A growing area of marketing known as gamification is consistently breaking through the clutter, delivering a wide range of stories, ideas, and products. In most cases these games incorporate a sense of achievement through levels or competitive scores allowing for the user to compete with friends or globally.
Certain traits tend to contribute to the popularisation of these games mainly simple to learn yet difficult to master. These types of games catch the attention of all skill levels making it harder to put down by allowing for people to enter a state of flow.
However i believe that in most cases gamification should be avoided within marketing. The overhead costs and risks involved during develop can often lead to corners being cut, and poor quality mini games being produced. In which case users don’t want to associate themselves with poor rushed to market services / products.
Good examples of the success of gamification include Doritos crash course which incorporated what is known as hybridisation. Including highly interactive real time competitive race’s (experience) with the branded content in the title. Another well known marketing campaign includes Dumb ways to die, which used a competitive scoreboard system, encouraging users to compete with the friends. What worked really well for this campaign was its ability to deliver its message through the experience and interactions the users had throughout the game play, delivering a consistent underlining message, in an entertaining and thought provoking manner while consistent with the whole campaigns message, allowing it to reach over 200 million downloads. Games that fail to meet this level of quality become saturated in the market and drowned out by all the noise. Such failures are a massive liability both financially based on scale and for the reputation and image of the company.
I believe gamification can be an effective method to deliver a message, however i most of the time games that contain a product or a message age too fast, alienate consumers, and lack an underlining purpose driven through a well thought out marketing plan, instead of just using gamification as a second thought.
What does the future of this industry look like? Will more advertising agencies take the risk of developing this type of content? Will gamification of marketing shift from dedicated apps, directly onto social media and messaging platforms, and what might this look like?
RMIT Assignment 3 
Games are absolutely a great way to get consumers more engaged with a brand, especially as they are really interactive and encourage consumers to be actively involved! I do wholeheartedly agree with you that poor quality games can do more harm than good though, or simply they’re just a waste of time and budget. So careful and strategic thinking comes into play, and it’s also important to test to see if using a game will deliver the message of the campaign better than any other more cost-effective method. One I know that worked fantastically was the Boost Juice “Free the Fruit” mobile game – my friends and I were super addicted, and we definitely visited Boost Juice a lot more during that campaign thanks to not only the rewards given in the game, but also as a result of just having Boost Juice on our minds more often than before, thanks to playing the game so much!
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I just had a look at Free the Fruit. Looks like it was a good concept with the ability to win vouchers and awards. Too bad it has been removed from android and ios, i would have liked to have had a look at how it worked and the process for redeeming rewards in store.
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Such a good example. I never got the game, but everyone was talking about it! It’s amazing how doing something well can have such a positive impact on consumers.
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What are the things that make these phone games stand out the most?
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Often mobile games succeed when they are offered for free, have good performance and slow battery drain, are unique and able to catch your attention, easy to learn yet hard to master, and carry some form of branding or name that can indicate quality.
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Personally, I love the concept of gamification. As a competitive person, there’s nothing more satisfying than beating my friends in a random silly game. However, you do make a good point on the cons of this method. Often, if games aren’t developed well enough, then the buzz, or lack thereof, they generate isn’t worth the costs and effort associated with it. Especially considering the amount of other effective strategies on hand. Regardless, I think I’m excited for the future of gamification and I hope it continues to grow as there is a lot of potential in it.
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Definitely, the cost of developing simple games has decreased significantly with the development of new game engines, development tools, and resources. The hardest part is catching the users interest and keeping it within this really competitive landscape.
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