EA takes Grand Slam Tennis to Facebook

Advergames are moving to Facebook or, better, are moving where people are. EA Games has just launched “Quick Challenge”, an interactive Facebook application, to support the release of its new title: EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis.

Quick challenge is a revised version in a tennis mood of the popular game (among our granpas’) “rock, paper, scissors”. The gaming mechanism is therefore pretty straightforward: you pick an avatar (both Rafa Nadal and John McEnroe are available!), you select your three shots: lob, slam, drop shot and then watch it play out against your opponent who gets challenged within Facebook itself.

Once your friend has accepted the challenge, the cool part begins, as you see the three shots in action with real game images taken from the videogame (and this is a nice new way to experience the game they want you to buy).

I must say that I’m always rather skeptical when I receive invites from friends on Facebook, and I tend to ignore them. I believe the brand can really make the difference in driving acceptance of such invitations. In three days the game has been played over 40.000 times, and we can definitel expect it to go viral, given the quality of the execution and the ease of its mechanism.

The agency is Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam.