It's Social Media Week and last night I attended the Future of Mobile Gaming panel discussion that featured John Swords from Circ.us, Nihal Mehta, Co-Founder of Buzzd, Peter DiBart, Creative Director at Edelman and Andy Ellwood Director of Business Development at Gowalla. The panel was led by Adam Broitman, also of Circ.us. It was a wide ranging discussion that touched on a variety of topics that really speaks to the wide open nature of both gaming and mobile.
Much of the early discussion focused on the overall trend of 'gamification' that seems to be permeating all of Social Media right now. This topic warrants its own (or several) posts, but a couple of points I'll make here. First, on the issue of how this all got started. Swords mentioned it being a bit like Boy or Girl Scouts and I think there is some relevance there - more on that in a minute - but I also think there is a wider cultural element. My guess is that many of the developers working now grew up in the 90s and were the children of Soccer moms. These moms rewarded their children with micro-payments for just about everything they did. Good test score? Let's get ice cream! Cleaned your room? Here's a cookie. Having lunch at McDonalds? Happy Meal!
Of course any time a trend catches fire you see saturation in the marketplace and, as Broitman pointed out during the discussion, not everyone really knows what they are doing, or why they are doing it. He warned that we're going to see, "a lot of shitty gamification in the next year" as brands jump on this trend but do so in a ham-fisted way. This leads into my second point: Boy Scouts v. Brocoli.
When you're in the Boy Scouts, you earn a badge as positive reinforcement for a goal accomplished - making a belt, going on a hike, doing charity work, etc. This is not unlike the achievements earned during video games. You do something positive within the context of an environment you choose to engage in and you are rewarded. This is the good kind of gamification. People love playing games (or being in Boy Scouts), the reward just adds another level to the fun. The other kind of gamification, and the one that was/is pervasive in many homes is of the "eat your broccoli and you can have dessert" variety. This is a very short-term approach and ultimately isn't going to yield results for brands. At some point, no matter how big the reward, people will stop eating your broccoli. (Full disclosure: I like broccoli, but you get my point). This gets to Broitman's point I believe. Brands are going to try to to jam game mechanics into a situation where it doesn't belong, just like they did with crowdsourcing and the results are going to be suboptimal.
Potential Winner: Companies like Badgeville, which offer white label Social Rewards and analytics platforms for web and mobile publishers, stand to gain greatly as brands realize that game mechanics are a science that requires real understanding beyond what a traditional (ad, digital, PR) agency may have.
This whole field is fascinating though and I'm looking forward to reading Aaron Dignan's new book, Game Frame, which comes out March 8, 2011 for more on gamification.
Later in the discussion Ellwood shared some fascinating information on work that Gowalla recently did with Disney Parks (Disclosure: My agency, Coyne, also works with Disney, but not on this project). Gowalla added dozens of check-ins throughout the part to add another layer of engagement for fans. The program served a variety of functions. Ellwood described how there are more than 1 million people who have annual passes to the Magic Kingdom. These people have seen and done everything there is to do at the park. For them, this added a new experience without Disney having to spend millions of dollars developing a new attraction.
The Gowalla ckeck-ins were also used to drive people to certain parts of the park. Ellwood explained how people checking in were given instructions to go to a TRON-themed arcade to receive special discounts or prizes. He mentioned how a similar system could be used to direct traffic flow within the park, sending people to empty restaurants when others are filling up.
Another aspect of the discussion revolved around console gaming and how that experience could be transferred to mobile gaming. While Swords argued that in many cases the console
experience wouldn't translate well (I agree) there is an area where I feel console and mobile could benefit each other quite well, social sharing of console game achievements. We recently purchased Kinect for the Xbos 360 (I highly recommend it) and Kinect Adventures is one of the games that comes with the system. I was amazed at how badge iconography was used, and immediately thought, "those look just like Foursquare badges," more specifically, like Nerd Merit Badges. As I listened to the discussion it occurred to me that it would be great if I could could Foursquare or Gowalla recognition for my in-game achievements. So, if I killed 100 bad guys in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, I'd get a cool badge in Foursquare because my Xbox Live account and Foursquare account were connected. And just like when I become mayor somewhere, a tweet would be sent out alerting my friends of my in-game achievement. I would sign up for that in a minute, and I thin you'd see a massive new influx of people to the Foursquare or Gowalla platforms. I'll be interested to see which of these two leading Location-based Services is first to make deals with Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo. When I asked Ellwood about this he agreed and said that it's very likely we'll see this soon.
Overall there was some terrific ideas put forth. Clearly, mobile gaming, in all its forms, is an area that is only going to grow. The most interesting part is that right now we don't know exactly what's going to take off. My hunch is that we'll see developments we didn't expect to see take off and push the field in whole new directions, but ultimately the win is going to be had by the players that can make mobile gaming social as well.