Social engagement loops

The use of games in non-gaming activities is rising each and every year. The idea of “gamification” (or game thinking, or ludic interface) became popular in our business culture and one feature to highlight in this context is engagement.



A game, in a business context, for example, needs a perfect balance between serious content and entertainment. From there, it’s possible to create strategies to engage audiences more accurately.

One fundamental idea in this discussion is the idea of “social engagement loops”.

As Cunningham and Zichermann say (2011, p.67) “social engagement loops, while not exclusive to games, borrow heavily from a viral loop design. A designer must not only see the way a player engages with the system, but also how he leaves it and – perhaps even more importantly – what brings him back again. In a social engagement loop, a motivating emotion leads to player re-engagement, which leads to a social call to action, which flows to visible progress and/or rewards, which loops back around to a motivating emotion”.

The figure below illustrates this idea:



A social engagement loop, designed to maximize player engagement and reengagement using core product design (CUNNINGHAM; ZICHERMANN, 2011, p.68)

Certain ludic contexts need deeper strategic building. Especially when we talk about serious games, business games, and gamification. The book in the end of this post is a great source of reference for this subject.

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Reference:

CUNNINGHAM, Christopher; ZICHERMANN, Gabe. Gamification by design: Implementing game mechanics in web and mobile apps. Canada: O’Reilly, 2011.

Money through mobile games

As you know, I’m a postgraduate research student and graduation level teacher in Brazil. At this moment, I’m teaching Digital Media and Gaming Concepts to my students. In a specific class about mobile gaming there’s question that comes up every semester: “How can we make money through mobile games?”

Ok, the world is going mobile and everybody wants to create the new Angry Birds to become a millionaire, but it’s essential to analyse some important business models inside this complex (and gigantic) market. In this post I just want to highlight some of these models. It is not my intention to write a complete document about this subject.



1. Freemium (a neologism mixing “free” and “premium”): is a business model by which a game is provided free of charge, but money is charged for advanced features, functionalities, or virtual goods. “Cut the rope” is an example of freemium game because you can download the content and play ten stages of the game, but if you want the complete experience its mandatory to pay. “Zombie Tsunami” is an example of how a company can make money with in-game equipment (players are invited to visit a virtual shop to buy scenarios, powers, clothes, etc. with real credits).

2. Ads and banners: there are a lot of free games with advertising inside its interface. It’s very common to find a free game with ads/banners in the screen. Sometimes it sucks but someone needs to pay the price and advertising could be an answer.

3. In-Game Advertising: refers to the use of digital games as a medium for the delivery of advertisements. This is a better way to put products and services in the interface. We have a lot of examples of brands that created games for its products, like “CP3K” running game from Nike.

4. Free for long-term profit: a good strategy for small companies in the beginning of its existence is to give the whole game for free or put the game for free for a while and put a minimum price on it after a few weeks. In the beginning it’s necessary to build a name in the mobile gaming field. If your first game was good, certainly people will pay for expansions or new ones.

5. Put a price on it: there’s no rule about a price for a mobile game. In this case it’s important to have an overview about similar games to create a coherent value to your game.

There’s a lot of another strategies to create “talkability” and make your game to go viral. It’s possible to distribute promotional numbers for free downloads to influent people, use social media, etc. but this is a subject for another post.

Now on to your opinion.

The Valve handbook for new employees

Amazing document about the working methodology of Valve. Click on the image below to download the full content.



About the company: Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996. In addition to creating several of the world’s most award-winning games like Portal and Half-Life, Valve is also a developer of leading-edge technologies including the Source® game engine and Steam®, the premier online gaming platform. Valve also is the creator of Steam, the pioneering game platform that distributes and manages over 1,800 games directly to a community of more than 40 million players around the world.

Official site http://www.valvesoftware.com/.