You Lift Me Up!

The Qantas Frequent Flyer program is one of the best examples of corporate game creation in Australia. It is a business which has been valued at $2.4bn and is used as fairy godmother to magic away Qantas public relations disasters.

At its foundation, it has the three core elements of good gameplay rewards: points, levels and status. These have been well-balanced to create an engaging and competitive world. I mentioned this to a partner at KPMG recently and asked him if he knew what his bank balance was. He didn't, and wasn't sure how many bank accounts he has. I asked about his Frequent Flyer status and he rattled off: "Platinum membership expiring in February, 660,000 points and 650 status points."

For an unexciting air carriage company to engage us on a positive emotional level is radical and effective. There is no action-packed story to work off, no tear-jerking moments to work off (though this could be debatable), just transport. In the world of film and television, the starting point is emotional engagement, so games should be a natural fit.

Movies and television are increasingly building worlds over storyline or characters, and this plays absolutely into the hands of game players who can explore these worlds, talking to the characters. Some movie directors like the Wachowski brothers even go so far as to direct the game as well as the movie - albeit with less than fantastic results.

As we started the production for our Facebook game Lost Monsters, we made a conscious decision to bring some writers onto the team. The idea was to ensure that we were creating the richness of narratives and characters in the game that could easily leap over to a TV series. With MIPTV in Cannes approaching at the end of March, Lost Monsters will form a major part of our portfolio. And maybe we'll start looking at an Xbox version of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program.

https://apps.facebook.com/lostmonsters/

This article was first published in Encore magazine, February 2012.