Gamespiel

Games > TV, Print, Radio, Other Digital – 5 reasons why Games Truly Communicate

Games cannot be compared to traditional mass media.

I ask why not?

Games are narratives. Narratives have messages. Media carries messages.

Here are 5 attributes on which I measure the power of Games as a communication vehicle which have me convinced that structurally Games are a superior form of communication to traditional media.

 

Authoring

Not to be taken literally, authoring refers to the sense of control that a player is imbued with to “create” and chart a course of action. That sense of empowerment is a fantastic motivator for any communication process. 

Freedom

A corollary to the earlier point on authoring, the open ended constructivist syntax of a game gives multiple routes to a player to progress. With multiplayer games, it creates even more possibilities. People replay a game even after being successful – because the experience can be radically different! Games as a communication vehicle offer choice and experimentation.

 Feedbacking

Not to be confused with being able to comment on a thread or article, Feedbacking refers to the constant action-reaction cycle that is a part of a classical communication process.  Games are built on the player being able to constantly adapt one’s actions and choose the same or different actions based on the system’s response – true communication!

Intensity

Games offer multi-sensory inputs to the human brain. Also with force feedback devices and with certain consoles like Wii, Kinect and Move the information and stimuli that is part of the communication process is of an overall order of magnitude higher than traditional media.

Immersing

As mentioned in a previous post, games immerse not just in terms of visuals and narrative but in the way they create a strong objective driven purpose for the entire engagement. With a strong motivator, chances for the communication process to break down or be aborted by a person are unlikely.

Now, if we evaluate traditional media vehicles like TV, Print, Radio and also conventional digital media like websites and digital video, they suffer certain deficiencies. 

These deficiencies are rooted in the structure of the media itself, so quick fixes or solutions are unlikely.

 What do you think? Does gaming still suffer from the stereotypical images of the 80s and early 90s? What stops Gaming from being a mass communication vehicle? Comments are open!

Next week may see a short break from posting but I may surprise you and myself with a post.

 

Alternate Reality Gaming – Crowdsourcing the Game!

To me, Alternate Reality Games are a really clever combination of narrative and user generated content that becomes the game itself.

Did you just go blank?

Take Two.

An Alternate Reality Game starts off with a premise.  Let’s take the example of the critically acclaimed World Without Oil (hence an Alternate Reality), which asked players to imagine such a world and then document their responses to it – through blog posts, videos, images, and even e-mails. This becomes the game content.

People discussed each other’s submissions, added and made changes to their original inputs, and may even have voted for the best contributions. The game progressed, on multiple parallel threads.

By getting people involved in contributing ideas and perspectives, maybe some unique high impact solutions result. In the case of World Without Oil some 60,000 people followed the game and around 2,000 actively participated over its 32 day run.

Jargon-lovers (Who, me?!) call this crowdsourcing!

Now imagine the Alternates to Alternate Reality Game in the above scenario?

Would you rather have had celebrities pontificate (Al Gore alert!) or played a casual game clone more out of curiosity (or guilt) than a real sense of involvement?

Central to Alternate Reality Games is the principle that the game designers (called Puppet Masters in this genre’s speak) will leave the gameplay and game progression to you – the player.  This also has the side benefit of players not having anyone else to blame if the game sucks (Heh! Heh!)

Counter-strike: So why haven’t such games become “mainstream”?

Here is my take on what plagues the Alternate Reality Games scene:

• Absence of a Mega Hit – Despite being around for at least a decade, and being used to promote everything from movies, to video games, and brands, Alternate Reality Games haven’t had their Quake, Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto moment – a blockbuster standout hit!
• Limited Duration – By their very nature Alternate Reality Games are used in a shot burst, and in advergaming applications, typically to support a larger property. It is hard to sustain a gaming franchise when the construct is inherently short-term.
• Snotty Core Gamers –  Fact, Core gamers look down upon Alternate Reality Games. Really, what did the Alternate Reality Game crowd expect when proudly broadcasting their TINAG (This is Not a Game) slogan to whoever cared to listen.

