Who doesn't love a good game? Be it video, computer, table-top, sports, or whatever else, we all appreciate being able to destroy our opponents in combat/battle/duel. Video games are able to combine this with story-telling, music and visuals to create an artistic product. This product is also an extremely viable media for business owners.
On a recent YouTube channel binge, I saw a video exploring a certain "advergame" from a few years back, Chex Quest. Naturally, the goal of this product was to sell another product, Chex cereal, and raise brand awareness. This trend of games as advertisement is not new, however. Even the Atari VCS featured a number of these.
The question then rises: how effective are advergames as advertisement? To answer that question, we'll look at a few examples. But first, we need to define what a advergame is exactly, and how it is designed to function.
As with any advertisement, the goal of an advergame is to make a consumer aware of a brand, and possibly cause the person to purchase it. Advergames accomplish this by incorporating elements of the brand in some aspect of the game itself: in Chex Quest, for example, the player controls a character designed to resemble a piece of the titular cereal. (This is getting ahead a little, but it is interesting to point out that the game is a first-person shooter, so the Chex-character is not visible during gameplay.) Other games include virtual brand placement in the play-field of the game.
Another type that I'm aware of is the tie-in website. I'm not sure of the exact name, but these sites are linked to popular children's television series and feature games, character bios, product information, etc... (They also ask kids to get their parent's permission. I wonder if anybody actually does that?). These are especially profitable due to low overhead and relative ease at which simple flash games can be put up.
However, because brand placement is relatively easy to do, we will instead focus on the type of advergame that consists of a game-advertisement.
What was one of the causes of the great video game crash of 1983? A glut of video game software, created to capitalize on what some thought would be a passing fad, almost destroyed the video game industry in its infancy. (Well, maybe it wasn't quite so bad, but it was still pretty bad.) Many companies that had no involvement or relation to gaming tried to cash in. For example, Purina released a game (1983) that features a dog chasing a chuck wagon, to promote their Chuck Wagon brand of dog food. (Aptly titled Chase the Chuck Wagon.)
For a little research I attempted to play an emulated version of the game. Through the second emulator I found, I was able to play a little bit. The controls weren't too bad, and the goal was straightforward. The dog begins at center, and needs to navigate a maze while avoiding a pixelated man and a some sort of small flying object. I found that the man was fairly fast, and I barely made it out of the first level. A second bit began, but I had no idea what was going on. Upon further research, I find that the man is a dog catcher and the second bit was a bonus round.
So, you're playing a dog on a journey to get dog food. How effective was this? If the game is marketing dog food, why is it in a format that dogs cannot interact with? Poor Fido!
But in all seriousness, the question still stands. In answer, I will make a small deduction and assume that the game didn't garner much profit. Most "shovelware" games such as this were cranked out by the dozen, regardless of quality or lack thereof. Additionally, two internet review sites, The Video Game Critic, and Honestgamers rated it fairly poorly, giving it D+ and 1 out of 10, respectively. One common complaint against the game is a lack of depth. A consolation, if it can be called that, is that the game is now relatively rare. However, with the availability of ROMs, I would recommend a retrogamer to go that route instead of purchasing the actual cartridge.
Back to the question at hand: How effective are advergames? In this first case, the answer seems to be "Not very." Yes, the game succeeded in becoming a collector's item, but it failed in its initial goal - and contributed to the factors leading to the NA video game crash of 1983.
One key element for advertisements and games is immersion. The simple, repeating design of Chase the Chuck Wagon does not allow for this. Four repeating maps does not create game-immersion. Also, there is not much as far as brand presence. The game's title is on top, and the brand name of the dog food is at the bottom, in color-changing letters, but still largely ignorable. Thus, Chase the Chuck Wagon fails because it is generic and not immersive.
Do later advergames improve on this model, or do they all stay shovelware garbage? Tune in next (insert lengthy time span here) to find out!
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