Continuing my discussion on social gaming, I turn to the question of matching the right game with the right PR strategy.   At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I had to chance to hear Frank Lantz speak on a social gaming panel. He is co-founder and director of Area/Code.  His firm has created both offline (real world) games like The Big Urban Game and online ones like Parking Wars based on the A&E show with the same name.  What links these social games together is their social dimension, their power to build community and generate buzz. They also reflect the blending of new and traditional media.

Choosing the right game depends on your budget, timing and objectives.  In one respect, Frank is not the best to ask for advice.  He likes “constraints,” so what others may see as obstacles, he may embrace.  

Here are three categories of social games to consider:

Games as Events – Real world games connect people to their physical environment.  They also tend to be newsworthy.  Games like B.U.G. generated a lot of earned traditional coverage in local media markets — especially during the weather segment.  The challenge is accessibility.  These games involve a great deal of logistics but engage only a few hundred to a upwards of thousand participants at a time.  You have to build the crowd.  It reminds me of the nerve racking days of my early career when I tried to generate media coverage by staging events for political candidates.  Crowdbuilding can be unpredictable. Real word games are repeatable, but they generally are a one shot deal for their participants.  In short, they are a burst of publicity, but have limited long term engagement.

Online Games – Online games on the other hand can generate publicity, but the bigger driver is community building, user engagement and brand extension.  They connect users to online environments like Facebook.  At their best, they can generate tens of thousands of users and millions of page views, but they require long lead times. Given time restraints, building a critical mass of gamers may require game sponsors to use incentives, promotions or celebrity involvement.  They also require an exit strategy.  You don’t want to alienate the very people you worked so hard to attract in the first place.  Games can generate avid fans who my want to continue playing long after the show or campaign they were created to support has ended.  You need to determine how and if the game will continue.   There is also the issue of handling cheaters and rule breakers. Cheating is a common occurrence.  The lack of effective community management to oversee rule breakers can generate ill will and unwanted negative publicity.

Mobile games – Mobile games are another category. Until recently, the challenge was not the number of mobile devices.  It’s that everyone had a different device.  Games had to function on multiple platforms creating design and feature limitations. That may be changing with the growing popularity of the  iPhone and the growing number of gaming apps.  It is now possible to create a richer gaming experience reaching a wider audience on a common platform.

Social games have a track record of success.  Done right, a game can catch fire and generate a billion pages that Traffic Wars did last year.  The risk is of course is building a game at considerable cost that does not capture people’s imagination, fails to generate media coverage, and does not sustain a community.  What is acceptable metric?  It all depends – 500 really engaged users or 500,000 casual one time users.

What is most critical is game design? As they say on TV, don’t try this at home. It is a complicated formula involving artistic and engineering considerations that impact the player experience.  As I advised in my last post, finding the right firm to communicate your message in the right game must be a key driver in your strategy.

Let me get back to you.

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When it comes to new media and the growing influence of computer gaming, is PR ceding ground to marketing?  Is gaming a PR no-man’s land or a new frontier?

I ask that question after doing an unscientific search on Google.  Typing “social gaming” and PR yielded press releases and phrases like “gaming changing,” “gaming the platform,” and the “expectation game.”  On the other hand, typing “social gaming” and marketing generated a slew of postings about marketing’s influence in this space. Either we as PR pros aren’t very good at tagging, or we are not embracing games.

My conclusion – PR has not established itself as a thought leader in the gaming space.  And that’s too bad. From community building and brand enhancement to reputation management, PR has a role to play.  

That’s certainly the opinion of Scott Schneider at Ruder Finn.  He’s an executive vice president and director of interactive, and games are a part of the services his firm offers its clients.  Projects have included 1) Picassohead - a take off on the popular children’s toy, Mr. Potatohead, which allows users to create their own Picasso-esque portraits and share them with friends and 2)  using the popular game SimCity to promotehe promoting British Petroleum’s green initiatives in SimCity.

When it comes to gaming, PR and marketing have much in common, but there there is an important distinction.  When PR gets involved, it is usually about the activity around games. Making news and creating content are key drivers.  Our role is to promote games, use games to promote clients, manage communities and  find existing games to promote a client’s message.  

It doesn’t have to be only promotion. Take the site Games for Change.  It is strictly .org.  But it’s instructive.  It seeks to harness video games to address pressing issues, including poverty, human rights, global conflict and climate change.  Serious stuff, and it’s time PR understands gaming’s potential.

Embracing Gaming but Understanding Ground Rules

Games are not releases:  As Schneider cautions, don’t confuse games with traditional PR.  They are not white papers or press releases by another name. Games are not tactics, and those who think so generally don’t play games.  (It’s the same reason why many great books don’t always make great movies.  The success of the great book lies in the interface. Its power is often lost in the translation from written word to silver screen.) Games are a new interface, and we need to understand  their rules.

