Welcome To The Decade Of Games

Game dynamics are fast becoming a critical currency of motivation. Their power lies not in connecting us to our friends, but in directly influencing our individual behaviour. More and more of these dynamics are being cleverly leveraged in real-world scenarios to influence your behavior. Smart companies will take this time to look at their product portfolios and community behaviors through the lens of game dynamics.

For those of you still trying to wrap your head around the meteoric rise of social networking over the past decade, this post might hurt a little bit. Because just as you and most of the world were getting a handle on it, the decade of social abruptly ended.

I don't mean that we will stop using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to share with our friends, colleagues and families. In fact, quite the opposite is true, our combined usage of these social networks will continue to increase. Rather, the decade of constructing the social layer is complete. The frameworks that we'll use to share socially are built, defined and controlled. Construction on the social layer ended with the launch of Facebook's Open Graph protocols over the last several months. All the interesting social stuff that will occur over the next decade (and there'll be lots, I'm sure), will exist within this predefined framework built and controlled by Facebook. In short, the decade of social is over.

What's taking its place? The decade of games.

When you hear games, you probably immediately think about things like World of WarCraft, the Nintendo Wii and Farmville. And while those are huge (and will get even bigger) I'm talking about the underlying game dynamics that are the core building blocks of those games. And in this decade of games, these game dynamics will move far beyond your computer screen and into decidedly non-game like environments, like the way we court customers, engage with others at work, discover where to hang out on Saturday nights and what, when and how we choose to purchase. More and more of these dynamics are being cleverly leveraged in real-world scenarios to influence your behavior. While the last decade was all about connections and integrating a social fabric to every facet of our digital and analog existence, this next decade is all about influence.

Game dynamics are fast becoming a critical currency of motivation. Their power lies not in connecting us to our friends, but in directly influencing our individual behavior.

The decade of games is starting now because cultural and technological shifts have led us to a perfect convergence of reach, relevance and demand. We're able to reach people anywhere at any time thanks to the powerful mobile devices that now travel everywhere we go. Facebook's Open Graph enables us to provide relevance to anyone with instant access to the social graph of connections. And there's the demand. Traditional forms of entertainment (movies, television... remember books?) are in a rapid decline. The demand for entertainment hasn't decreased, it's just shifted to a more interactive, pervasive form of entertainment. It's shifting to games.

I've been playing games for at least half of my life (granted, I'm only 21) but that's still a long time. And, I'm currently the Chief Ninja (that's the non-game company equivalent of CEO) of SCVNGR, aGoogle Ventures backed mobile gaming company. Needless to say, I tend to think of life as a giant game. A somewhat poorly designed for sure, but one big game nevertheless. I enjoy watching how game dynamics subtly, often invisibly, influence almost everything that everyone does.

At SCVNGR, we've been able to examine the statistical effects of introducing game dynamics into situations that are decidedly not games. We've seen simple game dynamics increase traffic to locations 4X over a matter of days. We've seen others extend the average amount of engaged time consumers spend at a business by upwards of 40%. This propagation of game dynamics into the real world via the social graph and mobile devices will have powerful business consequences for those who understand how to leverage them.

At SCVNGR we like to joke that with any seven game dynamics you can get anyone to do anything. So with that, I'll present three of our favorites here:

The Appointment Dynamic

The appointment dynamic is a famous game mechanic in which to succeed a "player" must return at a predefined time to take a predetermined action. It's simple and immensely powerful.

The appointment dynamic is powerful enough to alter the behavior of an entire generation — "happy hours" are appointment dynamics, as is the pervasive game "Farmville" by Zynga. But we've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Imagine companies like Vitality leveraging this dynamic to improve the adherence rate to often less-than-pleasant medicinal regimens, or the government creating a large scale game (with financial incentives as rewards) to alter traffic patterns to decrease highway congestion in the mornings.

The Progression Dynamic

In the progression dynamic, a "player's" level of success is displayed in real-time and gradually improved through the completion of granular tasks. Somewhere deep-rooted in the human psyche we have this desire to complete any progression dynamic put in front of us as long as the steps to do so are itemized and clear. With this as a known dynamic, it's not hard to envision the ways that this can be leveraged even further in the real-world.

The canonical "game" example of the progression dynamic exists in Blizzard's World of WarCraft, the most popular immersive online game with over 11 million monthly players. In WoW players follow a well-defined progression dynamic as they level-up from a weak paladin level 1 to an unbelievably powerful paladin level 60 by completing missions and tasks.

But like most game dynamics, real-world implementations of this mechanic are not hard to find. Coffee shops regularly use this dynamic with their "buy nine cups of coffee and your 10th is free" cards. Next time you log into LinkedIn, check out how complete your profile is. If you're one of the lucky ones who's figured out how to have a complete LinkedIn profile, then you've won this specific game, but for the rest of us, you'll see a now familiar looking progression dynamic, urging us to take a couple more steps to move that blue progress bar from the left edge of the screen to the right.

Communal Discovery

Communal discovery is a mechanic which involves an entire community working together to solve a problem. The reason I've saved the communal discovery dynamic for last is that it, perhaps more than all others, presents incredible opportunities to positively influence the world as we enter this decade of games.

In an effort to illustrate the immense data-collection power of the now mature social layer (and incidentally the burgeoning game layer), DARPA launched a challenge late last year. They hid 10 red balloons at different locations all across the continental United States and offered $40,000 to the first team to correctly identify their locations. The winning team (a group from MIT) constructed a strategy that in many ways mirrored a pyramid scheme. It was a cleverly constructed waterfall of incentives that encouraged massive cooperation. Essentially everyone to give them data about any balloon's location won some portion of the prize money based on how many other people also submitted the location of that balloon. This created positive communal incentives across what rapidly became a large and self-propagating network. Their strategy managed to accurately identify all locations in less than 9 hours.

