OK, so you are planning a new digital product. It might be for internal use, it might be for customers or potential customers, it might be a mobile app, a web app or a desktop app. Whether it’s free or a product you’ll sell, you want it to work and you want it to get a good return on the investment.

You've decided to partner with a developer because you don't want the costs or the risks to be too high (it often seems like developing in-house would be cheaper and safer, but unless you have an experienced digital product design and development team, it's typically higher risk and much more expensive).

The key question is, who do you partner with? There are hundreds of software developers and digital agencies out there, why on earth would you consider partnering with Game Designers?

Good Question.

Here are 7 reasons why you might want to consider partnering with Game Designers...

Learn from the most successful and innovative software

The games industry is now bigger than the movie and music industry combined. The sheer scale of the industry has driven innovation and creativity, not just in gameplay, but also in business models, user engagement, UX design, data analytics, capacity to scale and more. There is a lot to learn from the games industry that can be applied to any application. Before you start on your next digital product, you should take a good look at the most successful digital products to see what you can learn.

Get Noticed!

The app stores are busy places these days with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of apps to choose from. Perhaps the biggest challenge is to make your app stand out. When you are designing a new digital product, it's very tempting to kind of do what everyone else does and create an app that looks like everyone else's. In reality, that is the one sure-fire way of ensuring your digital product goes unnoticed! The games industry is used to making apps that really stand out and get noticed.

Keep them engaged

Whether it is staff or customer, most businesses want to increase their levels of engagement. It is no accident that games are popular. There are a huge number of proven techniques and tools that can be applied to any piece of software which will increase user engagement. Game designers can help you make software that everyone loves to use.

Games can handle the serious stuff

Games can tackle complex and serious subjects in mature and sensitive ways. Many people disregard games because they think that a game might trivialise their serious business objective. In reality, a game is sometimes the best way to address a serious subject.

It doesn't have to look like a game

You can apply game design approaches to software which is not a game and get some real benefits. Gamification has been around for almost 20 years now and plenty of very successful software is successful because it employs the same approach's that game designers use.

We know how to scale, securely and reliably!

You could be forgiven for thinking that games don't bother with things like security and reliability. In fact, they are typically leading the way. Game designers understand the importance of reliability as applications grow in popularity. They understand the importance of high levels of security too. All of those 'Enterprise' requirements' are second nature to us.

Everyone loves to play!

It is still often thought that games are for kids and maybe young adults males. In fact, 'play' is in our nature as humans and everyone like's to play. We just have different tastes when it comes to how and what we play. These days, we are fortunate enough to have game types for everyone. Whether its crosswords and puzzles, brain training, simulations, management style, action, arcade, retro and more, there is a game genre for your audience. What;'s more, when we're playing, we're having a good time, we enjoy the experience and that means we come back for more.

So there you have it, 7 reasons why you should at least consider game designers for your next digital product. There are lots more reasons too, so if you have a digital product in mind, get in touch and we can catch-up over coffee to understand more about what you are trying to achieve.