Game Theory - When Gaming meets Marketing, Fun happens!

Word-Cloud created using Wordle - a cool data viz. tool*

Gaming is fun. Gaming is big business. Gaming is the marketing buzzword du jour. Gaming is red hot right now!

Proof:- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (or MW3) made the biggest entertainment launch of all time in Nov 2011. Alec Baldwin created a tweetstorm when his addiction to Zynga's social game "Words with Friends" famously got him deplaned. (see pic below) Even The Economist has run a Special Report on gaming (The Importance of Fun). And, perhaps, as the greatest testament to the rising phenomenon, there's already a Hollywood cult flick out there on the racy life of a fully grown-up gamer - Grandma's Boy

But seriously, as the popularity of games grows worldwide, companies are increasingly looking at gaming (in its multifarious forms - gamification, social gaming, advergaming etc.) as a strategic brand marketing channel.

Here's my article on gaming (in NZ Marketing Magazine, Jan/ Feb 2012 issue) which came as a result of a Social Media Club Auckland event I ran in October 2011 on Social Gaming & Gamification.

Game Theory - Marketing meets Social Gaming and Gamification

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Addendum

Although I omitted them for lack of space, no article on gaming could be complete without mentioning:

Nintendo - with cult-hits like the Mario Games (and Donkey Kong), and more recently, Wii and Wii Sport, and that great hope of handhelds, Nintendo 3DS. 


Sony Playstation - with its game-changing PS1, PS2 and PS3 (Blu-Ray) series of consoles, and the ubiquitous Sony PSP, which took the gaming world by storm a while ago.

With Gratitude

Many Thanks to Stephen Knightly of InGame, without whose valuable contribution, neither the article nor the SMCakl October event would have happened.

Big Thanks also to Ben Fahy and Vernene Medcalf of NZ Marketing Magazine for their creative input and support.

A special mention to Tim Train of Zynga & Vishal Gondal of IndiaGames for the inspiration behind this piece.

Update

Article by Darren Steele of Mindspace (Mashable, May 2012): 4 Tips for Gamifying Your Marketing Plan

Social Scrabble


Zynga's rapid-fire tongue-in-cheek response to the Alec Baldwin - American Airlines incident.

A Baldwin - 1, American Air - 0. (Let Alec Play... he's got a hard case of social gaming :-)

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* Wordle is the creation of Jonathan Feinberg - ex-IBM Researcher, now S/W Engineer with Google