Gamification in the Arts, Part 2: What games fit what demographics?

"Video games sit at the confluence of history, technology, and art in such a way that's found in no other medium  a place where influences from every creative field meet, mix, and recombine."  -Daniel D. Snyder, The Atlantic. When most people conjure the image of a gamer they generally think of the past:  a nerdy 18-25 year old male, probably white.  The face of gaming has changed significantly over the last twelve years and now both men and women, young and old, and people of all races are engaged in games on a regular basis.  Simply put, almost every conceivable group of people is now engaged in gaming, just not all groups are engaged in all types of gaming.

According to a report put out in 2012 by the Entertainment Software Association, the average American households have at least one dedicated gaming consul, PC, or smartphone and 49% of US households have an average of two.  Roughly a third of game players in the US  are over the age of 36, one third are between the ages of 19 and 35, and the remaining third are 18 and under (meaning that two thirds of gamers in the US are adults and that the average age of a game player in the US is 30!)  Also, gender wise game players are now split evenly with 47% of all electronic gamers being women.

"What we are seeing in games is art at a world class stage design that is almost unmatched anywhere else.  It has been very exciting to me to see so many ideas that integrate social good and efforts to make the world a better place through games."  -Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States

The way in which people are engaging with games is changing.  Console gaming (Microsoft X-Box, Sony Playstation, and Nintendo Wii) has been on the decline over the last couple of years while social media gaming and mobile device gaming has been on the increase.  Similarly board gaming has also been on the rise (according to the 2011 US Census section on Arts, Recreation, and Travel) for the last twelve years with the explosion of number and quality of titles and has drawn increasing numbers of 'board game geeks' who wish to connect with people in person in the face of an increasingly electronic world.

So who plays games?  What games do they play?  Electronic gaming wise, women tend to skew towards games like The Sims (which is the "World's Biggest-Selling Simulation Series", and "Best Selling PC Game of All Time"), dance and fitness games, and social media gaming.  Men tend towards first person shooters, strategy games, and sports games.  Both men and women tend to engage in role playing games in roughly equal numbers.  In the board gaming world less information is out there about consumption and engagement but it can be assumed, somewhat safely, that similar propensities exist throughout different platforms.

How can the arts harness this?  As arts groups such as The Tate, The Royal Opera, Jacob's Pillow, and other groups explore game like content and applications they can use this data to fine target the apps they create towards market segments.  As an industry, any arts group can use a game dynamic in order to drive deeper engagement in marketing or development.  Activities such as the Glass Hunt on the Oregon Coast have proven successful at driving interest in art through a game layer, in this case, a scavenger hunt.  Other groups such as 2am theatre have used applications such as scavengr to drive similar efforts in a combined physical and electronic fashion.  In the arts, a typical marketing campaign has a one way thrust:  "buy tickets, come see our show".  With games, can be enticed to have longer involvement time-frames and be induced to repeat engagement.

Has your organization explored the possibility of using a game dynamic?  Was it through social media, an app, or through an old school scavenger hunt?  What did you find successful?  What were your challenges?  This series will continue in two more weeks with an exploration of how to approach game design, test games, and implement them.  If you have questions regarding this topic or any others please ask them in the comments section!

This Exquisite Forest: A Collaborative Project from Google Chrome and London's Tate Modern

Perhaps you played the French Surrealist game, ‘The Exquisite Corpse,’ in grammar school using the week’s vocabulary words or at a sleepover, where someone inevitably managed to take the game in an inappropriate direction (wasn’t me, I swear). If you do not recognize the creative exercise by its proper name, you will by its concept: a person begins a sentence or drawing on a piece of paper, covers their creation, passes the paper to the following person, and so the game continues until all participants have contributed. The final ‘masterpiece’ is often a comical, nonsensical, and potentially inappropriate, Dadaist anti-creation.

In July, Google’s Creative Lab teamed up with London’s Tate Modern Museum and launched the online collaborative project, “This Exquisite Forest.” Borrowing the game’s concept from the Surrealists, “This Exquisite Forest” enables users to draw or animate their own short animations (using Google Chrome browser) based on the initial “seeds” created by the artists Miroslaw Balka, Olafur Eliasson, Dryden Goodwin, Ragib Shaw, Julian Opie, Mark Titchner, Bill Woodrow, and Film4.0’s animators. One difference between the Surrealist’s version of the game and this project is the fact that online participants will have access to what was contributed before their own addition (as opposed to the Surrealist game where each participant's contribution is covered before moving on).

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nnhJ1841K-8[/embed]

As users add their own animations and visual narratives using a web-based drawing tool, “the videos dynamically branch out and evolve, forming multiple new visuals.” From this idea- of initial videos or “seeds” planted by Tate’s artists- and the additional sequences branching out to create trees, this collaborative online project was coined “This Exquisite Forest.”

The project exists both in the digital realm and in the physical world. Large-scale projections of the best of the online contributions are displayed in the Level 3 gallery of the Tate Modern. In-house visitors have the opportunity to view the animations and contribute their own additions using digital drawing stations in the gallery.

“This Exquisite Forest” does three things expertly:

1) Allows museum-goers and web-users to become creators and curators, not just passive consumers of art

2) Provides a forum for the global, online community to collaborate creatively

3) Markets Google’s web browser Chrome, Google App Engine, and Google Cloud Storage

The physical installation at the Tate will run until January 2013 (approximately).

Gaming or gamification: a tool for the arts

According to surveys done by Comscore, gaming online, on smart phones, and among women has been growing for years.  Likewise the number and quality of board games has exploded in the last twelve or so years.  The upshot of these phenomena is a clear indication that gaming and gaming culture is on the rise globally and all indications are that slow and steady growth will continue to happen in this sector. But how do the arts harness this phenomena?  Game dynamics can be used to attract attention, deepen interaction, and retain interest.  Games of course have always held interest in technology and examination of game mechanics regularly shows up on Tech literature.  Beyond the tech world gamification has also become a subject of interest in the corporate world in general.  Gaming and gamification holds promise for the arts.  Applications include game dynamics on websites to bringing game mechanics to your marketing or development efforts.

Roughly speaking game mechanics fall into a number of broader categories and smaller subcategories of stimuli and response mechanisms:

• Achievement:  points, levels, rewards, recognition, and gifts.
• Competition:  leader boards, envy, varying challenge from human interaction, and the human competitive instinct.
• Cooperation:  altruism, social fabric, communal discover, commerce, and teamwork.
• Ownership:  building something that is yours, loyalty, self-expression, and loss avoidance.

Before embarking on gaming or gamification it is wise to consider your brand, your audience, and your goals.   In order to motivate specific behaviors the right combination of mechanics and dynamics need to be in place and these can vary from audience to audience.  Indeed, high powered consultants at high powered firms can be hired to help with gamification but this isn't always necessary.  A simple, well planned addition of gamification can increase time spent on a website by two or three fold.  For instance, if a customer answers three questions correctly about your organization's history they get a 5% discount on their current purchase.  Will everyone participate?  Probably not, but it will deepen the experience for a number of people and potentially deepen their understanding and commitment to your organization.