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For Loyalty, Major League Gaming Must Be Social

Call-of-DutyThis week, Marketing Daily brings you exclusive coverage of the Brand Keys 2012 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. Each day, expect a full report on key product/services categories from among the 83 surveyed for this year's study, including automotive, electronics, retail and technology. This part of the fourth installment focuses on highlights from the Major League Online Gaming category.

Major League Online Gaming is a new category this year in the Brand Keys 2012 Customer Engagement Loyalty Index, represented by entrants like “Halo,” “Call of Duty,” and “Madden Football.” The category is represented across all brands and categories in this year’s index by "Call of Duty," which enters at No. 11.

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Robert Passikoff -- president of Brand Keys, who says the firm created the new gaming category because of the explosive growth of the segment -- also said there's a definite skew in the top games for shoot-’em-ups with three major experience components driving favorability.

"If you look at the top five, most are 'let’s go kill someone,'" he says. "But what's interesting about it is that the driver is storytelling. The truth is, it's not really just go out and shoot people. You have to create a brand -- you have to maintain something to involve people in terms of the story. And the requirement of real skills has to be a driver."

Passikoff says that the game must also have, built into it, a certain organic quality. "The people who participate in this are part of online teams worldwide; they’re playing as groups. A game has to be able to offer that kind of function, where there is an expectation among players of a certain level of skills."

The third major driver for favorability is the social aspect, per Passikoff. "It's not just you playing alone, it is you sitting in a living room playing with 40 other people from all over the world. This has become a real social event." He says that among respondents, who constitute players whose ages range from 18 to 65 years of age, the core group of players is 18 to 34 for most games, but it skews older for multiplayer games with a pro-sports theme.

Here is the list of top brands in this category:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

2. Halo

3. Battlefield/Madden Football (tie)

4. World of Warcraft/FIFA 2012 (tie)

5. Starcraft 2/Batman Arkham City/Diablo/NBA 2K12 (tie)

6. Crysis

7. Gears of War

8. Elder’s Scrolls Skyrim

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