Gamification: The Social Media Perspective

Over the past several years, there has been a very interesting development in the relationship between entertainment software and everything else, particularly with social media. I touched on this software love affair in my first entry to this blog, but I think it’s time to address this subject from a different angle. In case you’re in need of a social gaming update, it is pertinent to first examine some of the recent developments with the original social gaming giant.

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According to Reuters, CBS News, Edge, and just about everyone else concerned with technology investments, Zynga is in some pretty serious trouble with it’s stockholders; trouble that has been mounting since it’s IPO back in December that valued the company at over $7 billion. Apparently, social games are taking a back seat to mobile games as more consumers turn to the Android and iOS smartphone markets. Despite this disappointing news, it appears as though Zynga is searching to reignite consumer interests in one of their more successful mobile titles from OMGPOP by having CBS transform it into a game show. Of course, I’m referring to Draw Something. Celebrities playing video games with the average Joe on primetime television? It might work. 

While playing a video game on a social network for the sake of competing with your friends and having fun may be falling to the wayside, an increasingly popular form of social gaming has been on the rise. Enter the concept of “gamification,” the process of applying game mechanics to activities that are completely unrelated to games. For the sake of brevity, this post focuses more on gamification from a social media marketing perspective.

Like many marketing innovations, gamification is simply the answer to a question that every business has asked at one point or another: “How do we successfully engage our customers with our brand?” The theory is actually quite simple. If it’s fun, people will want to experience it. Now, we’ve already discussed what makes a game fun. Once the fun factor has been established, all that remains is to plug a unique representation of your brand into the equation. Let’s take a look at how other companies are embracing video games in an effort to reach a wider market:

Marriot – Last year, Marriot provided potential employees with an opportunity to show off their skills on Facebook. They did so by playing the My Marriot Hotel game, which allowed players to take on the typical challenges of a restaurant owner in a Farmville style interface. The goal was simply to make the restaurant turn a profit. While doing this in a game is obviously far less stressful than doing so in real life, many of the techniques and strategies applied in the game would be helpful in real life scenarios.

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Domino’s Pizza – Domino’s is also raising brand awareness on its Facebook page by offering the public a free game, apparently dubbed “Play Today!” If you recall, one important element that must be present in a game to create a fun environment is a reward system. Domino’s rewards players who defeat the fourth level of their social game by donating $1,000 to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. That must have provided players with a self-esteem boost. The really crazy thing about this game is that you don’t even have to “like” Domino’s or relinquish more personal information just to have a go at it. Nice job, Domino’s.

Toyota – In an effort to promote their new sports car, Toyota launched Social Network Racer on Facebook last year. This nifty app allowed players to customize their experience with data retrieved directly from Facebook profiles, and compete against other Facebook friends in an online racing simulator.

If you’re thinking that it’s necessary to hire an independent or freelance game developer to create a game with beautiful graphics and a unique user interface in order to properly gamify your brand, think again. In some cases, simply scoring users based on a number of factors and stacking them up against the scores of their friends is enough to prompt a reaction. If you haven’t come across Identified yet, now is a really good time to check it out. Identified is a social network “extension” that ties in to your Facebook profile. Registrants enter educational, occupational, and social information using a very simple interface, and Identified provides them a score. That score is then compared to the scores of Facebook friends, and is also visible to potential employers or other potential network contacts. I’m ranked 18^th out of my friends based upon the aforementioned criteria. I am not satisfied.

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This passive competition still provides enough encouragement to users to expand their social network, and the networks of employers, in an attempt to get a better score than their friends. Is it a game? I’m not sure, but it’s competitive. Oddly enough, it’s also fun, because it provides me with an incentive to increase my online presence and expand my social network. Perhaps this is why Identified raised $21 million worth of capital investments this month to gamify the network; the very simple format that it has implemented thus far is already fun and engaging, and I’m curious to see what the future has in store.

So, maybe the relationship between entertainment software and social media is souring in the realm of monetization. Yet the two seem to be growing towards a mutual relationship with marketing and branding. For developers, I think this is pretty good news. It means more paying jobs from companies you would never have expected to form a relationship with. It could also mean more depth for your game players. What do you think, developers? Will next generation consoles support virtual orders of live pizza deliveries during gameplay? 

The Effect of Sound

Okay, here is the truth. I love video games. I enjoy playing them, I enjoy talking about them, and I enjoy studying them. But I'm also a huge fan of music. Technically speaking, I know far more about the creation of sound and music than I probably ever will about the video game design process. Last month in part one of Mind Games I discussed the importance of music in video games. For the sake of brevity, I left out an aspect of significant importance during that discussion that I intend to address today: sound effects.

In his Gamasutra feature, "10 Tips: The Creation and Integration of Audio," journalist Tristan Donovan recounts the advice of several sound professionals in the entertainment software industry with an undeniably effective list of audio know-how. With tips detailing the role of sound in the process of immersion to the importance of involving the audio team in the design process from the stage of infancy on through to post-production, Donovan and his panel of sound professionals offer some incredibly helpful tips for both novice and veteran game designers alike.

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Full Sail University Director of Game Development Rob Catto offered a more simplified explanation of the role of sound in modern video games in an interview with Artists House Music a few years back. During the interview, he comments on how the inclusion of more senses will increase the factor of immersion in the overall user experience. What do we know from previous discussions? I'll save you the trouble of guessing by simply stating that immersion is very good. 

So how do sound effect enhance immersion? That's actually a good question, because a game that properly utilizes sound effects is one that doesn't leave you wondering "what was that sound?" In most cases, it should be a natural experience, and immerse players in an almost completely subconscious fashion. In order for sounds to have a natural feel, they should be appropriate for the situation. For instance, if you're roaming through a mansion riddled with zombies, a common sound effect might be the shuffling of feet around the corner, or a series of emotionless and painful groans coming from the other side of a door.

Here's another good example: in Grand Theft Auto, sound collectively plays a huge role in immersing players in the gameplay. The next time you load up a GTA title, pay close attention to the typical sounds of a big city: the passing of cars on pavement and the honking of their horns; the shouts of cab drivers and conversations of other pedestrians; the occasional sound of sirens and gunfire, somewhere off in the distance. It's a noisy and chaotic city, just like any realistic city of relative scale. There is really not much music at all until you hi-jack a vehicle and start blaring the car radio. This jumble of sounds and complete lack of music serves to further immerse players because it so closely resembles reality. It makes sense.

So it really all boils down to immersion. Just as the visual and mechanical experience must coincide (when I push the button I want to see my character react accordingly), it is equally important that the sound effects tie in closely with other elements of design. Designers shouldn't waste time on sound effects that don't matter, but they should not be too quick to write off a seemingly trivial sound effect as unnecessary, either. Finally, sound effects should be consistent throughout. I may cross an abandoned intersection over a hundred times without ever noticing the sound of my character's footsteps, but if I miss that sound even once, it may have an adverse effect on my experience overall. From a designer standpoint, you shouldn't fret that I didn't hear it the first hundred times; that means you have accomplished your goal, and I am thoroughly immersed.