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VIDEO: David Hasselhoff becomes the face of PlanetPlay’s green games initiative

Acting legend David Hasselhoff has become the ‘first star of the month’ for not-for-profit PlanetPlay’s ever-growing Make Green Tuesday Moves (MGTM) initiative – which enables players to make a real-world impact in the fight against climate change.

Starting today, Tuesday July 2nd 2024, each participating game is launching specially created green items featuring The Hoff, which will be exclusive to the MGTM movement and remain live until the next monthly activation begins.

Proceeds from the sale of The Hoff’s content – which can comprise new and/or upcycled DLC goods such as characters, skins and items – will be invested into fully certified sustainability projects by PlanetPlay’s eco-donate platform.

The Hoff, star of global smash hit TV series’ Knight Rider and Baywatch, is proud to be MGTM’s first ‘Star of the Month’ from the world of entertainment, supported by a huge social media campaign, helping to inspire gamers all around the world to ‘Make Green Tuesday Moves’.

Among the games featuring The Hoff’s green DLC as part of July’s MGTM are Avakin Life (Lockwood Publishing), Bowling Club(Boombit), Car Driving School (Boombit), Cook & Merge (Supersolid), Crazy Defence Heroes (Animoca Brands), Darts Club (Boombit), Dawn Of Ages (Boombit), Fishing Clash (Ten Square Games), Hunt Royale (Boombit), Nitro Nation (CM Games), Peridot (Niantic), Piper Pets Cafe (Tripledot), Solitaire (Tripledot), Subway Surfers (SYBO), The Great Ocean (Actrio), Tile Dynasty (Tripledot), Top Drives (Hutch), Train Station 2 (Pixel Federation), Triple Title (Tripledot) and Wooduku (Tripledot).

Google is also supporting the innovative MGTM movement with a dedicated page on the GooglePlay app store, featuring an overview of the mission, a showcase of The Hoff’s videos, and all participating games from July 2-15 across all English-speaking territories.

These games collectively have over 36 million daily players, with games that have been played over 4 billion times.

All gamers need to do to get involved in MGTM is harness their #PassiveActivism, by continuing to play the games they love to contribute to amazing sustainability causes – all supported by The Hoff!

These sustainability causes include the Hongera Project, which helps families in Kenya improve their living conditions by manufacturing and distributing clean cookstoves, and the WAI Wanaka water conservation project in New Zealand.

David Hasselhoff said: “As someone who has spent years entertaining audiences around the world, I know the power of influence. Climate change isn’t just a distant threat; it’s here and now. By joining the Make Green Tuesday Moves initiative, we can turn our everyday gaming into a force for good. Let’s make every play for our planet. Together, we can create a legacy of sustainability for future generations. Stay cool, stay green, and make a difference!”

Jessica Jung, Product Manager for Peridot at Niantic, said: “We’re excited to partner with PlanetPlay for initiatives like Make Green Tuesday Moves. At the core of Niantic’s mission, we believe that we can leverage the power of gaming to help people get outdoors, healthier, and meet new people. It’s amazing when this mission can also work in tandem to make for a greener planet.”

Tamzin Taylor, Head of Google Play Partnerships, Western Europe, said: “PlanetPlay’s Make Green Tuesday Moves initiative is a fantastic example of how the games industry can leverage its massive reach to make a positive impact. We’re proud to support MGTM by featuring it on the Google Play store, making it easier for millions of gamers to get involved and play for the planet.”

Rhea Loucas, CEO at PlanetPlay, said: “The Make Green Tuesday Moves initiative embodies the incredible potential of the games community to drive meaningful change. With David Hasselhoff as our first ‘Star of the Month,’ we want to inspire millions of players to join our mission to help keep global warming below the 1.5 degree threshold. I also want to welcome all our new studio partners, who are integrating sustainability into their game experiences to empower players to contribute to real-world environmental solutions. We are thrilled to have The Hoff on board and can’t wait to see the impact this collaboration will achieve.”

Gen Z and Alpha are redefining how UK brands see gaming

By Glenn Gillis, CEO, Sea Monster

Brands have a long history of using games. In fact, the first branded game – a simple beer-pouring arcade game designed to promote Anheuser-Busch in bars – dates back to 1983. It didn’t take long before UK brands started hiring developers to build bespoke games for marketing purposes. In 1984, for example, Weetabix released “The Muncher” for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer. The game required players to control a character called The Muncher, who had to eat Weetabix while avoiding obstacles.

