Influx

A few weeks ago, Influx attended a lecture by Raph Koster, Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment on “Gaming, The Medium that Ate the World.” Koster made the argument that “Gaming is the medium that is going to swallow the world, and present it back to us in the forms of things unknown.”- a scary thought when you think of “gaming” as “video gaming” or “computer gaming.” In today’s world, when someone uses the term “gaming” it is assumed that it means sitting in front of screen. However, it is enlightening to think of the term gaming as playing.

Playing is a form of learning. It is through games and play that we learn the very fundamentals of life. Games teach us how to master skills and patterns that are around us daily ? whether they are survival skills, social patterns or mathematical thinking. When kittens are playing with mice by batting them around they are practicing hunting skills they need to rely on later in life. When little children are “playing house” they are experimenting with social behaviors. When you consider games as simple as checkers you realize that games teach us basic and complicated mathematics such as topologies, algorithmic thinking and causality.

This week BusinessWeek wrote an article on using gaming as an interactive training tool. The article describes how “serious gaming” (as opposed to entertainment gaming) is cost and time efficient for companies and engaging to the employees. The military uses gaming for training, as does American Express, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Estee Lauder, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Cisco Systems inc., Cold Stone Creamery, Nokia, Pfizer, the US Department of Defense, just to name a few. It will be interesting to learn what “serious games” are played at the Game Developer’s Conference this month in San Jose.

Last year at the Account Planning Conference Mark Earls spoke for a session on the importance of co-creativity. His idea works parallel to the idea of play as a form of learning. Yet he says this play is interactivity and the result, creativity.

Gaming/playing is an opportunistic form of learning that could become the future medium of education and experience. It is a medium that blurs the line between learning and playing, with the added value of extended engagement. This type of engaging interactivity is just what the brand-doctor ordered. The question for you to ask yourself how can my company use games (and/or some notion of playful give and take) to create a more collaborative relationship with your customers and consequently increase brand loyalty?