Playful Branding

Playful Branding – How companies can strengthen education, increase the fun factor and attract talent

Counterplay, Aarhus 4th April 2014

Serious Games Interactive

Simon Egenfeldt-NielsenCEO, Stifter og Ph.d.

Background

& Work MA Psychology PhD Games & Learning Between industry & research

Serious Games Interactive- Three series for education +100 client projects

- Research-based company

- Founded in 2006

- Digital universe for learning

- Using games for more than entertainment

- Won several awards for our productions

- 30 Employees

- 9 Nationalities

- + 6 years of Unity 3D experience

We are…

Branding that makes a difference

Rationale behind

Create value for company and end-user at the same time

A medium that through play brings people deep into a world rather than just superficial message

Why QFO was bornTo attract new talent to Maersk Oil and Maersk Drilling that compete for talent with bigger industry players like Statoil and Shell.

Communicate that Maersk is more than container ships

Videos are boring. We need something more interesting.

Quest for Oil

Target group: General public, Students & exp. professionals

Platform: Digital download

Technology: 3D Unity game engine

Game duration: 8-16 minutes

Production time:

12 months

Content: A main strategy game with several mini-games.

Maersk Group

www.questforoil.com

Integrated gameplayClose integration between learning goals, branding message and game goals.

Keep bandwidth at realistic level so too much is not pushed.

Choose right focus to gamifiy rather than forcing the medium

Results• Massive media exposure

• Total reach: +40 Millions

• Played games: +225.000

• Awards: Nominations & wins

Cargy Dynasty’s birthThe transportation sector is growing and need more people with a complex skill set. However, it is perceived as not very attractive under pressure from other countries with low wages.

Communicate that transportation sector is interesting, and more than trouble with truckers from Bulgaria.

Need to use the language of the people they want to reach.

Cargo Dynasty

Target group: Students – 8-12 grade

Platform: Browser-based & Tablets

Technology: 3D Unity game engine

Game duration: 40-70 minutes

Production time:

18 months

Content: A main strategy game w. several mini-games.

TUR Forlag og TSU

www.cargodynasty.dk

Integrated gameplayClose integration between learning goals, branding message and game goals.

Keep bandwidth at realistic level so too much is not pushed.

Choose right focus to gamefiy rather than forcing the medium

Results• Good media exposure

• Reach: 1900+ FB Likes

• Awards: Nominations & wins

A interesting marriage Trade associations and companies can develop intelligent branding that are perfectly aligned with what Schaffer describe as epistemic games

Instead of donating a library that US digital games can scale much more aggressively.

We are seeing this happening some places but still only on a small scale..

The fine lineBetween education and marketing… never really been a problem in real life.

Very conscious not too tilt gameplay towards one company or approach. Integrity needs to be kept.

Never forced the medium to play if it don’t want to.

ContactSerious Games Interactivewww.seriousgames.dk www.globalconflicts.euwww.playinghistory.eu

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsenwww.egenfeldt.eusen@seriousgames.dk