Deleicht.dk a world of games and me

A few thoughts: Bad games as marketing

Today I was finding my way around the Nespresso Variations universe (http://bit.ly/h3NXpN) - quite amazing artistic work btw - and I stumbled upon a small game nested within the universe. It was simple, quite indifferent and amazingly boring. So I started wondering...how did Nestle spend so much money on their universe and still manage to create a stupid indifferent game? I'm sure there are more games hidden in there, but seriously...who's looking for them?

This raises two questions:

1. Why are the games hidden far away from public sight?
2. Why are the games so bad?

The first question I don't really have an answer for, maybe they just have too much money on their hands? The campaign is a succes no doubt - but why are the games so crappy?

I mean, games are the most amazing transmitters of information  you could ever imagine...teaching everything from advanced game rules to the history of the babylonians (go Civ 1, my first and best history teacher), so why shouldn't they be the best at transferring marketing messages too? Nestle is on the right track but as so many did before...they fail epically at understanding the basic rule of games: It has to be entertaining! So who is to blame here? I blame the marketing agencies that convince the companies that games are a good marketing investment, but fail to tell them that they're not actually capable of creating a compelling game themselves. How come no one is actually combining the fields of good game design with marketing?

So...is it actually possible to do a good marketing game? Or would the evil soul of the word "marketing" kill all fun even before the game begins? I believe it is possible...and I intend on doing it better than Nestlé when I get the chance. Games are inherently fun, so why shouldn't marketing games be too?