Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

New Products for Impatient Millenialls/Generation-Y Gamers

Continuing my search for new online trends today. Those of you who market to or conduct research among Millenials, or Gen Y as we prefer to call them at Anderson Analytics (Gen X2Z.com), are probably familiar with one of the several generational characteristics that seem to define them, impatience.

If you also happen to be a gamer and enjoy RTS (Real Time Strategy), I still love playing a good game of AOE on occasion (Age of Empires); you are likely to be all too familiar with this trait. Gen Y gamers seem far more likely to stop playing a game online at the outset if the game play has not developed in their favor within the first few minutes. The term Good Game or “gg” (the common online acronym) no longer means what it used to.

Gone is the gentlemanly protocol of chess and good sportsmanship most of us older gamers embrace. So what does this mean for us marketers?

Understanding Gen Y better, including their impatient streak, can help us improve marketing and product development for the segment. A good example related to gaming specifically is Achron as illustrated in the demo video above.

Rather than giving up after 5 minutes of play, Gen Y gamers can travel back in time to before they started losing. Mistakes are no longer permanent, only temporary; everything and anything can be undone.

I’ll probably give this game a shot, but not sure if my more linear Gen X thinking will allow me to enjoy it as much. However, I will be thinking about other ways products, services and marketing messaging needs to be tweaked for Gen Y in our Next GenX2Z study.

What do you think, would you enjoy Achron? Know of any other ‘impatience marketing’ examples out there?

@TomHCAnderson