Tag archives: advergames

Science Museum, edutainment 2.0

From the UK, an interesting example of online marketing used to drive teens to a museum. Created by Preloaded, the site supports the opening of the LaunchPad gallery at London’s Science Museum in November.

It consists of a series of advergames with the aim of teaching people of all ages about all matters relating to physics. More or less it’s a “learning by doing” method.

The games are challenging to play, and this makes the experience fun and rather addictive. Plus there is also a “viral” side of the project: you can create your own physics-based challenges and share them with your friends. Isn’t this edutainment 2.0?

Milk friends for life

It’s always fun to see what people do around the world to promote milk consumption. Today I point you to France, where they’ve launched a campaign featuring a weird (and kind of ugly) character that reminds me of Casper. There is a TV spot (see below), but also a website where kids (and adults) can play and win a bunch of WII.

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Silicon Commander

Intel Hong Kong, via MRM has built a pretty cool online game. Step into a futuristic era where technology is all-encompassing and Silicon is the lifeblood for any and all operations. You are the Superuser… An administrator holding unlimited access privileges within your base of operations, the Domain. Your mission? From your Control Center, you command a fleet of intelligent robots known as Clients who gather Silicon and help you do battle. Some are enabled with advanced technology giving you enhanced manageability, improved security and better performance. Agents of Chaos, including viruses, hackers and spyware are targeting your Clients and affecting your daily routines. Do you have the IT know-how and managerial skills to handle your fleet, control your budget and maximize productivity to gather more Silicon than the competition? I didn’t but had a lot of fun giving it a go.

The Good Food Fight experience

Can edutainment teach Americans (and not only them) how to eat properly? I don’t know whether The Good Food Fight is going to achieve its educational purpose, but the whole thing is amusing and, what interests me more, comes up with an innovative interactive experience. I would say it’s a video advergame, extremely well conceived and developed, with a touch of surprise effect that takes interactivity a step further than usual. Looking at the old lady running and jumping through the site interface is fun, even if hitting her with the food isn’t as easy as it might seem… Unfortunately even if the gaming experience is good, the site is disappointing in the way it delivers the nutritional information. At the end of the game what you get is only a (not so clear) link to the recipe on another site. The game is completely stand alone and doesn’t feature any tip on how to improve your nutrition (not even in the game itself). So in the end this project ends up being a nice exercise in entertainment and a poor example of online communication… too bad!

Advergames around the world

A lazy Sunday afternoon with some time to spend to look through the advergames submissions I’ve received over the last couple of weeks… From Argentina, an advergame by Three Melons for Sony, to promote their Home Theatre device called Muteki. The game is connected to a promotion which includes a reward for every level you overcome. From the US, Water Busters! an edugame launched by the Seattle Public Utilities to teach people how’s important to save water. It’s not exciting to play, but does a good job explaining where you can avoid wasting water.

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My name is Bond, Interactive Bond

James Bond is taking the Web very seriously as you can tell from a series of online initiatives I’ve recently discovered. Unfortunately the outputs are not always as good as they could have been… Let’s see in detail… To celebrate the release of The James Bond Ultimate Edition DVD collection and the Buy Bond Get Bond Free promotional period, MGM Home Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment have launched an interactive insight into the James Bond world using Google Earth technology. Users can click on individual film titles to open up a chronological walk through each of the classic 20 Bond films. Each location is presents info and trivia on Bond’s adventures. Users will also be able to visit the virtual lot at Pinewood Studios, and see some exclusive images from the real home of Mr Bond. The Google Earth James Bond plug-in can be downloaded here.

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M&M’s chocolate and movies challenge

After Virgin’s “Exercise your muscle” and Absolut’s “Bottle Search“, it’s now time for M&M to challenge us with “50 Dark movies hidden in a painting“. Recently launched in the US, the advergame features a Rembrandt’s style painting with a series of visual riddles. Players have to move around the screen and find 5o movie titles represented by the characters populating the painting.

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Merry Xmas, from Coca-Poland

In Poland, Coca-Cola is online with an advergaming site to celebrate the Christmas period. The site features a total of six advergames. I managed to play only a Xmas-Coke version of the popular Chinese game Mahjong, then my score wasn’t good enough to access the second game. And here comes the best part of the site: only the first advergame is open to everybody, all the others require a minimum score to enter. If games are good and funny to play I really think this is a sticky idea to keep people on the site. Sorry but my Polish is not good enough to tell you if there is also a competition associated to the site. If any reader can help… thank you!

Gamevertising network launched

In the US, AtomShockwave has launched the Shockwave.com Immersive Network, a platform that will place multiple advertisers within the company’s popular games. As AdAge reports, the AtomShockwave has already signed Sprint and Sony Pictures to sponsor the first available title “Switch Wakeboarding”. The game site attracts over 20 million unique visitors per month, so the gamevertising (another neologism, bleah!) opportunity is really big, also because the audience is mostly young and therefore particularly difficult to reach through traditional media. According to the Yankee Group in-game advertising a $500 million business, and could top $1 billion by 2010 (but cable TV generates 22 billions…).

Ten football advergames for MBNA

Launchfire Interactive has developed a series of ten advergames for the for MBNA U.S.A. 2005-06 NFL sponsorship. Each game functions the same but is uniquely branded to the participating NFL team. In addition each game broadcasts short rich media ads between quarters to promote the credit card companies (Visa and Mastercard) and their respective 2005-06 NFL promotions. For example, you can check out the New England Patriots or the Denver Broncos game.