Gaming lessons from a 7 year old

As someone who has grown up playing games I gradually moved to playing online. At the age of 16 I got involved in multiplayer games online with my school friends. This lead to creating and playing in teams and from there I began to compete. My competitive side was also evident in all the different team sports I played when at school. This competitive nature has stuck with me ever since and supported me in continuing to play team sports.

But my gaming habits have changed and I now don’t play structured competitive multiplayer. Instead, I play casual multiplayer with friends or family, or story-led games. Over the past few months I’ve been playing Fortnite with my 7 year old nephew and his school friends. This experience was enlightening for me as a former competitive player.

While Fortnite does enable you to “win” a match with you being the last player or team remaining this wasn’t the focus for my nephew. Fortnite has a “Battle Pass” system where you can unlock extra in-game cosmetic items (that don’t affect your ability in the game). Sometimes these items are given to you for free by earning experience. Other times you have to be a paid owner of the Battle Pass to unlock the content.

Experience is gained by performing actions inside the game or by completing quests. My nephew and his friends were constantly discussing which quests to do next and the best ways to complete them. Their focus was not on winning matches, that was merely a by-product of doing well. Instead, their focus was on unlocking the next piece of content or cosmetic item.

The changing behaviours of Gen-Z in gaming

This is what surprised me. I’ve been playing many games with a similar structure where you can unlock extra content but I didn’t spend much time on them. For Gen-Z who have grown up with only these types of experiences it has shaped the way they interact with games.

Winning is less important for players in this age group and their emphasis is on experience and content. What can brands do to support and engage this youth audience? This is a question I’ve been discussing recently and it has led us to place less focus on tournaments. We need to find ways to engage the younger audience who already have great spending power and will continue to do so.

One way to engage and build successful campaigns is to adopt the same mindset. Is there a way to create a campaign that incorporates challenge, unlocks, rewards, sharing and other mechanics? How do you enable participants to move at their own pace and choose their own path? Are there multiple stages in a campaign so that participants can see their progress?

When we receive campaign briefs these are now the types of questions we look to answer as part of our response. Tournaments will support a subset of the audience who like to compete. We need to think about creative ways to engage the rest of the audience and it starts by thinking like them.