Social media in games – social media in our lives, for that matter – is so pervasive it’s a stretch to remember a time before Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. But the science of marketing games via social media channels is in its relative infancy. Practitioners can still be labelled ‘pioneers’, though “there’s no such thing as a social media expert,” says PopCap’s director of editorial and social media Jeff Green. They are learning on the fly, at times clashing with their bosses and at others inspiring global audiences of millions to like, follow and ultimately buy their products. And while social media has worked spectacularly well for the likes of Minecraft and Dead Island, not everyone is getting it right.
As many a digital marketer will tell you, social media should not be about the short game. Platforms such as Google+, Pinterest and their older brethren should be a means to opening dialogue with an audience. Social media is a chance to talk with fans, update followers and create a feedback loop which will improve future games and engage players. That’s a message that is yet to trickle through to many publishers, according to some critics.
Chris Lake, director of product development at Econsultancy, which provides intelligence to marketing companies, fears some games companies just don’t ‘get’ social media. He says: “A lot of social media for marketing is designed to ‘big up’ games before or when they are released. That suggests agencies are telling brands what to do.” Those agencies are paid-for campaigns based on measurable Return On Investment (ROI) data such as YouTube views.
For Lake, publishers aren’t engaging in a dialogue; their traffic is all one way. He adds: “Game manufacturers are a bit behind the curve in terms of taking notice. I wish they’d use social media to engage. That’s what people at social media conferences talk about – listening and engaging. Flowery words, but it's a point we sometimes take for granted.”
Games companies are out of the loop when it comes to mainstream marketing respect, judging by the shortlist for the prestigious Marketing Week UK Engage awards. None of the nominees for the honours, dished out in May, was for a game campaign or company.
Marketing Week UK editor Ruth Mortimer and Econsultancy director of product development Chris Lake
Marketing Week UK editor Ruth Mortimer says the presence of games is felt in the list. “It appears that many brands from all different categories are using elements of gaming as part of their marketing," she tells us. "For example, the shortlisted Public Sector entry for GCHQ involved a recruitment hunt containing many game elements to intrigue future employees, while the National Trust was shortlisted in the Digital category for using gaming as part of its virtual farm website.
“So I think that gaming as a way of interacting with people has simply become more widely used by all kinds of brands, not just game companies.”
That raises the question of whether the game industry is truly behind the curve in terms of social media marketing, or whether ours is a special, compelling case. After all, it seems marketing has as much to learn from games as games have to learn from marketing.
The relationship between social media and games is certainly more complicated than the simple transmission of information to a captive audience of customers. Opportunities to drop beacons to connect with fellow gamers, or established mechanics such as uploading user generated content to social media channels, are examples of networks enhancing a player’s experience. They are also a marketer’s dream.
“Look at Call Of Duty,” says Lake. “Players upload videos of cool moments in the game. There are millions of these fan videos on YouTube. That’s what brands want – customers to be doing their marketing for them.”
And that’s not all publishers want. Another key advantage of social media marketing is that it represents a means for publishers to control the message without going through editorialised channels such as magazines and websites. In May, EA announced FIFA 13 on its own social media channels. The news was trailed on Twitter and Facebook. When they added first official screens to their Facebook page, the handful of images had been liked 1,607 times within seven minutes. The ticker of likes, and comments, kept spinning. That’s a good news story for marketers, who had a grip on the release of information, the way the images were used and the exact timing of the announcement. Interestingly, however, a significant proportion of comments noted a striking similarity between the FIFA 13 screens and its predecessor FIFA 12. After all, social media marketing only enables publishers to filter the message, not the response.