A video game veteran offers advice on gamification and commercialization

Some might think of David Elton as a guy who helped create video games, but he sees himself as someone who develops lasers.

Elton, who spent much of his early career so far working on the Need for Speed franchise at Electronic Arts (EA), has been focusing more recently on mentoring Canadian entrepreneurs at the Innovation Factory, a CDMN Hub. For Elton, “lasers” refer to the sharp focus required to separate a vague idea for a product from something truly marketable.

“Don’t try to be the everything to everybody. Focus on the end consumer. Understand who that person is and work towards that focus,” he advises, adding that in cases where entrepreneurs see myriad customer targets, “99.999 percent of those ideas end up not being loved by anyone.”

CommereLab recently spoke to Elton by telephone to discuss the state of commercialization in Canada and how to get more of those good ideas into the market. This interview has been edited and condensed.

CommerceLab: How would you evaluate the degree to which Canadian researchers are able to properly identify and articulate opportunities to commercialize their work today?

David Elton: I’d say at the moment we’re definitely a step behind. And I think that’s just comes form the overall culture. Silicon Valley has been the birthplace of a lot of great ideas, but a lot of that has been that concept of commercialization, of ideas, has been ingrained in that community for a long, long time.

It’s not something that’s been at the forefront here. Especially if you talk to the universities, I think now they’re just trying to figure out all the challenges around things like IP ownership, what is it that they actually want to get out of the research, whereas in the States it’s something that has been a part of the universities for a longer period. When you have that ecosystem built in where you’ve got people from the previous generation that’s been a part of their culture, then the younger generation is brought into that mindset of, ‘Let’s not only think about what you’re doing right now, but what are the potential avenues that the research could lead to?” As people are doing their research right now (in Canada), that mindset is starting to take place, but the ecosystem overall isn’t quite there yet.

CommerceLab: What about the specific areas like UX design, gamification and interactive display — how lucrative are these in terms of a market opportunity?

D.E.: I definitely do think that the market is there. I think if you look at UI as a whole, people are putting much more emphasis on everything from Web design and interface design, and not just computers but cars and cell phone devices. They’re thinking a lot more than just what the hardware’s like inside. On the gamification side, it’s definitely newer, and something that’s being built on top of the overall UI experience. But if you look at who’s today’s workforce is and who today’s customer is, a lot of them are people who grew up with games. And I think that’s a very powerful way of being able to connect with people in that workforce. But on top of that, a lot of the core elements of gamification have been shown not only to work with that generation, but also with older generations as well. I think it’s a case of really figuring what are the elements that really, really work and work well. I think a lot of people, when they first think of gamification, they think of the basic stuff like the badges. Whereas those may have a limited appeal or work for a limited period of time, we have to figure out what are those elements that will work for longer-term engagements.

CommerceLab: Your career until recently has been more focused on traditional video games at places like EA. What kind of lessons did you learn there that people pursuing gamification could learn from?

D.E.: If you look at a really solid game design in terms of communication, I think a lot of the lessons there definitely carry over. You’re looking at a form of entertainment that in many cases are looking to engage a person for as much as 40, 60, 80 hours, or even hundreds of hours. And a number of the techniques that game designers use are things that can carry over into non-gaming applications. An example would be that inside of the game, you may have a huge, incredible boss that you need to defeat at the end of it. And you say to the player, ‘Hey, by the way, you’re going to be going up against this guy. If you met him right now, he would just crush you in a heartbeat. But we’re going to walk you step by step through this experience, build up your skill set, build up your knowledge base, so at the end of the game, when you do meet this guy, you feel that you do have the tools in order to defeat him.” If you take that same pattern to a weight loss program, if you said, “Hey, you need to lose 60 pounds.” Sixty pounds sounds like just a huge, huge task. It’s a lot of weight for someone to lose. But if you break that down into that same sort of set of goals — say, “The goal this week is to lose a pound, and you’re going to meet that by cutting out this bit of food and a couple of walks.” Walk the person through that program in terms of the steps they’re going to take, celebrate those milestones that the user gets. That’s how you’re able to more effectively create a weight loss program. And that’s how a game designer builds games. It’s not about, “Hey, here’s the end goal,” and in terms of how you get there, “Good luck.” It’s about the steps that will take you through.

CommerceLab: How do you identify the commercialization ideas that are going to work?

D.E.: (laughs) There are definitely times when you’re thinking is, “This may not work.” But you still want to work it through and see if it can work. And sometimes it can just be the slightest little tweak, and now it goes from, “This may not work” to “Yeah, this totally works.” I would say you should look carefully at an idea and strip it down to its basic core. And if there is that one element where people can get hooked on what that idea is, you can build all the systems on top that help with the longevity, the communication, and the social mechanics as well.