PlayAbly Podcast Episode 4: Creating Games That Fit the Brand and Why Discount Spinners are Never the Answer

In this episode, we sit down with Seema Rao, Head of UX and Game Development at PlayAbly, to explore the art and strategy behind creating engaging games for brands. Seema, with over 20 years of experience in game development, shares her insights on why it’s essential to align games with a brand’s identity and target audience, and why generic solutions like discount spinners often fall short.

Discover how PlayAbly designs interactive experiences tailored to different customer personas and how testing and analytics play a crucial role in delivering impactful results. Seema also discusses how even high-end brands can use gamification without compromising their image and why every brand, regardless of its market segment, should consider gamifying their customer journey.

If you’re an ecommerce brand looking to boost engagement and conversions through tailored gaming experiences, this episode is a must-listen! 🎧

👉 Learn more and explore our gamified solutions at PlayAbly.ai.

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Thanks for tuning in to the PlayAbly Podcast! Ready to engage your customers like never before? PlayAbly turns your website into an interactive experience that drives results. Don’t forget, mention the podcast during your free demo, and get your first month free! Book now at playably.ai

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Transcript

PlayAbly Podcast Episode 4: Creating Games That Fit the Brand and Why Discount Spinners are Never the Answer

Seema: [00:00:00] Hello. I am Seema Rao. head of UX and I oversee game development. 

Kajal: How do you come up with what games go for what cilent? 

Seema: So I've been developing games for more than 20 years, and I feel like I worked in the hardest kind of game development, which is arts and culture, because nobody really wants to learn about that stuff anymore.

we were always trying to get people to see things that they didn't see. that's where I came from. what we really try to do here, is remember that brands want to share their products with their customers. Customers really want their products, but there's often a mismatch.

the game is the thing that links those two together. we try to hear our brand owners, and interview customers. then come up with a game that makes that come together. for example, let's say a brand has beautiful patterns and they want everyone to understand the patterns, but the customer really wants to look good.

We would come up with a game that shows how that pattern would work with their [00:01:00] ideal outfit, And gamify it. one of the things that's hard about games is people don't realize what a game is. It could just be an interactive, but usually you have to add something like time limits, or winning something.

A reward. Yes, the reward. Like we both have kids. You want to give them a reward. We went to school. Rewards are part of everyday life. And so leaning into that is what turns it from just something that is on your website to something that's actually going to engage people. 

Kajal: And I feel like a lot of that also has to do with the persona of the customer base. What drives them? Is it the reward? I know for me, anything where there's a Competitive nature to it. I'm always like, okay, I'm down. I want to be number one. That's who I am. And that really ties back, to the Bartle personalities that we use to start this company.

Seema: one of the things I love about games is that when you have a company, a lot of our companies have very oppositional personas. Take, for example, a Menopausal woman, and a 20 something man.

Their needs and, motivations are different, even [00:02:00] within the same nutrition company sometimes the product itself lends to different kinds of things. So you could have a product in a fitness brand that involves competition. outdoors, equipment, brands, cater to people who either want to compete against others or themselves. These are two different behaviors, we can use the same game and deploy it differently.

one has a time limit for self-competition, and one has a leaderboard, for competing against others. sometimes these audiences are different requiring different games.

For the outdoor one, I think some people are doing this for their meditation and personal enjoyment. something that's very low key, look for the differences would be ideal for them versus somebody who is trying to push themselves physically and they want a game that is more competitive.

Kajal: And I know it must be hard because there's so many things that a game could be, as you said, I've been on some of these BD calls where the potential customer comes in and says, I have an idea for a game. They see their brand in a certain way. They think, Oh, you [00:03:00] make games.

Here are, four ideas that I've come up with. How do you help them really pull that down and understand what will work? How do you make sure that you're managing their expectations? Because the brand is obviously very important. And we want to acknowledge that as well.

Seema: What's interesting is We work as their partner. they know their brands. A lot of them come up with platform games, And sometimes that is the right way to go. We have to test it but that might test well. Sometimes it's the worst way to go. we're not the deciders. Neither the brand nor us It's the customers. So we always prototype everything.

We do a lot of user testing. We test every game with real people and their behaviors make it happen. One thing I really try to do is be open to all of it, because we might, miss something if we weren't open to their suggestions, we also work with them to be open to other things, which luckily we are.

We have a host of games that they can select from, and between the two, we find there's a medium place that works [00:04:00] for everybody. 

Kajal: And how do you get brands who are resistant to the idea of a game who think maybe their clientele is too high end or the products that they have are too high end gaming, gamification can come off as, like it doesn't jive with it as well.

