CIO — Because kids have been known to change their minds almost as often as they blink, Joyce Harris understands that she and her staff face constant challenges in luring children to The United States Mint’s website, www.usmint.gov. But The U.S. Mint has been doing it, and doing it well, since Harris came aboard as a division chief of Web content in 1999.
Two years earlier, in April 1997, former President Clinton asked 30 federal agencies to find ways to "enrich the Internet as a tool for teaching and learning." The Mint was eager to answer Clinton’s call, but it struggled to find the best way to attract kids raised on Sony PlayStations and PokŽmon and keep their attention long enough to teach them about the role of currency in the history of the United States.
Harris looked around the Web for the answer and found pieces of a solution at sites such as Cartoonnetwork.com, Clevermedia.com, Disney.go.com and Web Business 50 winner AtomShockwave’s Shockwave.com. She saw hundreds of interactive games, from simple jigsaw puzzles and card games to revivals of arcade classics to new 3-D titles. And millions of Americans were playing. In 2000, about 35 million people played games online, according to a study by Jupiter Media Metrix. The company believes that that number will reach 45 million by the end of this year, and more than 100 million by 2005.
While the Mint is going after the kids, companies such as Web Business 50 winner Ford, Microsoft and Siemens are hoping that their online games will appeal to an older audience as well. And there’s every reason to believe that they will. A May 2001 survey by Boston-based Yankee Group found that 60 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds and 56 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds play an online game at least once a week. This year, many companies with a strong Web presence are using games to attract customers, expose them to branding messages, and collect user data and sign them to mailing lists. This strategy, in which advertising and marketing objectives are blended into an online game, is known as advergaming. Companies are spending anywhere from a few thousand dollars (for a two-dimensional Java-based game) to several hundred thousand dollars (for a 3-D game) because they believe play will pay off in name recognition and positive impressions. At the same time, many other organizations are successfully marrying educational and training materials with games?known as edutainment?to satisfy their audiences and reach their business objectives.
