Excerpts from “Persuasive Games,” I. Bogost
—— Not for Citation ——
GAME THEORY
One helpful introduction to the idea of persuasive games comes from Game Theory – an
area of economics, psychology, and mathematics. Noncooperative game theory is of
specific interest to the present discussion, as it deals with how intelligent agents interact
to achieve their own individual goals. Two agents are playing such a game if one wholly
or partly determines the other’s payoff.
In the 1980s, economists Paul Milgrom and John Roberts were concerned about
the large amount of advertising—especially TV advertising—that conveyed little or no
obvious information (Milgrom and Roberts 1986b). Milgrom and Roberts articulated a
kind of theoretical game they called the “persuasion game.” In a persuasion game, one
agent tries to assign values to the outcome of another agent. Persuasive games are
characterized by the simple fact that events relevant to the persuading agent are not under
that agent’s control (also see Luca and Trombetta 1997).
In advertising, a classic terrain for persuasion games of the general kind, a seller
may emphasize consequences of purchasing that are important to the potential consumer
but not directly under the control of the seller. Examples of such games abound:
advertisers claim that a particular brand of beer might increase the buyer’s appeal to the
opposite sex or that a particular athletic wear might radically improve the wearer’s
performance. In these games, the advertiser’s desired outcome is in the consumer’s
hands. Persuasion games also apply to representative politics, political lobbying,
organizational influence activities, social influence activities, and many other fields.
WHAT ARE PERSUASIVE GAMES?
A persuasion game is a game in which an interested player discloses information to
another player, who has to make a decision that affects the payoff of the disclosing
player. I give the name “Persuasive Games” to persuasion games (in the game theoretical
sense) acted out in the context of an electronic game, such as an online game.
The subject of the present discussion is activism, but I want to get there by way of
advertising. One of the most prevalent sources of persuasion in our daily lives is
advertising, and there are three important types of advertising that the persuasive game
proponents should understand.
(1) Advertising can modify the preferences of customers. Watching a
commercial increases the marginal utility (incremental benefit) of the
product. (Dixit and Norman 1978, Becker and Murphy 1993)
(2) Advertising can provide direct information. Watching a commercial
tells the viewer tangibles about the nature of a product. (Butters 1977)
(3) Advertising can provide indirect information. Watching a commercial
tells the viewer intangibles about the value of a product. (Kihlstrom
and Riordan 1984, Milgrom and Roberts 1986a).
Advertising in electronic games has been around for over twenty years, from the first
film/game tie-ins Tron (Bally Midway 1982) and E.T. (Atari 1982) to the product
placement gem Tapper (Bally Midway 1983), to two of the first branded games, KoolAid Man for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision (M-Network 1983) and 7up Spot for the
NES and Super NES (Virgin Interactive 1993). These early specimens showed that
games could achieve one or more of the three principles of advertising.
Recently, the advergame has enjoyed particular vogue, often cited as a possible
alternative to other unsuccessful forms of Internet advertising. Advergaming is
commonly defined as the combination of interactive gaming with advertising messages.
Advertising messages are incorporated onto games either by the Demonstrative or
Associative advertising methods. Demonstrative advergames reveal the use of a product,
providing direct information. Associative advergames correlate the product with an
activity or lifestyle, providing indirect information. Associative advergames are by far
more prevalent, thus the glut of snowboarding and other “extreme sports” games brands
have adopted in an attempt to skew their products to a younger market. Where game
design is concerned, advertisers strive to “integrate” the advertising message with the
game to combat player cynicism. This integration has its pedigree in the general practice
of branding in advertising.
I begin this discussion of political games with a nod to advertisers for several
reasons. For one part, I happen to have considerable personal experience designing and
publishing these kids of games, and that experience informs my own approach. More
importantly, advertisers have taken quite a few risks with their advergames, and
proponents of games for advocacy would do well to evaluate and learn from their
mistakes. Conveniently, these mistakes are many, and they are widespread.
As a sometimes-marketer, I can muster enough self-irony to admit that advertisers
are not the most reflective group. Goaded by the ever more skeptical ad-buying market,
marketers and researchers have tried to motivate brands to consider games as part of their
media plan by citing statistics such as the following:
•
The games segment is growing 25% per year and surpassing total
movie box office revenues. (Los Angeles Times)
•
Forty-five million people will play online games over the Internet this
year, growing to 73 million in 2004, which is faster than any other
form of entertainment. (Juniper Research)
•
Online gamers play games an average of 13 hours per week, which is
more than people spend reading newspapers or magazines and about
the same as TV watchers. (Juniper Research)
•
Sites promoting games are 8 of the top 10 entertainment sites on the
Internet. (Nielsen)
•
The session length in gaming areas of portals averages 4X the general
site average, or 28 minutes. (Advertising Age)
The problem with evidence like these is that they rationalize advertising games solely
through broader movements in the electronic gaming and online advertising markets.
Such advergaming legends share much in common with old guard Internet marketing in
general, especially when it comes to demonstrating conversion rates and ROI. These
legends perpetuate a number of fallacies we would do well not to repeat.