There is a caveat here.  Alternate Reality Games are not just a different genre but a different form of games. Core gamers pooh-pooh the lack of interactive content, storyline as gameplay construct, absence of victory conditions and objectives as per conventional game structures. True.

However the irony is that Alternate Reality Games have many things that many core games lack - A powerful narrative (Yeah! that story thing!), user generated content (Whole game vs. just mods!) , and a totally open ended gameplay progression (yes,  I am sneering at your scripted FPS games, core gamers!).

So gentle reader, you may ask, what makes for a good Alternate Reality Game?

Here are my ingredients for the secret sauce.

For marketing folks seeking to build a short term buzz around certain events or programs, Alternate Reality Games offer excellent applications . Especially around the “heavier stuff” to do with PR and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

What do you think – Are Alternate Reality Games just gamified Websites and Bulletin Boards? Have you used games for PR and CSR? What was the experience like? Comments are open!

Next week – a digression (a necessary one) into core gameplay mechanics as I post on “Game Depth”! 

Augmented Reality Gaming – All your Smartphone are Belong to us!

Apologies core gamers for defiling your sub-culture’s cult line for my petty purposes !

But after casual games, then social games, now comes the nascent but potentially Tsunami-like phenomenon in the shape of Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) that could sweep aside all in its path!

And all because of the Smartphone – the gaming console of the masses.

Before we go any further, for the newbies to Augmented Reality Gaming (not to be confused with the acronym sharing Alternate Reality Gaming) here is a short reckoner:

• Augmented Reality Games are games where computer generated information is overlayed onto a real world location with gameplay that combines the real and virtual worlds
• Augmented Reality itself isn’t new.  For example, fighter pilots have been using Heads Up Displays (HUDs) and Helmeted Mounted Displays (HMDs)for a long time now. The first ARG is reputed to have been ARQuake, a mod of the popular Quake game, way back in 2000.
• ARGs have three typical components:

–  A Viewer in the form of a camera, typically a webcam or your cell phone camera to read the AR information. Also, there are browsers such as Layar which activate the camera and read AR information

–  The Quick Response (QR) code which provides the AR information and gameplay controls. The functional equivalents of bar codes, these are typically printed out on paper and “embedded” onto real world objects. You can generate your own QR codes 

–  The Game Core – the game code and programming itself which runs in either the PC or the smartphone.

Marketers have been quick to recognize the amazing possibilities of Augmented Reality and here are some notable examples of ARGs in advergaming:

• BWM Z4:  If you never owned a BMW, this game allows you to race a virtual BMW Z4 roadster on your desktop. All you need is a computer with a webcam and a print out of the QR. The game has an added twist –the artist in you can create drawings on your desktop by driving the virtual BMW, which has colored tire marks. This innovative UK campaign was tied in with a TV commercial as well.
• Lego Platformer: This is a really cute3D  platform game developed for Android phones – label different LEGO Duplo bricks with QR labels to create your own game level. Then navigate the LEGO avatar to a treasure through a platform style game.
• Red Bull Racer: Developed for the iPhone this fun AR racing game has just one catch – you need to buy Red Bull cans – 12 of them – to create you very own track, in whatever shape you want. Use your iPhone to tag the cans, and off you go racing!
• Copan: What do Ireland and Mayan civilization have in common – beats me! But check out this fun treasure hunt ARG where you must roam the streets of Dublin to locate clues. Available on both the iPhone and on Android this ARG stands out for the scale of implementation and some really cool prizes that were given away!

