TOMB RAIDER JEEP BOOSTS ADVERGAMES
Copyright 2004 www.tombraiderchronicles.com

[ July 21st 2004 ]

How do companies get consumers to play their products? That's the latest question floating round the marketing water coolers? Ian Bogost, CEO of Persuasive Games and founder/editor of www.watercoolergames.org, says the playing solution might lie in "advergames." Dr. Bogost is a game designer, academic game researcher, educational publisher and Assistant Professor in the Information Design & Technology program at Georgia Institute of Technology. Bogost has nearly a decade of experience in digital media production for film, music, games, advertising and business.

The third popular model of advergaming, according to Bogost, is where advertisers commission entire games built specifically around their product. A good example of this genre is Jeep. Last year, the company launched, in conjunction with the film release of "Tomb Raider", a full on 3-D Jeep Rubicon game to get consumers to their site, http://www.jeep.com/jeep_life/tombraider/index2.html. The Jeep Rubicon was featured in the second installment of the Tomb Raiders film series, "Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life".

There are extremely promising figures in the industry, with games growing by 20% a year according to Bogost. The Yankee Study Group just released figures that show online gaming has risen to an 800 million dollar industry. Marketing executives are surely taking note of the latest numbers, and directing more ad dollars to online branding through gaming.