Games people play
Does bringing game shows to your cell phone make wireless carriers savvy or just plain desperate?
See correction below
IF SCOFFING AT someone else’s pedestrian taste makes you feel better, then read this column. I myself am trying mightily to resist the temptation to scoff, but it is hard.
It appears that “The Price is Right,” “Family Feud,” and many more game shows are coming to a cell phone, as well as any other wireless device, nearest you.
I’m not talking about streaming video; rather, the cell phone carriers — AT&T Wireless, Verizon, NexTel, and others — will offer interactive home user versions of these games to subscribers. The version of “The Price is Right” will feature 60 different pricing games. “Family Feud” players will try to guess responses to survey questions, as on TV.
Winners get prizes, but all players earn points that can be redeemed for sponsor merchandise.
Recently, the week’s high scorer of a word game called Jumble won a round-trip ticket to any of the cities Alaska Airlines services. Now, the winner in this particular case was online unscrambling for a total of 64 hours in a single week.
I spoke with Brian Levin, president of Seattle-based Mobliss, implementer of the technology and licensee of the game shows from FreemantleMedia. Levin’s technology and marketing company (now there is a dangerous combination) will be rolling out these services on the simplest SMS (Short Message Service) services to WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones and eventually to 2.5G (2.5 generation) and 3G phones.
Mobliss hosts the games and provides what amounts to thousands of different formats necessary to deliver viewable content to multiple device types over myriad carrier technologies.
Mobliss also will bring the Proctor & Gambles and Unilevers of the world to the same table as the wireless carriers offering everyone, Levin believes, a way to sell more of their products — be it air time, Pringles, or Dove soap.
Levin says “leisure services” will have tremendous appeal. Jumble already has 250,000 subscribers. “You either want to save time or waste time,” he said, and the cell phone is good for either.
And here’s a take-away for content providers that want to appeal to business users: Although text entry for cell phones is miserable and data flow is slow, the strength of the medium is that it can create a sense of urgency.
For Levin, that means sending an alert to someone in a fantasy football league to make a trade immediately. That’s not a far stretch from financial trading or closing a sale as quickly as possible.
What is most enjoyable about talking with Levin is his optimism and opportunism. “Some say there is no killer app. The fact of the matter is, they are wrong. [It’s] not a question of if there is a killer app but what it is that will make consumer use take off. If anybody has as good a shot at finding the killer app, it is us.”
And whatever your taste in cell phone programming, you know somewhere in your heart of hearts, Brian Levin is right.
Correction
In this column, we misspelled Procter & Gamble.