Fallacy 1 – An imprecise correlation between the growing game market
and its potential as a persuasive medium.
Gaming is a big business, but it is a business that has chosen, in the words of game
designer Chris Crawford, “to abandon all pretense of becoming a mass medium.” A mass
medium, says Crawford, “reaches a broad demographic: people in their 60s, working
mothers, stock analysts, janitors, and so on. Games appeal to NONE of these people; they
appeal to a single demographic: young males. They are a big medium, but not a mass
medium” (Carless 2003). The growth of games in general has certainly motivated interest
in non-leisure uses of games, but that growth does not imply the automatic success of
persuasive games.
Fallacy 2 - A loose or absent causal relationship between play and
persuasive value.
More specifically, claims like those cited above perpetuate the erroneous idea that
offering leisure games with weak associative relationships to a sponsor yields meaningful
value. As advertising tools, brands who create advergames simply because games seem
popular in general undermine their own success; instead, they need to explore how a
game can create a subjective response to a product or message that the player is likely to
evaluate in a way that leads to a purchase or other desired outcome.
Fallacy 3 - Reliance on the game experience as an end in itself rather than
a bridge to activities in the material world.
As a rhetorical tool, true persuasive games leave their mark in the real world. This mark
can, but need not take the form of a capital transaction – for example it could be a
communicated ideology, a piqued interest, or a burning question.
To combat these fallacies, proponents of games for advocacy must take the
following strong position: the fundamental principle of persuasive games is to drive
direct payer action outside the game environment. Numerous corollaries to this thesis
suggest themselves, many of which can double as design strategies:
•
Focus on outcomes first, not fun. Outcomes are almost always intended to take place
in the material world. Fun can contribute to the outcome, but it is not the primary
goal, as it is in leisure games.
•
Make only a few points, and drive only one or two outcomes. Unlike a complex
entertainment game fraught with twists and emergent outcomes, persuasive games
must keep their messages simple and forthright.
•
Create short-term rather than long-term experiences. For the most part, playing the
game should not require a large time commitment on the part of the player, and the
game need not leave a long-term impression. This doesn’t mean that persuasive
games can’t be design innovators, or that they can’t generate long-term effects in their
players. But the purpose of the game is to instill action outside the game, not to return
that focus to the game itself.
•
Simplicity over complexity of design. You cannot influence an outcome when
burdened with complex backstory, gameplay mechanics, or privileged symbolic
prerequisites (e.g. bomb every wall to find a secret).
•
Playable in one sitting. Or at least divided into holistic units that can be played in one
sitting, rather than played over a long period of time. These are not games with 100
hours of gameplay.
•
Replayable. You don’t “beat” a persuasive game. A good persuasive game topic will
leave itself open for further debate and consideration, in- or outside of the game
experience. Replayability implies deliberation more than literal replay, although it
does not exclude the latter.
•
Playable by informal gamers. But shouldn’t exclude hard-core gamers.
•
Played on widely available distribution platforms. These platforms have little or no
cost of entry and put to other uses most of the time (e.g. web, mobile, handheld).
•
Not direct revenue generators. Unlike some online games, persuasive games do not
make money directly. People don’t buy commercials, they don’t buy lobbying, and
they don’t buy persuasive games. However, people do buy newspapers, support
advocacy organizations, and make charitable donations.
I don’t intend to cover game design practices in fungible detail, but there is one
persuasive game design strategy I want to highlight. In their relevant book Age of
Propaganda, Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson investigate a compliance tactic
called the pique technique (Pratkanis and Aronson 2001, Santos et al 1994, Cialdini and
Schroeder 1976). The two argue that simply piquing someone’s interest may be enough
to get them to comply. In their experiment, a panhandler who asked for 17 cents or 37
cents collected 60% more donations than a panhandler who asked for a quarter. The
pique condition forced people to focus on the request, rather than screening it out as
noise.
Using the pique technique in persuasive games can help grab or maintain player
focus. One of my favorite examples of the pique technique in a casual game (in this case
an advergame) is UK beverage maker Britvic’s J2O Toilet Training Game (Graphico
2003). J2O is a beverage that bills itself as a “perfect soft drink pacer.” According to
Britvic, the product allows you to drink more, for longer (much like water, I presume, but
Britvic has managed to find a way to charge for it). This online game drives promotion
and product trial; in it the player takes the role of a tipsy barhopper who needs to relieve
himself.1 The goal is to aim in the center of the toilet. After more rounds of drinks,
aiming accurately becomes harder, and the inevitable splashes outside the bowl force the
1
Women are forced to take on the role of men to play the game. Production constraints probably
forced the developer’s hand in this regard, but I think it probably damaged empathy in female players.
player to drink a J2O, which relieves some of the inebriation. The game leverages its
innovative design to drive players to a trial purchase.
In this example, a persuasive game can actually offer more opportunities for
design innovation than traditional games. With much smaller budgets and fewer
stakeholders, risks are more palatable. Persuasive games should use the unique goals of
the subject or outcome to guide the game design effort.