Catering to the growing and evolving online gaming
business is on many service providers’ minds these days. In fact, the
product roadmaps of the largest telecommunications operators all have online
gaming squarely in their sights – they are just not quite there as far as
implementing anything soon. Oddly enough, where US-based service providers
are delaying entry into the online gaming business, universities as well as
other overseas service providers are forging ahead. In this article we will
review why online gaming is so attractive, explain how some universities are
approaching online gaming, and suggest some things that service providers
might want consider when they get serious about entering this business.
Why all the interest in online gaming?
Besides the fact that multi-player online gaming (MPOG)
is big business (10.3 billion in 2003), it has some particularly attractive
ingrained stimulants that drive its continued use. Like nicotine, online
gaming is very capable of manipulating and addicting its users. Online
gaming provides the same thrills as real world gambling where stakes
(rewards and consequences) are high and the action can be non-stop. During
online gaming play, users often fall into a type of trance where the user
becomes very close (both mentally and physically) with the game such that
the edges of the screen no longer confine the users participation. Such
experience is similar to television viewing or going to the movie in that when you
first sit down you see the room around the screen. However, as the movie
begins your focus intensifies to the point where all you see is the moving
portion of the picture and you no longer see the television frame or what
surrounds it. As reality slips away, the user becomes subjected to as well
as influenced by multiple types of media, stimulants, and opportunities.
Some of the time tested and proven elements of
successful businesses include the potential for addiction, dependency, ultra
convenience, or to cater to multiple age groups. If a business or technology
can capture at least one of these it has a good chance to be successful. Any
business or technology that can capture more than one of these elements has
an even better chance to be successful – online gaming addresses at least
two of these elements.
There are three very interesting aspects of online
gaming that influence users to keep playing games. These three areas include
escapism, mastery, and lingua franca (for lack of a better word). Escapism is the ability of the game to
envelop the player into a world of fantasy in the same way a dream takes you
away from your life to some alternate reality. Fantasy plays an important
role in games, especially as the graphics increasingly become life like.
Movies often have the same effect only they are less interactive. Mastery is
the ability for the game to provide opportunities for its players to achieve
success and other positive reinforcement. Most games start out fairly simple
and become progressively harder in response to the players becoming more
skilled. When games employ this type of graduated scale of difficulty, it
encourages players to keep playing as achieving milestones within the game
feeds and nurtures the player’s desire to master the game. Fighting and
violence, while negative aspects of online games, also provide opportunity
to demonstrate mastery of and therefore advancement within the game.
The subject of lingua franca (or common language) is a
very important yet seldom discussed aspect of online gaming. Lingua franca
is defined as “any of various languages used as common or commercial tongues
among peoples of diverse speech.” Most online games have the ability to
learn about the player, create a type of profile about the player, and then
customize the gaming environment or experience in response to the player’s
profile. However, some of the most successful games go well beyond that and
incorporate a type of common language into the game. What is a common
language you might ask? Some examples of advanced use of the common language
include Zodiac and Horoscope. The key to the followings of Zodiac and
Horoscope is the use of common language – or more specifically the ability
for these disciplines to write things that mean different things to
different people on a personal level. If you were playing a game and the
responses from the game come back to you in common language it would be as
if the game really knew who you are or can somehow predict your future. That
is a very powerful type of response and just one more reason why gaming can
reach people in ways that other media cannot.
Fraternities, Sororities, Dorm Houses, Cliques,
Departments, and Majors
Universities are one of the most segmented groups of
individuals on the planet. An individual attending a university likely
belongs to one of many groups. For example a person could be a “freshmen”
living in a “sorority” called “Alpha Kappa Alpha” majoring in “engineering”
with a minor in “business” and could be a member of other groups within the
university such as its “booster club”. Each of these groups has
characteristics associated with them. For example the Alpha Kappa Alpha has
a web site about the history of its members, the charter for its
organization, the beliefs its members hold, etc. When you have such a
population of individuals broken down into so many well-defined groups you
end up with a very powerful opportunity to really understand your market for
potential products and services. Few service providers can match
universities' ability to communicate with very specific groups of
their students, faculty, and staff. However, it is this capability that
empowers universities to more easily target potential gaming candidates over
service providers. Service providers generally have very limited
segmentation possibilities among their customers and potential customers –
in addition to very limited means of communicating with these segmented
groups.
Universities serious about gaming offer support for
students, faculty, and staff such as providing instructions on how to
connect game consoles to the university network (University of Wisconsin),
equip rooms for LAN-based computer or console games (University
of Auckland), links to locally hosted games available within the
campus network, competitions or contests for interested students (Central
Washington University), etc. Some universities even allow recreational use
of university owned computers for use with computer games (State University
of New York). Others are beginning to create Cyber Cafés where
students, factuality and staff can go to engage in popular network computer
games such as Quake II, StarCraft and WarCraft II (Michigan State
University).
Universities are often highly networked in this day and
age so that also promotes the wide spread use of online gaming where groups
of similar individuals challenge other similar groups or universities
challenge other universities, etc. – many scenarios are possible. Wireless
networking is spearheading the push for universities to offer more online
gaming options to students, facility, and staff within the campus network. The challenge from a
university standpoint is to manage the mayhem that results from large
numbers of students exercising their needs for MPOG. When all these people
engage in such activity it creates real challenges to the university's
campus networks which must carry all this traffic between buildings as well
as outbound to the Internet. When universities can keep all this traffic
within their network or better yet localize it within a specific room it
creates a much more manageable situation from a network engineering and capacity planning
perspective. Clearly doing nothing about rising gaming traffic costs the
university dearly in Internet and intranet transport costs not to mention
the impact this traffic has on other legitimate university uses of the
Internet such as research.
Today, the average age of gamers is
29, the core demographic is 18 to 35, and a third of game players are women
(Entertainment Software Association). Cyber games are replacing TV, books,
films, or exercise for 44 percent of these women (AOL Games/Digital
Marketing Services). Since 18-24 year olds represent one of the
hottest demographics in terms of selling products and services, what better
place to do this than a university. Something also unique to the university
is the selection process and the economics that come into play. Although
universities go to great lengths to avoid this, stereotyping is part of the
natural selection process. There
are just so many people who will pay a certain amount of money to attend a
certain university in a certain part of the country. As a result of this, the
general population of any university does have a lot in common.
Lessons for service providers
While universities clearly lead US-based service
providers in the rollout and embracement of online gaming services, the reverse
is true outside the US. For example over 40.5 percent of
China’s 60 million netizens are regular visitors to 5,292 online game
websites. In a report published earlier this year the State Press and
Publication Administration confirmed that in 2003 online games earned the
domestic market 1.32 billion yuan, an amount likely to increase to 6.7
billion yuan by 2007. This is good news for game operators (i.e. service
providers) as it confirms that China's online game industry is the year
2004's most attractive investment proposition (China Today).
What can US service providers do in preparation to go
after this market? The key lies within understanding what is making non-US
based service providers (like those in China) and universities successful.
Being able to breakdown, understand, and target specific groups of potential
customers as well as existing customers is an area of recent focus.
Increasingly more service providers are realizing their means of
communicating with their customers is grossly inadequate thus preventing
rapid adoption of new services upon deployment. Essentially each
communication instance has a dollar figure associated with it and they
really don’t have a reusable, reliable mechanism other than direct
advertising. Being able to communicate with customers is one important step
that service providers are realizing, but targeting these communications to
specific groups is at least a year (or more) away for most providers.
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