RES: [casual_games] Advergaming

[Chris Williams]

This is a little offtopic, but only a little...

I worked on an advergame of sorts for RJ Reynolds (yes the cigarette
company) about 6 years ago.

Yes, yes... I know, the evil megacorp... but before you start laughing, it
was actually part of their youth anti-smoking campaign (I believe it was
called Right Decisions, RIght Now.)

It was a fairly simple baseball style game built in Flash.  The intent,
ironically, was to promote other fun activities (such as sports) for
kids *instead
of* using their products.

Just thought I'd toss that one in.  It was a fun project.

Chris


On 4/12/06, Brian Robbins <brian-l at dubane.com> wrote:
>
> 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/
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>
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