As the last three examples are all on Smartphones, it just shows how ARGs have really come into their own when deployed on Smartphones. Here's why:

• Usability! Since the cool thing about ARGs is the real world environment that is being augmented, it is just easier to use a Smartphone as a platform than lug around even the tiniest of notebooks.
• Unique gameplay! Smartphones come with compass, GPS, and accelerometers as default.This allows game designers to provide a unique gameplay experience for ARGs that cannot be mirrored on non-mobile devices, at least not easily.
• SOLOMO! As VC guru   god John Doerr’s latest mantra goes for apps - SOLOMO– Social, Local, and Mobile, ARGs on smartphones pass this test with flying colors as illustrated below

Has your company explored the use of AR and ARGs? What’s the reaction been like? How does your marketing team plan to capture the Mobile mindshare? Comments are open!

Next time I’ll post about the other ARG - Alternate Reality Gaming and it’s advergaming applications.

Gamification: Toeing the fine line between Flirting with your Hot Cousin and Kissing your Sister!

Apologies for the sensationalist headline but as demonstrated previously, I am all about the cheap tricks!

Unless you have been living under the proverbial rock, it’s hard not to have come across the latest buzzword in the Customer Engagement and Experience world – Gamification.

The subject of multiple presentations on Slideshare (itself some would cite as an example of Gamification), Gamification has just had its first summit, and venerable vulture venture capitalists such as Bing Gordon of KPCB have been waxing eloquent about it.

So you still need a definition, don’t you?

But first let me say how this whole Gamification buzz thrills me as yet another milestone in the Gamers as Borg worldview that I have – You will be assimilated.  Yesterday Hollywood, tomorrow the world!

Gamification is defined as the application of game thinking and game mechanics to solve problems and engage users.

To me, simplified, it means making an activity or process that is non-engaging, fun!

Let’s take some popular and recent examples of Gamification at work:

• Google’s much touted Experimental Search which allows users to (+1) a search link that they found particularly useful. Also called Social Search, this is an attempt by Google to add a crowdsourcing layer to its “Made by MIT-genius” algorithms which haven’t been too shit hot lately.

This is straight from Gaming 101 where characters get (+1) power ups on completion of a level or meeting some secondary gameplay goal.

I see Google being able to add multiple more layers to this e.g being able to tag search results as Good, Bad, and downright Ugly with different type badges (See Kongregate the game aggregator for how it uses badges and Foursquare’s Gamification of it) which would be even more powerful visual indicators of the search results.

• Tripit uses leaderboards to show not just the trips and distances you have made and covered but also what other users, especially friends have “achieved” in comparison.

The whole comparison, competition, and collaboration mantra that I discussed in a previous post becomes very relevant when we introduce such simple but powerful game mechanics in the user experience.

I see Tripit Gamifying this further by offering travel rewards based not just on absolutes but on where one stands on the leaderboard, further increasing  consumption of travel services.

• Have you seen this? Lowe Bindfors groundbreaking viral campaign for Unilever’s Magnum Ice Cream has Gamified a whole digital advertising campaign!

You have a girl in search of bon bons (the objective), who must go through different sites (levels) ranging from a YouTube video to a Hotel website, catching and grabbing bon bons in a game mechanic similar to a platformer.

To top it off you have a timer and a score. At completion, you get ranked on a leaderboard.

I see Lowe Bindfors creating different episodes of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Bon Bons and Unilever Gamifying the campaign further by creating rewards like discount coupons generated online when players reach different scoring achievements. These coupons can then be redeemed against actual purchases.

A Gamification Framework

There are countless applications of Gamification that are possible – human creativity being a boundless thing.

And while no how to guides can credibly exist, there can be certain frameworks in which to evaluate and apply Gamification. Here is mine:

 

Gamification Caveats - Flirting with the Hot Cousin and Kissing your Sister

Where there be hype, there be dragons.

Under flirting with the hot cousin come all those thoughts that might seem tempting but you really shouldn’t coz no long term good can come from them!

For example, my bank’s Online Banking offering, I’d love it if they could Gamify the boring self-service demos on transferring money or opening a new deposit.

But I’d like no Gamification to my account management interface please and don’t festoon new icons on my account statements, so I can’t separate my debits from my credits.

