Tag: game

Alternate Reality Game for Recruitment

Alternate Reality Game for Recruitment

gamification·

Companies and even certain government organizations have been using Alternate Reality Games to mask scouting processes since at least a decade now. And each time, through specific tasks, it almost certainly gets the organizers true quality employees. But some thinks that ARGs are limited only to harshly complicated and cryptic riddle-based activities. Well, this article will aim to tell you how that might not need to be the case while still getting you highly capable recruits.

How ARGs Were Used for Recruitment

As ARGs are often more collaborated to cryptic puzzles and conspiracy theories, most of the time, recruitment through it often is for positions requiring elite-level intelligence. Below are 2 of the many notable uses.

Can You Find It?

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In 2013, this ARG was promoted by the British Intelligence to fill elite positions within the GCHQ. And with it, GCHQ hoped to find coders fully capable of cracking such codes that may have been self-taught, doesn’t have the proper degree, or even simply never found the chance. This method proved incredibly effective as the challenge (not even the reward) proved to have attracted the attention of hundreds if not thousands of capable mathematicians. Some of them even joined a community to discuss it with each other such as this Reddit thread in the UK Subreddit.

Cicada 3301

Exploding the world wide web with the biggest scavenger hunt the internet has ever seen, at 2012 was the mysterious organization nicknamed Cicada 3301. Some would say that Cicada 3301 is the pinnacle of an ARG. Combining mystery with elaborate puzzle hunts both on the internet and in the real world. Players would need to solve puzzle after puzzle. From fields of cryptography, steganography, and other related fields. Those puzzles would at the time lead you to find posters spread throughout the world. After the game is complete and Cicada finds their sought after individuals, it would at times repeat again the very next year. Though there is no way to know how many players actually participated in the game, it is safe to say that the count goes up to at least millions.

What We Can Learn From the Examples

Despite the two examples given the sound more elaborate than what a regular company might need, there are some very valuable points to take from them.

  • Can You Find It proves that you can be more direct with your intentions to draw in interested parties.
  • It also proves that such an ARG are an incredibly efficient way to grasp the attention of hidden talents that may even prove more capable than those that have official titles.
  • Cicada 3301 proved that a phenomenal ARG can attract the curiosity of countless throughout the world.
  • While at the same time, it may not need to cost more than you think.

How an ARG Could be Cheaper to Make than It Appears

Returning to the point of Cicada 3301, many of the puzzles that they’ve made are intricate. Even the red herrings were intricate. And this sound like it would take a lot of effort and cost-heavy. Especially the part of interconnecting the scavenger hunt to the real life with the posters spread throughout the world. But that may not be the case.

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While some of Cicada’s puzzles were obviously handcrafted by experts, a less hard and more open to general individuals may not necessarily need such things. For one, many free softwares are available online if you simply want to create encrypted messages. And anyone can now hire a number of services to simply do tasks such as placing a poster in certain parts of the world. And it would hardly cost much.

Even beyond that, with the growth of social media today, it is quite easy to make a number of smaller scale ARGs if you prove creative enough.

Closing Point

ARGs are still not within the mainstream but can easily attract the curious attention of the public. With this in mind, the earlier you are to try and use it, the more unique and creative your implementation will seem by comparison. And thus, would draw in more interest.

Creating a Brand Sensation with ARGs

Creating a Brand Sensation with ARGs

gamification·

According to eLearning Industry, ARGs or Alternate Reality Games are “An experience that takes place across multiple platforms, formats, and locations.” Something that “Has elements of eLearning, computer games, geocaching, scavenger hunts, live action role-playing, and social learning in Alternate Reality Games.”  But that in itself is not the full extent of this initiative. With proper implementation, this initiative has the potential to attract up to millions of players worldwide. Alternate Reality Games could possibly be one of the best method of getting the involvement of your potential consumers through a marketing campaign and this article will tell you why.

What is an ARG?

Alternate Reality Games are more than often a collaboration of a scavenger hunt and a mystery case. Sparking engagement through the puzzling clues it leaves and drives collaboration within individuals that are equally interested in finding the answer. Through the challenging tasks it provides and offers to the players, often times an ARG is seen as something that might alienate consumers instead of draw them in. However, what is often overlooked is that despite not everyone is able to participate in such a hunt for clues and puzzles, everyone can bear witness to it. The mere activity in itself becomes intriguing and often leaves people fascinated by them, and this often leaves quite the examples.

The Problem with ARGs

Albeit having early 2000s with Microsoft’s marketing campaign for the movie; Artificial Intelligence, ARGs had always been thought as expensive due to the need of in-depth elements such as puzzles, mysteries and the incorporation of those elements to the real world. Combine this with things such as website maintenances and other variety of costs, Alternate Reality Games have always been considered an intimidating campaign to plan, let alone execute. And despite the results ARGs seem to bring, with its level of virality and reach, it has never been a true trend or mainstream within the world of marketing. However, the argument here is that perhaps now it is the time to ignite a more creative approach to ARGs.

