Marketing

Origins International Games Expo is our consumer show. Here, game players from across the US and around the world come to play their favorite games, meet game designers, and buy the newest releases from publishers. Origins is the ultimate direct-to-consumer marketing experience for game publishers, a great opportunity for game retailers, and a solid venue for the strengthening and building of the game-playing community.

Games In Education: This program strives to teach educators how they can use games in their curricula. Anchored by the Teacher’s Hall Pass program at Origins and our Games in Education Booklets, our staff has also been attending educational conferences and reaching out to educational organizations. In addition to attending several teacher’s conferences, GAMA is on the cusp of another positive change with a program to offer lesson plan outlines and lists of matching standards in the next printing of our GiE Brochures. 2006 was also be the first year that the Teacher’s Hall Pass Program is officially open to Librarians and School Administrators, which will increase attendance and help get the word out about the positive and educational nature of many of our games.

National Advertising Campaign: To help our retail members spread the word about their stores and the fun of games, GAMA created three generic “Let’s play a game!” commercials that include time at the end for custom information (in TV parlance, to “tag” the ad with the store's info). The ads became available to free to all GAMA members starting on 2005. Each tape includes three ads (15, 30, and 60 seconds), and comes with instructions on buying ad time with your local cable company to target your customers either by geography or interest. The ads come on Betacam SP tapes, which is the format the TV industry prefers.

Origins Awards: Presented by GAMA’s Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, the Origins Awards recognize the gaming industry’s top achievements and products released during the previous year. Now in its 32nd year, the Academy strives to create national recognition and prestige for these awards, and reward innovation and achievement in our industry.

Industry Watch Committee: Led by Michael Stackpole, the Industry Watch Committee helps stores and publishers deal with negative press about games. Luckily you don’t hear much about our work in this area as Mike’s done a great job handling issues.

Retail Locator: To assist in the sale of more games, GAMA offers a retail locator on our Web site for people looking for game stores to use. Our list of retailers is also available in one file for our members to use in their marketing efforts. New in 2005, we cleaned our retailer database for the first time in years, making the resource far more useful.

What is Gaming? Web Site and Pamphlets: We started this in 2005, and plan to expand the program for 2006. We have written pamphlets for all of the gaming genres to help in educating new players, parents, and so forth.

TV-Turnoff Week: GAMA partnered with the TV-Turnoff Network to promote game playing as a great activity during TV-Turnoff Week 2006, April 24-30. TV-Turnoff Week gives GAMA-member retailers a great opportunity to showcase the industry's products to a whole new audience while taking a positive stand in their communities.

Games to Troops: The troops overseas are never far from our minds and hearts. We are already working with the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation departments of each of four service branches, and will put together packages of games and gaming supplies (on a donation basis) to send overseas to the MWR centers of our servicemen and women.