn more about what we’re working on for 2011 http://facebook.com/vectorbloom