On a chilly Monday evening over 120 people attended our Social Gaming to Gamification panel debate with Speakers: Nicholas Lovell from Gamesbrief and Matt Maxwell from Blue Barracuda who were joined by Panellists: Brittney Bean, Sam Sethi, Odera from Groupon, and Katie Bell from Stardoll Network. We were gathered at Olswang to discuss the impacts of Social Gaming, the gamification of products and services, games mechanics and what the future holds.
Nicholas Lovell kicked off with supercharged enthusiasm describing how and how not to build a social gaming strategy and he warned – it is expensive. He suggested using some of your marketing spend, emphasized the need to understand your player, warned this is a “process, not a project” it doesn’t stop and there are unintended consequences. He suggested using the Bartle Test to find out if you / your targets are Killers, Socializers, Achievers or Explorers and save at least 50% of your budget for after Launch.
Matt expanded on the fact that everyday alot changes but the people haven’t, their motivations are the same and gamification has long existed but now we have new tools to play with.
Katie was challenged on the ethics of tweens gaming, she pointed out the fact that gaming helps you test out who you want to be and users are secure and have control over their profiles to delete/ start all over again providing a unique environment for them on Stardoll (97 million subscribers btw). Sam Sethi sugegsted children should not be given monetary rewards but achievements instead. but It was noted that games can effect behavioural change in children and society at large..
We touched on whether we harness the power of gaming to improve Health care, education, sustainability and low carbon economy services..(http://www.kiva.com mentioned as example) and for once, fraud, identity theft and security were barely mentioned.
Brittney pointed out “Gaming is supposed to be fun!” Her aim is develop games for real people to play and have fun. Should we be gamifying? Is it still fun?
Some clever spark mentioned that “Life is a Game” which lead to alot of speculation about who might be winning and in whose opinion, many of the (male dominated) audience were plumping for Charlie Sheen (definitely his first mention at @mashupevent).
Games are good for engagement and retention but not customer acquisition unless you are directing them off the game —> somewhere. Games are targetted at the time rich and cash poor.
Facebook fear reared it’s ugly head – ” are we all going to disappear down the black hole which is Facebook?” but Brands will go where the customers are. Odera believes we’re starting to design around the customer and Facebook is only the first step.
Foursquare came out badly as the audience felt it wasn’t a game … and people want access to rewards money can’t buy.
The crafty audience were point scoring and badge awarding on the twitter feed!
Photos from the night
Magicsolver demo’d their games and app along with Crowdscanner ’s networking product which attendees participated in you can see the results here and join in here
Techfluff were on site interviewing and filming See @ssethi @mattmax @Stardoll in video at http://ow.ly/4ftdY
NEXT EVENT: Our next event “Energy 2.0 – Energy goes Digital“ 31st March with @Forum4theFuture
