110% agree that it’s the responsibility of Publishers to embrace new mediums within the gaming space rather than bury their heads in the sand. As a genuine enthusiast who would love to experience the type of gaming enhancements you describe in the article, hopefully progressive leaders in the industry are exploring the possibilities as we type…

Those who understand the challenges will be the same people with the foresight to first capitalize on a comparatively untapped landscape. With social networking uptake still far from reaching a critical mass but #s already in the ‘hundreds of millions’, we should all be optimistic.

Shrewd of you to acknowledge that the catalyst for a major shift in mindset towards compatibility between traditional boxed products and social applications could very well be a collaborative partner and media spend…

Finally, I agree with Jason in that the early conversations with the major players could well be turbulent, however bottom line is that if it’s fun, people will play it no matter what it looks like (anyone played Tetris recently?)

The gaming format will always dictate the quality of the brand’s graphical inclusion, but past experience says that most are willing to trade fidelity for extended reach and metrics in this space. But to your point, being proactive and overly-communicative of what the opportunity could entail will hopefully eliminate any surprises on either side of the conference room table!

Something to consider: For publishers of triple-A titles to implement this advice, they will have to overcome an institutional prejudice against using lower-quality graphic images to promote/advertise their luscious games.

The preference for using “enhanced” trailer graphics vs. actual gameplay images in game advertisements may pale before the active resistance to using “simplified” graphics on social media sites.

Imagine the meeting where the publisher’s marketing folks show the game developers the boards for the social media application. There might be some yelling!

So, publishers and their agencies will need to thread the needle carefully in order to successfully step up to the marketing opportunities while “stepping down” the quality of the graphics.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by MafiaWarsGame: Expanding the Gamer Experience: Why the Gaming Industry Should … http://bit.ly/5LImhL…