The opposite may also prove troubling. You may have done a good job of Gamifying a product or service but some PR/MarCom genius thinks these features are enough to start positioning the experience as a Game.

In fact, the Magnum Pleasure Hunt campaign is a good example of what might happen if it was positioned as a game.

Once the initial charm and innovativeness of the user experience wears off the shallow gameplay and the lack of a backstory that establishes an emotional connect with the girl and her quest, might leave you underwhelmed. I know I was.

It’d be just like kissing your sister – no fun and you wouldn’t do it again! If you want to deliver a full-fledged game experience then do something on these lines.

So what do you think? What are your favorite Gamification examples? Or do you think it’s all hooey? Comments are open!

Next week I’ll talk about ARGs – Augmented Reality Gaming and how smartphones and related technologies may herald a new revolution in it, especially on the advergaming side.

Got Game? My Advergame Hall of Fame

Gaming, like almost everything else in life is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration but since this blog is all about evangelizing advergaming, it’s time to serve up some of that inspiration Kool-Aid!

So here are my favorite advergames – you will notice not all conform to the paradigms and concepts that I have blogged in previous posts about.

That just proves I am a real open-minded guy with a larger world view (cough! <modesty break> cough!)

Enough, here are my top 5, in no order of ranking:

1.       Adidas Teamgeist

The marketing context: Adidas Germany are the official kit sponsors of the German football team and with the 2010 World Cup looming they wanted a digital campaign around both the national team and the event.

The gameplay: After some killer graphic novel style intros (cut scenes) the simplistic turn-based gameplay of Teamgeist may leave gamers cold but that is missing the point – this is not a FIFA or a Bola! Read on…

I love it because: It should remind all game designers and gamers that games are fundamentally interactive narratives. Stripped of all the geewhiz graphics, physics, and controls it is the story that must engage a player at an emotional level.

 
Teamgeist does a fantastic job of creating an epic heroic premise – the player has to save the identity of the Die Mannschaft - the German team (and by implication the nation ) by going back into time and winning key World Cup matches – and marrying it with excellent graphics and production values, that is the hallmark of the Swedish Studio that produced it, North Kingdom.

2.       Get the Glass - California Milk Processor Board

The marketing context: The California Milk Processor Board (yeah not your typical brand!) ran a highly successful advocacy campaign called Got Milk? in 2006. In 2007 they wanted to sustain that with a game – Get the Glass was born.

The gameplay: The Adachi Family needs milk – actually it needs a glass of milk. So the family starts on a quest to “Get the Glass”. It must do so through the overarching gameplay of a board game where you roll the die and move ahead on a board. Based on where you land you then get to play mini-games of different kinds – puzzles, skill games, arcade, all the time taking care not to get into trouble – which means jail for the family at the aptly named Milkatraz !

I love it because:

Oh! Where to start! Get the Glass did for Advergames what Top Gun did for Tom Cruise. First, the background of a family - the target group might be children but it’s the parents who are the decision makers and influencers. Second, to choose a simple but familiar board game mechanic, what do most families play together – boardgames! Then, fantastic 3D art assets embedded in flash – if it looks good then it must be good seems to be Swedish studio North Kingdom’s premise and one can’t fault them.

A tactical advergame that became a strategic advergame with bulletin boards and walkthrough pages dedicated to it. 4 million visits with 9 minutes of average time spent is some achievement!

3.       The Great Piggybank Adventures -T Rowe Price

The marketing context: Financial Education is a key marketing theme for many banking/financial services companies and catch ‘em young seems to have been T Rowe Price’s mantra when it wanted to do a game for kids aged, 8-14.

The gameplay: Again, use of a simple board game mechanic and players embarking on a quest from one region to another. Only this time around you would have different goals and making decisions about money would be critical in meeting those goals. Answering financial trivia question cards and playing mini-games gets you closer to your goals.

