Insightful Marketing Tips from Good Game Design

People are obsessed with games. And I’m not just talking about all those quote and quote ‘gamers’ out there.  It’s more than just the people who play xbox3 or wii; people now choose to interact with games on their mobile devices almost on a daily basis. From social games like Words With Friends or Draw Something, to games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, people are interacting with games on whole new levels.  Why do people willingly choose to interact with games so much?

After watching two keynote lectures on good game design, I finally think I understand why everyone enjoys playing games in some form. What’s even more interesting about good game design is that it provides great marketing insight for us marketing people.  Here’s some great marketing insight I took away from the gaming world from Dr. Amy Jo’s keynote and Jesse Schell’s keynote lectures.

1.     Good Games understand their players: The Sims game is a perfect example of how game designers understand their players. Sims is designed as a life-simulation game that follows the gradual life cycles that people go through including both successes and failures.  A new Sims character will go through different life events depending on the choices and life that a Sim character makes, similar to the same choices people will make in their real lives. In Amy Jo’s keynote, she talks about how games understand their players’ different life cycles. As players move from a novice position to a regular player, their needs from games change. She advises that when designing a game to map out the different needs of players as they move from a novice beginner to a regular player to enthusiast.  Similarly, as marketers, we need to think about how to prepare our strategy to our target markets as they move through the purchase funnel. How we speak to a new consumer will be very different than how we speak to an avid fan of our brand. Just as it is important for game designers to map out the needs of their different players, we as marketers need to plan ahead for talking to different types of consumers.
2. Good Games interact with their players by teaching: How good does it feel to watch the stack crumble on Angry Birds and make it to a new level? Players enjoy figuring out how to get to the next level of difficulty. Jesse Schell made a point that people enjoy interacting with games because they always provide something new to learn or peak their players curiosity. Whether it is achieving a new level or a feeling of freedom, games provide people with those psychological needs. Although our brands/products do not always need to teach something new to our consumers, we need to think about teaching, as a fun & engaging way to interact with our consumers. Marketers need to remember that teaching our consumers through interactive campaigns about new products may lead to more engaged consumers.
3.   Good Games embrace intrinsic value like relatedness, and power: If you’ve ever played Bejeweled on Facebook, you’ll understand how intrinsic values like relatedness and power play a role in getting players to keep playing. After finishing a game of Bejeweled on Facebook, the application shows you your rank against people on your friends list. This ranking against people who matter to you versus beating strangers gives you a sense of power and relatedness to others, even if you have not interacted with them recently. Although the game itself may not change often, you may be more inclined to play as you see your friends beat your score.

In both keynote lectures, both speakers talked about how relating to people’s intrinsic values will always leave a lasting impression over extrinsic rewards. This is important point for marketers to understand, especially in our world of couponing, free promotions, and prizes. As marketers, we need to remember that our advertising, marketing, and PR needs to appeal to people’s intrinsic values like a sense of belonging, accomplishment, learning or greater meaning. Intrinsic rewards may lead to better sentiments with our consumers towards our brands/products in the long run than silly big prizes to extrinsically reward them. Is the reward system we are giving to our repeat consumers making them feel like they belong or apart of our brands or is it just an extrinsic prize for them?

So what do you think about these insights from great game design? Check out these great keynotes from Jesse Schell & Dr. Amy Jo on game design and let me know what marketing insight you have gathered from game design! 

Signing off from the intern coral –Kristie