The Future

The world can be a highly competitive place.  Students compete for grades, employees compete for promotions, and as I type this there are thousands of men and women competing for the best shopping deals on “Black Friday. "  Competition doesn’t have to be a scary or unnerving.  Competition can be a lot of fun.  We play traditional computer and board games as a way to relax; these are essentially competitions.  Over time game makers have discovered some interesting techniques that they use to motivate players to play and enjoy games.

Seth Priebatsch runs SCVNGR, a mobile start-up company with the revolutionary idea that we can build a game layer on top of the world.  In his speech entitled The Game Layer on Top of the World (filmed July, 2010 for TEDxBoston), Seth argues that the power of game dynamics can be used to build brand loyalty and ultimately influence people for good.  Game designers know that status is a particularly good motivator.  Status is why the average World of Warcraft gamer spends 6.5 hours-per-day playing the game.  He (or she) is willing to put in that much work because the reward is to have a hulking, powerful character that impresses all the other players on the server.

From my own experience I know that leveling up (for status) is a really effective motivator.  I used to stay awake and play Call of Duty 4 for an extra hour or two until I had achieved the next highest rank.  In college I played Resident Evil Outbreak well into the night, trying to post a high score that would be visible to all my contemporaries.  If I had convinced myself that I could achieve superior status by citing the most sources in my bibliography, or by reading the most pages in my textbook, I might have spent those late hours on my studies instead.

I’m using this as an example of how powerful game dynamics can be.  Compared with many more practical endeavors, building a highly ranked WoW character is very time-consuming and difficult, but the feat is regularly achieved by people that society would deem lazy by professional and economic standards.  How can this be?  Well, the status game dynamic is very influential, and has the potential to be used by businesses to attract and retain customer.  Sports bars are a business that I think could benefit from manipulating game dynamics.

Sports bars already participate heavily in the first game dynamic that Seth discusses in his presentation: the appointment dynamic.  In fact Seth uses the concept of happy hour as his chief example.  By being in a certain bar at a certain time (happy hour), that player essentially wins – his reward is half-priced beer.  Happy hour has already influenced that lives and habits of millions of consumers, but there is more that can be done to attract more regular patrons.

Now I’m going to discuss how manipulating the game layer can revolutionize the way sports bars do business.  A lot of businesses already offer some sort of frequent customer program.  Most of them operate on some variation of the punch-card system.  For example if you buy 10 coffees and have the cashier stamp your coffee-card, the next one is free.  The problem with this system is that it isn’t very much fun, and those cards just end up cluttering up your wallet.  I may have cashed in on a free beverage once in my life, but overall this system feels more like work than a reward.

The social framework of the internet is already in place (ex. Facebook).  We can make rewards systems a lot more effective, and more importantly, fun!  Seth describes the progression dynamic whereby, “You have to make progress and move through different steps in a granular fashion.”  This is going on wherever you see a progress bar.  Seth believes that when we are presented with a progress bar and easy steps to take to try and complete that progress bar, that we will do it because something deep inside compels us to.  “We will figure out a way to move the blue line all the way to the right edge of the screen.”  Seth’s company works on finding ways to use games to drive traffic to local businesses.  He suggests a game that requires people to go places and do challenges to earn points will be a lot more fun and engaging than remembering to bring your punch-card every time. 

I can see a future of sports bar marketing where winning at trivia will earn you 50 points, ordering the secret menu item of the day earns 25, and repeating the secret phrase of the day to the waitress – it’s found online at the company website, of course - will net you 10 points.  You could literally have a blue progress bar online to keep track of it all, just like at the website Linked In.  Other patrons would be able to visit the bar’s Facebook fan page and see their total score, your total score, how many times you had each won at trivia, and if one of you had amassed enough points to be a “grand Fergs all-star” or some other status-conferring title.  There could be group-based achievements too, to take advantage of the communal discovery dynamic Seth discusses.  I guarantee that some people would compete hard for the rank of number one customer if there is status at stake, and prizes are involved, and that means big money for the sports bar.  It would be easy for a sports bar to install this sort of system because the social framework is in place right now.  The time it would take an employee to update the rankings at the end of the night is practically negligible.  Earning enough points to fill your blue bar would no doubt result in free food or drink, and then you could start filling it up a second time like prestige mode on Call of Duty 4. 

I’ll admit that I chose to focus on game theory because I like to play games.  One thing that drives me to revisit certain sports bars is the chance to have fun by playing a game while I get the social experience of eating dinner with friends.  I think that sports bars could take this a step further and do what Seth is doing with his company, which is incorporating a kind of progression system (leveling up), with a rewards dynamic.  I agree with Seth that everyone likes to see some sort of visual progress.   I believe that a game-based rewards system could revolutionize the way sports bars attract customers, and it would be a lot of fun as well!