I love it because: Most advergames are hosted on exclusive sites - you have to go there to play them. Marketing a game is as or perhaps even more difficult than building one. Why kill yourself and not fish where the fish are? The Great Piggybank Adventure game piggybacked on the Disney platform – both offline at the Epcot centre as well as online on the Disney site. Excellent partnering and ecosystem creation is why this game gets my vote!

Did I mention this is from North Kingdom as well? Seriously, not wanting a job with them. See the next entry!

4.       Disrespectoids – Capri Sun/Kraft

The marketing context: Capri Sun’s fruit juice drink for kids  had a USP – it was in a pouch. Ad agency Ogilvy and Mather focused on this unique attribute with a mass media campaign “Don’t disrespect the Pouch.” The Disrespectoids game was the digital dimension of this campaign.

The gameplay: Casual mini-games with each game having its own gameplay. You can choose from a bunch of neighborhood urchins – Fred, Louie, Chuck and Betty being a few of them. The gameplay ranges from an obstacle race in the Bobblehead Fred mini-game to a physics type shooter in the Boing Boing Betty mini-game.

I love it because: 5 of the 6 Mini-games are independent (the 6^th you unlock with achievements in the other games) so you aren’t forced to play ones you may not like to get to the ones that you do. Yet, there is common impish and prankish undertone to them which fits brilliantly with the overall brand attribute and ties the different games together.

 

Excellent graphics and production values which go a long way to make gamers take such games seriously. There is also a leaderboard so you can beat your friends score or even aim to be the top player overall.

5.       America’s Army – U.S. Army

The marketing context: Uncle Sam wants you! The official explanation for the game that can be found on its website is that it provides an opportunity for US citizens to explore a career in the U.S. Army.

I guess if you are a military arm of the US government you can always do with some positive PR in any case! Launched symbolically on July 4, 2002 the game has had upwards of 32 million dollars invested in it.

The gameplay: First Person Collaborative Multiplayer team-based shooter. Given the breadth and depth of the mission that the U.S. Army performs all over the globe, the player has a huge choice. As missions are completed, one gains skills and abilities and of course gets promoted.

The Unreal engine that powers the game provides the player with all the weapon effects, physics and controls that would make the game seem real life.

I love it because: America’s Army is the best possible example of a strategic game property and the impact it can have on your target audience. Huge money has been spent for sure, and many companies may not be able to afford such investments but with 10 million registered accounts, I would say money well spent.

 

The multiplayer – and there are enough people on the game servers any time of day – of course is what makes the gameplay rich and unique.

This is a serious advergame for a serious gamer.

Except for the last example the games I have linked  to are all featured in Tony Giallourakis’s excellent site, www.advergames.com, which was the place where I got my first real introduction to advergaming.

I’d encourage you to explore the various examples on it.

So has your organization ever commissioned an advergame? Do send me a link to it! Which are your favorite advergames? Comments are open!

Next week it’s back to some theorizing (Hey! A Dalmatian does not change its splotches) as I talk about another buzzword doing the rounds – “Gamification” and how you could make it work for your marketing communication!

Advergaming Scenario: If PepsiCo Were to Change the Game!

Given all the theory I have been spouting these past few weeks it’s only fair that I man up and provide an illustration of how Strategic Advergaming may work for a brand.

So what better brand to take up for illustration than PepsiCo – who are all about changing the game!

I call my concept SOMOGAN = Social Media Online Gaming Network – a network of social RPGs (That’s Role Playing Games for the philistines amongst you!), independent yet interlinked in gameplay, each mapped to a leading PepsiCo brand.

The gaming platform – Facebook. It’s where the TG is, it’s got all the viral tools of spreading a social game.

 

The graphic below illustrates how the SOMOGAN would be a portal for players to enter, choose which particular game they would want to play and then see them leverage their friends – real life or game-specific – across the other games to level up and meet the game goals.

