Social media dimensions of gaming

Games People Play
Social Media Dimensions of Online Gaming

The intersection
Gaming is at a crossroads
Social media and gaming are intersecting
Where social media and gaming meet, or collide:
What are the challenges?
What are the opportunities?

Social media is game changing
Social media will change the evolutionary process for game marketing and development
Social media will create new business models
social media/gaming equation
New audiences x (collaboration + participation) = synergy

Changing the game plan
Social media are changing every aspect of business
So social media is going to change the gaming industry
It’s going to change
What games we play
Who plays games
What a game is
Social media will change how games evolve

Social media is going to change the playing field
Social media will impact all aspects of gaming:
That’s players, designers, vendors
Social media isn’t just moving the goal posts, it is changing the playing field
Social media will change how games are developed, reach the market place and become successful, or not

Adapt or die
Have you heard of the dodo?
Evolution dictates that weakness and inefficiency do not persist in complex environments, such as the Internet
When environments change too fast, animals go extinct
To survive, animals must adapt

Survival of the fittest
The fittest games will survive
Easiest to play
Easiest to share
Best meet our basic needs such as human interaction
Crap games do not last long in the market place.
The best games persist
The best features are copied and passed on to other games

Selection  Extinction
Customers are selecting, like natural selection.
Due to natural selection, all the dinosaurs went extinct.
The birds are the only relatives of the dinosaurs to survive.
With social media selection in the gaming industry is going to be ever more ruthless and faster.

Extinction  Consolidation
Selective processes will move away from top down conception, design and execution.
Selection will occur at the earliest stages.
Control of game conception development and marketing will be bottom up
This pressure will lead to consolidation.

Extinction  Consolidation Birds

Adapting to change
The gaming industry must adapt to change
Another lesson from evolution is that complex environments provide many niches
The gaming industry will exploit niches and thereby diversify
There are niches within the industry that don’t exist today, and that we can’t even imagine
We’ll see later what some of these might be

Diversification Biological niches

Social media meets gaming
Around 2006 games met social computing
Ppopular sites such as MySpace and Wikipedia had reached popular audience
The world was introduced to Facebook

Interest in online games
Searches for online games steadily increased over the past several years.
Searches for games on Facebook has grown with the explosive growth of the social network.

“ online games” “ facebook games”

There are a multitude of games on Facebook.

Mafioso on Facebook
Click of a mouse: invite friends Bigger mob = more properties, weapons, money
Profile status updates
Recreates the village
How you match up against others, not a machine
Social element takes games to new audiences

New audiences
Howard Dean used web-games to teach democracy and increase interest in campaigns

New audiences
US Army’s arcade-style games help with recruitment

New audiences
Dept. of Treasury and Ad Council created a game to teach about importance of good credit.

New audiences
Kids use Sim City to design their ideal city for the Future City contest.

New audiences
Elf Island, with Second Life-like functionality, empowers kids to benefit environmental causes

New applications = new audiences
These games are being used in new ways
They break out of the mold of game as entertainment
They introduce new audiences to games
These games lack a strong social component
Bringing a social element will allow gaming to break out of bottlenecks to growth

Bottlenecks to growth
Limited business models
Pay to play
Hardware and software sales
Gaming as entertainment
Gamers as nerds or dropouts
Implementing social media models
Institutional inertia
Low value or misleading content (spam)

Game changers
User-created games
Kongregate, Facebook
User-created content
Spore
Bottom-up control
Portable profiles
Hardware obsolescence
Distributed computing
Mashups

Distributed computing
Onlive is gaming on demand
High-end equipment not needed for optimal gaming experience
Multi-user platform with social gaming
Promises “massive
spectating” with
“ instant community on
an epic scale”

What’s coming?
Augmented reality games will emerge into the real world through geocaching, such as Gowalla.
Ubiquitous computing = everything is a gaming platform
Mashups
Second Life + Google Maps + GPS
Walk or drive, find and identify friends via augmented reality systems
Look inside the shop before deciding to go in.
Far-fetched?
They’re already doing this in Japan.

Chipuya Town
Chipuya Town is a virtual world accessible on a cell phone.
Users create custom avatar, for a version of Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district.
Companies pay $4,000 a month for ads on in-world billboards.
Players socialize with other avatars and earn “Grooves”
They recruit friends, go on treasure hunts, and attend sponsored events.

New business models (gaming niches)
Create microgames
Crowdsourcing development and marketing
Games for everyday life
Work (e.g., employment screening)
Play (improve your game)
Shop (optimal instore experiences)
Drive (safer and faster)
Dine (finding a restaurant)
Health (learn healthful lifestyles)
Think (mind-mapping)

Welcome to… The Gaming Economy Gaming is the new communication.

Gaming as communication
Tough challenges create exciting opportunities
Where gaming and social media intersect, a gaming economy is emerging
Gaming can be the currency of this economy
Combined with social media gaming will be the new paradigm for communication

Contact
[email_address]
919 573 6307
Twitter: @rharris
LinkedIn : rogerharris

Social media dimensions of gaming

by Harris Social Media LLC on Apr 30, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

2 Embeds 4

Statistics

Social media dimensions of gaming — Presentation Transcript

http://www.slideshare.net	2
http://www.linkedin.com	2