Cannes 2013: 'One day, we will all be gamers’

In a talk on day three of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2013, Jane McGonical, game designer and author, spoke about how gaming can increase creativity. She was introduced on stage by Mark Holden, worldwide strategy and planning director, PHD.

For starters, she pointed out that a billion people in the world play a game for an hour a day across platforms (consoles, phones, computers etc.).

“The stereotype that games are a waste of time has to be done away with. People spend 300 million minutes every day to play Angry Birds. A COD (Call of Duty) player plays 170 hours of the game – that’s one month of full time work. In fact, one in four players of COD’s Black Ops 2 called in sick at work on the day of the launch,” said McGonical.

She went on to explain that 89 per cent of workers (globally) are not engaged at their work place, making it an onerous task to get work done out of them. "As a result, 2 trillion dollars are lost per year, as their productivity suffers,” she added.

She presented some more statistics before the audience, underlining the popularity of gaming:

- In the USA, 99 per cent of the boys under 18, and 94 per cent of the girls in the same age group, play a game, for an hour a day
- 92 per cent of the two year-olds play games on their parents’ devices

"It’s inevitable, one day we all will be gamers. So, whoever you are, and wherever you are, you need to associate your brand with games,” the game designer argued.

McGonical went on to list 10 positive emotions that a human being goes through while playing a game: joy, relief, love, surprise, pride, curiosity, excitement, awe and wonder, containment and creativity.

These 10 emotions, she said, are sources of engagement.

"So with your brand, you need to look at these 10 emotions and look to use them in your communication,” she surmised.