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 18th 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?
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