Mention computer gaming and what springs to mind? A niche market? Teen grunge? Think again! The computer gaming industry is bigger than the film and music industries put together – and doubling every five years! It is also changing fast.
The typical computer gamer is in his mid 20s and female gamers account for one of the fastest growing parts of the market. New developments in sociability and interactivity are also transforming the industry. Brands & Gaming is the first major study of the alliance between consumer brands and computer gaming and shows huge opportunities for brand development.
Written by consultants from Added Value and B.I.G., the book studies the impact of computer gaming on business and brands and offers an insight as to how marketers can maximise promotional opportunities such as sponsorship and product placement with optimal targeting.
Since its early days gaming has changed beyond all recognition. Three generations of players have fallen in love with gaming – moving from battling it out with basic bat and ball games to creating and starring in their own universes, and living in online worlds with upwards of 100,000 likeminded gamers, from across the globe. And once they've been bitten by the gaming bug, all the signs are that it stays with them.
The latest developments positively encourage sociability (online and multiplayer games), activity (WII, dance mats and cyber bikes) and on-the-move entertainment (mobile gaming). Gaming is getting up off the couch and interacting socially – and while it's still in its infancy, it's growing-up fast. If you hadn't already noticed it, you had better look out. It is now one of the key global passion points, making it something no business targeting six to 60 year olds can afford to ignore.
Michael James, Managing Editor and Publisher of South African NAG [New Age Gaming] Magazine and Senior Project Manager of the annual rAge Exposition, says this is true for the South African market too. “The modern IT lifestyle in the office and home (and computer gaming in particular) comprises one of the fastest growing sectors of the entertainment industry. After only thirty years in existence, global revenue for videogames (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and others) is already around $30 billion a year, and is expected to reach more than $35 billion by 2007,” he says.
James notes that when Halo 2, an Xbox console title, was released on the same day as the Spider-Man 2 movie in the US, it outsold the movie release.
He says, “With figures like this to back it up, predictions that by 2008 videogames will be the second most popular form of entertainment, having overtaken music, don't seem all that farfetched. This fast paced, growing market cannot be ignored. Brands and Gaming presents the perfect starting point to understanding and then speaking to the game playing public.”
Andrea Ellens, a Project Director at Added Value SA, agrees and says the book is a must read for the marketing industry, particularly for those who are non-gamers. Like many people, she'd always imagined the average gamer to be a teenage boy, locked in his darkened room with his PC. “I couldn't have been more wrong. The research blows my mind. If you haven't thought about gaming yet, you should think about it now.”
This brave new world of sociable, interactive gaming offers huge opportunities for brands, but it comes with unique rules of engagement which you break at your peril. Do you know your EyeToy from your GameTrack? Your MMORPG from your FPS? If not, and you want to understand the world of computer gaming, ‘Brands & Gaming' lays it out in 10 pithy chapters.
Visit our PRESS OFFICE: Added Value offers brand development and marketing insight services to blue-chip companies across all industry sectors. Everything we do starts with insight and ends with action, in pursuit of healthy brand growth for our clients.
Our approach is individually tailored to the task in hand, with one important element a constant; that's our belief that it's not just how people feel about brands that really matters, it's how brands makes them feel. We call this approach Brand Connections. At one level it's neuroscience. At another, it's pure intuition.- more....
Connected by: Uninet
The typical computer gamer is in his mid 20s and female gamers account for one of the fastest growing parts of the market. New developments in sociability and interactivity are also transforming the industry. Brands & Gaming is the first major study of the alliance between consumer brands and computer gaming and shows huge opportunities for brand development.
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