Designagaming has most definitely arrived

In the November 2008 issue of the magazine ‘Brand Strategy’ (RIP) I identified that a growing number of children and teenagers were taking pleasure from creating computer games, as opposed to just playing them.

I then described a potential marketing campaign a brand could run to take advantage of this trend:

“In the gaming world, new software and online tools are making it ever easier for enthusiasts to build their own games with high production values. In the near future I predict this trend will extend towards “Designagaming”. The more adventurous brands will run competitions for the public to create advergames on their behalf. The money previously used for content creation will be switched to prizes for the most successful games and building libraries of assets for willing developers to utilise. Why have one campaign when your target audience can create a hundred different variations, all competing to become your most effective marketing material?”

Nov 2008 Brand Strategy Magazine with Nov 2009 New Media Age
One year later the social gaming website Kongregate has teamed up with the bubblegum brand Stride and done something extremely similar:

“Kongregate and STRIDE® gum are challenging game developers to answer the most epic question of our time: how long can you last?

To answer (and perhaps win our $10,000 first prize) design a Flash game with the theme "endurance". You are free to interpret the theme in any way you like, so get creative! The 15 highest-rated entries will automatically become finalists, winners will judged based on creativity, innovation, use of the theme, and how fun they are to play.”


The site then goes on to list several examples of games that would suit this challenge. Huge respect to Stride for being brave enough to try this marketing strategy and Kongregate for organising it. If anyone has done this before, I’ve certainly missed it.

I’m just sorry that the competition is only open to US residents. I would have really liked to see how game designers from all over the World would have taken to this challenge. I suspect this would have created a much more diverse set of entries as different cultures attempt the same challenge. Perhaps Stride is only sold in the US so they required a US winner for their competition PR.

Turner Media Innovations have also recently launched a designagaming website – Ben 10 Alien Force Game Creator. This site is claiming to have had over 9.5 million plays with over 17,500 games created in just eight weeks. This provides children with a set of prebuilt graphics and a game builder similar to Playcrafter.

Designagaming had definitely arrived. I wonder what some clever marketing type will name this style of campaign?