« Science Study: (Intercessory) Prayer Power is of little use | Main | What happens when GoogleCorp acquires AmazonBay »
June 26, 2006
Lessons learned from the gaming industry
(Posted by francois to: product innovation | technology enablement )
Last week at SuperNova, Amy Jo Kim from Shufflebrain gave a great presentation on the lessons that can be learned from the gaming industry to better design software services and applications.
Neuroscience tells us that games shape behavior by leveraging our "primal response patterns," which are deeply embedded in our psyche, and by engaging us in "flow" - that spot where skills and challenges are somewhat in balance.
Based on that, there are 5 game dynamics that can make an interactive game more fun, compelling and addictive. They are:
- Collecting - the ability for people to collect all kinds of stuff and brag about it - be they weapons or other artifacts in worlds like WoW or Runescape, or friends in MySpace
- Points - both social points given by other players as well as ratings given by the system
- Feedback - whether visual or auditory, a way to tell a person how well they are doing
- Exchanges - especially social interactions, whether explicit or implicit
- Customization - whether customization of your persona or your environment. After you invested time personalizing your world, you are less likely to leave
If you can embed some of those game mechanics into your traditional software service or software application, then those too will become more fun, compelling and even addictive. Some of the software applications that have successfully embedded those features include Flickr, MySpace and even eBay.
.Other write-ups about the points made during the session include:
- Business Week's Tech Beat
- Max Kalehoff at Online Spin
[Tags: gaming industry neuroscience software+development ]
Posted by francois at June 26, 2006 12:51 AM | Bookmark This
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.emergencemarketing.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/669
Comments
Wonder if it would be possible to design a marketing plan that incorporated those 5 elements? Not just for marketing a game but for marketing other products or services?
Posted by: Stephanie at June 26, 2006 2:39 PM
I like that idea a lot! I am sure you could...
Posted by: francois gossieaux at June 26, 2006 5:09 PM
Very interesting titbit, especially calling out the 5 dynamics. It's funny, not long ago I wrote about the new xbox live service emulating a bag of marbles:
http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/next-gen-video-games-emulate-bag-of-marbles
with the collecting and the points, it provides all the things that school yard games used to have.
BTW I think the pokemon marketing plan contained all the elements :-)
best,
Karl
Posted by: karl long at July 10, 2006 8:15 PM
