Future of Everything? Turn it into a game...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html

I just got finished watching this great video that's found on the TED website. It is called 'When games invade real life' and the talk is given by Jesse Schell who is an employee at DICE and has worked on games at other studios.

The main point of the talk is how obscure style games, and odd ideas, are having huge success in the gaming industry right now. Such is seen with games like Club Penguin (Purchased by Disney for $350M), and Mafia Wars (A text based game found on Facebook which has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue). Also included in Schell's list of highly successful games is Wii Fit, Rockband, and even the xbox live achievement system. Games and ideas like these are seen as odd because when these ideas were first announced, or the games first launched, the anticipation for success was low. I mean how many people would have though Farmville could generate hundreds of millions of dollars?

Schell speculates that the huge success that these games have seen comes from their involvement of reality. With some games this involvement is obvious, as in it is easy to see how they touch on reality. Such is with Rockband where the player is moving around and playing a plastic replica of an instrument. Some games it is less obvious to see what is going on, such as with Mafia Wars. Schell drives a good point here by saying the reality lies in the players determination to be better than his or her friends list. The game encourages players to play because if they don't their friends will become better. If their friends are better they can pay some money to rank up faster.

The real opportunity for this lies in the advancement of technology and the implementation of technology into every day things. It seems like a marketer's dream. Turn everything into a game. This encourages people to use items more, and in turn shop more. It also encourages people to try new things. What if the first 50 people to review a new restaurant were given 100 Kudos on Facebook? The person also had a Pepsi with their dinner which, because the can has a thumb print reader embedded in it and a wifi connection, and Facebook knows your thumb print, the person also gets kudos for drinking his/her 10th Pepsi in the month. These Kudos can be used for movie passes, or flights, or money off at the super market. Would a person be more willing to drink more Pepsi in a month? Wouldn't they be more likely to try and review new places to eat? How many people would rush out to XYZ Indian Restaurant to eat just so they could earn the points for the review?

Would people even care? Sure they would. There's systems like this in place right now. An Airmiles card earns points every time a person shops a certain locations. There bonus levels as well, just like in a game; If you purchase 10 cans of Campbell's Soup you earn 50 bonus miles. It is obvious that these systems work when you go to a store well after a promotion started and the soup aisle is looking under stocked.

But will people feel comfortable using these systems? This question is a little more subjective. Do people want to be constantly monitored. Their every purchase stored in a database. Their eating habits recorded, the amount of chips the person eats tallied permanently... In my opinion this is way too close to big brother. One of Schell's concluding statements was along the lines of - You don't know what books your grandparents read 50 years ago, but someday our grandkids may be able to know what books we read. This is of course if Kindle started keeping track of every book we read, and rewarding us points for book reviews done, and series finished, books bought, etc.

I can see how making everything a game encourages people to do things they normally would not, but would a total flood of games be annoying? What would the psychological consequences be once everyone is literally ranked against their friends? How fast would the constant bombardment of points get annoying? And how boring would we all get if we all became a slave to a points system?

For a marketer there is huge potential in turning everything into a game. The future is bright. For society, I'm arguing not so much.