This communal discovery mechanic is immensely powerful and, as DARPA so elegantly displayed, can be used to solve immensely difficult problems in record time.

These are just three out of a myriad of game dynamics that will act as the core building blocks used to construct the game layer over the next couple years. We're right at the beginning of this decade of games and so now is the time for everyone to learn about these game dynamics and discover new ones. Smart companies will take this time to look at their product portfolios and community behaviors through the lens of game dynamics. Where could you employ progression or appointment dynamics on the existing social graph or through mobile to encourage upsells or repeat visits? The time is now to map out your game dynamic strategy. The more people that help in the construction of these frameworks, the better they will be. So, go play some games. Then start building.

Source - Harvard Business Review

Ironic Partnership

For decades, videogames and fitness have been each others nemesis. Thankfully, this war of attrition has come to an end as these once enemies have joined forces in a somewhat ironic partnership. The following is both an example of the evolution of videogames and proof that peace does have a chance.

The Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco, CA last week, and there, Nintendo announced several upcoming product and service introductions, including the much-talked about Wii Fit gaming title. Wii Fit is meant to promote fitness as much as fun game play, showing that the console really is meant for an entirely different gaming market than the “traditional” gaming consoles. Scheduled to officially launch in mid-May, it will come with a Balance Board that can sense one’s weight and motion. Gamers will also be able to log onto a Wii Fit Channel where they can monitor fitness progress through both weight loss and BMI (body mass index). Games that make use of the Wii Fit Balance Board are already in development.

In addition to Wii Fit, Nintendo also plans to launch a downloadable game service called WiiWare on May 12. Here, customers will be able to access games, while developers can gain gaming ideas. Some of the first available games will include Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles; My Life as a King; and LostWids. Both the competing Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 permit downloading games through online portals.

For more information, visit www.wii.com.

Aspirational Lifestyle Seeks Aspirational Product

Videogames and advertising are a match made in heaven yet few marketers have unlocked the true power of this relationship. Both mediums connect their audience with an aspirational lifestyle however the videogame medium is able to do it from the opposite direction offering products to your already aspirational online persona. How do you sell a Sony Camcorder to Nico from GTA IV?

There are a few common reasons why advertisers want to use videogames to reach consumers.

One is the belief that videogames are a place to recover the waning audiences of television advertising. The highly desirable, seemingly elusive 18-34 male demographic is often, unfairly, assumed to correspond directly to videogame players. What better way to retrieve these "lost" consumers than to inject billboard and video advertising into their sci-fi shooters and fantasy role-playing games?

Would an orc order pizza? Does a dystopian planet from the future need a pacer drink? In most videogames, advertisements become parodies of themselves. An alternate version of this principle swaps young men for middle-aged women, and console games for casual puzzle games, where branded objects replace abstract tokens.

Another motivation is advertisers ongoing interest in targeting children. People assume videogames are for kids (as well as young adult males). Everyone, from greedy candymakers to hopeful science educators to earnest charitable organisations, wants to reach kids early with messages to buy, to learn, or to become aware. What better way to speak to the kiddies than via Mario platformer lookalikes or custom virtual worlds that extend a favorite franchise?

Unfortunately, kids advergames and educational titles underestimate the sophistication that children exhibit at play. Titles like Pokemon, Animal Crossing, or Zoo Tycoon require patience, deep knowledge and sophisticated reasoning.

Yet another reason revolves around visibility. No matter the intended audience, games get attention. These days, every musician, politician, and non-profit cause has a MySpace page, a Facebook profile and a YouTube channel. Videogames offer a sure-fire way to attract new attention in a noisy world. Major press outlets will cover a game without ever playing it, so quality matters less than curiosity. In fact, an entire genre of computer-enabled games played partly in real-world environemnts, known as Alternate Reality Games (or ARGs), have been funded almost exclusively by advertisers as a way to garner the kind of front-page news stories money can't buy directly.

But the features of videogames that make them powerful communication tools cannot be found in their demography, or their puerility, or their peculiarity. Rather, they are located in the very way they make meaning. In games, players take on roles constrained by rules. In play, we become other people, in a different situation, and try out life in their shoes. This is a powerful idea that has the potential for both commercial and social benefit.

For a long time now, advertisers have sold desires rather than competing for needs. They have lured us into buying products that represent the lives we aspire to but don't actually lead. They do this by plastering our world with images of these fantasy lives in the hope that we will buy untold products and services in a vain attempt to bridge the endless chasm between lives of mundane, suburban debt and lives of lithe, hypersexed outdoorsmanship.

But videogames don't just project images; they simulate experiences. For the first time since the quaint sponsor spots of the golden age of television, we have in the videogame a medium that can actually make claims about the features, functions, benefits and drawbacks of products and services. Or of public policies and causes, for that matter.

This untapped potential of games upsets the very foundation of advertising as we know it. Instead of surrounding us with images that reflect lives unlived, games can allow us to try out hypothetical lives with new products, people and ideas. To realise this potential, advertisers of both goods and viewpoints must stop blindly inserting their billboards into games or creating feeble copies of the cornerstones of videogame pop culture. Instead, they must start simulating the products, public policy positions, charitable interventions and other worldly ideas in new games – games worthy of our attention.

In a videogame marketplace overflowing with sports, fantasy and war, one need only look to The Sims, which recetly sold its 100 millionth unit, to see the untapped potential of games to be about real lives instead of fantasy ones.

Source - The Guardian