The Interactive Marketing Players
Microsoft’s recent purchase of Massive says a lot of things, but most importantly it tells us that video game advertising as a platform has fully arrived. Ever-encroaching as the dominant form of home entertainment, video games can no longer be omitted from any serious marketing plans that desire to have real reach into the media-saturated homes of today. It shows a distinct maturation of a market long associated with children and young adults. As the gamers of the world have grown up and joined the working world as a whole, many of the most serious gamers followed their childhood dreams and never stopped playing.
The incredible growth in this industry has allowed many of these lifelong gamers to continue playing right into corporate America. As someone who started in the literal basement of one of video game’s largest publishers, I can tell you a job in the video game industry is not all fun and games. Long hours, tight deadlines, and a host of various mind-numbing tasks awaits the pixel-eyed gamer looking to pay the bills by playing their favorite games for a living. But while the gamers have learned the harsh realities of the corporate working world, the corporate world has been infected by the notion that work can be play.
Ironically, it is virtual worlds like Second Life that are taking making this ethic of work as play a reality like never before. While the marketing world struggles to find a place within these nascent worlds of commerce and expression, the players in these worlds are finding ways to make a living in a total end-around maneuver on Corporate America. Consider the Second Life player going by the name of “Kermitt Quirk”. Just for fun, he programmed a multiplayer tetris-like game for players of Second Life to play from within the virtual world. It was a game within the game, but more importantly, it managed to hit that magic gaming sweet spot of easy to learn but difficult to master.
Within a few months, Quirk managed to sell (as in make real dollars) over 200 copies of the game to virtual people within Second Life. The real twist though? A real game publisher licensed the game and is selling it as a Gameboy Advance cartridge. The game within the game has spilled out into the real world. A game creation community has since spawned within the Second Life world.
So what does all this playing have to do with interactive marketers? It has to do with the difference between us and Madison Avenue. Our brand of marketing is supposed to be interactive. It is supposed to engage users to not just look at ads, not just listen to ads, but PLAY with them. The video game industry is infiltrating our industry at all levels, and we have to understand what that means to our jobs on a very basic level. We have to learn from these gamers. We have to learn how our work is really about play.
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