'Gamification': businesses seek the perfect video game to sell their goods and services
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A gaming kiosk created by Electric Owl Studios is located in the baggage claim area of the Pittsburgh International Airport.
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he idea of making a game out of tax season would seem akin to making a stimulating gum massage out of a root canal for most people.
But as more businesses turn to games and game mechanics to attract new customers or keep the attention of current ones, it's a safe bet that something along those lines is already in the works.
"I'm sure somebody's working on it right now. I'm not even exaggerating," said Phil Light, lead designer and co-founder at East Liberty-based gaming company Electric Owl Studios. "Good luck," he added, shaking his head at the thought.
Making a game out of everyday purchases and transactions is nothing new to American businesses.
Rewards programs, such as frequent filer miles used by airlines, employ principles of game mechanics that give customers incentives to reach or surpass certain milestones. The first modern frequent filer mile program was introduced in 1979 by Texas International Airlines. Grocery stores and gas stations have used loyalty programs that award points for purchases since 1896, when Sperry and Hutchinson Co. introduced S&H Green Stamps. Customers would collect the stamps from participating retailers and redeem them for prizes advertised in S&H Green Stamps catalogs.
However, in an age when video games can be found on nearly every cell phone and "Farmville" is one of the biggest draws on Facebook, thousands of businesses have upped the ante from game mechanics to customized video games designed to keep users on websites or to market specific items in retail settings.
In May, HSN (formerly the Home Shopping Network) introduced HSN Arcade, a page on its website that links to traditional time-wasting games such as Solitaire or blackjack, but also features a jigsaw puzzle that uses images of top-selling products and a word search where customers seek out terms like "satchel" or "makeup."
In July 2010, Madison, Wis.-based American Family Insurance launched "iAMFAM," a Facebook game in which users take care of a virtual family by making everyday financial decisions and interacting with a "Trusted Advisor" avatar who fills them in on the company's insurance plans.
And when consumer electronics retailer Best Buy partnered with San Francisco-based social gaming company Zynga to place virtual Best Buy stores in Facebook's popular "Cityville" game in August, it gained more than 1 million Facebook fans over the course of a week.
This notion of gamification -- a term coined in a 2010 speech by Jesse Schell, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center and founder of South Side-based Schell Games -- has led to industries seeking ways to create the perfect video game to sell their goods and services.
The phenomenon has cropped up in several places locally.
Electric Owl CEO Patrick Mittereder said his company has had gaming kiosks in UPMC Children's Hospital waiting areas for several years and just last week installed some of the same units in Pittsburgh International Airport's baggage claim area.
The company is also responsible for the Penguins' "Baierl Kia Extra Attacker Fantasy Hockey" game, created for the team's website to help fans become more familiar with lesser-known players on the roster.
Evil Genius Designs, a South Side-based mobile gaming technology company founded in 2009, used its platform to entertain thousands of Downtown visitors with an interactive game shown on a Jumbotron during the city's First Night celebration. The game, sponsored by Eat'n Park and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, allowed users to press buttons on their cell phones to control a bar graph on the screen that bounced an Eat'n Park Smiley cookie above Pittsburgh's skyline.
Mr. Light said social networking sites like Facebook have changed the way organizations think about who they can reach through gaming. He cited statistics from the Entertainment Software Association showing the average American gamer is 37 years old, 42 percent of all gamers are women and 29 percent are over the age of 50.
"People are now playing these games and connecting with each other on Facebook and the like who have never and would never sit down in front of even a Nintendo Wii," he said. "There's this barrier to entry to becoming a gamer which is getting much, much lower.
"Now we're starting to get grandmoms and moms, people at work. All of these new audiences are coming to realize that games aren't just a way to waste away a childhood."
An April study by U.K.-based technology research company Gartner Inc. estimated that by 2014, more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application.
But even as interest in the concept grows, Mr. Schell said many organizations aren't sure how to use games to successfully market their concepts or don't fully understand what they hope to achieve.
"What a lot of companies are looking for is a Band-Aid -- slap a game on the site and everything gets better," he said. "What they should do is figure out what's wrong with the site now and what do you need to make it better."
Tracy Brown, CEO of Evil Genius Designs, said her company has seen a huge increase in business since it was launched in 2009, but she agreed that many companies that show initial interest in a game might not have concrete goals in mind for what it should accomplish.
She used a campaign that the company created with soft drink giant PepsiCo as an example of how a specific objective goes a long way in creating a solid concept. PepsiCo wanted to highlight products beyond its soft drinks, so Evil Genius created a motion-controlled game in which users sit in front of cameras set up inside of gaming booths to pick an array of PepsiCo products off a virtual shelf to collect points.
"The goal was, people know PepsiCo makes Pepsi, but they may not know PepsiCo is also the parent company of Tropicana or Quaker Oats or Sabra hummus. So could we create a game that was fun and identified with PepsiCo, but do it in a way that educates them on the fact that PepsiCo is behind some of these other brands they may already know and love?"
Even when organizations approach gaming companies with concrete goals and ideas, there's no guarantee that what they've come up with can be turned into an actual game. Electric Owl chief technical officer Brad Patton said some companies come up with ideas that qualify as games but, frankly, aren't much fun.
"One of the things that I'm always baffled by is a lot of people that come to us and say, 'I have this idea for a game.' We say, 'OK, that's a cool idea, but this game you've wrapped around whatever you're trying to achieve -- it needs to be fun.' People have to want to play it," he explained.
"That's a good idea on paper, but if it's not fun, people aren't going to do it and you're not going to achieve your goals no matter how pretty the artwork is."
Whether the influx of corporate-sponsored games is a bubble in the gaming industry that overall saw $66 billion in worldwide revenues in 2010 is up for debate.
But the fact that the first Atari addicts are now full-fledged adults with disposable income, combined with a new generation of social gamers eagerly waiting for the next "Words With Friends," is enough to ensure that the industry as a whole will survive far beyond any trend.
Sarah Will, the 26-year-old lead artist at Electric Owl, said she's been gaming since childhood and doesn't plan to quit anytime soon.
"From my generation on, or maybe the one prior, it's all part of life now," she said. "So soon I'll be a mom and I'll be a mom playing games. I'm not going to ever stop playing games."
Correction/Clarification: (Published February 1, 2012) Phil Light, lead designer at East Liberty-based gaming company Electric Owl Studios, is also co-founder of the company. He was identified incorrectly in a Sunday story.
First Published January 29, 2012 12:00 am
