Friday, August 31, 2012

Digital Media Convergence: Advertising and Games. (43050735)

Digital Media Convergence: Advertising and Games

Introduction

Media has always been the forefront of how people get their information, from the town crier in the Middle Ages to the simple paperboy, there has always been a means for information to get around. However, with the introduction of the Digital Age the media has found itself having to re-think its designs to try and keep up with the changing pace. This is the concept known as Digital media convergence, where the old must try to accommodate the new to remain relevant in the fast pace of today's society. Advertising is no exception to this rule as they have to develop new techniques to reach a generation that have found ways around the usual methods. With advertisers arguing amongst themselves about the right way to attract audiences, it has come abundantly clear to all involved that they need to be open to the idea of new mediums that are outside of their comfort zone, one such medium comes in the form of Video Games (Spurgeon 2008)


The Market

Recent studies have been done into both Facebook and Smartphone usage as a means to determine what these two popular brands of social communication are being mostly used for and in both cases the answer is the same: Games. At the time of the research it was shown that within the 30 day testing period, the most downloaded app for smartphones with a percentage of 64% was in fact various forms of games (Nielsen, 2011). Facebook had similar results with 51% of the people who logged onto Facebook were using it to play the games and 69% of those were actually women, this equated to at least 56million people playing games on Facebook daily (O'Neill, 2010). The major driving force for this high success is the introduction of the casual game into society, the benefit of these games are the fact that they are so easily accessible through the mediums they are offered. Also due to the simplicity of the design compared to full production games the more popular titles are regularly updated and worked on. These market numbers as well as the numbers already seen by the top production games have really demonstrated how much interest in video games there is and this understanding has lead to a genre of games known as; Advergames.
                                   
Neil Patrick Harris attempting to play a real life Angry Birds (demonstrates the popularity of games)


Advergames

"Unlike movie or television placements, video games draw the user inside the entertainment medium. Instead of just seeing a brand or product, video game players can interact with it again and again (Lagario, 2007)."
This is the biggest draw that companies have when using a video game as the medium for their advertisements. The player is essentially presented with their brand for as long as they play the game and unlike a television commercial or a movie, games can average around 10 hours of gameplay. That is essentially exposure on a level 5 times greater than a movie. The most famous advergame would have to be the FIFA franchise where not only are you playing with the players who have the logos from their actual team sponsors but the side of the stadium is plastered with advertisement that have been put into the game by the developers much like advertisements used at a real football stadium. In 2010 studies were done with EA Sports in conjunction with Gatorade to find out how much their in-game advertisements had helped with the offline sales for the power drink company. The studies showed that the in-game advertisement actually increased household dollars spent on Gatorade by 24%, and offered a return investment of $3.11. (Nielsen, 2010). This is an outstanding result for the minimal amount of effort that would of went into the advertisements as opposed to running a television ad. 

Demonstration of in-game advertisement through Fifa.


eSports

“The eSports scene is one of the hottest trends in video, and is rapidly attracting the core 18-34 male demographic in greater numbers than any other medium or category,” (Lanzone, 2012)

Video games have been played in a  competitive fashion since their inception. The very first tournament was held by Atari in 1980 for Space Invaders, over 10,000 participants showed up to compete in a game where all you were trying to do was beat someones high score. Since then the ideals of "Professional Gaming" or "Electronic Sports" were founded and have been growing a following ever since. The concept was first big in South Korea where the game known as Starcraft, a real time strategy game where the sole purpose is to build an army and destroy your opponent, was seen on the level as soccer in terms of their athletes prowess. Television studios would broadcast the matches and the games got so much exposure that tournaments would be held and sponsored by leading brands such as Coca-Cola and LG in attempt to advertise to a demographic that they couldn't attract with the older forms of media.

 
Lim "SlayerS_Boxer" Yo Hwan doing an advertisement for a candy bar.


In the last two years the concept of Pro-Gaming has blown up in the west and this is due to the introduction of Major League Gaming (MLG) on to the scene. This event runs at least four times a year with millions of people tuning into the live streams over the weekends just to watch their favourite players play a video game. The sponsors of MLG will play their advertisements during the breaks between the games and if that is not enough the casters will constantly plug the companies throughout their casts just to make people aware of who is actually allowing the content to be produced. On top of these events Twitch.tv, the leading broadcasting network for video games, attracts over 16million people a month to their site just to watch the online tournaments and each stream plays ads throughout the broadcasting. Video games are becoming a prime link between companies and the youth of the world.

                                       
Intro to MLG in 2010, showcasing the professionalism of the event.

Reference List

Unit Readings
  • Spurgeon, C 2008, Advertising and New Media, Routledge, Oxon.
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