Let The Games Begin?

I read an interesting piece in Fast Company magazine recently on the Wisdom of Gamers, which suggests that a new type of intelligence or facility is emerging in the generation that plays electronic games as readily as it does street and field games. This confirms what I've seen in my own children and the ease with which they move around virtual worlds in contrast with my own painstaking progress (which has me wondering if I am coming too late to this place and whether this new intelligence is simply beyond me).

Over the last little while, I've heard too that educational planners are looking to draw on the different way that gamers build understanding and acquire skills to add to the more traditional classroom-type learning in our schools.

This raises some important questions for brands. How will the new learners make sense of what we have to offer? What are the building blocks of meaning in this new world?

Whilst I believe that our audiences are unlikely to completely abandon the ways in which they learn about their world for the new game-led intelligence, it's clear that brand story will have to adapt to the new click-and-go thinking that is challenging the more traditional stick-and-ball learning that we did as youngsters.

Hold on to your thinking-caps! We're in for quite a ride.