tailieunhanh - Game design as marketing: How game mechanics create demand for virtual goods

The unregulated nature of counterfeit goods also presents challenges to consumer protection as there is no way to monitor poor manufacturing or toxic ingredients iv which may pose a threat to consumers. Unregulated distribution also means what may be regarded as potentially harmful media content (., films, computer games and so forth) are available to children in ways that bypass systems of certification and content regulation (O’Connell and Bryce, 2006). These issues suggest that regardless of one’s position on the ethics of copyright, patent or brand legislation, regulation and attempts to control counterfeiting, this. | Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management Volume 5 Issue 1 2010 Game design as marketing How game mechanics create demand for virtual goods Juho Hamari Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT . Box 9800 FI-02015 TKK Finland Tel 358 408359563 Email Vili Lehdonvirta Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT . Box 9800 FI-02015 TKK Finland Tel 358 503841530 Email Abstract Selling virtual goods for real money is an increasingly popular revenue model for massively-multiplayer online games MMOs social networking sites SNSs and other online hangouts. In this paper we argue that the marketing of virtual goods currently falls short of what it could be. Game developers have long created compelling game designs but having to market virtual goods to players is a relatively new situation to them. Professional marketers on the other hand tend to overlook the internal design of games and hangouts and focus on marketing the services as a whole. To begin bridging the gap we propose that the design patterns and game mechanics commonly used in games and online hangouts should be viewed as a set of marketing techniques designed to sell virtual goods. Based on a review of a number of MMOs we describe some of the most common patterns and game mechanics and show how their effects can be explained in terms of analogous techniques from marketing science. The results provide a new perspective to game design with interesting implications to developers. Moreover they also suggest a radically new perspective to marketers of ordinary goods and services viewing marketing as a form of game design. Keywords online games social networking virtual world virtual goods business model sustainability captology Juho Hamari and Vili Lehdonvirta 1 INTRODUCTION Selling virtual goods has become a major new revenue model for consumer-oriented online services social networking sites massively-multiplayer online games MMOs and