Popular Science has published a delightful article that describes how 2010 Honda Insight (a hybrid vehicle) uses some principles of video games to encourage more fuel efficient driving behavior. The car’s multi-information display includes a progress meter — a (leafless) virtual plant. The plant’s empty branches grow leaves over time, as a result of efficient driving behavior recorded by the car’s onboard computer. The multi-information display helps teach the driver how to drive more efficiently (and thus, gain leaves) by signaling the impact of excessive stopping and starting, inefficient acceleration, etc.

This isn’t a short-term game, either. Over the car’s entire lifetime, a thrifty driver can earn a second tier of leaves, then a flower on each branch. The screen will eventually display a trophy if a driver performs well enough for a long enough period of time.

What I like about this idea is not just that it makes fuel-efficient driving more fun. No, what I really like about this is that, if Honda is smart, they could turn this into an incentive to purchase more Honda vehicles in the future. After all, when the time comes to purchase another car, you wouldn’t want to lose the virtual trophy that you had worked so hard to earn, would you? Well, why should you have to lose it? Just purchase another vehicle from Honda, and all the trophies you earned in your previous vehicle can be transferred over to the new one! Of course, it would work better if you could earn trophies for more activities in addition to efficient driving (and it would work better still if the accumulation of trophies led to concrete real-world benefits, like a 5% discount on your next vehicle, a t-shirt with the Honda logo on it, etc…)

February 24th, 2009 | Category: Marketing & Advertising, Solving "Hard Problems" | Leave a comment

My second guest post on the New York Times Freakonomics blog is up; in this one, I explore how two video games, Rock Band and Guitar Hero are fundamentally changing the way that music industry executives think about promoting and selling music. While this story is interesting in and of itself, I chose it because it’s a powerful example of the way that games can be used to reinvent moribund markets. Almost anything can be turned into a game, with enough creativity and effort.

November 17th, 2008 | Category: Marketing & Advertising, Reviews & Interviews | Leave a comment

There are lots of interesting articles on games and business recently.  A slightly older one is a BusinessWeek slideshow on 33 ways that game companies can make money from games, some of these methods are only relevant to game companies, but they offer interesting hints as to how game companies and other businesses can work together.  A Swiss engineering company is using techiques right out of games to create compelling point-of-sale displays.  Another article looks at the way some games tackle serious issues, ranging from tragedy to war, in an intellectual way. And, on the lighter side, humor site Something Awful imagines what business skills a few well-known games might advertise themselves as teaching.

October 23rd, 2008 | Category: Marketing & Advertising, Society & Culture | Leave a comment

With confirmation today that Obama is advertising in billboards in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise, Presidential politics have apparently started to take games seriously as way of reaching voters.  Less serious is this pro-Obama voting simulator.  There are also prediction games using the presidential election, and Ian Bogost’s Campaign Rush.

October 14th, 2008 | Category: Marketing & Advertising | Comments (1)

I was particularly intrigued by news that Allstate is piloting a program which seeks to determine if playing video games could make better drivers out of those over the age of 50. This news caught my eye for two reasons:

1. If the study is conclusive and positive, Allstate plans to offer discounts to mature drivers who pass similar online tests, and,
2. The games in question are not driving simulators, as one might assume. They are various types of “brain-challenging” games designed to test abilities such as “visual alertness.” InSight, the developer of the games, claims that they can reduce dangerous driving maneuvers by up to 40 percent and significantly increase reaction rates.

Jewel Diver is one of five InSight games being tested by Allstate. In Jewel Diver, players must track multiple moving objects — fish marked with red gems — as they float around in an ocean with other, similar looking fish.

This article is a nice illustration of one of the arguments in Changing the Game: that games can be used to educate, screen, and market to people using abstract gameplay and virtual metaphors, not just simulations. (The marketing angle is particularly compelling, in this case. Imagine the following: “Congratulations, you scored in the top 20% of all players! Odds are, you’re a better driver than the average Joe. Allstate is pleased to offer you 10% off your insurance premium…”)

October 11th, 2008 | Category: Marketing & Advertising, Training & Education | Comments (1)