Atari Licenses Too Good to be True
August 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Our readers probably know well my interest, even obsession, with both the Atari VCS and licensed games. As Nick and I put the final touches on our forthcoming book on the Atari, I've been doing a lot of final fact confirmation online. In the process of doing so this weekend I fell upon some of the best ideas that, alas, never really were for the system, thanks to the Van Gogh-Gogh's comedy site. The first: Interactive 8-tracks! We've discussed music-game tie ins before (1, 2), but nothing compares to the concept of a double-ender 8-track/Atari VCS game. The fake ad ...

You'll wish it had stayed dead
August 4, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

To promote Universal Pictures' new film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the studio created an advergame, Chariot Chase Down Game. Go ahead and play it. It's almost as good as the film, which garnered an impressive 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. ...

Return to Death Race
August 3, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The 1975 film Death Race 2000 inspired the 1976 arcade game Death Race, by Exidy. In the game, players tried to run over abstract figures meant to represent "gremlins" with an equally abstract car. The game sparked the first major media controversy around videogames and violence. In three weeks, Universal will release a remake of the film. The studio surely knows about the game, so it's interesting to note that the official website offers two links: Watch the Trailer and Play the Game. The game in question is an advergame intended to promote the film, one that has little to ...

Coupongaming
July 28, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Here's an interesting advergame for the home solar system manufacturer Sungevity. The game is Solar SFUN, and it takes two forms. The first is a trivia game of the usual variety. The second is a Tetris-like puzzle game, in which you try to cover a roof with solar panels. The games are simple, but there's an interesting feature at work. By playing successfully, you can earn up to $100 off an installation of home solar panels (sorry, California residents only). Or you can transfer the value, or have Sungevity donate 1% of it to an environmental charity. Getting the full ...

Slim Jim's Virtual World of Meat Stick
July 3, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Slim Jim, makers of fine dry meat snacks, have a launched virtual world for "people who want to explore their spicy side." This inspired locus, dubbed Spicy Town, is a "wild place where people can create a unique alter ego that’s a little aggressive, insane, adventurous, and mischievous." So say Slim Jim's PR agency, which encourages me to let you all know that, once you've created your Spicy Side avatar, you can "challenge other users to real-time rumbles, talk smack, or just hang out in the immersive digital Spicy Town where you can cruise around and break mailboxes, spray paint ...

HGTV Interior Design Game
June 30, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

HGTV has a reality show called Design Star, which is apparently like American Idol or The Apprentice but for interior design. They have an advergame up that's actually, miraculously vaguely related to the theme of the show. It's called Design Star Shuffle, and it's basically a reskinned version of the puzzle boardgame Rush Hour. Instead of moving cars, the player moves sofas and other furniture. It's not a bad idea, and a reskin of a proven design is probably better than a crappy new one, as is so often the case with film and tv advergames. But it's disappointing that ...

Half off OMMA Gaming registration for WCG readers
June 19, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

If you're interested in advertising and games, you might be interested in OMMA Gaming, a one-day conference on marketing and games in San Francisco on 22 July. You can get a 50% registration discount with the code PERS395, which takes it down to $250 from $500 for early bird (through tomorrow, 6/20), and down to $300 from $600 for normal registration. Here's a longer description of the event from the organizers: OMMA Gaming is the premier one-day conference designed to overcome one of the biggest disconnects in media, the missed opportunity of marketing in and around the video game experience. ...

Boostin' Nuts
June 12, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Jeep has a new advergame on Facebook to promote the new edition of their Liberty small SUV. In the game, called Boostin' Nuts, the player controls a flying squirrel who needs to land on acorns to stay in the air. Some give more points than others, and others take points away or knock your squirrel off course. If you don't use Facebook or don't want to log in to the application, you can play the game on Jeep's games website as well. As a web-based casual game, Boostin' Nuts is pretty good, although the design clearly stolen straight from one ...

Sun's Identity Hero
May 28, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

It's been a while since I've seen a thoughtful online advergame. Here's one that surprises on a number of levels. Sun has a new game called Identity Hero, an arcade-action game that features features from the company's Identity Management Solutions, which is apparently some suite of IT management tools for compliance, network, and auditing management. In the game, you take the role of an IT Manager trying to avoid various threats, using the software products as powerups. The game is cute and high production value, but more importantly it does what so few advergames bother to do: it simulates (albeit ...