 

 
Each brand game would be independent and complete in itself. Two examples:

• The Mountain/(Mtn Dew) RPG could be in the action/adventure RPG genre with elements of a Point Break –surfer-dudes-who-flirt-with-danger (minus the crime) kind of  setting and narrative.
• The Cheetos RPG could have Chester going Calvin and Hobbes in a “Spaceman Spiff” like setting for a fantasy-rich experience or take an edgier subversive “Clerks meets Police Academy” tone in line with the Orange Underground campaign

Level complexity follows a geometric progression, making it critical after a certain level to have powerful friends in the larger SOMOGAN universe!

That last part is really important because that is the real game from a marketer’s perspective. Uniting users with different tastes, preferences, and lifestyles.

 While each is playing a game of their own these people are collaborating across the network and sharing a common umbrella.

The graphic below illustrates how this network effect would build up.

 

Benefits to Brand PepsiCo

By potentially creating a large digital community PepsiCo could use this audience for a variety of strategic and tactical brand activation programs.

However, the real value of having such a powerful property is the benefit to the corporate brand which goes beyond the undoubted benefits that will obtain to individual brands.

The SOMOGAN moves beyond speaking about individual brands to the consumers and gets into a wholly different space of integrating with the digital lifestyles of PepsiCo consumers by meeting their needs for high quality engaging and interactive content. From Brand Equity to Brand Love.

Hey if P&G could do this with a movie, why can’t someone do this with a game. Free your mind!

So what do you think? Do you buy the premise I outlined? Where do you see the pitfalls? Would you see yourself playing such a game? Comments are open!

 Next week, it’s some advergaming examples that I have been very impressed by, and the takeaways one could take from them!

Engagement through Immersion through Gaming: Go with the Flow!

Marketers want customer engagement. Digital Marketers want customers to have an engagement with their digital properties. Frequently they turn to gee-whiz graphics and cutting edge technology to deliver this engagement.

In my current workplace as well as in my previous job it was common practice to label anything in 3D as an “immersive environment”.

When compared to Flash websites or games that operate in the 2D realm or 2.5D at best, a 3D virtual world or game appears clearly more immersive. The spatial, interactive and ambient effects combine to draw you into the world.

But should we look at immersion only from a physical perspective? Is there another secret ingredient to immersion?

Let’s do a small comparison of two 3D environments. Second Life – the celebrated Virtual World has 20 odd million registered users of which around 800 thousand are considered active. Then there is the famed MMORPG World of Warcraft with 12 million subscribers.

Second Life was supposed to have reached a high of $80 million odd in revenues. World of Warcraft is estimated to earn publisher Blizzard $1 billion a year.

That’s more than 10 times Second Life’s revenues.

 

Is there something to the fact that WoW is a game which contributes to higher user engagement? Is there an emotional and intellectual dimension of immersion that is worth considering?

Let’s ask the good doctor, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (real easy to pronounce the last name… No? ) .

Now, he is no Sid Meier or Will Wright, In fact, he is not even a gamer.

However  Dr. Csikszentmihalyi ‘s  development of Flow Theory in my view is one of the most seminal pieces of research that has a direct and profound learning for anyone interested in using games for advertising and marketing communication.

Becoming hard to keep your head over the water with me splashing Immersion and Flow Theory at you?

Distilled, Flow Theory defines Flow as the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

Games are a fantastic way to create a state of “Flow” as others have written about and can also be seen below:

 
 So what do you think? Have you ever blown huge money on digital communication and seen poor results? Has your organization ever conducted consumer research on their digital engagements? What did the research reveal? Comments are open!

Next week, let’s talk about a hypothetical advergaming solution at a strategic level. Enough of opinion, time for some applications!

 

Click and Mortar Gaming: Integrating Online Game Performance with Real Consumer Spends

Used to be a time when gaming was about skill and strategy. Hours spent mastering a dangerous curve in Need for Speed or the perfect collaborative team play in a Counter –Strike.

