Facebook Week: Day Three Game: Street Market

Running my own virtual business and writing argumentatively

For so long time, I’ve heard about Facebook games in which you run a business. Games like Farmville, Fishville, Restaurant City, Café World and Street Market. My children and friends always told me how addictive those games are and how engaging they could be that you may spend hours playing them. I always laughed at them undermining the games’ addiction level. I WAS WRONG!!

For two hours now, I’ve been playing Street Market. I can hear what some of you are saying now..No, I have other things to do.

Anyways, the interesting conclusion I got from Street Market is that it can be a great tool in teaching college students about two basic elements of writing: audience and organization. I’m not kidding! Let me explain how I reached this strange conclusion. For time and place sake, I’ll talk about audience now and leave organization issues to a later post.

When I started playing the game, I always bought certain goods to sell in my store. I watched and found that some of them sell quite fast while others do not. The other remark I had was that some people (customers) came into the store and left without buying anything. They also had a sad face expressing their disappointment. I had to stop and think how to accelerate the business and satisfy most of my customers. I decided to have more items of the best selling clothes, to expand the range of clothes (e.g. add men’s and accessories), and to add a section for music CDs.
The business boomed as a result. More customers came to the store and actually bought things. Additionally, the customer satisfaction rate increased dramatically.

Another thing that emerged in higher levels. Some customers would question one of the products in display (a question mark bubble). At first, I didn’t know how to deal with that. When I ignored that bubble, it turned into a sad, unsatisfied face. When I clicked on the bubble, it disappeared and a green, happy face appeared instead.

So what?? I learned how to address my audience (customers) by varying the displayed items they like, diversifying the brands and makes, and expanding to new products. Isn’t this how we address audience in writing? Analyze our audience, find out what the audience likes, decides on what satisfies and convinces the audience ?!?

At a higher level, students should expect the audience’s questions and objections and know how to deal with them for more persuasion and satisfaction.

Tip of Street Market: know your audience/readers and make sure you have what convinces them; use enough and relevant support and evidence. Pay attention to audience’s questions and answer them as you write. In short, go play Street Market.