This is not a post about the always increasing number of social gamers (about 100 million people playing mostly on Facebook). This is not about how much money people spend to play social games ($1 billion in the US according to the same study quoted in the linked article).
This is a post about the opportunity games offer companies and organizations looking to engage customers and constituents in good work. Here is a little bit reality about the virtual world.
“There are games now for pretty much every age, every demographic,” Jesse Schell, who teaches entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon University, tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “More and more women are going online. It comes down to everybody is playing games.”
So who has the biggest appetite for games now?
“The single largest demographic that plays games online is middle-aged women,” says Schell, who is also a game developer. He serves as the chief executive officer of Schell Games, which he founded in 2004.
“Games are just evolving like species in order to fit into every little niche of our lives[.]“
Not everybody plays games. I don’t. But it is not hard to observe the increasing presence of games in my online social life — with requests from Farvillers, online Mafiosos and the like coming far more frequently than new friends nowadays.
The point is that social games are an effective and potentially lucrative method to engage people. So why hasn’t social gaming become more popular in the CSR space or nonprofit world?
Two big reasons jump out:
- Cost: the development costs for a social game along the lines of Farmville will be in the several hundred thousand dollar range. That’s no small amount but it’s only a fraction of the $23 million four utilities spent in to encourage energy conservation in WI in 2007. Now is it so hard to imagine that someone who will pay for virtual farmland might invest real dollars into a virtual wind farm that ultimately translates into an actual wind farm?
- Stigma: from the comments below the NPR piece — “NO, not everybody plays games nor are these people antiquated relics . They are people that know that the real 3D ultimate vieo game is called life and and the joy stick is your body . Now get off your flabby butt and Play.” To which I will only direct people the good work being done in David Shaffer’s shop at UW-Madison. Students learn how to become journalists and good urban planners playing online role playing games.
It may not be your thing — it isn’t mine. You may not get it — I don’t completely. But to discount the effectiveness of games as a tool for engagement and a means to generate revenue is folly. Ask the folks at Zynga who generated a just “north of $200 million in revenue” last year.
Imagine that kind of power harnessed on behalf of your cause or candidate. So all you imaginative nonprofit execs and corporate social responsibility managers take note: games are here for good. Use them for good.