Earlier this year over 90 New Zealand marketers and agency types tackled ‘gamification’ with Gabe Zichermann, one of the world’s leading proponents of “using game concepts to engage users and customers,” courtesy of CAANZ’s Digital Leadership Group.

Rather than page views, unique users and measures of reach, games are all about engagement, which is more specifically measured by looking at users’ recency, frequency, virality, duration and ratings.

So, how do we become more engaging? Here are some of the strategies game designers use that can equally be used to gamify a website, competition, loyalty scheme, campaign, product or service, according to Gabe Zichermann.

Emotional Experience Engineering

Gabe suggested we live in “post-Maslow” days where security and food are largely guaranteed and people’s needs are less tangible. So what do modern customers want and how could we deliver it?

• Status. Let customers “level up”, like the red carpet treatment for priority travellers with Continental Airlines.
• Access. Exclusive access for beta-testers, or early access to a daily deals site.
• Power. Being an editor at Wikipedia gives you power and influence over a large number of other people, but you’re also free labour.
• Stuff. Product sampling, 2-for-1 deals.

A key opportunity in these digital times is that the benefits at the top of this list are both the most engaging and the most desirable, and also the cheapest to create.

Design for every player

Different people play games for different reasons. In 1996 virtual worlds professor Richard Bartle classified players’ motivations into four camps:

• Achievers, who want to win almost regardless of what the game is
• Killers, who not only want to win but want to be seen to beat others in the process
• Explorers, who delight in seeking and finding new things and experiences
• Socialisers, who use games as the excuse to socialise with others

I’m sure you’d recognise many of these types of people even from a social soccer league. A good game provides opportunities to express all of these roles, or purposefully focuses on only one segment.

Gabe’s “if you do only one thing after this seminar” takeaway is: watch the US cable show Storage Wars to see the Killer instinct in action.

Tightly script the most positive aspects of your player/customer experience to appeal to these groups. Designing for “flow” also means not making things too easy, which ultimately makes things dull. Humans respond to the “progression to mastery”, where we spend our lives striving to master complex systems and experience fun and self-discovery in the process.

Learn from Social Games

The most successful social games (such as Farmville and the like) are a mix of clever business strategy, fun but accessible games and clever shepherding of user behaviour. They do many things differently to traditional offline marketers. Lessons we can learn from social games include:

Don’t give free stuff away to your best customers. Traditional marketers would give an extra coffee to a coffee card holder who first buys ten coffees. Instead, social games sell virtual goods or special access to their most dedicated players who want a deeper experience.

Don’t limit the amount your best customer can pay. Traditional marketers have a set price for everyone (with discounts as the exception). In a social game, a flat rate subscription caps your potential revenue. Instead they allow the top 3-5% of customers who want everything to pay more to get it. They also let many introductory players experience the basics for free before upselling.

Never give up an opportunity to acquire new customers. Many marketers never actually directly ask for a referral. Social games ask for friend requests, reward both you and your friend when they join the game, and ask multiple times in multiple ways.

The Art of Game Design

Gabe reminded us that games don’t have to be complex. The best games historically (think Chess or Go) are elegant systems with hidden depths.

Although applying gamification well can seem daunting, there are experienced hands locally to make gamification strategies a reality. Gabe identified one group of people who go to bed and wake up in the morning thinking solely about how to motivate users: game designers.

While our venue, the Media Design School, is well known for the AdSchool and design courses, fewer people realise it has run very successful Game Development Diplomas since 2005. There are several game designers locally who regularly make games that are played online by several million people per game each year. They’re largely unseen as it is 100 percent an export market, although the industry has nearly doubled in the last year. In the hands of an experienced game designer a five-minute Flash timewaster becomes a compulsive five hours of lost productivity. When was the last time you could claim your customers had engaged that deeply or frequently with your campaign or product?

An article originally written for www.stoppress.co.nz by Stephen Knightly, a director of gamification consultancy InGame, coordinator of the Auckland Game Developers Meetup, Board member of Playmaker and a director of Pursuit PR.

• 14% higher skill-based knowledge levels,
• 11% higher factual knowledge levels, and
• 9% higher retention levels

than employees who did not use training games, according to a 2010 literature review and study conducted by the University of Colorado, Denver (and these figures include  some poorly designed training games which bring the average down in our opinion).

This is the largest review of research into the effectiveness of training games conducted to date.  It included a meta-analysis of 65 studies and data from 6,476 trainees.

Why are games effective for training?

• They are more engaging – meaning fewer distractions and more attention paid.
• By labeling something a ‘game’ the context alters – making staff more relaxed and open to experimentation.
• Games allow for more ‘divergent pathways’ – there does not have to be ‘one right way’. Instead multiple ways to succeed and fail are possible, just like real life. This increases understanding over rote learning of the right answer.
• Games allow dangerous or inaccessible locations and tasks to be accessed safely ‘virtually.’  For example, NZ Steel provide interactive 3D models of a loading bay to new truck drivers so they can become familiar with a dangerous environment before they set foot onsite, and have seen a significant reduction in health and safety incidents.
• Workers can play the game as often as they like and, since games are intrinsically motivating, workers often do play them again in their own time.
• Games can easily be blended with face-to-face, seminar and group training.  The literature review identified that embedding games in a training programme is effective best practice.
• Games can be social, can work in group situations or use leaderboards and competition between departments or branches.
• Reference information, such as manuals, policies, websites, intranets can easily be integrated.

