Care in the community

I was invited to speak at the Multi-Platform Gaming conference earlier this month about the likely impact of Web 2.0 on the gaming industry. It seems ironic: If there’s one industry that’s already grasped the potential behind the hype and turned it into commercial success, it’s gaming.

Bingo and poker, for example, have already established very strong communities, but the differences between them fascinate me.

The poker community is split into distinct areas – help for beginners, strategy discussions and (most importantly for long-term relationships) an opportunity to display prowess and seniority.

On the other hand, the community aspect of bingo is absolutely fundamental to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Given that the primary target audience is made up of nursery mothers and the elderly, the community provides an opportunity for interaction with friends and peers that would otherwise be impossible. Many community members leave the chat on all the time they are at home – even when they aren’t playing, because that social contact is so essential for them.

The ban on public smoking on 1 July will make the online community even more important. If, as expected, the ban drives players away from bingo halls in the rest of the UK as it did in Scotland, there is an opportunity for online gaming to fill the social hole in people’s lives.

These two examples show that Web 2.0 ideas need to be applied differently, depending on both your business and your audience.

In poker, the community forms part of the sales cycle but then, after conversion, will only increase the satisfaction of players – it won’t make them brand-loyal.

In bingo, the community is central to whether new customers sign-up and whether they continue to play. So there is real value in improving these features, possibly even to the point of integrating web cams within the site and giving away branded hardware to all the players.