The benefit of games is indirect:  When it comes to games, corporate messaging must be woven into the experience. You can’t simply insert corporate messages.  Games must be engaging and entertaining. For the most part, experiencing the game is the message, and it’s the community of players who spread the word. 

Done right games are immersive, viral and potentially transformative. At their best, they create a communal experience that brings people together.  The buzz they generate is PR’s reward.

Games are not cheap:  Gaming can bust traditional PR budgets.  Non complicated games can cost upwards of $50,000 to $100,000 or maybe $40,000 to $60,000 in these recessionary times.  And the cost can be hundreds of thousands for more complex games. It costs a lot of money to design, build and maintain them.

Games are not easy:  Games require technical skills and knowledge that most PR professionals don’t have.  Schneider’s advice:  find a partner with gaming experience and more importantly some success under its belt.

Measuring Success: Given the cost to produce a game, ROI is a critical as ever.  Certainly eyeballs, the number of conversations, the number of players and buzz are great metrics.  Another measurement is determining results based on the cash equivalent of a traditional ad buy.  Which served the client better? 

If I Were in Charge

Need a hypothetical example: Take Flintstones Chewable Vitamins. They are perfect for a PR driven game.  (My apologies if one already exists.) A game lends itself to the core audience.  It’s experiential, and  would be a fun way to promote a message of nutrition, diet and health.  And you can build a whole PR campaign around the game, highlighting an innovative social media strategy.  And oh by the way, it may sell more vitamins.

In one sense, I have created a false division between PR and marketing.  The growing overlap between the two departments is not lost on me.  In some cases, PR and marketing can share mission and budget.  My point is that PR needs to understand that gaming is gaining wider acceptance within the business world. It provides a whole new way to communicate our message.  Asserting thought leadership will go a long way in increasing PR’s influence and value.

Let me get back to you.

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I recently attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.  Thousands of gamers descended upon the Moscone Center for a week of discussions about the gaming industry. 

It was my first GDC, and it helped clarify my interest in gaming.  For me, a key focus is social gaming.  Social games are a new frontier (I was going to use the word “compelling” but in a GDC rant session Stephen Totilo at MTV News comically put it on his list of words to avoid along with “very” and most adverbs) for marketing and PR professionals.  They have the ability to engage users, build community and extend the brand experience.   

At its most basic social games are about social interaction, as opposed to playing one on one games like solitaire and gamer against game.  Check out Nick O’Neill’s post for a great more complete definition. In short, they are, well, social — easy to play, based on social platforms, and accessible to the general public.

Need proof of their growing popularity?  Look no further than Facebook and iPhone.  Gareth Davis, the program manager for games in Facebook’s platform marketing division, said in an interview that “Games are by far the biggest application on Facebook. We have more than 5,000 games and hundreds of thousands of developers.”

And according to Jeff Scott, as of March 26, one third of the approximately 30,000 active or inactive apps on iPhone were games and entertainment. It’s time to take games seriously.

Meet the (Gaming) Press

Among the panels I attended was Meet the (Gaming) Press with journalists Brian Crecente of Kotaku, Sam Kennedy of 1up, Brandon Sheffield of Game Developer Magazine.  It was moderated by Frank Cifaldi.  (Here is another perspective on the panel: Michael Thomsen) The turnout was good, but nothing like the session: The Cruise Director of Azeroth:  Directed Gameplay within World of Warcraft.  The line to get in for that talk was at least a football field long.

Most of the discussion at the gaming press panel was pretty basic – advising people to read the publications they are pitching and that emails are often a better way to reach them even if they just skim most of their messages.

What most interested me was the social media piece.  Culling Twitter feeds and Facebook pages for information are now part of the morning ritual.  In the age of Google, they were less enamored with exclusives – which has long been a mainstay of  journalists.  Today the number of channels for leaks is too great to hold water.  Brian Crecente doesn’t use them.  Also in a global market with a 24/7 news cycle, embargoes are hard to keep with international editions factoring in.

I did find it amusing when Brian recounted how he tried to get confirmation from a PR person on story he was writing.  While the PR rep looked for a spokesperson, he went on Twitter and spoke to his contact at the company.  The PR rep later informed him that a spokesperson was not available, about the same time the story went live.  So much for controlled messaging,

PR nightmare or part of the new world of media relations?  If we embrace decentralized centralized communication, we need to anticipate unexpected sources.   But as one journalist (and I can’t remember who it was) said, you need to keep tighter controls on employees if you don’t like leaks.  Easier said then done.

Blogger Meetup

I was sorry I couldn’t clone myself later that day.  There was a blogger meet up at the same time a social gaming session was being held.  Social gaming won out, but I wanted to at least give a shout out to some of the bloggers including Ian Schreiber, James Stevenson, Adam Niese, Andrew Armstrong, and Brenda Brathwaite who attended.

I plan to post a lot more on social gaming because I think social gaming for marketing and PR professionals is still in its infancy and affords both great opportunities and challenges for PR.  

So stay tuned, and let me get back to you.

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