RES: [casual_games] Advergaming

[Brian Robbins]

There's a lot of mix in terminology around what is an "advergame"  The
definition that I like to go by is that an advergame is a game built
around a particular brand or brand message. Essentially the entire
game itself is an ad. This DOES NOT include games that have ads
embedded into them. That's in-game advertising and a completely
separate type of game development.

An advergame developer has to know that they are primarily working as
an ad agency, and their goal first and foremost is to promote a brand,
message, etc. Secondary to that is making a fun game. Ideally these
two can work in tandem and you can end up with a great game that also
portrays the messaging and brand image for the client.

The challenge for your average every day game developer is that
getting your foot in the door at ad agencies, or even worse, direct to
brands, is extremely difficult! If you want to reach top-tier ad
agencies you need to show a solid body of work, and prove that you are
worth talking to. This is why most developers have horrible luck
trying to repurpose their existing games into an advergame version. By
and large developers don't know how to talk to ad agencies (and
probably don't want to!).

We had a lot of success at Fuel Industries because we understood that
we were an ad agency. Our sales team knew how to talk to advertisers
and marketers, and we focused on doing great work built around brands.
In fact, the only time we didn't meet with a tremendous amount of
success is when we tried to repurpose existing games for new clients.

The thing to keep in mind is that an advertiser/brand has a specific
idea for the message they want to get across, and that you will very
rarely have a game that matches up with that idea. As a result the
best advergame projects are custom-developed games specifically
tailored to meet their needs.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as advertisers are largely
uninterested in keeping control of a game or game engine. In the 6
years I worked in this space I only had 2 projects where we weren't
able to maintain full rights to the game, allowing us to potentially
create our own unbranded version of the game after the advergame had
launched.

As for pricing, if you want to become an advergame developer, and
focus on that aspect of the industry, it can be lucrative. There are
brands and agencies willing to spend $100-$500K on a game experience,
and even a few that will spend upwards of $1 Million. However you
can't get there working on Bejewelled clones with logos slapped in, or
by thinking of this as a way to get a little bit of extra revenue off
of games you've already built.

--
Brian Robbins
Director of Games, Game Trust
http://www.gametrust.com/
Chair, IGDA Online Games SIG and Casual Games SIG
http://www.igda.org/online/   http://www.igda.org/casual/