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Quick Summary: Read about a new brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming.
At yesterday’s Mobile Monday Mumbai session, as I watched Jump Games CEO Salil Bhargava present a case for mobile advergaming, I kept asking myself why it didn’t (yet) make sense for Indian marketers.
Later, as Salil was joined by Anant Rangaswami from Campaign India magazine and Nidhi Taparia from Tata Indicom for a panel discussion moderated by VeerChand Bothra from Netcore Solutions, I actually asked them –
So, why exactly should mobile advergaming become an essential part of my media plan?
As I expected, the discussion quickly turned to how marketers expect too much from digital media.
However, since I think of myself as a digital media evangelist — I want mobile/ online advertising to work — I told myself to not think about all the reasons mobile advergaming won’t work for me and instead think about the set of conditions under which it would work for me.
The basic problem with the present developer-centric (or operator-centric, but certainly not brand-centric) business model for mobile advergaming is that all the risks are borne by the brand. The developer gets a development fees and the operator gets a hosting fee — but nobody gives the brand a commitment on downloads and plays.
I would love to do an advergame (or ten) if the developer and the operator are willing to share the risk of “what if nobody downloads/ plays the game?” with me. The developer develops a new game for me, the operator hosts it and promotes it aggressively and I only pay on the basis of downloads and plays. If nobody downloads/ plays the game, I don’t lose out — and why should I? — but if 500000 users download the game, I’m happy to pay up and the developer and the operator make a killing. This is basically a cost-per-action (CPA) model for advergames — it has worked elsewhere and there’s no reason it won’t work for advergames.
So, are there any takers for my brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming?
Comments (7)
This may be a lengthy comment, but since I am a veteran and consummate gamer, as it were, this touches on a subject very dear to my heart. ^__^
This is the catch I see with the “brand-centric” chart.
If you let your users download for free (and then pay for multiple plays), if the game is any good people will figure out how to get around the “paying” part. Someone will hack it and then share the info online, etc.
I’ve never heard the word “advergaming” before, but I can guess what it means. ^__^ (It’s a word that only stays on one side of the desk, right? No one goes out to the public and says “play our new advergame?”)
So I checked out Jump Games and looked into their advergames.
Let’s see.
“Bingo! Chips Factory
Go Bingo! A Mobile advergame developed for ITC to advertise their new smackalicious product line of Bingo! Chips.”
No gamer is going to pay money to play Bingo! Chips Factory. (On the plus side, no one is going to try to hack Bingo! Chips Factory either.) And if you want money, you’re going to have to crack the gamer market.
The way I see it — and I’m not a marketing person — you’d have to make a deal with the phone company to have Bingo! Chips Factory installed on the phone (and free, like Tetris), and work out the money deal that way. If a person is comparing two phones and one has a bunch of games, even if they’re advergames, the game phone will win — or at least it would for me.
So then it becomes about mobile sales instead of about game downloads or pay-per-click sales.
Or you figure out a way to include product placement in another, cooler mobile game. Bipasha Bapu jet-skiing? I’d play that. She could snarf down some Bingo! Chips in a cut-scene after I won a level.
And I’d pay to download it one time, but I wouldn’t pay-per-game. If it were really cool I’d find a way around paying, and if it were lame I just wouldn’t bother paying (or playing) at all.
Sorry if this seems patronizing or full of stuff you already know. Again, I’m not a marketer, just a gamer. ^__^
@Blue: Have I told you yet that I blog to receive comments like this?
I’m told that mobile gaming (in India) attracts a different — less geeky — audience from PC/ console games. Therefore, the hack issue is the issue for PC/ console games, but a non-issue for mobile games. But, I’m not an expert on this either.
Also, the download charges for mobile games in India are in the range of $1 to $4 and — if the pay per play model works out — the per play charge will probably be less than 10 cents — small enough to make it a non issue if the game is borderline addictive.
The key, of course, is to develop a game that is (1) simple (2) addictive (3) aligned with the brand core. Without that, everything else falls apart.
Advergames as a differentiator for mobile phones/ mobile operators? Well, it reminds me of the Twitter as a differentiator for mobile phones/ mobile operators idea, but I don’t see any mobile operators trying it out anytime soon.
Gasp! Did you just imply I was geeky?! ^__^
So per-play is less than Rs. 10? How often does the player have to pay? Every time the player begins the game (and then has an unlimited number of “turns” until he/she stops the game), or every time the player loses a turn?
For me that would be a prohibiting factor, but again that’s for me alone. I know that there are people who have no problem dropping cash on things like that. I mean, sure, that was the entire principle of the old-school video arcade and plenty of people dumped money into those things.
The most successful model I’ve seen in terms of getting people to pay (by which I mean “it got me to pay”) isn’t the “pay-per-turn” kind of thing, but the “pay to unlock.” Give the gamers enough game to get hooked and then make them pay to access special features, levels, etc.
My telling you this is probably like the pot asking the kettle “have you ever thought of trying to sell people on “premium” or “exclusive” content?” ^__^ So I won’t elaborate.
But your original question was about how to share the risk with the game developer. Perhaps in a scenario like this the developer is building new “premium” material over a period of time; that is to say, if you both start out with the base game and a few premium components, then if the premium stuff sells you can pay the developer for more premium components which can then be sold to the gamer.
There. I have solved all of your problems. ^__^
@Blue: My understanding is that mobile game developers in India have so far focused on simple but addictive games, so there aren’t too many features/ levels that need to be unlocked (or hacked). I think this is because of a mix of low user base, low user sophistication and willingness to pay and low quality data networks at the operators’ end. So, I’m not sure if the free basic content paid premium content model will work.
I’m going to experiment with both online and mobile advergaming soon, so I’ll do a follow-up post on what we were able to work out.
The paid to premium doesnt work at all. Most Symbian games were sold like that. They all got cracked and posted all over the place. The site mobango.com built itself on hosting cracked games but the worst offenders were some of the chinese forum type sites. We’d put a game out and it would be on there in a couple of days.
Your right about the diff in type of user. Any savvy/geeky user wouldnt download these games, they use them for free. Its the suckers who pay for games in the Indian Context.
I dont belive in any pay for each game type scenario. The best games you play again and again until it becomes programmed into you and you cannot stop.
However it is true, people need to play to get the bug.
So limied versions free, that only take yuo to a certain level. could the answer.
Then buy the software, or sell it to the phone manufacturers
@Gaurav
Hi, I think this is a very interesting post, as the issues you bring up are exactly what is wrong with traditional advergaming. You don’t get any guarantees… We have tried a new business model, that offers the game for free (with ads), but the user has the option to buy power-ups in-game. So by paying minimal fees, you can upgrade your character and the experience. We also guarantee advertisers (depending on the game) 100.000 downloads! Send me a mail, if you want to know more send me a mail.
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