Play Games, Win Stuff: Lootsie Brings Real-World Swag To Gaming

Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
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Play Games, Win Stuff: Lootsie Brings Real-World Swag To Gaming

Admittedly, when we had reached the point in gaming where it was entirely possible—if only technically so—to make a living playing video games thanks to various tournaments and the like, we all kind of remembered how it used to be, when arcades offered free prizes in exchange for tickets and tokens and the like (indeed, some arcades used to compress tickets down into small coins which had a ticket value), allowing Skee-ball prowess to be rewarded with stuffed bears or plastic trinkets or the like. Now, that same mechanic is getting a comeback in the form of Lootsie, who recently brought out a new software development kit to give games a whole new level of reward.

With the Lootsie kit, games can add on the ability to generate points for various accomplishments. Said points can then be taken to the Lootsie Marketplace, where said points can be traded in on various prizes, including gift cards for Amazon or Walmart, among a variety of others. Indeed, what Lootsie believes it's hit upon is a way to offer advertising that users won't ignore. That's difficult under the best of circumstances, but with Lootsie, it may just work out. Plenty of mobile games thus far seem to agree with Lootsie's projections, since the Lootsie system is already at work in fully 100 different mobile games, a major achievement in its own right. Prizes, meanwhile, range in value; one prize valued at what seems to be five Lootsie points nets the bearer a free cupcake when another cupcake is purchased, while 70 points get the user a $35 gift certificate for clothes.

This is an idea that might well catch on; indeed, it's a means to give out what amounts to a few free samples, and potentially net some permanent business from gamers. Imagine the frenzy if 500 Achievement Points on Xbox got the user a free large pizza at Pizza Hut! Microsoft has started to do something similar, at last report, though mostly for things in its own ecosystem; expanding outward might be a huge thing for Microsoft, and potentially even the kind of thing that sparks up interest in the Xbox One, a development which could certainly use some spark given how it's selling against the PlayStation 4. Of course, there's nothing stopping Sony from doing likewise, and given how eager both companies are to take on the living room, imagine paying for your Netflix account with Achievement Points.

It's an idea that may well gain some serious ground. While Lootsie is more geared toward the mobile market, there's not much stopping the other figures in the market from stepping in as well. We could well be angling toward a point where, in a sense, advertisers pay for access to us, and then pay us—in free stuff—to traffic certain businesses. It's an interesting idea, though only time will tell if it's one that goes into wide use.

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