Since then, things have evolved considerably. The rise of PC and mobile gaming, coupled with the development of the internet, has made it so much easier for brands to create games that people can repeatedly play in their homes, on their way to work and everywhere in between.

And things aren’t slowing down anytime soon. Gen Zs and Gen Alphas, many of whom have played some form of video game since they were toddlers, are fundamentally changing how we think about gaming and branded games in particular.

Ubiquitous gaming as a lifestyle

First, it’s worth looking at how ubiquitous gaming has become among Gen Zs and Alphas. According to research by Visual Capitalist, 90% of Gen Zs (those born between the mid-1990s and 2009) play games regularly. Among Gen Alphas (those born between 2010 and 2020), meanwhile, the number is even higher, at 93%. In the UK, Gen Alpha gamers are especially engaged, with 62% playing for over five hours a week, compared to only 17% of Gen Z gamers.

But games aren’t just another form of entertainment or bad-screen time for these young people. They’re part of a lifestyle and act as an avenue for learning, creating, socialising, and even taking part in events like virtual concerts. It should hardly be surprising therefore that, having been raised in a tech-centric environment, these two generations are also the most inclined to participate in gaming through alternative avenues. Some 72% of Gen Zs and Gen Alphas regularly watch gaming channels and indulge in game streamer content online, for instance.

How these younger generations approach games, and gaming, tells us a great deal about the sector’s future. But it also provides some insight into why brands and other organisations are looking to the gaming industry for a way to connect with a new audience.

Brands are tapping into the evolution of gaming as a lifestyle to foster a long-term affiliation with younger people who are natives to the world of games and gaming platforms. In doing so, we’ve seen brands launch marketing campaigns in existing game titles and even develop bespoke gaming experiences within platforms like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite in order to engage with young people where they are already congregating and spending time. 

An evolving landscape

According to figures from Statista, 81% of the Roblox community – comprising 70+ million daily players and 196 million monthly active users – are under the age of 25. Nearly two-thirds of Minecraft players (162 million monthly players), meanwhile, are under the age of 21. One reason why young people flock to these platforms is because it’s where their friends and peers are. In effect, they have become a virtual third place, where young people feel safe outside the bounds of school and home to play, socialise and develop their unique virtual identities.

Beyond a third place, brands must also understand what young players want from these platforms and games in general.  Research from GWI, for example, reveals that Gen Alpha primarily want games that have a sense of adventure and allow them to build things.

To use gaming platforms as yet another way to inundate people with meaningless ads and commercial content would be a missed opportunity. The real value in this space lies in creating gaming experiences that get young audiences to engage with your brand in a fun and meaningful way that feels authentic to your brand and suitable to the platform. Through this approach, gaming platforms can help brands effectively build a community, enhance customer loyalty and explore new revenue opportunities.

Games as part of the future marketing mix

With even young children spending an average of 38 minutes per day gaming, the case for using games as a means to reach young people should be clear. With nearly 400 branded activations on Roblox as of the beginning of this year, and hundreds more across other platforms, it is evident that brands across the world are recognising and capitalising on the immense potential of the gaming industry to capture the attention and loyalty of their next generation of consumers.

These days, it’s a given that every major brand has a presence across all major social platforms and, in the future, it could be a similar no-brainer for brands to establish and maintain a persistent presence in immersive virtual spaces and gaming worlds as part of the modern marketing mix.

Photo by Jose Gil on Unsplash

Could games be key to helping brands tackle social and environmental issues?

By Glenn Gillis (pictured), CEO, Sea Monster

In 2023, the world saw record high summer temperatures in Europe and the US, deadly floods in locations across the globe, and catastrophic wildfires in Greece, Canada, Turkey, and many other locations. On their own, each of these incidents is a tragedy. Collectively, these indicators serve as a stark warning, highlighting the significant impact the climate crisis is already having on societies across the globe. Taken together, they represent a profound warning about how big an impact the climate crisis already has on societies worldwide.

At the same time, almost all of those societies are grappling with significant social issues. Whether it’s income and wealth inequality, gender, race, and class discrimination, crime, or education disparities. These are all issues that must be addressed for any society to flourish.

Addressing both climate change and the myriad of social issues listed above requires intervention from stakeholders across society, including brands. For many companies, that has meant incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards into their operations. Those integrations don’t always come easily, however. In fact, in a 2022 survey, 44% of UK businesses admitted that they were failing to deliver on their sustainability commitments.

Fortunately, there are strategies that brands of all sizes can adopt when it comes to simplifying ESG integrations and encouraging participation from their employees and customers alike to join their mission. Games, in particular, have an important role to play.