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Why ARG is Now Simpler

After nearly 2 decades of its first case, ARGs are now getting simpler to plan (With the creation of intricate elements of the game aside). This is due to the fact that communication and media had grown wildly since then. It is much easier to spread the fire of the game’s virality online. And such ease comes from (but not exclusive to) the following:

  • Growth of the Internet and its ease of use
  • Growth of Social Media
  • Rise of services that serves to ease phases of an ARG’s creation

How Alternate Reality Games Drive Such Engagement

Everyone loves a mystery and many people love challenges. A good ARG brings the best of both worlds. An ARG can create a challenging mystery, driving the curiosity of its players and bringing creative ways for the players to progress the game. In its essentiality, an ARG uses the same drive that makes people think up and love things such as conspiracy theories. Since, within an ARG, initially you would not know what the purpose of the challenge is. The cryptic nature and intermingling over the world-wide web would spark a sense of genuine curiosity and fascination.

ARGs’ Effect to Brands

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Besides leaving behind a spectacle in the brand’s history, players that had partake in the game or even onlookers that observed its progress will familiarize themselves with the brand that conceived it. And this is no small matter. As, if the game itself reached the ears of hundreds of thousands or even millions, those very millions would be the one to see the brand in high regard for the clever marketing. And besides spreading brand awareness, would most likely also promote a better image for the brand as all creative marketing plans tend to do. And should this be coveted into recruitment for capable hands, the campaign itself would also serve to be the best type of assessment for it.

Conversions Using Game Partnerships

Conversions Using Game Partnerships

gamification·

Conversions Using Game Partnerships

Video games are one of the most top grossing ways to place advertising or collaborations. With an ad revenue of up to 24 billion USD, spending on advertising within video games are rising above 4 billion USD—which, debatably, is an incredibly cheap investment for the potential returns. With the improvements of mobile games as a whole, the market for video game advertising is becoming even cheaper and to a wider audience. 

Why Games? 

Advertising on games are a slow moving yet efficient way of spreading brand awareness and dragging in conversions. Especially if you partner with games that are somewhat in-tune to your brand. As digital advertising brings in more data, it could prove to be an even more profitable investment than many other types of digital marketing. Especially if you are aiming for a lower budget advertising. 

Lower Investment Costs 

Game-based partnerships and advertising is still relatively cheap despite the potential abundance of data and possible conversion it drives. With the average price per engagement staying way under 45,000 IDR or somewhere under 3 USD per engagement. 

Something that game partners often claimed to be “much cheaper than less engaging alternatives” especially considering how much of a user’s digital footprint you gain access to should this type of partnership be done. With the game companies handling the maintenance and necessary changes to the game, the partner doesn’t need to worry about too many side costs (such as maintenance or upkeep costs) that may hinder revenue. 

Various Type of Engagement 

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The type of engagements that comes from this partnership also varies. Among them are some of the following: 

  • Social Media shares of ongoing about partnership/campaign, creating more brand awareness for you from the users and earning more potential users. 
  • Organic Conversion where users may not only use your services for the benefits but also everything else that you provide. 
  • Cyber Footprint of users that logs in through other means than the designed partnership 
  • Behavior Analytics be it from a user’s spending habits of in-game currency to how often they would use benefits your service provides. 

Study Case: Kota Kita 

As an example of how a partnership with a video game works, we take a look at Kota Kita by Agate. The game had first been drafted years before its first partnership. However, was finally finished and launched at April 2018. And in under a year that it had been up, the game had accumulated at least 500.000 users. And with the 500.000 users it had, over 50% of them contributed to the game partner’s conversion rate. As for the rate charged was much under 30.000 IDR or somewhere under 2.1 USD per engagement. Which were even less so than market average. 

How the Partner was Advertised by Kota Kita 

Due to the partner having their own game channel, the way Agate approached this partnership/collaboration was to put in a login option to the game through the partner’s channel. Logging in to play the mobile game would in turn help save their progress, this is the same benefit earned by players even should they log in with Facebook or Google. However, with the partner’s channel, a user would gain additional benefits and premium rewards for the game. 

This generated a lot of interest and in turn engaged them enough to not only register for the partner’s channel but use the partner’s channel for its other uses. With a special note being that the 50% conversion rate for the partner does not include the small percentage of people that had already had an account for their channel. And with the active daily user count reaching 45 to 60 thousand users per day, the partner has a share of said active user. 

Insights from Partnership 

The partnership had been an enormous success due to the sheer numbers of users playing the game, even if they do not log in with the partner’s channel. As, it was found out that logging in with a social media account also proved beneficial due to the user data it provided. And this, in turn, was shared with the partner, letting them earn valuable insight to potential customers. 

Data driven from a user’s Facebook or Google account is invaluable as it contains information such as preferences, digital behaviors and interests. All of which can become a treasure of an asset for market studies and predictions outside the game-based partnership. 

Other Means of Game Advertising 

A full partnership is of course not needed for spreading your name to a game’s user. Even simple ads that pops in on a game meant to be a simple time-waster can help. Though it may prove intrusive should it be done wrong, when a user is fond of the game and the advertisement appears enough, it might even just condition them enough to eventually click on the advertisement and thus, the potential of a customer is realized. 

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