Observed: Game Mechanics
Now, let me clarify, I’m not completely behind the eight ball here. I first saw this video, with it’s bizarre vision of a futuristic social-game enabled world, about a year or so ago, I can’t be certain. But it has stuck with me, and stuck with me, and, well, stuck with me. Indeed, I’ve even given thought to how game mechanics could be applied to the design studio environment (You mocked up someone elses idea, 1000 points!).
The more I think about what a connected, social, game-ified future could be, the more I like the idea. When I mix together the above game mechanics with the sort of data driven, socially connected and hyper designed coolness of this video from Dentsu, the future looks very bright indeed. (after the jump)
Like I said, there’s nothing new here, and I also want to re-iterate, I’m not ‘just coming to this’ — I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a while. What I am interested in, is how can this thinking and this ‘psychological space’ be brought into branding.
A project I am working on at the moment, for a charity brand, is actually bringing many of these threads together. A brand that is shareable yet ownable, is based on a simple set of unchanging properties, but can be plugged into anything else — be they another brand or product. An element of the brand we have been looking at is making it react, physically, to interactions from the public - be they social mentions, donations or website traffic.
The interesting outcome from some of this initial prototyping and thinking is that we could actually hook people into making multiple donations, as they see the outcome of their own, and their friends, efforts being made visible. This sort of ‘visible sign of progress’ is a big issue when raising funds for charities, as fatigue sets in “I’ve been donating for how long and there’s STILL poverty??”. By creating a brand that responds and flexes to the activity and momentum it creates, and showing progress, it creates an opportunity for deeper engagement with consumers. Oops, I said engagement. I call bullshit bingo on myself… 100 points!
