Emergent Social Behavior Alert

Heads up: Right now—as in RIGHT NOW—there is an interesting emergent social behavior appearing at the intersection of broadcast media, live events, and gaming.

Emergent social behaviors are the trends that eventually become social norms. Often, they are triggered by new technologies. Look at how the telephone, television, cell phone, and iPod successively changed the world in terms of social interaction, marketing communications, and business.

The emergent behavior we’re interested in here can readily be seen amongst the multi-platform early adopter types. It involves either a live event or a big screen (TV, movie, PC) and a smaller screen or window (mobile phone, live chat, live micro-blogging) and concentrates around the phenomena of group-viewing and/or virtual participation. The typical scenario is a sporting event, movie screening, or concert where—officially broadcast or not—an audience multi-casts the content directly or indirectly using whatever tools they can to the social web, inviting others to be part of the event.

The leading edge of this trend began more than a decade ago with online multiplayer roleplaying games such as Quake and Doom. X-Box Live, Playstation Network, and, of course, games like World of Warcraft, have boosted the momentum for large scale, live interaction and concurrent game play as electronic games went from solo activities to two-way social interactions.

Most recently, Nintendo Wii marked an important first step toward expanding the gaming console market by making a Wii Party something that wasn’t laughable for non-gamers. Rock Band created thousands and thousands of virtual musicians who gather spontaneously for fun—selling millions of units and peripherals in the process. Though core gamers still love their first-person shooters, there’s an increasingly interesting emerging market for cooperative co-play that doesn’t involve shooting zombies or stealing cars.

Where are we going from here? Let’s look at two notable directions. One is the addition of the physical to the equation. Credit the Wii, with it’s breakthrough motion-sensitive device controllers, for introducing a physical component to what could be called in-room gaming. This has proven to be a surprisingly effective way to reach consumers previously resistant to console gaming. For many buyers, the Wii was the first gaming console they ever purchased and the physical game interaction was a key selling point.

Microsoft’s Project Natal is intended to bring motion-oriented play to the next level, by implementing tracking technologies that read how a person’s entire body is moving, rather than just the position and velocity of a hand-held controller. The vision is for Project Natal to provide a fully social and networked experience that extends the in-room model by linking consoles and participants via the internet.

The second path leads beyond social gaming to group viewing and interaction around sporting events, content like movies, even shopping. It may very well prove that “gaming” is not where Project Natal and related technologies spark their revolution. Couple a connected console that can detect where a person is and how they are moving with augmented reality technology and the possibilities expand exponentially—call it socially networked virtual tryvertising, if you dare. The possibilities for event marketing, education, and edutainment are also pretty exciting.

For those who want to stay on top of this phenomenon, we recommend that you consider taking the word “game” out of your brainstorming when you think of Xbox. Playstation and Wii and try thinking of these devices as a new and physical interface to the internet. Assume that people using a physical interface can and will be seeking out others to share their experiences. To really kick it up a notch, integrate the possibility for concurrent use of other media—television, DVDs, instant message, Twitter.

We can’t say exactly what it will end up looking like, but we’re pretty sure we’re going to like it.