A step by step guide on how to do a successful marketing game
Please be adviced: This is a highly technical, extremely well researched and unbiased guide on how to do a successful marketing game.
- Step 1: Get inspiration - Select which game concept to rip off - remember to choose wisely and not choose something which is funny.
- Step 2 - Select awesome developer - An essential part of selecting the right developer is to make sure they've never done a game before. In this way you're sure that your own ideas are heard and implemented - after all, who knows your brand better than you?
- Step 3: Creating the game - Drop everything interesting about the already boring game concept you're ripping off, and do a badly implemented, featureless, flawed version instead.
- Step 3a: Amazing controls - Remember to make the controls as bad as possible! Nobody wants nice controls in a marketing game, and if you did your research you should know that this is what all the other marketing games did, so you should do the same.
- Step 3b: Epic feedback - Remember to ignore feedback mechanisms both visually and auditively. Nobody wants feedback, they want to know about your brand and buy stuff from your company based on how epic your game is.
- Step 3c: Real graphics - Throw in badly done graphics. Nobody likes graphics, they want moving pictures instead...like that nice tv marketing in which you trust.
- Step 4: WAUW contests - Remember to include an irrelevant contest, everybody loves contests and would do whatever it takes to win...no matter the size of the prize or how bad the game is.
- Step 5: Social vibes - Make sure the game in no way utilizes social networks. It is very bad if the gamers should be able to communicate, share highscores or in any way be able to interact with each other. This would only lead to bad comments about your company and your brand, and people who comment stuff should be muted...not heard!
- Step 6: Go viral - Remember to make the game go viral by making your employees write favourable reviews and share it with their family - it's a sure win!
Comments are welcome to this awesome guide.
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:
- Why are the games hidden far away from public sight?
- 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?



