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

By Juho Hamari, Vili Lehdonvirta. International Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, 2010

329 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f79a8bd35c4b4ab129eb58bc49edc565e9422cee

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In Clinical Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Social Motivations To Use Gamification: An Empirical Study Of Gamifying Exercise (2013, background): “In the last couple of years, gamification (Hamari and Lehdonvirta, 2010; Deterding et al. 2011; Huotari and Hamari, 2012) and persuasive technologies (Fogg, 2003; Oinas-Kukkonen and Harjumaa, 2009) have been strongly harnessed for purposes of marketing, attitude change, and motivational pull.”
Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification (2014, background): “During the last couple of years, gamification [9][28][31] has been a trending topic and a subject to much hype as a means of supporting user engagement and enhancing positive patterns in service use, such as increasing user activity, social interaction, or quality and productivity of actions [25].”
Studying Gamification: The Effect of Rewards and Incentives on Motivation (2015, background): “…limited to the system on which they are issued (Liu et al., 2011 ) Achievement systems can provide players with rewards that are usable in the game in contrast to having rewards that are related to accumulating achievements and unlocking badges (Hamari & Eranti, 2011 ; Hamari & Lehdonvirta, 2010 ).”
What is eSports and why do people watch it? (2017, background): “Finally, the third category is focused on the demographic and other background factors of players (Hamari and Lehdonvirta, 2010; Jansz et al., 2010; Koivisto and Hamari, 2014; Mäyrä et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2008; Yee, 2006b).”
Player Types: A Meta-synthesis (2014, methodology): “While Hamari & Lehdonvirta (2010) do not explicitly propose a player typology they suggest methods and a framework for segmenting players via in-game behavior.”
Do Persuasive Technologies Persuade? - A Review of Empirical Studies (2014, background): “There are two dominant conceptual approaches: the longer-established persuasive technology(1) [1,2,3] and the more recent but increasingly popular gamification [4,5,6].”
Do badges increase user activity? A field experiment on the effects of gamification (2017, unknown): “…situations pertaining to outside-game concerns (especially with the rise of Free-to-play games about how people use money – Alha, Koskinen, Paavilainen, Hamari, & Kinnunen, 2014; Hamari, 2015; Hamari & Järvinen, 2011; Hamari & Lehdonvirta, 2010; Paavilainen, Hamari, Stenros, & Kinnunen, 2013).”
Measuring flow in gamification: Dispositional Flow Scale-2 (2014, unknown): “…terms, this development is referred to as ‘‘gamification’’ (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011; Hamari, 2013; Hamari, Huotari, & Tolvanen, 2014; Hamari & Lehdonvirta, 2010; Huotari & Hamari, 2012; McGonigal, 2011), which refers to computers/technology being used to affect people’s…”
Why do people play games? A meta-analysis (2017, background): “…et al. 2008; Williams et al. 2009; Zhou et al. 2011), and which use a wide variety of business models (Alha et al. 2014; Alha et al. 2016; Hamari et al. 2017a; Hamari et al. 2017b Hamari & Järvinen 2011; Hamari & Lehdonvirta 2010; Lehdonvirta 2009; Mäntymäki & Salo 2011; Mäntymäki & Salo 2013).”
A definition for gamification: anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature (2016, background): “…games are offered in increasing numbers as services to consumers, very few academic articles have been published that bridge game studies and the service or marketing literature (e.g., Hamari and Järvinen 2011; Hamari and Lehdonvirta 2010; Hamari et al. 2015; Sigala 2015; Stenros and Sotamaa 2009).”
Demographic differences in perceived benefits from gamification (2014, background): “…of the game industry and the increased competition within the field has also led to two parallel developments: (1) using game design as marketing (Hamari & Lehdonvirta, 2010) and (2) gamification – going beyond what traditionally are regarded as games and implementing game design there…”
Transforming homo economicus into homo ludens: A field experiment on gamification in a utilitarian peer-to-peer trading service (2013, background): “…design elements for marketing purposes has rapidly gained a substantial amount of traction among service marketing practitioners, both in games (Hamari and Lehdonvirta 2010, Hamari and Järvinen 2011), as well as in non-game contexts (Deterding et al. 2011, McGonigal 2011, Zichermann and…”
Defining gamification: a service marketing perspective (2012, background): “In this paper, we propose a new definition for gamification, which emphases the experiential nature of games and gamification, instead of the systemic understanding.”