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Much has been said about advergaming. Literally, it might only be taken as another online marketing initiative.
But it's when games and advertising, two entities unknown to each other, have come to a fusion in power that you'll see its strength. Advergaming like people has to wear many hats, some as roulette-style wheel or an online drag race, still others as interactive scratch cards.
So what really is advergaming if it's not just a marketing strategy? In its early years, advergaming, coined by Anthony Giallourakis owner of Advergames.com and Adverplay.com, was defined as the use of video games to advertise a product, organization, or viewpoint.
The term "advergaming" should have a new definition by now, a more comprehensive one, since it has ventured off to promoting not only brands but services and social causes as well. A major example of this is American Cancer Society's Smokeout Cafe. It's a game designed for people to buy orange wristbands whose proceeds will go to their information drive for the dangers of smoking.
Advergaming inception almost happened simultaneously with the advancement of the game industry's formative years during the late '70s to early '80s. Unknown to many, advergaming might have been born in 1973 when Digital Equipment Corporation started a new version of Moonlander to demonstrate a new graphics terminal. A catchy feature of the game is when you hit the right spot an astronaut will come out, walk over to McDonald's, and order a Big Mac then take off again. But when you miss the spot, it will say, "You clod! You've destroyed the only McDonald's on the moon!" That may be the first time games and advertising met.
Gamers and gaming software developers alike have seen the strong chemistry between games and advertising early on that they started promoting products through games they develop. One company who takes pride of advergaming's ethereal vision of success is CyberArts, who has gone in its 150+ years of collective experience across gaming and into scalable and flexible enterprise software and advanced software development.
Games and advertising have come far from their first meeting. They have conquered many fields, and they brought us the best thing: innovation.
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