Building on brand purpose

To understand how games can help brands tackle social and environmental issues, it’s critical  to recognise  the importance of brand purpose. Beyond the “what” and “how,” brand purpose can broadly be defined as a company’s “why”. It’s also what customers look for and most easily latch onto when they choose which brands to support.

Increasingly, that means putting their environmental and social commitments  at the heart of their branding. A report released in October last year, for example, found that 70% of consumers want to know what brands are doing to address those kinds of issues, with 46% paying close attention to a brand’s social responsibility efforts when making a purchase.

While the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a ready-made framework that brands can work from, communicating brand purpose based on that is a different proposition. That’s where games and gaming can make a significant difference as a vehicle of communication, a place to build communities and as a means to inspire shifts in behaviour. In this way, games can be leveraged to help brands connect with their customers to drive this higher purpose while also driving their own marketing and brand goals. 

The power of impact games

In order to get those results, brands can’t just expect to build any game. Rather, brands need to adopt impact gaming strategies in order to maximise the power of the medium.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term “impact games,” chances are you’ve encountered one at some point or another. If you or your child have ever used a game to supplement educational activities or have seen a game used as a workplace training tool, you’ve witnessed impact games in action.

These games can mirror the dynamic interactions, structural complexities, and feedback loops that characterise real-world situations and scenarios. In doing so, they can encourage and reward the kinds of outcomes and behaviours that organisations want to see from their customers and employees in a comparatively low-stakes environment. They work because, rather than simply trying to build an association between a specific brand and positive social and environmental impacts, they provide an authentic and relevant way for brands and consumers to exchange and share value around these issues.

An industry adept at driving change

When it comes to environmental and social issues, many brands have built up an extensive understanding of environmental and social issues and how to address them and talk about them through gaming.

A prime example of how games can not only target broad audiences but also produce valuable insights is UNDP’s Mission 1.5. This game served as a climate policy education tool and provided a platform for players to vote on the climate solutions they wanted to see happen. According to UNDP, they received 1.2 million respondents, making Mission 1.5’s “People’s Climate Vote” the largest survey of public opinion on climate change ever conducted. Using a new and unconventional approach to polling, results span 50 countries, covering 56% of the world’s population, showcasing the potential for how brands can use games as a dynamic tool for education and obtaining audience data and sentiment at scale.

As another example, 2023 saw leading coconut water brand, VitaCoco create an experience on Roblox called ‘Coconut Grove’. Through interactive experiences and games, Vita Coco was able to not only spread awareness about responsible farming practices with the online community they had built in their game but they also actively supported sustainability with a pledge to donate $1 to its charity partners in Brazil for every coconut seedling planted in the Roblox experience, up to $75,000.

Similarly, as part of their commitment to supporting the agroecological movement, Nestle France launched a Farmtopia experience in Minecraft in order to help raise awareness among young people about the world of regenerative agriculture. And other impact games with an environmental and social lens are also making a difference in the fashion and finance spaces, among others.

Big issues require big engagement

There is no doubt that brands have a significant responsibility when it comes to helping find solutions to environmental and social issues. Their ability to do so, however, depends heavily on keeping customers and employees as engaged as possible and promoting their values as a brand with their community.

When it comes to driving engagement and reaching their audiences in an effective way, there are few more powerful tools than impact games. So, by working with the right game development house, brands can drive their ESG and sustainability commitments forward and promote their brand purpose in ways that would previously have felt impossible.

What modern marketing can learn from the entertainment industry

By Glenn Gillis, CEO of Sea Monster

People don’t go to the cinema for the previews, and they don’t watch their favorite show just for the ads. Why then, do marketers expect them to watch an ad before watching their favorite Youtuber or engage with a shampoo brand in the middle of their Instagram feed of selfies and vacation pictures? Why should they be forced to sit through advertising just so they can continue playing their mobile game for free?

Traditional advertising forces a message on the individual by interrupting the thing that they actually came there for. Marketers would simply buy media space, smack in the middle of people’s favourite TV show, magazine, newspaper, or news and shout their sales pitch to passive consumers who had no choice but to wait until it’s over.

But thanks to digitalisation, consumers no longer have to watch, listen or read an ad, and they’re not. They’re tuning out and skipping past. To combat this, marketers need to start considering the kinds of experiences people are trying to skip past the ads, to get to.

