In this conversation, Kelly Leonard interviews Bastion Bergmann, co-founder and COO of Solston, about the significance of play in human experience and its implications for business strategy, particularly in gaming. They discuss how gaming can serve as a powerful tool for engagement and marketing, illustrated by Burberry’s innovative approach to integrating their brand into a video game. The discussion also covers the creative development process in gaming, the importance of understanding the audience, and the cultural impact of gaming in relation to sports.

Reading your book reminded me of a great George Bernard Shaw quote: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” 

“I don’t think I have anything to add to that. That about sums it up. Another quote that comes to mind around the importance of play is what Plato supposedly said, or at least it’s attributed to Plato, where he says, ‘Show me how you play and I can tell you who you are.’ And I think that quote in conjunction with the one that you shared – that’s really what it’s about.  From an evolutionary perspective, there’s almost nothing that’s fundamentally more human than to play.” 

There was a point some years ago where we figured out our customers didn’t want to buy “play.” They would buy improv skills to help teams – but if we framed it as “play,” they weren’t buying it. 

“You’re hitting on an important point. There’s this stigma around play: that play’s not serious. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. What’s interesting about what you just shared is it’s symptomatic of the challenge that gaming as an industry has in terms of its perception of the potential and the potency that it has for companies and brands to leverage it as a medium, as a touch point to engage consumers, because there’s all these stereotypes around it. There’s the stereotype of ‘a gamer:’ some18-year-old dude in a basement, slinging Red Bull cans with neon lights in the background and they’re blowing stuff up on their computer screen when they’re playing a shooter game. And the reality is, that is a stereotype. I’m not saying that persona doesn’t exist. They absolutely do exist, but it’s a minority if you look at the global gaming population. And here’s the reality: almost three and a half billion people now play games regularly. So, it’s not just a young audience.” 

One of the many fascinating examples you write about is how Burberry made a deal with a gaming platform to market virtual characters and a clothesline.  

“So, they integrated with this game called Blankos, which is a really cool sandbox open world game. You could do a bunch of stuff with it. That’s why it was a really good fit because it allowed for a lot of self-expression, a lot of creativity, and a lot of freedom. You could do a lot with the characters in the game. Long story short, they launched a limited-edition character set, 750 of them, $300 a pop per character alongside a virtual clothing line. So that was basically mirroring their latest runway collection that they had so you could dress up your character. People were able to trade these items and there was an after-sales marketplace so you could see if you had a character and that was like a really unique one and it was appreciating in value. And the crazy thing is it took 22 seconds to sell out all of those characters. They made over $220,000 in 22 seconds. I think the money is one component, but more importantly, it took them 22 seconds to literally crack the door wide open to an entirely new consumer demographic that they up until that point had been completely out of touch with.”