Me on Advertising and Games in the Guardian
May 2, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

If you read the Guardian, you may have noticed that they are running a series of articles and opinion pieces as a part of a self-declared "games week." Richard Bartle and John Kirriemuir already offered great pieces on games and censorship and games and learning, respectively. I wrote a piece that ran yesterday on games and advertising. The refrain is probably familiar to readers here, but I'll excerpt a bit nonetheless: But the features of videogames that make them powerful communication tools cannot be found in their demography, or their puerility, or their peculiarity. Rather, they are located in the ...

We pwn free games
March 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

PC World's new list of "101 Fantastic Freebies" is out in the forthcoming May 2008 print issue, also available online now. There's a category for games, and I'm happy to say that two of the nine on the list are Persuasive Games titles. One is our send-up of the TSA, Airport Security, and the other our satire of Kinko's, Disaffected. Woo! ...

Parking Wars on Facebook
December 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

This isn't the first Facebook advergame, but it's the first I've seen that really tries to take advantage of the service's social graph. There is a new A&E television series called Parking Wars, which starts in January. The subject of the show is probably the only division of the police force not yet to have their own reality/documentary series: metermaids and parking enforcers. Parking Wars the game is a Facebook game built to promote the show. It's very simple. When you add the app you get your own street with a handful of spaces. Some have special rules, like only ...

Spurn-A-Bear
December 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

You know Build-A-Bear? It's a retail store that allows kids to construct custom plush toys by choosing different styles, parts, and accessories. I recently learned via Leigh Alexander that the company is about to release a virtual world based on their gimmick. As much as I loathe these kiddie virtual worlds, the concept behind Build-A-Bearville does make some sense. When you purchase a real bear, you can get an avatar version as well and play minigames with it in the virtual world. Sure it makes me want to claw my eyes out of my head and feed them to the ...

Stella Artois 14th Century Brewing Games
November 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Belgian brewer Stella Artois has a new ad campaign, and they've published a new website with a complex fictional history of the Stella Artois brewing process, circa 1366. Dubbed "Le Courage," the site combines live-action video with occasional, simple games like trying to balance the (flat) world so the barley harvesters don't fall off its edge. The production values are high even if the games are pretty basic and not particularly playable. I've been meaning to write something about advertisers' obsession with live action film/video and how they insist on integrating this medium into Flash games, even though it's not ...

Alternate Reality Games Seminar
September 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Despite their interesting features, Alternate Reality Games like The Beast and ilovebees really got their start as marketing campaigns. Since World Without Oil, there has been growing interest in using ARGs for serious purposes. Game community Unfiction is sponsoring a one-day event, Embrace the Chaos, to help people understand how to use these games. The cost is $175 before Sept 30 and $200 thereafter. I think it's a bit unfortunate that the organizers have positioned the event toward marketers ("Alternate Reality Games and online experience marketing when done correctly create a powerful connection between the audience and you"), but I ...

PETA's KFC Anti-Advergame
August 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I've previously suggested the term anti-advergames, games that critique a company's products or business practices rather than promoting them. Disaffected! is one, as is Molleindustria's McDonald's Videogame. Here's a new anti-advergame from PETA, the animal rights organization, created as a part of their ongoing campaign against KFC's breeding and slaughtering practices. The game is Super Chick Sisters, and it's a detailed, high production-value platform game that copies not only its premise but even its characters from Super Mario Bros. The plumbers are replaced by chicks, and the princess is Pam Anderson (who serves as a spokeswoman for the campaign in ...

Microsoft Live Maps lose their bearing
August 17, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

We've been a little remiss in our coverage of advertising games of late, and I'm going to try to correct that over the coming weeks. Let's start with Microsoft Live Derby 2007, a browser game agency EVB created for Microsoft to promote the latter's Google Maps competitor, Live Search Maps. Map mash-ups have been all the rage for a while now, but this is a pretty involved version of the concept. I'd characterize the game is a vaguely wacky combination of Rally X and Pac-Man (two arcade games that shared the same hardware, as it happens). The player chooses one of ...

Nielsen uses television tech to measure game ads
July 25, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

In my new book Persuasive Games, I argue that the advertising industry measures its success not with evidence but with collective hallucination. In the case of television, the ad industry invented a set of (nearly arbitrary) metrics, which all the agencies adopted, and therefore which all the brand managers used (and continue to use) to explain the amount of exposure, and therefore value, particular television programming commands. The brilliant thing about this method is that it doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, just that everyone in the ad industry buys into it. In-game ads pose a problem to marketing ...

