We’re all gamers now

Gaming has never been more mainstream. In the past, brands have sought to integrate themselves into popular games or even create their own. The new frontier is to use games as a powerful tool to change behaviour. Gaming as a mindset, not just another channel.

Gaming is truly mainstream

Whether it’s allowing people to maintain a house in the country, run a fashion boutique or kill innocent civilians, the world of gaming cemented its position as the most important and exciting entertainment medium in the last month with two significant pieces of news.

Firstly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 became the highest-earning entertainment launch ever when it sold 4.7 million copies for $310 million in the US and Britain in a single day.

To put this figure into context, The Dark Knight took $158.4 million in its record-breaking opening weekend.

Secondly, Electronic Arts (the developer and marketer of enormous videogame franchises such as The Sims and FIFA football) bought Playfish (a maker of social-network-based games, such as Pet Society, in which you create and look after your very own virtual pet) for a reported $300 million dollars.

The first piece of news reinforces the sheer mainstream scale of the console gaming sector.

The second shines a light on the growing world of casual/social network gaming; a world that’s home to a whole new kind of gamer. The stereotype of videogames as the preserve of geeky teenage boys has never sounded more outmoded. You just have to witness Ant & Dec’s irritating probing of families and young professional couples in Nintendo’s latest TV spots to get a sense of where gaming’s new audience lies.

Gaming as a Mindset

Of course, brands have sought to mine the potential of games for a good while now.

From Burger King creating branded games for the Xbox back in 2006 (yes, 2006!) to Obama canvassing for votes in Madden NFL 09 in the run up to the election.

However, most efforts have tended to mimic traditional broadcast advertising in screen-based games.

If we consider gaming to be simply a way for us to “pretend”, as Russell Davies posits in this excellent blog post, then ‘gaming’ can play a role in every interaction our fans (potential or real) have with our brands.

In other words, ‘gaming’ as a mindset, not just another channel.

The Gaming Mindset Can Change Behaviour

But this is about more than just shifting likeability scores on a brand tracking study.

The power of games lies in their ability to change behaviour, by letting people pretend.

Whether it’s encouraging people to transfer money to their savings account by letting them pretend that they’re slapping a pig to do so (see below!), encouraging children to eat more healthily by letting them pretend that they’re eating 12 cheeseburgers a day and then showing them the consequences, or educating young people about the importance of being careful online by letting them pretend that they’re part of an elaborate mystery.

In creating experiences that recognise people’s innate desire to pretend, we can encourage them to take specific actions.

3 examples in detail

1. British Heart Foundation – Yoobot.co.uk

Currently one in three UK children are obese or overweight and if this trend continues, it is predicted that 90 per cent of today’s children will be by 2050.

The challenge was to encourage children to change what they ate for the good of their health.

The solution is ‘Yoobot’, an educational game which allowed children to experiment with the future health effects of diet.

Children could either care for their ‘Yoobot’ or feed it into an early grave, learning about the effects of diet and exercise on their long-term health along the way.

Over a million children created Yoobots and 78 per cent of the 11-13 year-olds who played claimed to have improved their diets

The IPA paper is here.

2. PNC (Bank) – Punch The Pig (Virtual Wallet)

PNC is an American bank.

The challenge was to make lifelong customers of their Generation Y customers.

The solution was to create a new kind of online banking experience, one that reflected the way their audience felt about money.

One gaming mechanic they included was ‘Punch The Pig’ – a playful interaction in which you click on a virtual pig to transfer a pre-determined amount of money from your ‘Spend’ account to your ‘High-Yield Savings Account’.

More here from IDEO.

3. Channel 4 – Smokescreen.co.uk

The challenge was to educate children on the threats, dangers and opportunities of life online.

The solution is ‘Smokescreen’, a 13-mission Alternate Reality Game about an invented social network, created by Six To Start.

From the site: “Smokescreen follows the story of Max Winston and Cal Godfrey, two mates who’ve set up an exclusive social network called White Smoke. After Cal’s involved in a car accident and falls into a coma, White Smoke becomes huge – and starts attracting huge problems. Each mission sees you explore the world of White Smoke, and find out who you can trust – and who you can’t.”

A version of this post appeared in glue’s Newsletter. You can sign up for the Newsletter here.

And there’s a great post on a similar tangent by Katy Lindemann here.