Stop me if you have heard this one: "I am not a gamer." Typically, this is the person who is right in the middle of swiping through a round of Wordle or sneaking into the office restroom to get one more level of Candy Crush done. According to Bastian Bergmann, author of "Press Play" and guest on Brilliant Podcast on Youtube, we are in the midst of a massive cultural denial.

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In our latest conversation in “Gaming Is Marketing Now (Catch Up)”, Bergmann discusses the reason why the "gamer" stereotype, like the teenager locked away in a basement drinking energy drinks, is a thing of the past. Currently, over three billion people play games daily; gaming is the only medium that reaches all demographics and you are a brand and are not in this space, then you are like trying to sell umbrellas in the desert when everyone else is at the water park.

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Participation vs. The Doom Scroll

The biggest problem that executives face is understanding that gaming is not social media with more buttons. Bergmann explains that "social media is a one-directional activity where you just sit there and consume, doomscroll while the algorithm feeds you content; zero effort is required. 

Gaming, on the other hand, does not work if you do not participate. This leads to a "flow state" where dopamine and oxytocin are released, so people are open to new ideas, and people are open to connecting with a brand. While social media is about watching, gaming is about playing, and playing is how we have learned since we were toddlers.

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Four Ways to Get in the Game

You don't have to create the next Fortnite to succeed in gaming. Bergmann outlines four unique avenues for businesses to break into the world of gaming:

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• Integration: Put your brand inside a pre-existing game. Think of the real estate simulation inside the world of Roblox, courtesy of Zillow.
• Build Your Own: Create a custom gaming experience. The beauty of this is that, unlike other platforms like social media, you are 100% in control of the experience.
• Blockchain Ownership: Utilize the power of blockchain to allow for the ownership of virtual goods, which can then be traded, creating a continuous loop of relevance for your brand.
• Product as a Game: Think of Peloton, a video game version of a workout routine. It is no longer the instructor yelling at you to run faster; it is a journey, and the more you run, the more the game advances.

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The Small Business Hack: Analog Gamification

You're a small bakery or coffee shop, and you think you can't compete with the bigger brands in the world of gaming. Not according to Bergmann, who points to the coffee shop stamp card as a basic form of a loop: Action (buy coffee), Reward (stamp), and Next Task (get more stamps).

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You can do this further without a million-dollar budget. For example, you could run a "hidden object" type game within your brick-and-mortar store where customers have to find three objects while waiting in line for a discount or you could run a trivia contest on your website once a week. The idea is to give customers a reason to come back that is more than just a transaction and about providing a real-life experience that creates a relationship.

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Hiring Your "Gaming Strategist"

If you are serious about this, you need a pro, but don’t hire a coder. Bergmann says to hire a User Experience (UX) Game Designer because you need someone who knows about the "core loop", the journey of the gamer, and not just someone who can make a button turn green.

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Start small. Create a Proof of Concept (POC) to convince your CFO that this is driving real business goals, like reaching Gen Z audiences that spend three times more time gaming than they do social media. Gaming is an "always-on" marketing effort, much like social media was ten years ago. It is the defining consumer medium of our time and as Bergmann says, in ten years, nobody will even call them "video games" anymore; they will just be how we live, shop, and learn.

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