Three ways for gaming marketers to understand "culturalization" in emerging markets

Whether it’s to escape to an alternate reality or to pass time while commuting to work, games have become a part of people’s everyday lives. Mobile technology has made gaming ubiquitous, and it has heightened gamers’ expectations for instant, seamless experiences. Consumers have come to expect games to consistently meet their lifestyle, mood, and budget. These and many other trends are laid out in the new Facebook Gaming Marketing Report, which I encourage you to download and read.

And as Facebook’s Americas Gaming Director, I’ve been thinking a lot about one particular trend: the arrival of 5G and what it means for our consumers. It has become readily apparent that consumer expectations are growing alongside download speeds. And players now consider any shred of latency unacceptable to their gaming experience.  With the rise of internet access globally, millions of new people all over the world will be coming online in the next few years to play games. 

So what does all this mean for gaming marketers as we look to the future? Well, I’ve seen that publishers and developers typically dominate in their native markets, and not because they’re necessarily the best marketers, but because they deeply understand the cultural nuances of these consumers more clearly.  This means that if you can really understand these new environments and the nuanced ways in which people consider and consume their games, that can open up some big opportunities. I’d like to share a couple thoughts on how the gaming industry can successfully navigate these changes as new games and players come into the fold. 

Understand these markets are different. 

If you’re only localizing your game’s language as you bring it to an entirely new market, you’re simply short-changing the potential of your game. It’s important that marketers acknowledge that these territories differ from one another and more than just the languages they speak: they cannot be bucketed together for the sake of convenience, and international campaigns and games with a one-size-fits-all perspective will not deliver the best results. In order to successfully penetrate an emerging market, you have to dive in with an open-mind and understand the regional-specific characteristics of their gamer base.

 Rethink what it means to connect to different cultures.

The thing is, localization must go beyond language. Connecting with varying markets isn’t just about the mere translation of words and copy, but about translating emotion, and heart: connecting with gamers globally means being able to relate emotionally, and that will vary from region to region. So learn about the popular culture and customs within each region, and that you can integrate those disparities in your campaigns and game design. These variations should be a part of those early concept stages and feed into marketing, development and everything in between: details like characters, themes, art style/palettes, achievements/rewards and even typography. Understanding and acting on these language and cultural differences is a big investment, but it’s crucial to meaningful global impact as the industry continues to grow.

Consider value exchange at the cultural level

Currency and value vary by country.  Apple and Google have built some allowances for this automatically.  For example, a $0.99 purchase in the US is roughly the same as a Rs. 60 purchase in India (although current exchange rate is a little higher).  However, this doesn’t mean that a US customer values a $0.99 purchase at the same level an Indian customer would value a Rs. 60 purchase.  For this reason, Apple and Google provide flexibility to offer much lower minimum pricing in India and many other countries.  Developers should understand the value exchange at a local level and set pricing according in accordance with how each item or offer will be valued and received by its local customer.

There’s no doubt that this is an exciting time of change and growth as global gaming becomes quickly democratized.  There’s such opportunity to connect authenticity with audiences as 5G technology enables new gamers to come online across every continent. I’m looking forward to this next chapter and all that we can do together.