Vintage Vinyl Music Games
June 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Boing Boing points to a fantastic site about videogame bonus content on vinyl LP records. You would have to record the proper portion of the album to cassette and then run the cassette in your computer (most of these were Sinclair Spectrum programs). Among the more detailed of these games and demos is a Thompson Twins graphical adventure game "you guide the Thompson Twins around a land of beaches and caves." The game has even been archived for download or online play. There are a lot more examples. We could consider these advergames, given the "bonus" of getting the game ...

Sears Advergames
May 30, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Sears, the department store you probably forgot about, has a set of three new advergames to promote their wares. The first is Rush Rider, in which the player uses a rocket-powered forklift with tractor beam to retrieve and deliver online orders in a warehouse. It's actually pretty cute and the best of the three games. The second is Hands-On Fitness, is a Track-and-Field style game. Hit the arrow buttons in the familiar sequence to run on a treadmill. Forgettable. The third is Craftsman Mow Down, a sort of side-scrolling mowing game. The player is supposed to mow as much grass ...

Games on Amazon.com?
May 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Not videogames for sale, but online games. I happened onto the following headline during an impromptu visit to Amazon.com today (click to make it bigger): From the looks of it, you'd think that Amazon had their own online advergames. But when I clicked the links, they just took me to the product pages for the corresponding films. Anybody know what's up? ...

Advertising and Ecology: Planet Green Game
April 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Starbucks Coffee and Global Green USA have created Planet Green Game, a game about energy conservation and consumption. The game is set in a hypothetical town called Evergreen. The player chooses a character and transportation mode (foot, skateboard, bicycle, and three types of automobiles, each with different emissions). A variety of energy-related minigames are scattered throughout the town -- a MPG management driving game at the service station, a click-to-fix energy waste game at home, a build a city park game, a quiz at the school and city hall, and energy-efficient shopping memory game at the building supply store. ...

Turning the Tables on In-Game Ad Design
April 3, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest column, Turning the Tables on In-Game Ad Design. The column takes a new branded edition of Monopoly as an introduction to how designers might consider moderated use of in-game ads design tools rather than just colonizing forces. In addition to promotion, in-game ads and product placements also have the potential to carry the cultural payload of the brands that mark them. Such inclusion signals a design strategy different from visual authenticity—after all, it doesn’t really matter much whether billboards and sports arenas carry real ads or fake ones. Instead, brands might be used in the ...

Track your Viral Games (in the UK anyway)
April 2, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

UK-based Viral Chart is a "viral traffic monitoring tool." In addition to video ads, they also maintain a list of viral games all over the web, aggregating the results together in one report. In addition to the usual advergames, two of the top ten are educational games, Snack Dash from School Food Trust and How does your garden grow? from Growing for Life. The list seems to track UK-only content, but there's also a Japan version (in beta of course). (via Marketing the Buzz) ...

Monster.com Crap in the Door
February 13, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I frequently get emails from PR agencies hocking their clients lousy advergames. I usually save these up, but I realized that it's been too long since we railed on a crappy advergame. Here's Foot in the Door, from Monster.com, the job ad website. According to the press release, the game is "a fun, interactive way for job seekers to relax while making fun of the experience of getting into an interview, and the hurdles they find in the process." To play the game, you throw feet. At doors. If this were just a cute game that they threw up for ...

My new column: When advergaming backfires.
January 17, 2007 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Remember me? I used to have a life and even regularly post on this blog. Well, I'm still alive and even though my dissertation manuscript is not finished, it's getting there. In any case, Serious Games Source has posted my new column about the infamous 2004 Intel IT Manager advergame. If you have been around with us for the last couple of years, you probably read our posts on the subject (1, 2). Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the story on how not to do a serious advergame. ...

My new column: Promogames, Another Kind of Advertising Game
January 2, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Serious Games Source has published my latest Persuasive Games column, this one on Burger King's recently released Xbox 360 games. In the article, I suggest that we think of these games as promotions, not advertisements: I give the name promogames to video games whose primary purpose is to promote the purchase of a product or service secondary or incidental to the game itself. These Burger King games work by giving gamers a reason to buy Burger King hamburgers, not by telling gamers why they should buy those burgers over other burgers, or over fried chicken. While advergames promote the company, ...

Raiders of the Lost Mouth
December 18, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

This is one of the weirdest advergames I've ever seen. Fuel Industries has created a fairly involved graphical adventure game in support of Reach toothbrushes for the Canadian market. The game, Mr. Reach in the Mouth of Mystery, features the Reach mascot on a sort of Indiana Jones like adventure throughout Canada. Canadian residents who create an account will be eligible for prize drawings, but the rest of us can only, uh, enjoy a truly bizarre advergame experience. ...