Seema: say to those 

Kajal: people? 

Seema: I developed games for some of the fanciest museums in the world. for example, we've talked to some high end brands I work for a museum and that is useful because nobody is snottier than a museum staff.

coming from those kinds of credentials helps. one thing we remind them is, a game doesn't have to look like Angry Birds. Game is a broad category for many things. so sometimes we use the word interaction 

And a lot of high-end brands have done interaction. Chanel van Cleef Gucci, lots of them do interactives. And every brand has a newsletter sign up that's basically trying to gamify the website. You're saying if you do this. I will give you this. That's a reward system.

It's a very low level [00:05:00] reward system. And what we're basically saying is we'll do this better for you. So when we reframe it that way, I think they see it. The other thing that really helps for high end brands is to remember that they do PR launch events. They do parties with influencers.

They do all kinds of things that are actually game based and ephemeral. I would invite them to try it for something they feel is low stakes. a lot of companies will break the paradigms of the institution on specific events or for an ad campaign.

if you can do that, then you can absolutely use an interactive. 

Kajal: Sure. And the data speaks a lot to it as well. As you mentioned you do testing to make sure that it matches with the customer base. how would you go about testing an idea like that to show a higher end client that this will work in their space?

Seema: Yeah, I think we always want to manage for success. So we would pick a very specific event, let's say a product launch, and the ad campaign for it. we would run the game version and the version without a game. And [00:06:00] then use the analytics to help us.

usually we're seeing something like three X conversion. because, even the wealthiest person is still just a human. humans love competition, we love play. That is the basis of all human intellect. play is how we teach, and play is how we convince people to buy things.

play is inherent to everyone. we have a wonderful analytics arm that helps us understand the testing, so we can iterate that game. For example, heat maps help us understand what parts are really working. We pull back all the analytics on what they're clicking. With a game like matching people's outfits, you even get to see who they are.

getting more data about that person versus an ad where they're just looking at a still picture. when a company sees all the resources they get out of our project, they see how much it's worth, even beyond that high conversion rate. 

Kajal: I think the depth of what we're building for people to be a first party data collection source.

is [00:07:00] Definitely important. And I know one of our biggest arguments when it comes to people who say, Hey, I have a spinner. Isn't that enough? What else are the spinner people not thinking about when it comes to games? 

Seema: Oh, the spinner people. I have very strong feelings about spinners, one of the real problems is you're breaking your trust with your audience. spinners are usually set to always have the same highest answer, You pick a number, and it always goes there. you've shown them that you're not trustworthy, and a smart person will figure out it doesn't work.

So that's a huge problem. You've already turned them off or tricked them, or they don't believe you, spinners have become visual noise. right now, the customer, has more options. than you They have 20 of you.

if all of you have spinners or these defunct things, that's a huge problem. you're not getting any information on them. you have no resources on who they are, or what they're doing. You're not giving any feedback loop for them. finally, you're not surprising [00:08:00] and delighting them.

That's the biggest problem, right? we've done many studies in the development of our product, asking people about spinners and games To them, entering their email, feels like giving something valuable. if you're not earning that email, they won't enter it.

even worse, if you don't keep up with it, like, if you only ever have a spinner, and nothing else. they'll leave and pick somebody else. 

Kajal: That's true. I've done spinners before seeing that it was a minimal discount rather than give them my email and use that discount, I use something like honey or capital One shopping, that scrapes the codes and finds it for me so I didn't have to give them my email for marketing.

So I understand that. 

Seema: You're losing so much when you do that. It means you will never find them again. There's no retouch, you can't have another touchpoint with that customer. 

Kajal: Sure, and 

Honey has all the data now because they know across all the sites where they're shopping.

Seema: That email and the behavior of that person being able to, create a host of, interactions, allows you to retarget and potentially create [00:09:00] a whole profile of that customer across multiple visits and increase LTV.

Kajal: Everybody likes more LTV, can't complain about that. Keeping customers, especially with the, number of brands that started existing after Covid in every space? I don't think there is a space that's uncrowded. What is the biggest mistake that you see brands make when they are trying to implement games?

Seema: I think one thing that is really problematic is they don't think of data before they build a game. if you're not somebody who comes from game development, you don't necessarily understand games like the reward system, and you also don't understand what it can do for you in terms of data.

 I think because games are very good, Games are meant to trick you, think about Monopoly. It's a very simple system, But it actually tells you a lot about different people's behavior. you might be a Monopoly player who wants to get as many cards as you can, or you're the one who only wants Park Avenue and focuses on that. 

