Gamers as Customers and Employees

From Competitive Instinct
to Competitive Advantage
Gamers as Employees and Customers

Jeff DeChambeau
December 1, 2009

Examine the gaming
experience

Implications for
managers and marketers
© 2009 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved.
2

CoD: Modern Warfare II
Modern Warfare II (Inﬁnity Ward)

Games are really big
“Games are the new movies”
“Games are the new movies”
Ghostbusters (1.25M units)
Ghostbusters (1.25M units)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (>2M units)
Batman (>2M units)
Grand Theft Auto IV
Grant Theft Auto IV
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
$60-80/unit
$60-$80/unit

3 Copyright nGenera 2009

Who are these people?


The numbers
Frequency

Daily Weekly Monthly Less

All 21% 28% 27% 20%
Gender 18-29 20% 30% 30% 16%
Men 55% 30-49 20% 26% 25% 24%
Women 50% 50-64 19% 30% 25% 24%

Age 65+ 36% 28% 17% 14%
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey, October-December 2007. n=1063 total adults,
18-29 81% margin of error is +/-3%

30-49 60%
50-64 40%
65+ 23%

Household Income
<$30,000 52%
$30,000 - $49,999 59%
$50,000 - $74,999 62%
>$75,000 56%

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey, October-December 2007. n=2054 total adults,
margin of error is +/-2%

Spore (Maxis)

Games are their own worlds
People invest a lot (!) of time in these worlds
Successful games are successful for a reason
Best games share common design principles
Gamers are likely to play the best games
We can therefore talk about the “gaming experience”


Games have their own logic
So does the organization!
In games, this logic is explicitly and implicitly taught to the player
Very speciﬁc rules and criteria must be met to win
Winning is always the goal
Gamers are therefore predisposed to following rules
The games have to teach the gamers how to play and win
Let’s look at an example of an entire game that’s a tutorial, Portal


Portal video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TluRVBhmf8w

Wired explaining Portal

Games teaching gamers
Present obstacle

Introduce skill

Conﬁrm competence

Increase challenge

Combine & summarize

Add to toolbox


Plants vs. Zombies (PopCap), GTA3 (Rockstar), NBA 2K10 (Visual Concepts)
Legend of Zelda: OoT (Nintendo), Starcraft 2 (Blizzard), Homeworld (Relic)


Team Fortress 2 (Valve Software)

Optimize the fun
Gamers are playing to win
Other gamers are means to victory
Camp, bait, exploit, hack
How do you encourage supportive behavior?
Games generate lots of perfect data
Leads to “local optimization” and “optimal strategies”
Few strategies are better than being the fastest


Team Fortress 2 (Valve Software)


Bioshock (2K)


Despair Incorporated

Gamers fail often
Failure is a core dynamic for all games
Gamers want to win, just not too easily
Failures resets strategies
Encourage new solutions & skills
Attempted in quick succession
Results in a fearless, iterative approach
Skills are mastered through repetition
Example: Braid

Braid video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqtSKkyJgFM

Forza Motorsports 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZPHswbgeuY

Counter-Strike & Half-Life 2 (Valve Software)

Beyond the ﬁnal boss

Counter-Strike HL2DQ

Core takeaways

Gamers are self-interested (maybe even lazy)

Gamers have a need for speed

Gamers demand engagement

Gamers experiment (and fail) readily


Gamers are self-interested
Managers Marketers
Clearly deﬁne tasks and Help them win, and you win too
“completion conditions”
Don’t distract, annoy,
Explain the bigger picture or detract from the
experience
Make altruism a system trait
Appeal to their vanity
Beware of a “peers as
resources” mentality


Gamers have a need for speed
Managers Marketers
Give them urgent projects Target them carefully
Beware the tension between Be respectful of their time and
speed and velocity succinct with your message
Expect frustration in response Give them an edge
to slow peers, processes,
and systems
Present tasks in series

Gamers demand engagement
Managers Marketers
They are predisposed to Create engaging, meaningful
following rules consumer experiences
Carefully open up feedback data Extend virtual experiences into
the physical world
Draw clear links between
behaviors and results Extend physical experiences into
virtual worlds
Recognize wins publicly
Offer “context aware” products
Give them a trophy case

Gamers experiment readily
Managers Marketers
Set the scope and context Understand the core dynamics
of how games work
They’re not afraid to fail, but
failure isn’t always “no biggie” Create campaigns that show
gamers that you understand
Clearly specify what tools can
their shared experience
(or can’t) be used when solving
problems Experiment yourself


Related research
Gamers as employees and customers, January 2010, by Jeff
DeChambeau
Valve Software: Engaging prosumers, competitors, and
communities, November 2009, by Jeff DeChambeau
The Art of Warcraft - Leadership, Metrics, Design and Business
Intelligence for the Collaborative Enterprise, and Radical
Decentralization: Organizational Design, May and June 2009, by
Alan Majer
Game Time: Marketing Opportunities in Social Gaming, August
2009, by Catherine Thorn

Jeff DeChambeau
jeffd@moxieinsight.com
416.836.8880

Gamers as Customers and Employees

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