Preview Bogost's New Book, Persuasive Games
December 11, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

My new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, which will be published in spring 2007, now has an official page up at the MIT Press site. This is the major research project I've been working on for the last couple years, and I'm really excited about getting it out there. The main argument in the book is that videogames exemplify a new form of rhetoric, which I call procedural rhetoric. Then I look at a multitude of examples, from early arcade games to very contemporary games. The book is very readable and should appeal to researchers, developers, and ...

Enter the Holiday Advergames
November 26, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

There's often a big rush of holiday-themed advergames starting around this time of year. Here's the first one I've encountered: Shave Santa. It's sponsored by the electric shaver manufacturer Remington and the goal is to shave Santa's unwieldy beard. Created by Sway. ...

Creepy Burger King on Xbox 360
November 20, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to Brian over at Kotaku for reminding us that the Burger King Xbox 360 advergame / promo games are now available. All three feature the creepy King BK mascot. Pocket Bike Racer is a kart-style racing game, Big Bumper is a bumper car game, and Sneak King is a ... strange stealth action game wherein the player sneaks up on unsuspecting people and delivers them lunch. The games cost $3.99 a piece. One Kotaku commenter notes that they are "worth the price you pay for them," which is to say "they suck for the most part." Another offers positive, ...

StrawberrWii Banana Slurpee
November 9, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Even though we talk about advergames here, we usually don't talk about videogame marketing itself. But every now and then there's reason to. This morning I awoke to a strange banner ad on my usual visit to CNN.com. For 7-11. And Wii. I can buy a StrawberrWii Banana Slurpee and enter to win a Wii. Check out the, uhm, Slurpee straw guy uttering strange pseudo-slang on the site. Marketing promotions often have a charming non-sequitur to them, but StrawberrWii? I guess, erm, sometime after drinking it one does have to... well, you know. ...

Ohmigod, I'm like totally going to the virtual mall
October 24, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Paul Hemp points us to a Harvard Business Review article on the future of e-tailing in virtual worlds. The article claims that e-commerce is going to shift from web transactions to online simulations of shopping, via virtual malls in 3d worlds. The usual references to American Apparel's store in Second Life, but goes beyond virtual stores as advertisements to suggest that shoppers will meet up online to go shopping. Sociologist Bob Moore calls it a return to the "social and recreational aspect of shopping." I'm probably cynical about everything these days, but I wonder if a return to the shopping ...

Right to Bore Arms (and new columns)
September 26, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Gonzalo and I each have a new column at Serious Games Source, the serious games arm of CMP's popular website Gamasutra. The first installment in my "Persuasive Games" column is up now, titled The Right To Bore Arms, about a new NRA-licenced game. ... By making firearms boring, slow, and arduous, NRA Gun Club might actually perform the rhetoric many people, including myself, have previously laughed-off as politicking and fabrication: the responsible handling of firearms. One might even go so far as to say that NRA Gun Club owes most of its rhetorical power to the commercial FPS. The very ...

Disaffected! Universal Binary for Intel Macs
September 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

One of the nice things about getting mentioned in the NY Times Magazine is that a lot of people then email you about how they can't run your game. Intel Mac users: a Universal Binary is now available. Please be gentle with our bandwidth; if you have a PPC Mac, just grab the old PPC-only version, which is almost half as big. We'll be moving all of these to mirrors and sites like download.com in the near future, methinks. ...

NYTimes: Gaming the System
September 3, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

It's really a nice feeling to open the newspaper on Sunday morning and find your friends on it. Ok, I didn't really open the paper but I did open the webpage :) The New York Times runs today a story -Gaming the System- about Ian's Disaffected! It also features Persuasive Games, the McDonald's Videogame, good ol' Georgia Tech along with some interesting questions about if Ian's Kinko's game is legally protected as parody. If it is not, you can always request asylum in Uruguay ;) Congrats Ian! ...

Branded Sudoku: Snakes, DaVinci
September 3, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

My grasp of the world lessens daily. Today it's curious branded sudoku puzzle books Snakes on a Sudoku and The Sudoku Code. Maybe "branded" isn't the best characterization here -- it's more like sudoku books skinned with pop culture icons. I haven't seen The Sudoku Code, which seems to be the more interesting one, but I did flip through Snakes on a Sudoku today. I can assure you that there are snakes on every single puzzle. Or around them, at least. ...

