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Sociability in Hybrid Board Game Marketing Materials: Seven Key Features Sociability in Hybrid Board Game Marketing Materials: Seven Key Features Ville Kankainen Abstract University of Tampere Hybrid board games mixing physical and digital Kalevantie 4, FI-33014 elements are one form of growingly popular hybrid Finland [email protected] playful products and services. Hybrid Social Play research project aims to identify the best practices in Timo Nummenmaa using the hybridity to develop new kind of social University of Tampere experiences in board games. In this study marketing Kalevantie 4, FI-33014 and promotional material of 13 hybrid board games Finland +358 50 420 1506 have been identified and analyzed in order to determine [email protected] how social features related to hybrid game features are presented. As a result of the analysis, it has become apparent that there are seven key features which are presented as being important to players. The knowledge generated in this work acts as a view to how the industry sees hybridity in games as a tool for supporting social interaction, and how the industry Paste the appropriate copyright/license statement here. ACM now wants to message it to consumers when they explore supports three different publication options: promotional material. • ACM copyright: ACM holds the copyright on the work. This is the historical approach. • License: The author(s) retain copyright, but ACM receives an Author Keywords exclusive publication license. Hybrid Games, Board Games, Marketing, • Open Access: The author(s) wish to pay for the work to be open access. The additional fee must be paid to ACM. Advertisement, Sociability This text field is large enough to hold the appropriate release statement assuming it is single-spaced in Verdana 7 point font. Please do not change the size of this text box. ACM Classification Keywords Each submission will be assigned a unique DOI string to be included here. K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General – Games Introduction also informing what they think customers value in such Hybrid Social Play1 is a two year project which aims to products. identify best practices and principles for hybrid social playability and develop tools and concepts for future Position Statement social physical-digital (phygital) products and services. Currently, the mobile technology allows mixing digital The project focuses on four hybrid phenomena: board and physical elements in board games easier than ever. games, toys, money games and print media. The However, augmenting physical board games with the research on the project is conducted with mixed digital technology is nothing but a new phenomenon. methods approach including, but not limited to Already on late 1970s there was microchip mediated workshops with entertainment and media industry board games such as Parker Brother’s Code Name: partners, literature reviews, game analysis, interviews Sector (1977). A popular game during its time, Dark and surveys. Tower (Milton Bradley, 1981), was one of the first board games that had simple displays integrated on the Hybrid board games which blend physical and digital game board. elements in various ways are a category of growingly popular hybrid playful products and services (cf. [10]). Games such as Clue VCR Mystery Game (Parker In order to understand how the industry sees hybrid Brothers, 1985), utilized the VCR-technology of 1980s board games regarding the social features, we analyzed as a game element. During the 1990s and 2000s the a set of commercial games in terms of how they are outdated technology was replaced by CDs and DVDs, marketed to the consumer. This information also and the digital recording technology made it possible to reveals what features are seen by the publisher to be introduce interactive elements into the game design the selling points of the game, and what they think (e.g. Space Alert, Czech Games Edition 2008). There about the expectations and wishes of players. Goals for were also some attempts towards augmented reality this analysis was to find out: board games (e.g. The Eye of Judgement, Sony 2008) in 2000s, but these never grew successful. 1. How do game publishers see hybridity to affect sociability in their games? The app revolution of late 2000 revived publishers’ 2. What do game publishers see as interesting interest towards hybrid board games. Mobile from the perspective of the consumer? technology has been used in various ways to augment traditional board game experience, but the most These findings will give insights on publishers view of common approach at the moment seems to be a hybrid board games, which is important in order to companion app supporting the physical board game in understand what they find valuable in hybridity, while some way (cf. [5]). As the technology develops so does the understanding 1 https://hybridplayproject.wordpress.com/ of what is considered as hybrid. Electronic elements were introduced to the board games already on 1930s Previous Research Table 1. List of games. according to the Board Game Geek2. Currently these Sociability in board games and digital games have been Name Publisher Year are rarely considered hybrid games per se, but at the studied in several occasions and from various angles Code time such games blended together features from two (e.g. [9]; [8]; [3]; [14]; [13]), and there is number of Parker Name: 1977 separate domains that were not traditionally mixed. studies concentrating on the design aspects of hybrid Brothers Sector Likewise, in the future board games using mobile apps board games (e.g. [7]; [2]). However, only few studies Milton can become a norm instead of forming a separate exist that analyze the ways how games are marketed Dark Tower 1981 Bradley category of games. to the public, and the few out there (e.g. [11]) are Electronic mostly concentrated on video game marketing. Still, a Milton Mall 1991 The hybridity in itself is rarely interesting for the study on player appreciation of board games suggests Bradley Madness customers in the long run; the value lies in the that the success of a new board game relies on its Monopoly: experiences it can offer. As such it can be argued that it capacity to present unique play experiences and Electronic Hasbro 2006 would be beneficial for the designers to understand the possibilities for interaction between players [4]. Banking experiences hybrid products blend instead of just The Eye of Sony 2008 mixing various technologies. [1] Analysis Judgement A representative selection of games with various types Czech One way to blend novel features to the board game of hybrid elements were selected. They were analyzed Space Alert Games 2008 experience could be to introduce familiar features of with a form of qualitative content analysis [12]. The Edition social media that already surround the core play sources used include text on the game’s website, The Game Identity 2012 experience. Lauwaert [6] speaks about the core and advertisement videos, and text on the back of the Changer Games periphery of play. In the core are the ways of play the game box. The selection of 13 games (see Table 1on Spellshot Hasbro 2012 designer intended, while in the periphery lie the the sidebar) has been guided by previous research in Leaders: A emergent forms of play. One way to harness the the Hybridex project [10], but contains many games Rudy Combined 2013 Games opportunities of hybridity is to bring the periphery of also not mentioned in that research. Game play in to the core. For example, a Finnish game Hare- company Playmore Games is developing a companion The requirements for games to be analyzed here were Golem brained 2014 Arcana app called Dized that teaches you to play various board that they contained digital elements which affect Schemes games through interactive tutorials similar to ones seen gameplay and board game like mechanics. It was also Ravens- 2003 3 King Arthur in digital games . The company has plans to develop required that information regarding sociability and the burger 2014 their app to a full blown universal companion app combination of physical and digital elements was XCOM: The Fantasy usable with any board games, that can be used for present in marketing material that could be found. This Board Flight 2015 example to find new people to play with. is in no way an exhaustive list, but contains various Game Games different types of games, some more recent and some World of Iello 2015 somewhat older. The analysis process involved reading Yo-Ho 2 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1072/electronic through the collected data, and extracting pieces that 3 https://dized.com/ fit the requirements of the study. These excerpts were then further analyzed, focusing on the way they considering its importance for the game experience and represented the role of social interaction. value for the consumers. However, it is another matter if this is actually the case. There is the possibility that Seven Key Features the publishers have higher expectations for the effects By grouping together the important findings from the of the hybrid features in their games than those analysis, the following seven key features can be actually have. As the hybrid games are a new identified to appear in the marketing material (in no phenomenon they have a gimmicky value which particular order): publisher can take an advantage of when persuading consumers to buy their products or services. 1. A game master and/or common enemy 2. Replacing player managed parts with more Findings of this study will give important insight into efficient versions sociability in hybrid board games which can be used in 3. Personal physical element as a game interface various ways. The information can be used as design 4. Social features and interactions not normally knowledge for designing social features in new hybrid seen outside of hybrid products board games or in designing add-ons to existing 5.
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