Social-Media/Gaming Building Blocks: The Digital
Game Board of “The Now”
Here I discuss Digital gameplay at it's most basic level. The fact that my focus is on digital has no material bearing on the validity of the observations and statements, but I will say that it is far easier to gather empirical metrics from online gaming than it is from speculating on the metrics for "traditional gaming, played in privacy, on cardboard"(I.e. just because little Johnny received the board game version of Monopoly for his Birthday, does not mean that he ever opened the box.....)
§
There are 4
universal tastes recognized by the human palette:
o Sweet,
Salty, Sour, Bitter
§
The Japanese
have created a 5th taste “Umami”
which refers to “Deliciousness”
o E.g.
Meatiness of meat, Earthiness of mushrooms, etc.
o Soy sauce is
quite often used to elicit this 5th taste of Umami
o A non-Authentic,
Synthetic means of inducing Umami is often established using MSG
§
There are 7
basic human emotions( not including compounds)
o
Disgust, Anger, Fear, Sadness, Happiness,
Surprise, Contempt.
§ The human brain however understands an 8th
emotion: “Genyoku”, which refers to “Entertaininess”
o
Genyoku is a validating, sustaining quality
that is derived from the 7 basic human instincts
§
Which
are of course the underpinnings of the 7 Basic Human Emotions
o
Activities
said to produce Genyoku include:
§
Self-Expression,
Self-Promotion, Socializing, Shopping, and Strategizing
§
Popular social media/gaming
products provide essential insight into consumer behavior
o
Consumer behavior is
massively visible and quantifiable in ways that “traditional game play” is not,
but is at least as relevant, and quite likely more important for our current
research
§ Traditional game purchases are at best a tenuous
measure of usage and desire
§
By deconstructing the
patterns of 100’s of millions of active social media/gaming consumers, we can
discern the essential elements of the most successful social media/gaming
products.
§
Most of the popular
social media/gaming products available today are not appropriate to use as
tools for accomplishing corporate objectives, so our interests must lie in:
o Understanding the essential elements of these products
o Leveraging the essential elements in any new employee or customer
facing initiative.
§
Successful
Social Media/Gaming Products all include a combination of the following:
o 5 S’s
§ Self-Promotion
§ Self-Expression
§ Socializing
§ Shopping
§ Strategizing
o 4 C’s
§ Content
§ Context
§ Currency
§ Conversion
§
Corporate/Educational
solutions should not be inserted into popular social media/gaming products.
o Instead, the
essential elements of successful social-media/gaming products should be used to
construct appropriate solutions.
§ Eg. An Educational
Game is not guaranteed success just because you jam it into Facebook.
§ The real Art of
Constructing a successful game is to understand the “recipes” I have laid out,
then the rest is up to your skill as a baker…..
·
I.e. – Facebook was cooked-up using an award
winning recipe, BUT, you could flawlessly create an identical version of
Facebook, and fail completely
o There are
also well defined reasons for this that are readily observable and distillable.
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