Let’s talk a little about the advertising media industry.
After a fairly brisk journey on the web for all things “advergaming / gamification”, as expected I came upon many articles both celebrating it’s worth while others boldly stated Advergames as being a load of garbage. The argument would suggest those of the latter probably don’t fully comprehend the underlying phenomenon revolving around why people actively seek to be part of advergaming experiences in the first place. Nor the applied philosophies related.
Game academics have discerned that video games within modern society are used to modulating distinctive communicative types of messages. The more people play games, the more familiar they become to the principles applied, which in turn allows marketeers to take advantage and broaden the scope with regards to deriving value from such game playing activities. Which explains why gamification has become so effective and extremely valuable for those within the marketeering arenas. A lot of that success comes from the recent phenomenon applied from social media sharing, ranking, rewarding…
Obviously each game may follow different principles and have their own ideal scenarios, “game play methodology and objectives” for both player and marketer in mind. More likely whatever game one chooses to produce, they should facilitate the underlying similarities that make a successful Advergame and exploit them. Part of the key challenge is to detect those features and to succinctly comprehend means of taking these critical systems onto a larger scale and determining varying strategies that relate to each and every game they wish to create in order to strike a balance between serious objective and play.
TO boil it down, think of games like Call of Duty and Ipods Smurfs… though completely different games, they still hold similarities that tie together, they understand the current dynamics revolved around the need for players to develop online relationships, they also explore opportunities within the social community via online posts, blogs, articles, leader boards and deliver rewards etc..
Why not pass me a line to discuss other successful solutions that have kept advergaming ‘play’ alive.
Published - dmid 2011 Edition 19