The Media Native: The game’s up!

A new series of blogs about the broadcast industry, narrated by David Brennan…

I’ve made many predictions in my time and, although I know I was right most times, it is rare that I have documentary evidence. When I was filmed speaking at MIPCOM in 2007, I said one of the most exciting areas creatively for TV in the future might be when TV and games producers started to work together. I think I’m going to be proved correct!

I’d first seen the possibilities from an episode of The Royle Family (an excellent source of insight into the TV viewing experience in many households). It was Sunday night in the Royle household and the girls were in the kitchen, helping Denise try on her wedding dress. The boys are in the living room, hurrying them up so they wouldn’t miss Antiques Roadshow (!). The theme tune plays, they all start singing along, and then the reason for their excitement becomes apparent when they start betting money on the value of the items. I used that as an early example of interactive TV in many presentations.

That example stayed with me when I’d observed the footage of Thinkbox’s Engagement Study earlier that year. The thing that had struck me was how playful people were, even when they were watching alone. We had plenty of examples of people laughing, singing, dancing, joking, mimicking and generally messing about with the content, whether programmes or commercials. We had multiple examples of people playing ‘guess the ad’ games or competing in their knowledge about an actor or a piece of music.

We’ve also seen plenty of examples of how this appeal to the audience’s willingness to play can reap benefits. I remember quite a few years ago the BBC screened Test The Nation in 2002 and got 8 million people involved. Programmes such as Million Pound Drop have been aiming for similar success. Channel 4 have appealed to this sense of playfulness in some of their themed ad breaks recently and advertisers are increasingly looking for ways to use gamification (no, it’s not a real word) techniques to move TV viewers closer to their brands. But, whether it’s through programmes or commercial breaks (although I suspect the real fertile ground will be the space between the two), we have only just touched the surface in terms of appealing to the audience’s desire to just ‘play’.

I sometimes think the slow pace of development in this area is because too many people assume ‘gaming’ means something far more intensive, immersive and interactive than is likely to be the case. I think the true integration of gaming and TV will be something very different to the console games market and far more akin to the impact of Farmville (including, probably, a skew towards women players and a casual, long-running, on/off approach to game play.

There is certainly no excuse in terms of access to the technologies that can induce this sense of playfulness. Either via the TV set (and internet-connected TVs offer huge opportunities to create and deliver sticky, engaging content), or via second screens, the game-playing element appropriate for any show – even Antiques Roadshow – is only limited by the creatives’ powers of imagination.

It should be the broadcasters who lead the way here, as the thing most viewers want to play along with is their content. No doubt, the platforms will have a huge influence in enabling something of the scale to get millions of people playing along together. But, now I’m on a roll with my predictions, I’ll make another one; one of the leading innovators in this area will be an advertiser. I’d put my money on a retailer… at least I would if I could play along.

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