By Skandaram Vasudevan
One of my favourite things about advertising is the fact that narrative storytelling and creativity comes together to create a solution from the cause of a problem. This has been a particular personal delight for me. I will try to explore that by using various examples of my favourite thing to do – gaming!
As a very curious child growing up, the world was like a treasure chest for me – millions of things to figure out, learn and identify. I remember being heartbroken when I found out dinosaurs were already extinct (who wasn’t?) or a sense of loss that Hogwarts wasn’t a place I could go to study (something that still rankles to this day) to being excited to explore space and the different planets (the final frontier)! Everything seemed so fresh and fun to explore, it was just an exciting time to be!
As with anything, how I explored different things around me was a function of what mediums I had access to. And that way, I was lucky – I had the freedom to access it through almost anything I could think of – from novels to TV Shows to movies to encyclopaedias – almost nothing was off-limits. This allowed me to fully explore the most random of things – which is how I processed information as well.
Through all of this, however, there was one medium that was mostly off-limits to me (or even when accessible, in a very controlled manner). This would be the medium of gaming. From a very young age, I was discouraged from getting too involved in games – with the common consensus among all the adults in the family at the time being that it was very addictive. And even my computer or handheld game usage was strictly monitored, to not fall into the trap of video games. Video Games being addictive (and gamers becoming obsessed with it) was a common trap that people fell into, and my family made sure I was aware of it.
Like all things denied, I grew up and became an avid gamer – enjoying a vast variety of genres, ranging from role playing to simulations to souls-like games. And it was an experience that I thoroughly enjoyed – still do, to this day. However, I still saw what my family was vary about – the addiction involved with games (which, due its very nature of engaging content and involved decision making, it hooks people in) was real. But at the same time, I did not feel it any different to the dopamine rush one got towards completing an engaging book or finishing that last episode of a show that one was watching.
However, it was when I tried convincing the family of this opinion that I faced proper barriers – they were unable to be open and accept this perspective as the perception of game addiction was fully ingrained in their head. This was hard to combat, even when paired against gaming slowly becoming a career (with e-Sport tournaments being taken on a similar line to sport tournaments).
Perception shapes the world and how we view it. More than reality, it is how we perceive it that truly matters. And the most commonly prevalent perception was that video games were addictive (which had its basis in truth), there was little done to address this aspect outside of cautionary tales to get people to stop gaming. This was, until recently, the general trend; however, recently, this has seen a dramatic shift.
While traditional advertising may not mesh well with games, the power of narrative communication tends to go extremely well with gaming as a medium. And with more people increasingly getting into gaming, this has given rise to increased fears around game addiction as well as very creative ways to address this potentially sensitive topic.
Increasingly, we found that the most effective way to address this issue has been to creatively use different aspects of the game and gamer behaviour to make effective communication. For a medium like gaming which isn’t very receptive to advertising, it would take an engaging narrative to get gamers (and their surround system) involved. And there are few things more effective at this than using the game itself to address concerns around gaming.
We can look at this through two different examples – BGMI’s Machine Gun Mouth and Waoo’s Love Squad.
BGMI – Machine gun Mouth
Probably the biggest game in India, BGMI was a revolution in terms of getting the general population to participate. With a massive and engaged user base, it almost felt like every person in the country was present on BGMI.
However, this also meant that the game with the highest worry around addiction was BGMI. While it could not remain silent, the question became how it might effectively tackle this, reaching out to both gamers and their ecosystem.
BGMI decided to take an interesting narrative approach to warn against the dangers of video game addiction. It fosters the need to game responsibly in a light-hearted manner by using the features of the game (more specifically, the iconic sounds of BGMI as a metaphor for excessive gaming), it managed to break the clutter and appeal to both gamers and the support system surrounding them respectively. It basically was an unexpected take on a pressing issue.
Waoo, Love Squad
It’s not always about integrating within games or using their features. Sometimes, it’s just about identifying the behaviour and surprising people with the same – which is another way of making the problem, your solution. I feel the Love Squad campaign by the brand Waoo best exemplifies the same.
Considering gamers get obsessed with their games and tend to play for hours on end, it does take a toll on their support system. So, Waoo, tying up with popular gamers online, created a Love Squad where the families of gamers could request a hit on them, in-game, so that they could then spend more time with their families in real life. It was a hilarious and fun take on gaming obsession, using core behaviour to impact changes within the gaming community.
While these are just two examples in a specific category of gaming where we see the problem becoming part of the solution, we can observe a litany of examples – both in the category and outside it. This is also because I believe that the solution to any problem needs to feel organic or natural – and this is most exemplified by the problem itself becoming a part of the solution. And this can have unexpected effects, as we have seen in the category of gaming, where it makes it possible to effectively reach a rather niche audience which is difficult to get hold of.
Skandaram Vasudevan is the strategy director at 22feet Tribal Worldwide.