Be it videos, magazines, or games, marketers need to look at what people are engaging with and determine how to give it to them, harnessing the power of voluntary engagement. A good starting point is moving beyond the mindset of ‘what’s in it for us? What actionable item are we trying to achieve?’, and think more about ‘what’s in it for them? What does the customer need in order to have their attention captured?’

The entertainment industry understands this idea of capturing and holding your attention- it’s the ability to hit “next episode” on Netflix to keep watching a series marathon. It’s also the reason why the Superbowl half-time show is a multi-million dollar production. An engaged audience is the best audience for entertainers and marketers alike.

Marketing content should be relevant and applicable to what the consumer is interested in. Take sponsored Youtube content for example. In a video on DIY interior design, a sponsored message for a relevant product integrated into the video itself adds value to the viewer’s experience, as it’s directly related to what they came here to see. This is far more valuable to the viewer, and is more engaging than the same product being tacked on as an ad at the beginning of the video.

Getting even more creative, brands should experiment with developing games that deliver marketing messages. For the production and placement cost of one 30-second ad, brands can deliver hours of engaging, educational content that drives brand value. And critically this engagement is voluntary, creating a much higher value relationship.

As marketing messages compete in increasingly congested and expensive channels, what we know is that voluntary engagement is key– whether it’s the choice of what show to watch on which streaming platform, or people opting out of certain digital content because of the barrage of ads and other interruptions. People are no longer captive to marketing content, their time and attention matters to them, and brands should use that time wisely.

Glenn Gillis is the co-founder and CEO of Sea Monster, a leading animation, gaming and augmented-reality company. Sea Monster utilises games to increase engagement, improve learning, and strengthen the impact of learning outcomes for corporations across Europe and Africa. 

Reality Clash teams with Subtv for innovative student campaign

Reality Clash, a unique Augmented Reality FPS mobile combat game from publisher Reality Gaming Group, has partnered with youth broadcasting channel Subtv to engage with students across the UK.

The latest Reality Clash trailer will be played to Subtv’s audience of 1.2M 18-24 year-olds across TV, digital and mobile platforms, encompassing a network of 80+ sites/100+ venues in universities nationwide.

The trailer will also interact with the Subtv mobile app, from where students can sign up to the Reality Clash Beta testing programme and claim £5 worth of free in-game currency to spend.

The Subtv partnership is the latest step to Reality Gaming Group’s initiative to work with universities, including Kingston and Westminster, that will see students testing the Reality Clash game ahead of its release in early-2019.

In addition to students and the general public, other participants in the Beta testing programme include Denmark-based eSports community, Sørby, which Reality Gaming Group supports.

Reality Clash is an innovative AR first person combat game for mobile devices set in an underground world of cryptocurrency and hackers. Players are able to connect to friends in real-time using geo map technology, join private teams and enter competitive tournaments.

“We’re delighted to continue building our relationships with students across the UK in partnership with Subtv,” said Reality Gaming Group Co-Founder Tony Pearce. “The Beta testing programme has already put Reality Clash in the hands of thousands of gamers, and now we’re looking forward to seeing some competitive gaming on campuses around the country.”

“Reality Clash is a great fit for Subtv. We’re looking forward to inspiring gaming fans and early adopters from across our University audience of 1.2M students to get involved,” said Subtv CEO Nick Brown.

www.realityclash.com

Chris Hassell &Brynley Gibson

Ralph & Kuju partner to offer VR & AR experiences to brands

Brand experience agency Ralph Creative and Kuju, a full service Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) content specialist, have teamed up to offer a one-stop-shop for creating groundbreaking VR and AR experiences across any platform.

The announcement follows their earlier co-production of a music remix experience for Grammy Award winning duo The Chainsmokers and Sony Music. The experience, for the single Paris, was unveiled at SXSW in Austin to great applause.

“We are thrilled to be announcing this partnership today,” said Kuju’s Head of Studios Brynley Gibson. “When Ralph first approached us about a collaboration on The Chainsmokers’ VR experience it seemed a great fit: our interactive entertainment background in music and VR, alongside their impressive expertise in brands. We found in Ralph kindred spirits with a passion for creating cool innovative projects and we’re looking forward to showing the world what we will come up with next.”

Chris Hassell, Founder of Ralph added: “Working with Kuju is hugely exciting. We knew we wanted to find a partner that had true game development experience but never thought we’d find someone with such a pedigree, with many years of VR experience across many platforms. Based on the success and positive feedback of Paris.VR on the PlayStation Store, we are looking forward to having a lot of fun and doing more groundbreaking work with them in the future for new and existing clients.”