M&M's Goban
September 1, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Almost three years ago, when Mars released the first black and white M&M's, I lamented the fact that they hadn't printed a small goban on the inside of the package, creating a $0.65 game of edible Go. There's still no goban inside the package, but now you can get a lovely mini goban crafted especially for use with M&M "stones." According to creator Ron Konzak, this hand-crafted 9x9 line board is crafted of Alaskan yellow ceder. You can order one yourself for $39.95 + shipping. ...

Free Ad-supported Mobile Games
August 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

One of the ongoing complaints about in-game advertising is the fact that, unlike television, radio, and print, game adverts are not removing or even subsidizing the cost of videogames for consumers. In fact, console videogame prices are rising, even as advertising messages in games are increasing. Who wants to pay more to be marketed upon? Well, here's an interesting example of the opposite strategy: free games supported by advertising. ...

Viacom/MTV buys Atom Entertainment
August 10, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Viacom's MTV Networks division has bought Atom Entertainment, who run Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com (which we've linked to recently for a few newsgames), AtomFilms.com, and AddictingClips.com. The acquisition price was a respectable $200 million. This is an interesting acquisition for a few reasons. The rest of the world will probably note that the broadcast/media conglomerate ownership of a short films portal like Atom Films and the YouTubesque AddictingClips will offer new opportunities for moving niche and grassroots/fandom films up and down the broadcast chain. But most important to note for our audience is this fact: the acquisition of two casual games portals ...

Review of Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins
August 1, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I read Henry Jenkins's new book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide this weekend. The book is a short, smart, buttery read on a hot topic, and it is sure to draw both popular and academic interest. Jenkins is a multifaceted media scholar, a critic of vaudeville, fan fiction, comics, film, games, and more. He is also the founder of the Education Arcade, an MIT group interested in the intersection of videogames and learning. And so, even though the book addresses games as a minority subject, I offer this review to alert our readers to Jenkins's current thinking. ...

The OC mobile game
July 31, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Word is out that mobile games publisher Gameloft has released a mobile simulation/dating game based on the hit television show The O.C.. Pocket Gamer reports that the game, still in development, is really a port/skinning of another Gameloft game, New York Nights: Success in the City, an existing (!) sim/dating game. Players can choose a character from the show, or customize their own character to maximize his or her desirability. From the article: Gameloft also promises that there'll be a host of mini-games, including talking, joking, criticising, kissing, drinking, dancing, offering items and punching. Which sounds like an average Friday ...

In-game advertising, now "interactive"
July 25, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I never tire of mocking the in-game advertising industry. The latest salvo in the ongoing saga is Massive, Inc.'s new "interactive advertisement technology," first deployed in Anarchy Online for Toyota Yaris. Here's the blurb from the press release: The new technology allows players to interact with dynamic billboards in the game, making for a more memorable and interactive advertisement experience. The new Toyota campaign allows players of the free 'Anarchy Online' version to walk up to in-game billboards and interact with it to unveil the sleek new Toyota Yaris. For those of you not "fortunate" enough to have had direct ...

CDC: We did not approve anti-videogame ads
July 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

As reported yesterday, during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta I learned that the anti-videogame print ads we had previously attributed to CDC (following the advertising trades), might not have been in any way affiliated with the organization. Today the CDC confirmed that the ads in question were not a part of the VERB Youth Media Campaign, which the organization has been running since 2002. Faye Wong, Director of the campaign, explained that the "Give your thumbs a rest" ads were indeed created by Saatchi & Saatchi New York, one of the agencies retained ...

CDC doesn't villify games, gamers?
July 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Back in February, I wrote about the Centers for Disease Control's misguided attempts to market against videogames and gamers, a campaign titled "Give Your Thumbs a Rest, Play for Real." I first saw the ads in AdCritic and later found the remainder of the series online. Joystiq and others picked up the thread, and we all did a good deal of seemingly well-deserved CDC-bashing. Well, I just got back from giving a talk on games for health at the CDC here in Atlanta. Before the talk, John Anderton told me that the CDC had nothing to do with this campaign ...

Microsoft offers Massive services to Nintendo and Sony
July 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

As regular readers will remember, Microsoft recently bought in-gae ad network Massive, Inc. A few weeks ago, Hollywood Reporter columnist Paul Hyman reported that Microsoft is interested in Sony and Nintendo using Massive's services, rather than locking its competitors out of the market. From the article, "If there are three different ad-serving solutions for the three different versions of, say, 'NFL Madden Football' on three different platforms, advertisers may choose not to participate," Browne says. "So we're trying to extend the olive branch and say to Sony and Nintendo that this is an area where we should all think about ...

Top 10 Disaffections
July 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost