A new attempt to turn Twitter into a Super Mario-style platformer is the latest example of gamification.
I'm a little late with this but, if you haven't already seen it, check out Super Twario. It's essentially an iPhone Twitter client designed to resemble ? and play like ? a mid-eighties platformer. Lead character Twario, wanders through the scrolling landscape, headbutting follower icons to read and reply to tweets. The 'game' uses the handset's accelerometer allowing you to tilt and tap your phone to navigate, and you score by writing our own messages, gaining new followers and a range of other actions. The original version has been out a couple of weeks, but a special Halloween version is now available, and the designers are busily working on new features.
Created by Manchester-based advertising agency Head First, Super Twario is a sort of test case, designed to promote games as a way of getting brands noticed. As the agency's director Dom Conlon explains, "Games are the meeting point for so many people and yet they are often sidelined into the special interest camp. We wanted to show that engaging people through gaming can apply to any product - even something like Twitter. Making an impact is more than just buying the right media, it is about creating the right product and the right message. Super Twario takes Twitter and says, let's interact with this in a new way."
It is, of course, another example of 'gamification', a burgeoning trend for applying game design principles to other services. The competitive location finders FourSquare and Gowalla are currently the best known examples, with score-based to-do list, EpicWin, also garnering plenty of attention. The concept is, people like to play, so they're more likely to engage with complex or possibly mundane concepts if there's some sort of game involved.
Although brands are fighting an ever-more complex war to grab the attention of skeptical consumers, Head First has encountered some resistance to its gamification ideas. "We were approached to spec out a campaign for an iPhone shop and created a real talking point by placing the game concept at its core. The client really liked it but didn't pursue it because it wasn't a traditional online shop front. That makes me scratch my head. We've had online shops for, what, a decade now? And already we are cementing our ideas on what a shopping experience is. It seems counter-intuitive to me."
I can understand Dom's bewilderment. An online store designed to work like a game would seem to be the perfect method of capturing unwilling male shoppers. Amazon-meets-Sonic the Hedgehog? You could be on Stage five before you realised you'd bought three books and a DVD box set.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/nov/03/games-social-media
KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY COMPANY KEY JDS UNIPHASE JDA SOFTWARE GROUP
No comments:
Post a Comment