Today Cityville, Farmville and Nightclub City are the new AAA titles. Skill has been overtaken by the number of friends you have “in-game” and even more by your propensity to whip out a credit card.

Buy those virtual goods and level up!

 

Social gaming behemoth Zynga gets 90% of its $500 million revenues through micropayments. Even earlier Virtual Worlds like Habbo and IMVU seduced users with millions of virtual goods in their catalogs and at an ARPU of $1-$2 a month they have micropaved their way to success.

But is every player using micropayments?  No!  Only 3% of Zynga’s users are estimated to have used micropayments.

Also, in many countries like India regulatory and technical challenges have prevented micropayments from taking off.  Even if we did solve those challenges only a small percentage would use micropayments. Or they may need a larger carrot?

Now we do know that all players shop and spend money in the offline world on “real” things. There lies the opportunity.

I call it “Click and Mortar” Gaming – the integration of online game performance with offline rewards and vice versa.

Imagine you are playing a cricket game on Facebook, and are quite the Captain Fantastic.  Wouldn’t it be great that every time you won a match, the game was to add Rs 2 to your bank account? Play 5 matches a day, win 4 out of 5, 22 days a month – that’s 176 bucks or a free ticket at your neighborhood multiplex.

Consider the reverse scenario - If a Supermarket chain would tie up with say a Zynga. If you shopped for INR 5,000 or more a month it would get you an auto level up in the game.

Or unlock Special game missions.

So Marketers need to create an offline ecosystem around popular games. If it’s an advergame then they have the advantage of owning both the game and the offline value proposition.  How about cobranded Loyalty Cards?

 

Breakdown the barrier between the virtual and the physical world and cross-reward and watch players increase consumption – of both the game and the physical goods and services.

 What do you think? What has been your experience in integrating the online and offline worlds of your consumers? How challenging is building an ecosystem of partners? Comments are open!

Next post I’ll talk about the other things that games do very well apart from community building – Immersion!

Game First. Brand Later: A Strategic Approach to Advergames

If it’s an advergame it makes sense that the brand is front and center – in both the graphic element as well as the gameplay..

Most advergames are tactical – usually to spread brand awareness, frequently tied in with a brand launch or event.

I would like to posit a case for a different kind of advergame – the Strategic Advergame, where the brand finds no mention at all, at least initially! Game First. Brand Later.

Crazy and illogical. Maybe Not.

First let me establish the fundamentally different objectives of a Tactical vs. Strategic Advergame

 
You may be a Coke or Pepsi or a McD’s  and your brand stands for many things but chances are is not synonymous with gaming. An EA or a Zynga has a higher credibility in the game space.

So then why would we want brands to get in the business of “hardcore” gaming? Because as my previous post mentioned, games are great at community building.

Make a fun game – allow critical mass to build and then the Brand does a Reveal, typically through a brand or sales promotion.

Will some players get pissed off and not return. Sure! But the larger task of community creation and a resonance with brand values would have been achieved.

 

Brands have recognized the power of popular games – T-Mobile’s recent partnership with Zynga for a special mission in Zynga’s Treasure Isle social game.

Look at what P&G has done in the television movie medium with Secrets of the Mountain. P&G took upon itself the task of providing families with quality entertainment and commissioned the movie.

No mention of P&G on the movie posters. No cheesy in-movie product placements.

Why not a full-fledged game in the same vein?

What do you think? Do CMOs and Brand Managers have the guts to tell their CFOs that they will spend serious money on a game which will have no mention of their brand upfront?

What has been your brand’s experience with gaming and digital media? Comments are open!

Next post I’ll talk about Click and Mortar games and why that should set the pulses of all die hard marketers racing!

Facebook is Passé. Pt. 2 – Here Comes the Mob(ile) and Those that Do no Evil!

I Say: Facebook is not a mobile network.

