Games, Games everywhere
April 30th, 2008 Diane
Has anyone noticed how frequently games are used as a commercial ploy? For example, theres dozens of ads on the internet that are like mini shooting games or “click this button” types of games for people browsing the net to play, enticing people to send them information or do a survey through alluring, mindless pea-shooter games. It makes me wonder if there was a survey done to prove that a majority of people are more likely buy into what they’re selling or giving if their banner had a game of some sort. I suppose that those mini games are intriguing little Flash doodads, but how does killing a fly with a swatter or beating the crap out of George Bush have anything to do with getting a free PS3 or taking a survey on a matchmaking site? Is it purposely not suppose to? Is it lying to the consumer by advertising like that? Sorry if I’m just blurting out questions but I just kinda want to get them out there. Really what brought about this post, wasn’t because of those games but for another game.
I’m a member of Total Assault, which is like a club for new musical artists (mostly the metal, rock, electronica kind) and there was a link on the most recent email they sent me…a link to a widget game for Disturbed’s new CD, Indestructible. (Which, if you want to play, is here.) It’s not a fancy game, but I would have to say one of the first games that I have ever seen to actually promote something else. All it is, is a FFR (flashflashrevolution…ie DDR but for your fingers, there’s a whole site for it here). And you just press the A S D F and G keys when the color bar from the top reached the bottom where the keys are. And you basically play kinda like DDR except it’s only to Disturbed’s new songs on their new CD.
I played it for a little while, and you get into a sort of flow even though the music seems less “flowy” than you’d like it to be (I find that since techno music has a way more rhythmic sound it’s easy to get into a trance listening to Trance, like how a lot of the songs for FFR and DDR are like). What interests me is the fact that since get into this sort of flow, you’re not really listening to the music (the beats you press seem to not have too much connection with the music) but sort of absorbing it. And since you’re absorbing the sounds it’s like listening to the music that you’d normally just kinda put on in the car and zone out to (which I do all the time…it’s like a driving flow or something…and yes, I sing…loudly in my car. I probably look ridiculous.) This makes using a game like this almost an ingenious marketing ploy, to me. You don’t really get into that sort of state when you’re on the band’s site, and listening to the tunes while you click away, browsing like Beanie baby sites and stuff. I think it’s because you’re mind is much more active if you’re listening to the music on a site. I was on a music site after I played the game and I kept flipping through the songs (I have a short attention span) so when I’m going through the songs, I only hear about the first 15 seconds. With a game, I’m forced to listen to the ENTIRE song and just let the whole thing sink it, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s forced.
I suppose the whole point to this is just how much games are turning up literally everywhere (especially like movies’ official sites and network channels like USA) and how they’re being sort of used as a commerical commodity.
I know this is literally the last day to respond to these kinda things, but for you last minute bloggers, what do you think about this?
Entry Filed under: Game Log
2 Comments
1. scify_rd | May 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
While I don’t think there was a specific study that said “put flash game banners on your site. People will do whatever it is that you want more often if you do,” it is a known fact that people enjoy interacting with things, and that advertisements that offer some form of interaction tend to have higher interest levels than advertisements that are just words and pictures. This is why you find ads in magazines and such that are folded or cut unusually, or are the connect-the-dots puzzles (saw those for a Jeep ad, I believe) and, more recently online, ads that talk to you, annoying as they may be. The games are there because, honestly, they catch your attention since they move around a bit, are simple and easy to interact with, and can be sort of fun in a quick burst of playing. And if WarioWare has taught us anything, it’s that people love playing micro games for five to ten seconds. As for Disturbed’s widget game, again, people love simplistic games that they can fall into playing. And music almost always makes that easier to do so, whether it’s a direct part of the game (as here) or an indirect part of the game (like most games, where the music only serves as a background sound). Flash Flash Revolution type games are pretty simple as you only have to hit the arrows on time to get a good score, and as long as you have a good sense of beat and the game is coded well, that is fairly easy, at least at the lower levels of play. Getting into the flow of the game and losing track of the music isn’t terribly surprising either. Think back to any games you’ve ever played where the music is simply for background purposes, and think about how very repetitive that music is. Yet you, as the player, likely never really notice that it is, even though you may be listening to the same minute long clip of music for twenty or thirty minutes straight, even though anyone nearby that isn’t also experiencing the game in some likely gets annoyed pretty quickly. Music is something that is very easy for us to attenuate when our focus is shifted elsewhere. While we still experience it somewhat, especially in games like Dance Dance Revolution, our focus is really only peripherally on it. In DDR and its ilk, we pay somewhat more attention than in other games, but really, we’re almost always focusing on the bass and drum lines for those games. I can almost guarantee that the reason so many DDR players know the lyrics to the song is because they either watch other people play or because of sheer repetition: when you hear something so many times, it’s hard not to learn the words.
2. asgoodwin | May 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I think companies are also starting to realize that games can be good advertisement.
Particularly movies - if you go to a movie website, you will often see a game of some sort. I actually thought that <a href="http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/cmp/matrix27_mono.html">this game</a> might come up in our discussion of Columbine, because the killers were Matrix fans and almost definitely played this game, which was available on the movie’s official website (and still is). In the game, you are Neo or Trinity, you choose a gun, and you play the scene where they shoot up everybody to get to the elevator. There is Marilyn Manson (I think? or someone similar) playing in the background.
But that tangent aside, nowadays I think games are becoming a useful tool for advertising in their own right, not just as a part of an ad. Look at America’s Army, which we discussed, which is basically a giant ad for the Army. Then there is Virtual Magic Kingdom, which I’ve mentioned in class, which has no subscription fee but is a giant advertisement for the Disney parks and is one more tool to get kids to bug their parents to take them.
I definitely get what you say about the Warioware aspect of the flash ads (which I don’t tend to see as much since I have adblock and flashblock on in firefox). Some of the ads, even though they are blatant ads for something I would never get, I have played the little flash game for (and so clicked on) because it looked fun or funny. What better way to advertise a mortgage loan than offering to let you punch George W. Bush in the head with a boxing glove?