Is the "G" word about to vanish again?

Sticky Content > Viral marketing > Advergames > Casual Games > App (?)

It appears someone I’ve never met has gone and changed the name of the product my company makes, again. Great. So before the word “Game” vanishes beneath another layer of marketing talk, let’s look back on its ten-year rise to becoming a serious enough business application to be renamed to just three letters.

The rise of Sticky Content

Ten years ago a small and forward thinking group of companies (including 4T2 where I work) started to create mini games in Macromedia Flash. The Internet back then was a predominantly a boring place to surf and this new technology was helping us to inject a little fun – even over a 56k modem.

When releasing these games we soon found that third party websites were taking this content and placing it on their own sites to entertain their visitors. At first our clients resisted such use of their campaigns, worried about “bandwidth theft” and losing control of their content.

The unfortunate term “sticky content” started to become prolific and online games began to show their true potential.

By 2001, MiniClip was becoming very popular by collating and sponsoring as many of these online games as possible and offering them to third parties - “free games for your site”. MilkAndCookies.com also started to show up in log files. This site allowed American students to instantly and freely submit any online content that they thought would be of interest to their friends. At some stage in the future, some clever marketing type would call this “Social Bookmarking”.

Industry recognition was gained by your game being at the top of the all-important Lycos Viral Charts.

With a relatively small number of quality online games being produced, content placement was free. You could also generate amazing national PR because of the originality of your promotions.

Viral Marketing catches on

In 2002, companies like 4T2 were touring advertising and PR agencies educating them to the benefits this style of marketing offered. The agencies we worked for at the time were still nervous about using the “G” word in meetings, so told us to refer to it as “Viral marketing”. I guess it sounded more expensive. The theory was that one person would play your game, and, if they liked it, tell two of their friends about it. This would of course lead to an explosion in traffic (note to self – really must find the time to update our company website and my blog as it is full of this stuff!).

To promote “viral spread” (and keep the people in fancy London offices happy) 4T2 spent time building mini-leagues and other fiendish social networking devices into our games. None of this ever made any noticeable impact to traffic figures but it was a lesson we needed to learn. Getting our clients’ games listed on a selection of popular websites was a much more cost-effective use of our time.

This reality led to media owners joining the party and commercialising content placement. For example, if Lycos found a brand name in the game you submitted to their site they would no longer add it for free. Bugger.

By 2003, 4T2 were producing enough “virals” for well known brands such as Comet and Vauxhall that we plucked up the courage to start using the dreaded “Game” word in meetings – in fact, it was becoming expected.

Advergaming hits the big time

By the end of 2005, there was a huge raft of new media agencies offering “advergames”. The “viral” branding must have died out due to the fact it was mainly pony. By this stage 4T2 were privileged enough to have The LEGO Company as our main client so did not have to worry as much about game seeding, allowing us to concentrate on the marketing aspect of our work. Instead we focused on “360 degree marketing”: driving traffic between media by publishing unlock codes on product packaging, movie trailers and point of sale units that gave access to additional content within online campaigns. A similar approach focused on driving traffic between TV shows and related online content. For example, our planning meetings with GMTV Kids now revolved around what actions we could put into an online game that could actually be performed by their presenters in real life so the content matched perfectly.

Casual Gaming becomes the trend

In 2008, the term ‘Casual Gaming’ started to be heard to a much greater extent. Previously, I had associated this with low cost games a user purchased after playing a demo. Almost overnight, ‘advergames’ seemed to have become a sub-category of this field.

By now the commercialisation of game based websites had hit a new level, with Spil Games purchasing many existing websites and a selection of expensive domains. Two new models for brands to pay for game placement became commonplace based either on guaranteed visitor levels or a pay-per-play format.

On the other side of the coin, social gaming websites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds had become fully established marketing tools in their own right. By offering free game placement and a selection of APIs to integrate high score tables and achievements these sites built a huge following. The ability for games creators to take revenues from these sites by joining their advertising schemes was a huge benefit for student developers all around the world. Being at the top of the Lycos Chart was replaced by the honour of becoming a featured game on Newgrounds.

Will “App” be the next name change?

In 2009 the name for what 4T2 build seems to be changing again. Already this year we have received three separate briefs to build “Apps”. The trend seems to be led by an iPhone TV advert that featured Super Monkey Ball, and the growing requirement for Social Networking game integration. Apparently, because a game needs to be playable on Facebook, it must only be referred to as an App. Helping to consolidate this change of title is also the growing requirement for game creation systems such as YoYo Games and PlayCrafter. After all, if we are leaving it up to the end users to build their own games using some form of clever construction kit, surely the developer is creating an App?

Another, more disturbing possibility, is that the Credit Crunch has once again made agencies scared of using the “G” word. Is an “App” more commercially viable?
Will this catch on? Who knows? One thing is for certain – don’t spend too much on your printed marketing material as it will be out-of-date very quickly! So to conclude, here are the top three lessons I have learned over the last ten years:

3) Save your time, sanity and budget - place your content where the traffic you want is currently residing. Don’t try to push people to a new location for no apparent reason.

2) Test your games with your target audience before releasing them to ensure they actually are fun for people outside of your office.

1) 4T2 make online GAMES. Beware of using product titles that do not contain the G word as they will tempt you into focusing on the marketing aspects of your campaign, or an over complex method of increasing spread. Above all you must make sure your campaign is fun, or it will fail.