You Say: WTF!!? Call yourself a serious blogger - Facebook has 200 million mobile users - roughly 40% of its users access using mobile devices. Also Facebook’s launch of Zero – Facebook’s lite text-centric version – proves it’s serious about the mobile space.

But I am making a different point. A mobile social network to me is different from mobile access of a conventional social network.

The userbase, features, functionalities, and the value proposition are distinct from conventional social networks.

 

Let’s take a step back and examine fundamental differences in mobile vs. PC/Laptop usage behaviors:

1. Impulse

Mobiles work great for spur of the moment actions. It’s an always on, always with you device – the thought to action cycle is rapid and mostly uninterrupted, unless it’s your boss or significant other who is hollering at you!

2. Convenience

No BIOS sequence, no Windows is updating Registry files…  And shopping or making payments (soon in India) is a breeze compared to if you were doing it on a PC.

3. Synchronicity

A voice call by definition is synchronous; Text messages get uncannily answered way faster than an e-mail or a comment on someone’s Wall. The only time PC/Laptop users are really synchronous is when they are on Chat.

4. Form Factor/UI

Long a bugbear of mobile devices for more complex and immersive experiences, this is now no longer the case.  Especially, if you include an IPad or any tablet in your definition of a mobile device and it’s a whole new ball game!

Now let’s examine some applications and use cases of mobile networks:

1. Chat: Before Facebook or Orkut came along wasn’t your default social network Chat – Gtalk/Yahoo/MSN? Those chats were synchronous. One of the most popular mobile networks is Mig33 and QQ messenger trumps Facebook in China. Btw, Facebook chat sucks.
2. Instant Polling: So it’s a Friday evening, a bunch of friends working in different places across town want to fix a watering hole to meet at. What are you going to do – voice conference people? Use Facebook’s polling option on your Wall and wait for people to indicate preference? Or push out a poll on everyone’s mobile screens and get instant feedback.
3. Event-driven Social Networks: Following on from Pt.1 of the post, where I emphasized the fact that it’s not just friends = social networks, people also enter into certain temporary but high focus social networks.

 Watch a match at a stadium with 50-60,000 people.  Attend a business conference with 3-  4,000 delegates. Marketers looking to get people to participate and engage at events are  going to want a real-time, always on social network and organizers of such event will value the deeper experience and engagement that participants will be involved in.

4. Augmented Reality gaming: Just as social games took off once they had the right platform with SNS, better mobile networks and mobile devices will power an augmented reality gaming revolution allowing people to combine real and virtual activities – at parks, zoos, festivals!

Mobile devices and the mobile internet will become the primary rather than secondary way for us to go social, and in a real time synchronous way - Facebook better watch out!

And now to the threat from Google.

Though momentum is currently with Zuckerberg and co., they need to carefully consider the following:

1. Google dwarfs Facebook in ad revenues. This is not Sex Therapy 101. Size Matters.  Currently that is approx. $20 billion for Google vs. $2.5 billion for Facebook.
2. Google drives android – the open source mobile OS. In the context of mobile devices and mobile networks that is a huge advantage. It’s also a revenue stream that will scale rapidly.
3. Google has a stake in Zynga. How many people would watch a TV channel if all their hit shows went off air. Facebook’s Achilles heel is that its top properties all come from the Zynga stable – a company where Google has made a hush-hush investment.
4. Facebook may be the social network but Google is my internet ecosystem. Browser - Chrome, Instant Messenger - Gtalk, Mobile Phone OS - Android ( and Chrome OS), Youtube, Blogger, Desktop Search etc. etc. – I just have more Google Friends in my computing ecosystem than Facebook.

 

Image from Benzinga.com Copyright of authors

What do you think? Will mobile networks be radically different from current ones? Does Google still have what it takes to to stave off the challenge of the brash new upstart? Or will the new David beat the new Goliath? Comments are open!

Next few posts it’s back to a deep dive on advergames, especially social games, now that I have established a context on the larger social network that most of these games will exist in.