Importantly, the research also found that games where the skills you want to teach are also the skills needed to win the game are most effective.  These games feature a high level of integration between the game design and the training content.  Eg, creating a game were you load a truck safely vs a quiz which contains merely questions about loading.

Source: Sitzmaan, T. (2010). “A meta-analytic examination of the instructional effectiveness of computer-based simulation games.” Personnel Psychology.

Computer games are bigger than Hollywood. It’s understandable why – games are the single most engaging medium available. Some go so far as saying they are addictive.

The potential of games is not to interrupt and grab attention, like some sort of banner ad on steroids, but to engage with a brand deeply. There are many creative opportunities to bring to life the intangible elements of brands. Games are effectively world simulations and have underlying values systems and rules that can be manipulated in your favour. If your brand philosophy celebrates good friends helping each other out, a game can subtly incentivise that behaviour. All it takes is some creativity in the game design.

That games are engaging is no secret to consumers – you need only look at the length of time we spend playing. According to a July Neilsen NetView study, online games (10.2% of time spent online) are now second only to social networking (22.7% of online time) as our most dedicated Internet activity. That’s ahead of email, videos and online auctions. This time is also focussed attention time, less prone to interruption.

The potential market: anyone

By the way, these gamers are not teenage boys hiding in their rooms. Three times more adult females play games than teenage boys. Games have diversified to embrace Facebook games, motion-controllers like the Nintendo Wii, mobile games and snack-sized casual games.

The Interactive New Zealand 2010 report found that 88.5% of households have a device for playing computer games and the average Kiwi game players is 33. They’re income earning, have families and are educated. 78% of gamers in New Zealand are over 18.

The ubiquity of games and the sophistication of game playing consumers have clear implication for brands. A disconnect will emerge and brands do themselves a disservice if their approach is to merely rippoff an existing game like Pong, PacMan or Punch the Monkey (all recent local examples). The audience, meanwhile, is comparing these ‘toe in the water’ executions with a highly-polished Facebook or a $50m Xbox game.

Here are four things I’ve learnt about making effective advergames.

Make your brand relevant to the game

The more your brand experience (not visual identity) is relevantly integrated into the gameplay experience, the greater recall and persuasiveness.

At the simplest levels, this means to merely sponsor a game, or slap a relevant theming on top. Burger King did this successfully a few years ago in the US with a series of Xbox games (bought instore, thus generating foot traffic) where you played the Burger King character from their TVCs. This approach communicates your brand personality, but what about your functional benefits and brand promise? Next you might insert products as items, abilities, powerups and obstacles (Red Bull could give you wings and Lynx could attract the girls, for example). A really creative game design infuses your brand experience and worldview, not by talking about it but by setting up a system where it is shown through the consequences of the player’s own choices. For instance, there are games out there that make statements about free will, the nature of marriage, generosity, technological progress – quite high-minded concepts.

A game does not stand alone

Many early adopters unrealistically expected their advergame to go viral by itself. Games are a great destination, but need to be part of an integrated campaign. I believe the strength of games is in brand building and relationship marketing, not grabbing attention. Social media integration is common, given the explosive success of social games (10% of all Facebook users play FarmVille). The online fantasy game EverQuest II used to allow you to place Pizza Hutt orders from inside the game.

Have an original hook

Advergames compete for audiences’ attention with high-budget entertainment games, and competing with identical games with bigger budgets doesn’t make sense. (Does the world really need another racing game?) I like the progress of V’s gaming strategy, which did some successful racing games integrated with promotions a few years ago and has moved on to introduce more original gameplay with its recent ‘eVolution’ game.

However, a budget of $50,000 to $100,000 could be enough to create a polished original game.

Make it fun

A game needs to be fun above all else, just as ads need creativity. Fun is the reason people play games, and if you sacrifice it for other objectives you lessen the impact.

Stephen’s talk aired on TVNZ7 during December 2010 and you can watch it on TVNZ OnDemand here.

Here is a PDF copy of the presentation. (1.5 MB PDF)

Some of the key points of the talk are:

• Violent games are only the visible tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of games are constructive and family-friendly.
• Game players are incredible diverse, from 98-year olds in Dargaville to moms on Facebook.
• The ‘Serious Games’ movement is all about creating fun games that also have a serious purpose beyond pure entertainment.
• Many serious games have been clinically trialled and had positive results.
• Games inherently teach us things – even if it is only ‘how to get to the next level’.
• Games teach us about the world. They are often world-simulations.  Therefore they include worldviews and can teach values as well as content.