Those are two different people. If you don't [00:10:00] understand how games are built or how data is done, you won't understand that you can manipulate the game to identify those people. if you're running an e com brand, how would you do that? But I think that's a big thing.

Cause you will, they'll hire, for example, some dev from somewhere. The other huge thing that they're not doing is understanding where it should fit. In their ecosystem, if it should be an ad, if it should be on their organic traffic, if it should be on a landing page and how that impacts.

their sales and who it impacts, so which persona, most people are not making data driven persona decisions. They're making emotional persona decisions. They think they know their customer and what their customer needs is X. most of our team loves games in different ways, and we all have our favorite game.

I'm not picking my favorite game. I'm picking the game that's the right game. 

Kajal: I think the timing is something that a lot of people don't think about at the placement Spinners Every time you get on the homepage or [00:11:00] any page it just pops up.

It's the first thing before you even get to meet the brand or see the products or anything you clicked on. being able to introduce it at the right time, I can see the importance. 

Seema: I don't understand why so many brands want to annoy their customers. it's such a bizarre UX thing, and they're so convinced it works, then we put in a game, and we get so much more pickup on emails, and they're like, huh, we didn't annoy anybody.

That's why. 

I think that's the advantage of working with companies like ours we get to show you the customer perspective and say, Hey, you may not be thinking about it this way, but this is annoying or this is ugly, or this is, not the first thing that I want to see.

Or worse when something doesn't work and it's just broken. we're definitely advocates for the customers in that respect when it comes to working with brands. 

Absolutely. they can take those learnings from the game and apply them to everything.

it changes their email. their website, they're changing everything. We're always like wait. 

Kajal: Oh yeah, even customers we don't work with anymore [00:12:00] who changed their entire homepage to be the landing page we created for them. 

It's good to see our legacy live on. That's true. Thanks for all this information. I think this is super helpful. Two last questions. One, is there any advice you'd give to people or things you'd want to say to people who are maybe a bit on the fence about trying games?

Seema: So we love games so much and we love talking to customers We can absolutely jump on a call and discuss it with you you're in a lot of our BD calls and you've heard it, people get so excited and we love brainstorming games. we could even brainstorm a game for you.

If nothing else, it will help you think through some of your other challenges in terms of meeting your customer needs. we've heard so many customers over the years and so many different games We will bring you a new perspective Everyone probably has a free half hour that they could do just brainstorming games with us.

So that's something I would say definitely if you're on the fence, try that. The other thing I would say is play some [00:13:00] of our games. We have a game arcade. You can play some of our games. We have something we call Playco, which is like Pachinko or, Plinko, depending on where you grew up and how you call it.

But you can see how addictive it is. So playing some of those would be great. The other thing I would say to you is if you're on the fence, go back to the customer questions that you get. if you are getting like a million questions, one of the ones that we work on a lot of games about is sizing, right?

Like finding the right products. If that's a thing that's happening and you cannot solve it. I would just say come to us. We can solve it. We can find an interactive that will make that a lot easier. And remember if you're in the world, and you're looking around, notice how many times they gamify something.

TikTok is just completely gamified. notice how many places in the world, even at very high end things lots of orchestras will gamify it, right? Go to three concerts, you get one [00:14:00] extra.

Kajal: Yeah, loyalty. To the tears, 

Seema: the, 

Kajal: yeah. 

Seema: High end, 

Kajal: The membership, the exclusivity. 

Seema: Oh my god, the membership exclusivity. We were talking about, you and I and some of our colleagues were talking about a brand and you were, they were asking do you have a code to get into the game.

Oh yeah. We were laughing about it because it's a low end brand. But absolutely, those secret passes, everybody is gamifying things. And so I think your question, no matter where your brand is, why aren't you? 

Kajal: And then lastly, I have to ask everybody this what is your favorite game of the moment? 

Seema: I have been playing a game this weekend that is basically matching cards. It's a Native American game from the Southwest. I was playing it with some colleagues. I'm sorry to say I don't know the name, but it's basically like war.

Where you're trying to slap cards down but with tiles that are handmade and really beautiful. it had the energy of craps. people were screaming. I will admit there was wine involved that might [00:15:00] have been part of it.

But it was really fun. I don't know the name of it, 

Kajal: That sounds super fun. And aesthetically pleasing. 

Seema: it took us a long time to play the game because we had to make our tiles and everyone spent a lot of time painting them. 

Kajal: Love it. Thank you for your time and for joining.

Appreciate your insights on all of this.