Game On For Advertisers
Recent advances in computer game technology have seen an increasing number of advertisers adopt the medium to grab the attention of audiences. Julian Ireland, European communications director at in-game ad specialists, Hive, explains the attractiveness of the medium, and its growing importance in the media mix…
Hopefully we’ve all heard the stats, not the “it’s bigger than box office” or “it’s the fastest growing entertainment sector” types, or indeed the lazy, banal outbursts from the Daily Mail, but rather the more positive, sentimental comments on the computer and video game industry’s impact on a technology-savvy and entertainment-hungry society.
In this instance, I reference a recent story from Reuters of how a ‘video game set-up’ has helped a nine year old to re-develop basic physical and communication skills lost as a result of a car accident.
Using neuro-feedback training, the CyberLearning Technology LLC system marks a new frontier that taps young people’s fascination with animation and electronics to sweeten often frightening and tedious medical treatments.
Doctors pronounced Ethan Myers brain dead after a car accident dealt the nine year old a severe brain injury in 2002. After he miraculously awoke from a nearly month-long coma, doctors declared he would never again eat on his own, walk or talk. Yet, thanks partly to a video game system, Myers has caught up with his peers in school and even read a speech to a large group of students.
So what am I getting at here in a media context?
It has been proven that video gaming can help to develop cognitive abilities, not just in children, but any participant. Where probing of new and increasingly rich environments, together with complex problem solving or demanding hand-eye co-ordination, is creating a whole new, and in some cases accelerated, learning experience.
The very essence of games, aside to perhaps escapism, is the task-reward mechanism that fuels their increasingly realistic interactive experiences. Humans love achievement and reward – it releases that lovely feel-good chemical.
As the games industry enters its next stage of maturity with a broader appeal than ever: from the ‘party gaming’ antics of Buzz to the calorie-busting, carpet-cutting fun of Dancing Stage, there is more diverse, compelling entertainment in this medium than across the whole of the Sky EPG. It isn’t just spotty twelve year olds anymore, gaming is more universal than ever, enjoyed by young and old, male and female.
Computer and video gaming is uniquely immersive – a ‘lean forward’ medium if you will. Against a backdrop of increasingly less effective traditional media spaces, it is the depth of engagement that is exciting brands, where product placement actually becomes experiential, and where dynamic content delivery into games is now possible.
So, despite its undoubted popularity it’s not all blood-spattered Grand Theft Auto and ‘putting a cap in a mo-fo’s arse.’ Games are intelligent and engaging entities that are fuelling a new consumer intent on entertainment when and where they want. Brands wanting to connect with this consumer would do well to consider this exciting new space.
Hive: www.hivepartners.com