InGame Director Stephen Knightly spoke at TEDxAuckland on 26 September 2010, an independently-organised local offshoot of the hugely inspiring and influential TED Talks.  Stephen will be talking about “Games for Good”, but he’s not the first person to talk on this topic at TED – check out these other  TED Talks as preparation before TEDxAuckland.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world

Seth Priebatsch: Building a game layer on the world

Stuart Brown: Play is more than fun

Scott Kim: The art of puzzles

Daniel Floyd: Games and tangental learning

Dave Perry: Beyond the surface of games

Brenda Laurel: Games for girls

Founded by experienced child psychologist Dr Yvette Ahmad and CEO Fraser Hurrell, BrightMind Labs is a social venture that seeks to redefine traditional mental health care delivery. They saw gaming as an opportunity to provide CBT in a more efficient manner than face-to-face therapy.

Each aspect of the game, from the colours chosen to the lack of eye contact presented, is designed with a deliberate, clinically sound approach.  For example, research suggests that children on the spectrum respond more positively to animation than real faces, structure and patterns and spinning objects. The game is designed so it can be played with parents and neurotypical children too.

A pilot clinical trial, presented at the Royal Australasian College of Psychiatrists conference in May 2010, came up with positive initial results. Participating children had a ‘highly significant’ increase on the Social Responsiveness Scale, with improvement in their socialisation skills at home and school. A ‘significant’ result on the Revised Manifest Anxiety Scale showed a reduction in anxiety attributable to playing MyFriendQuest over the six week trial.

When it comes to understanding complex and subtle concepts, such as how vehicle loading affects handling and cornering, 3D gaming technology makes complex ideas simple to understand and experience. The sim shows what happens if the truck speeds by 10kph, changes the load configuration or takes a corner too fast. From the driver’s seat students can look down the side mirror to see the effects of ‘roll amplification’ or smoke coming off tires under heavy breaking.

The simulator gives students the ‘freedom to fail’ and safely explore consequences – a key e-learning benefit. Customer feedback has been outstanding, with many students asking “can you make it more like a game?”

The computing required to simulate realistic physical forces is complex, but is a technology that has been pioneered by the gaming industry and incorporated into HDV3 by Urban Voyage. Even a few years ago incorporating lifelike physics would have required expensive computers, but this technology is now possible on standard computers (PCs, Macs, iPads and iPhones).

Forget the stereotype of a gamer being a sweaty teenage boy locked in their bedroom for hours on end.  In fact, more adult females play games regularly than male teenagers (34% vs 18% of all gamers).

• 45% of gamers are female (55% of ‘social gamers’ such as Facebook gamers are female)
• The average age of a game player is 32.
• The average age of an avid PC gamer is 42.  25% gamers are over 50.
• The average gamer  spends 13 hours playing games each week.
• 88% of Australian households have a device to play computer games. 61% have more than one. 43% have a games console.
• 80% of parents in these households play games with their children.
• Only 15% of games sold are rated ‘Mature’.  The most popular genre of game sold is ‘Family Games.’
• 59% of people aged 6-65 in the UK play games, and 52% of those are in the top ‘ABC1′ socio-economic group, according to a BBC study.
• 71 million Facebook users play Farmville every month (18% of the 400 million people ever registered on Facebook). 55% are female and the average age is 48.

In addition to who does play games regularly, these stats show that almost any group can play games if one is put in front of them via your marketing, training or business.  In addition to these overall stats, we can advise on what genres of game appeal to different groups.

Sources: Entertainment Software Association, GfK Retail and Technology (Australia and New Zealand), NPD, BBC

Here are some ideas on how to include games in your campaigns:

• Make the game the call to action for your ad campaign
• Provide a game as a competition prize, or as a reward for entering
• Provide the game as a reward for loyal customers on your database
• Use the game as the focus of  a social media conversation
• Involve fans in crowd-sourcing artwork or the design of levels
• Charge for the game like Burger King did
• Use games sales to fund raise for a charity
• Involve artists, musicians or celebrities in making the game and leverage publicity
• Re-use artwork and sound from TVC campaigns
• Buy targeted advertising inside existing games
• Create branded levels or mods for existing popular games

• 3.2 million games were sold in about six weeks (1 million sales worldwide would be considered a ‘hit game’)
• Burger King leveraged the games with significant positive PR coverage
• Social media was leveraged when a fan posted clips on YouTube of himself sneaking around and surprising strangers – copying the moves from the game – in real-life.
• Burger King reported a 41% lift in sales that quarter and attributed this largely to the ‘King Games’ campaign

The games were fun and cheeky, reflected the character of BK’s previous TVC campaigns well and were well received by fans.  The decision to sell the games in-store (rather than as a more convenient download from Xbox Live Marketplace) drove traffic in-store and added to the retail experience.

It was the largest game-centred ad campaign in the world at the time, and Burger King benefited from a first-mover advantage and from executing to a level that matched the expectations of gaming audiences.

Xbox players are used to playing games that typically cost USD$10-$30 million and several years to develop.  The ‘King Games’ were still a significant investment and took 9 months to create, with quality and polish on a par with ‘Indie Games’ downloadable from XBox Live.