Console Games Offer Brands a New Playing Field

EBay also took part in promotions around the game's launch last summer. A demo of the game debuted online in May and included among its car choices an eBay-branded Ford Mustang GT-R. Contestants were able to download the demo, race the tracks, and compete in real-time races at the “Grid” Web site during the month before the June launch. If they beat the fastest lap time, players received a unique code that would let them go to the co-branded “Grid”/eBay Web site and enter their results.

The top five drivers were then brought to San Francisco to compete in a real-time “Grid” race for a notable prize: an eBay-branded custom Mustang just like the one in the game and valued at $90,000.

Tricked out with alloy wheels, racing suspension and a 445-horsepower engine, the car was won by a 16-year-old from Gretna, LA, who'd just gotten his driver's license.

“I asked how many times he'd raced the demo course to get into the finals, and he said it must have been about 800 times,” Smith says. Multiply that kind of brand exposure by the 2.4 million downloads of the demo in the month before the game launch, and that means a lot of people learning what eBay Motors does in the real world.

“Dash of Destruc-tion” goes even further toward brand integration, structuring the entire game as a chase in which a “snackivorous” T-Rex pursues Doritos trucks on their delivery rounds, gobbling their contents and demolishing the environs in the process.

Building a game around a brand can be a risky move, however. Game development costs money and takes time, and in the end you might be left with a poorly received game. Doritos got around the cost and time issues by throwing the challenge open to amateur game programmers and letting the online public pick a winner.

But Wilson says he was less concerned about reviews of the winning game than about talking up the Doritos brand with advocates enthused enough to build a game about it.

“I didn't get involved for the destination; I got involved for the journey,” he says. “We told contestants we wanted something that embodied Doritos, bold and intense. Then we heard them dialogue with each other and with us through our forums, talking about what the brand is really about. That was what was most valuable to us: all the time spent with our fans both before and after the game.”

A DIFFERENT WORLD

Sony has taken a different approach to bringing brands and gamers together with last December's open beta rollout of Sony PlayStation Home, a free, high-definition virtual world accessible only via the PlayStation 3 console and meant to foster a community in which PS3 gamers can socialize.

“Our vision for the Home platform is that most of the content will not be created by us, but by our partners, either in-house or though a managed vendor network,” says PlayStation Home's director Jack Buser. “As the platform scales, it will do so mainly by content from our brand partners.”

A number of brands already have checked into Home, including a Diesel store that sells apparel to members' avatars for micropayments and a Ligne Roset furnishings store to decorate members' virtual apartments.

Two other brand members are promoting not virtual goods, but experiences. Later this year game maker Electronic Arts will open a sports arena that lets members watch trailers for upcoming titles or challenge other users to Home-exclusive online games.

And Red Bull has built a Home version of its real-life air races on Red Bull Island. Visitors get to race planes modeled after those used in the real Red Bull races and navigate through pylons. The site will soon have a leaderboard like the live events so that players can compete for standings.

“Red Bull Island will expand in early 2009 to include other mini-games and social experiences influenced by global Red Bull events and athletes,” U.S. company spokeswoman Ellen Applen said in an e-mail response. “The Flugtag game will challenge users to launch flying machines modeled after those from actual Red Bull events off the end of a pier with the goal of flying the farthest.”

PlayStation Home users also will see a Home version of Red Bull Illume, a live exhibit of action-sports photography displayed on 8-foot-high illuminated cubes.

“Red Bull had the foresight to build a branded kiosk on the edge of the island,” Buser says. “You can go there any time of the day or night and find members of the community actually pretending to serve Red Bull to each other. Here you have this interactive community that's so engaged by this mini-game and this immersive activity that they're willing to stand there and serve Red Bull. As a promotional target, you can't ask for better than that.”

OBAMA: IN-GAME-AD BOOSTER

It was the ad seen 'round the virtual world — or rather, 18 ads.

Last October the Obama campaign began placing dynamic ads in the online versions of some 18 games running on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 video-game consoles. The games, which included “Burnout Paradise,” a racing game from Electronic Arts, were served almost up to Election Day to players in 10 states considered hotly contested.

Game blog GameSpot turned up a filing with the Federal Election Commission that revealed a $44,500 payment from the Obama campaign to Massive, the in-game-ad agency that placed the ads on the Xbox 360 network. But it's not known if that constitutes full payment for the ad run on that console. IGA Worldwide handles in-game ads for the PlayStation 3 version of “Burnout Paradise.”

With that one effort, Obama's reach for the gaming audience raised the visibility of in-game ads among all brands, says J.J. Richards, head of Massive. “The response was huge because that campaign made global news,” he says. “It was seen in Germany and in London's Victoria Station. People all over the world saw not only the technology, but the power and effectiveness of it. “I was a little disappointed he didn't work it into his inaugural speech.” — BQ

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