The gaming of this world is on. At the GameON conference I attended today the merging of virtual and real entertainment came together. There are young gamers who started with a few hours in the basement and now generating $40,000 per day in game sales through the Apple and Google app stores, and there are movie producers. Banks are coming into the industry using the television and movie project funding formulas and movie theatres are working with adept game companies to gametize their stories.
All is converging in the marriage of real and virtual worlds. If you’re in a real world business, just think of how you can partner with a virtual game one and see your numbers online go nuts. And yet some of the viceversa stories are not as glamorous. People who have taken virtual brands and tried to create real life stories out of them have not been as successful. I guess the key is that the virtual world audience is viral and very protective of its “property”. Its almost as if the originators don’t own the property, the audience does…and isn’t it funny that the real world is now heading into that direction from the opposite side of the spectrum.
One other note. Some people think that the gametization strategy to use should be harder than real life, in order to ensure that people earn their “rewards” in gaming, while often times people’s perception is that the game should be easy.