The Digital Australia 22 report has been released by the IGEA and Bond University and is available for download from the IGEA website.

The report has been running since 2006 and as usual, this one is a great report. It gives plenty of insights into games, who plays them, how often and in what way in Australia.

The theme this time is ‘Connected by Games’ which is very appropriate given the lockdowns we’ve experienced in the last two years and the way games have played a huge role in the negative impacts.

Of course, we are always looking at the game industry and how businesses can learn from it and there are 3 things we’ve pulled out of the report that we think you might find useful…

The Covid Effect

The first is that the last two years of Covid have seen a dramatic shift in all use of digital, but perhaps none more than games. More people are playing now than ever with almost every household in Australia having at least one device for playing games. Yet again, the biggest audience for games is adults and the average age of a game player is now 35. More than solo game playing, we’ve seen the rise of multiplayer and/or chatting with friends while playing. Games have become a way for people to connect in a disconnected world. They are also a way for connecting within the same household.

If your organisation is suffering from a lack of connection, and your people have been working remotely for a long time, then perhaps it’s time for a game. A game might fill the gap that has been left by having no social events, or internal conferences. Of course, a game could just be for fun, but it also might fill some other business objectives too, like learning, motivation, deeper engagement.

Games in your Marketing Strategy?

Games now rank second in households ahead of Free To Air TV. Does your organisation have a games component to their marketing strategy? Are games part of how you reach your customers and potential customers? There are many ways that games can and should be part of an effective marketing strategy; advertising in and around games, promotional and simulation games, next-generation loyalty programmes, learning and education for your customers, gamification and more. You can no longer ignore games and they should form part of every marketing strategy.

Use Games in learning

Whilst we are seeing a slight increase in the use of games for learning at work, it is still nothing like the levels it should be. Schools and universities are using games at a far higher rate and as such we have new generations coming into the workforce who have experienced rich digital learning environments. They now face boring compliance training driven by the limitations of learning management systems and poor authoring tools. This tends to lead to people doing as little as possible rather than truly engaging in the learning.

Games can win hearts and minds as well as achieve much better learning outcomes. With more and more people used to learning through games and play, is now the time to look seriously at creating game-based learning?

Is it time for some fun?

The Fun Report that we released earlier this year clearly showed that the different working conditions, the lack of social functions and the general underlying pressure from Covid have meant a severe lack of fun for most people over the last 2 years. That is probably part of what is driving the Great Resignation.

How fun is your workplace right now? What could you do to make it more fun? Is a game the answer?

If you’d like to have an informal chat about how games, gamification and fun could be used to engage your customers, staff or both, please, get in touch for a chat.