7 billion hours by 1 billion gamers are what’s up for grabs in the Engagement Economy, according to game designer and author Jane McGonigal, speaking at a seminar hosted by PHD at Cannes Lions festival.
With 1 billion people spending an hour or more a day playing computer and videogames, “it’s good news for business, it’s good news for innovation and it’s good news for anyone who wants to help solve the world’s most urgent challenges” said McGonigal.
Statistics illustrating the amount of time that could potentially be tapped into by brands, “rather than just avenging angry birds” include:
· 300 minutes a day spent playing Angry Birds – the equivalent of 400,000 years
· 170 hours a year per player on Call of Duty…or 1 month of full-time work every year
· 1 in 4 players called in sick to stay home and play Call of Duty Black Ops II on launch day
And as the economy grows, more hours by more people will become available as a resource. According to McGonigal, the key to harnessing the Engagement Economy is mass participation combined with skills and abilities. The engagement economy is driven by basic, universal human desires such as the desire “to be challenged, to get better at something, to master new skills, to put those skills in service of something that really matters, to be connected to a larger community, she said.
“Decisions about where to work, what to spend money on, which brands to be loyal to – these decisions will all be made based on how well an organization, or experience, or product fulfils this urgent desire to engage whole-heartedly with meaningful challenges”.
Games lead to happier, more resilient people and therefore employees when applied to the world of work. According to research by Gallup,
· 89% of global workers are not engaged
· Unengaged workers cost companies $2 trillion annually worldwide
Unveiling PHD’s own game based operating system, Source, for the first time to an external audience, the agency revealed how turning its work for blue-chip clients like Unilever into a mass scale game, has led to 75% of its global workforce displaying unprecedented levels of engagement, collaboration and creativity.
Mark Holden, worldwide strategy and planning director said “Source has changed the way people at PHD work. Now people come to work each day and play the game – the result and effect of which has enhanced planning and innovation for our clients across the world. This has been achieved without us truly maximising the full potential of game thinking which suggests that the opportunity for brands, business and communities at large is highly significant.”
Source awards employees points called Pings for collaborating with others in the network, placing them on a global leader board. Game mechanics have been applied to this year’s official Cannes Lions app, which awards delegates Pings for a variety of things, from attending seminars.
Currently 1,572 are actively playing Win Cannes and the top 5 countries are theUSA, Brazil, Japan, UK and India.