21 Oct How Social Media Has Transformed Gaming
Today the Triangle AMA had their monthly luncheon with a focus on an industry that everyone in the Research Triangle of North Carolina should be aware of: the interactive entertainment industry. There are over 40 interactive entertainment/game studios in the region including big dogs like Epic Games, Electronics Arts, Disney Interactive, Insomniac Games, Vicious Cycle Software, Red Storm Entertainment and Spark Plug Games. The Triangle is home to the commonly used video game engines, Unreal and Gamebryo, as well as the esteemed Themis Group, a company that founds, incubates and operates businesses in new media and interactive entertainment (and runs the video game site The Escapist.) This year marked the opening of the first seed-stage accelerator program focused solely on digitally distributed video game companies, Joystick Labs. Moreover, next year will be host to the third Triangle Game Conference, almost tripling in size compared to its first conference. If you don’t know about the booming video game scene in North Carolina, you might want to check it out. With the recent passing of the digital media bill that is very favorable for the interactive entertainment industry in the area, it is advised that everyone brush up on their knowledge of the country’s second largest interactive entertainment hub.
The panel today consisted of Kendall Boyd, Director of Marketing at Epic Games, John O’Neill, President and Founder of Spark Plug Games, Phaedra Boinodiris, Manager of the Serious Games program at IBM, and Troy Knight, Managing Director of Design & Gaming at Vaco. Topics ranged from the very roots of the video game industry to looking towards the future, discussing current technological trends and predicting how new advancements (like Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move) will sway the industry.
Social Media and Games
One topic, h
owever, came up time and time again: the dramatic changes that social media and social networking service (SNS) sites have brought on the interactive entertainment industry. Ten years ago, the 
demographics of gamers consisted of those stereotypical guys that sat in basements playing D&D and eating Cheetos 24/7. Nowadays, because of social media, the demographics of gamers are huge and include gamers and “non-gamers” alike. As Kendall Boyd said, “There’s something for everyone [now.] It’s how you meet them that’s the challenge.”
So now we have non-gamers playing games. John O’Neill addressed it best, “Games have expanded as a medium. Social media isn’t just about Facebook…people have been socially gaming for years. Ever since our existence.” And it’s not just games that interactive entertainment is touching on with social media. Phaedra Boinodiris from IBM, the founder of INNOV8, pointed out repeatedly that video games (serious games) can be used to explain complex systems and the like – a great example being her recent release, City One, a serious game that helps people learn how to “solve real-world business, environmental and logistical problems.”
This trend pertains to social media marketers through the constant need to be getting your message to where your consumers are. Clearly, more and more consumers are gaming, whether they openly admit it or acknowledge Farmville as a game or not. O’Neill put it best when he explained how he pitches Spark Plug Games: to spend a huge amount of money on a 30 second commercial, you’ll get a 30 second retention rate and a message that people may or may not see and remember. Take a tenth of that budget and have a game created that has to do with your brand or product and all of a sudden you have a four to five hour retention rate with a game for only a fraction of the cost. This game can easily be shared, spread and discussed between groups of friends. This is what Ignite Social Media does with our own clients – by engaging people through social media in a way similar to the games available on different social media platforms, whatever you can do to break past the clutter and grab someone’s attention for more than five minutes: that’s the key to success nowadays. The stickiness of the message increases dramatically. And to do it at a fraction of the cost…how can you beat that?
Granted, the panelists agreed: it’s best to use social media to drive awareness. But social media is a vital tool because, as Kendall Boyd put it, “It’s no longer just about our market. It’s about the global market.” Using the Internet to gain awareness is just about as global as any campaign can get.
What should social media marketers be looking for in regards to the future? Phaedra Boinodiris points to the increasing cross between social media and massively multiplayer online games. “The mixture of the digital plus the real” holds great promise and exciting technology for the future. If you’re looking for the new, next big thing, though, you might want to check out Microsoft’s upcoming controller-less Kinect and Sony’s recently launched motion-based controller Move. Consumer-generated content, lower costs for game development, and the development of biofeedback technologies will also be big for the interactive entertainment industry. Troy Knight’s hopes lie in the development of technologies for holodecks (from Star Wars.) We can only hope, Troy. We can only hope. One way or another, the lines between gamers and non-gamers are blurred at best and marketers need to be aware of this industry, particularly if you’re in the Research Triangle of North Carolina.
