Your Company Needs a Gaming Strategy

In his new book, Press Play: Why Every Company Needs a Gaming Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025), Bastian Bergmann examines how visionary companies are using games to win over customers. Here’s an excerpt. When Burberry approached Mythical Games, the creator of the renowned blockchain-based video game Blankos Block Party, about introducing its new fashion line through unique in-game characters, the Mythical team, led by cofounder and CEO John Linden, thought it was a joke. But Burberry was serious: it wanted to tap into a new digital audience with vastly different expectations and shopping behaviors. The company had done its homework. Its research into global consumer trends showed that the target consumers didn’t just shop—they interacted with brands on social media, played video games, and prioritized experiences over physical goods. Personalization was paramount. Blankos Block Party, with its open-world, blockchain-based format, was the perfect platform. In the game, players can own, create, buy, sell, and build upon their digital vinyl toys, known as “Blankos.” These Blankos are customizable and come with unique designs and abilities, which are influenced by pop culture and various art styles. Burberry’s goal was to give players an authentic Burberry experience inside the video game. The team created a novel character, called Sharky B, that players could purchase and use as their virtual representation. They could customize this character with virtual Burberry items from the company’s 2021 summer collection, merging high fashion with digital play. With accessories like jetpacks, shoes, and armbands, the limited edition character—only 750 were available—launched just two months after the partnership had begun. At a price of $299.99 per Blanko, the entire collection sold out in 22 seconds. The price tag was high, compared with the average cost of in-game items, but that didn’t discourage players. The price signaled exclusivity, a premium experience, and the opportunity to belong to a special club—not unlike the signals sent by real-world Burberry items. Less than one minute into its video game journey, the fashion company had made $225,000 in revenue. More importantly, it reached a new digital audience while being authentic to its brand. Beyond money, Burberry had created new opportunities as a business, which would bode well for its future endeavors. Many companies today are similarly trying to meet dramatically changed consumer expectations. People desire experiences more than goods and services, because they continue getting value from them long after consumption. Research shows that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when companies offer personalized, deeply immersive experiences, and 64% expect the companies offering these experiences to react and respond to their questions and requests in real time. The data is clear that traditional forms of media and consumer engagement—the tried-and-true marketing playbooks—simply cannot meet these desires. While daily TV consumption decreased by 21% between 2020 and 2024, for example, consumption of digital media is slated to increase by 28% between 2020 and 2026. The key driver of the widening gap? Video games. Games and Gamers Are Everywhere The 3.3 billion people who played video games almost daily in 2024 represent about 60% of the global population that is connected to the internet. The takeaway is this: gaming is a platform and a technological medium unlike any other in how it penetrates our lives. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a gamer, chances are you are exposed to video games quite frequently anyway. My wife, for example, would never describe herself as a gamer, but she has the puzzle game 2048 on her phone and plays often; she also likes The New York Times games bundle, which is they key driver behind the Times success in increasing its digital revenues against the prevailing trends in a challenged publishing industry. Your kids probably play some video games and hang out with their friends inside them. Maybe you or your partner like Wordle. Maybe the person sitting next to you on an airplane is frantically matching items to collect colorful gems; roughly 270 million people play Candy Crush Saga at least once a month. My 65-year-old father-in-law pulls out his phone at every dinner party and gets in a few minutes of Royal Match. An executive at a large insurance company, who my colleagues and I recently met at a conference, confidently proclaimed that she isn’t a gamer—only for her colleague to ask how often she opens Scrabble Go. The next time you are in the office, at a family reunion, or in a public space, keep your eyes open and you see the following: everybody plays games. The myth of the gamer as a lone person in front of a TV in their basement is not only outdated—it’s highly inaccurate. And that’s not just because people play regardless of social, economic, or demographic background. Games are starting to show up in a lot of everyday places. If you watch Netflix or Apple TV+, you’ve likely been prompted to play games that are an expansion of their traditional content offerings. Instagram doesn’t necessarily look like a game, yet at its very core it functions like one, which is a big part of the reason it’s been so successful. The same is true of the well-known language learning app Duolingo. If you’re currently brushing up on your foreign language skills for your next vacation, you might have noticed that the experience looks and feels a lot like a game. The company is pushing its foray into gaming even further with its recent acquisition of mobile game studio NextBeat to bring music classes to users via a dedicated mobile game. Major brands, companies, and nonprofits are getting into games and employing different strategies to master tectonic shifts in consumer expectations and engagement. Here are a few examples: Mastercard issued League of Legends–themed credit cards that allowed players to redeem cashback offers inside the game and unlock special discounts. Louis Vuitton placed its iconic handbag in the same game in the form of a trophy case. Mountain Dew created a soda specifically aimed at gamers that was advertised in Call of Duty. Balenciaga launched its latest fashion collection virtually in Fortnite before it premiered on runways in Milan, Paris, and New York. By selling in-game items in PUBG, SpongeBob, and others, WRTHY and the Eleanor Crook Foundation realized 10,000 days of treatment for malnourished children in under 26 hours. Peloton let its riders immerse themselves in a bike-racing video game while they’re burning calories, paving the way for the company’s goal of becoming an immersive, connected fitness platform. The commitment with which these companies are pushing into video games demonstrates how play is serious business. The benefits they—and potentially you—are able to reap are profound. Games allow your customer engagement efforts to scale quickly and globally, and to reach millions of consumers through a dedicated touchpoint that you can shape to represent your brand and align with your goals. No other channel, not even social media, offers this. The Case For Games Engagement with your content, brand, and products will be far higher through games than through your website, let alone offline touchpoints. This engagement can be continuous, ensuring that you stay top of mind throughout the modern customer journey. Games can help your company become a part of new communities, interact with customers ongoingly and in real time, and develop far stronger brand identity and loyalty than ever before. Case in point: 86% of consumers who purchased a virtual item inside of a video game also purchased the corresponding physical item. You will also gain invaluable data and insights, at scale, from your target audience, allowing you to mitigate risks and lower costs in research and development while increasing revenue. These kinds of benefits are a major reason Microsoft decided to double down on its gaming strategy by acquiring Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in 2023, the largest acquisition in the computing giant’s history. Video games are the consumer touchpoint of the 21st century, and they’re pushing companies to reimagine their approaches to a range of services. Former PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman put it this way: “People play video games every day. They also make multiple payments every day. But they only use PayPal a few times per week. I wonder if there is anything we can learn from the world of video games and apply it to the world of payments.” From dynamic consumer brands to more traditional B2B firms, I’d argue those lessons are relevant to every industry and company. Bastian Bergmann is the author of Press Play: Why Every Company Needs a Gaming Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025), from which this article is excerpted. Buy it here

Your Company Needs a Gaming Strategy

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