Thanks for the kind words and insightful comment.

Surprised your book didn’t sell more copies!

The foundations for all of this were definitely laid down sometime ago…

What’s interesting to me is how pervasive gaming has become in the last couple of years and how it will continue to do so…

The SEB example is new to me – will take a look.

Thanks again,
N

Thanks very much for stopping by.

Great to hear that this rings true with someone at the coalface of game development.

N

Both yours and Katy Lindemann’s recent posts are great stuff. Thanks for posting.

Wholeheartedly agree with the power of gaming and play to provide a new window into solving problems, visualising (intangible) outcomes, changing behaviour etc. All marketeers should be finding ways to use this lens to look at their brands, and many are starting to. One of my old clients (Sweden’s leading online banks SEB) used gaming as inspiration for innovation as far back as 2000 and has led the development of new ways of playing with your money.

It does seem that we are hardwired to play, but play is at odds with ‘being grown-up’. The older I get, the more I want to play – just look at how many tweets on the new CoD game come from guys (and gals) in their late twenties, thirties and even forties. Basically anyone who grew up with those early simple, fun games on Acorns, Ataris, Spectrums or in the arcades!

Me and a couple of colleagues co-wrote a book called ‘Brands in Gaming’ in 2005 where we set out some ideas on this and ended up getting it published (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brands-Gaming-Computer-Phenomenon-Businesses/dp/1403998973).

This is no plug, I think it only sold a couple of thousand copies and the royalties all went to my old agency, but what’s interesting is that although we got a lot of predictions right, we completely missed the social media explosion and how that might change things and how gaming and social media would collide. We did lay out a whole host of ways brands could use gaming as a way of engaging consumers (gaming as a mindset type thinking) and there just seem to be more and more ways emerging as we and the technology evolve.

Exciting times! Maybe one day I’ll also be able to explain to my mum what gaming has to do with anything and especially my job. Sparks a thought, maybe there’s a game for that!

Tom