by The demand for rapid gamification in the world of marketing is fueled with the introduction of modern technologies in the gaming industries and relying upon its ever-growing customer base for building the brand audience.
History of Gaming
Video games were first introduced and popularized in the late 1970s, before which there were coin-operated pinball machines. 1972 marked the beginning of home consoles with Magnavox Odyssey being the first home console. Since then the technological advancement gave a rose to modern devices like Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, personal computers, and mobile phones which made gaming more affordable and convenient.
Further, the companies began to collaborate with these gaming studios to promote their brands in the gaming industry as well as promoting their brands in various gaming events.
Gaming industry?
Now companies are not just the Nintendos and Playstations of the world – are turning into augmented reality, in-game advertising, and “advergames” to further expand their reach and build customer engagement.
Video game consoles played on PlayStations and Xbox are still around. Although, currently they are not even the largest segment of the gaming market
Mobile games continue to gobble up more of the video game pie, which makes up about 42 percent of the market.
The demographics of video game consumers have changed as well. Although pinpointing the exact numbers is difficult, the Entertainment Software Association estimates that around 41 percent of gamers, for instance, are female.
New Ways to reach Customers
Here are some of the ways the video game industries are changing the world of marketing and brand engagement.
Mobile
By far the video game industry has shifted towards mobile phones. Mobile gaming can be built upon various technologies. It generates big money for game developers who create games that are free to download and play, but offer in-app purchases and selling in-app ads, product placements to advertisers.
Augmented reality
Pokemon Go revolutionizes the gaming experience by adding augmented reality which alters real-life experiences with graphics or data as a marketing tactic. In 2016 everywhere you looked, people were holding up their phones to catch a pokemon or, in some cases, overrunning sites that are inappropriate places to play a game. At its peak, Pokemon Go had 45 million daily users.
Now that the augmented reality has become mainstream, other brands are looking at AR platforms like google AR and augmented reality tools used for building an environment to showcase their products.
Most of the Social Platforms are providing a software platform for their customers to build AR filters with an immersive experience. The users can also post them on their social media profiles for their peers to get a feel of the AR experience. Companies have incorporated their brands and created interactive games to get more engagement for their social media posts.
Facebook and Instagram have the AR tool named Spark AR which as a simple user interface for building the custom AR filter.
Snapchat has its own tool named Lens Studio for building AR filters and games
Advergames
Brands that use video games as a marketing tool are long gone beyond simple ad placements. Companies are now developing their own games as a tool for building audience engagement.
The games built by brand may vary from a simple HTML game, interactive games with a brand objective using phaser and other lightweight game engines to advanced games built using Unity, Houdini game engines.
Conclusion
The days are long gone where Video games like Super Mario, Duck Hunt, and Sonic dominated the marketing industry. Now gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that involves big brands in the world across a number of devices.
How companies choose to leverage their growing interest in games to drive value can be best learned by Clevertize
Clevertize is one of the Top Integrated Marketing Communication Agencies in India. It has worked with many national & international clients like eBay, Nando’s, David Lloyd UK, METRO Cash & Carry, Sobha Ltd., TATA Motors, Barbeque Nation to name a few.
Clevertize is an Award Winning Agency, known to marry marketing with technology.
Some of the services that Clevertize provides are:
Creative Services, Performance & Digital Media Marketing, Visual Identity & Branding, Campaign Management & Analysis, UI/UX & Website design, Video creation, Media planning & buying, Chatbot & more.
If Return on Investment is critical for you, talk to Clevertize!
