Masaryk University Faculty of Informatics Utilization of advergames in marketing strategies Bachelor’s Thesis Peter Bosák Brno, Spring 2016 Declaration Hereby I declare that this paper is my original authorial work, which I have worked out by my own. All sources, references and literature used or excerpted during elaboration of this work are properly cited and listed in complete reference to the due source. Peter Bosák Advisor: doc. RNDr. Tomáš Pitner i Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor doc. RNDr. Tomáš Pitner, Ph.D. for his constructive criticism and for the time he has invested into helping me publish this thesis. I would also like to thank Iveta Mi- naříková for helping me stay motivated throughout writing this work and Lenka Kimličková for helping me cope with the english gram- mar. iii Abstract The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to explore the fitness and ef- fectiveness of advergames in marketing strategies, and to compare advantages and disadvantages of advertising through advergames against advertising through other advertising media. The thesis should also contain a practical implementation of a simple advergame. This implementation should demonstrate traits typical for advergames as a medium and should be designed so that it is easy to scale and mod- ify. iv Keywords advergames, advergaming, Unity, StrangeIoC, advertising, market- ing, C# v Contents 1 Introduction ............................1 2 Analyzing the use of advergames as an advertising medium 3 2.1 Definition of the term advergame ...............3 2.2 Gamers statistics and demographics .............3 2.3 Games as a marketing strategy ................4 2.3.1 Virtual billboards and product placement . .5 2.3.2 commercial interrupts . .6 2.3.3 advergames . .6 2.4 Advantages of advergames ..................7 2.5 Past research on advergames .................9 2.6 Development costs of advergames ............... 12 3 Making of Memory Game – A documentation through a practical advergame’s development process ......... 17 3.1 About ............................. 17 3.2 Requirement Gathering for the sample advergame ...... 17 3.3 Design of the sample advergame ............... 19 3.3.1 Interpretation of the requirements gathered in the previous chapter . 19 3.3.2 Design of the gameplay and game rules – how will the game be played . 20 3.3.3 Branding the game . 21 3.3.4 Technical design of the sample advergame . 22 3.4 Implementation of the sample advergame ........... 26 3.4.1 Unity game engine . 26 3.4.2 StrangeIoC framework . 28 3.4.3 User iInterface of the sample advergame . 32 3.4.4 Setup of the game scene . 34 3.4.5 Selecting the cards . 38 3.4.6 Saving the score to the leaderboard . 40 3.5 Maintenance and modiability of the sample advergame ... 42 3.5.1 The IConfig class . 42 3.5.2 Changing the images . 43 4 Conclusion ............................. 45 vii List of Figures 3.1 StrangeIoC MVCS Context Architecture[28] 32 3.2 Screenshot of the sample advergame run on a device with a standard 16:9 screen aspect ratio. 37 3.3 Screenshot of the sample advergame run on a device with a standard 16:9 screen aspect ratio, but with a reduced number of cards in the deck. 38 3.4 Screenshot of the sample advergame run on a device with an extremely widescreen aspect ratio. 38 3.5 The possible states in which a card may be; and the transitions between them 41 ix 1 Introduction Just a little over two decades ago, digital marketing (an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly the Internet[16]) and the various forms it takes were consid- ered to be the newest hit in the evolution of marketing[34]. Today, they are considered a common practice – virtually no company nowadays exists without at least hosting a website of their own and in the up- coming years, the forms of digital marketing will only increase their significance over the other kinds of advertising media[32]. The digital marketing, just like marketing in general, is constantly evolving as the companies that use it strive to addres more customers by introducing more clever, original, surprising or enjoyable forms of advertisement. An example of the digital marketing’s evolution is the growing popularity of an advertising format known as advergam- ing. Advergaming is the practice of using video games in order to advertise brands or products. While the original intent behind the development of video games was to offer entertainment and not to help companies with marketing capaigns, the digital merketing has quickly found ways of utilizing video games in such manner. The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to explore the significance of advergames as an advertising medium. The thesis will be divided into two parts. The first part of the thesis will describe advergaming in greater detail. It will then proceed to analyze the academic and business re- search done in the past on the topic of advergames, alongside the academic and business research done on various other topics related to the topic of advergames (such as video games, digital media or ad- vertising in general). By performing this analysis, the thesis hopes to provide additional reasoning for why should the topic of advergam- ing be of interest to the academic community. The analysis will also address the efficacy and cost efficiency of advergames. The second part of the thesis will describe the development pro- cess of a simple advergame. The sample advergame will strive to in- ternalize the marketing principes described in the first part of the the- sis. Whilist the sample advergame will be kept fairly simple, it will be fully functional and ready to be used in a wide variety of marketing 1 campaigns. An extra amount of emphasis will be put on the modifi- ability and extendability of the sample advergame. 2 2 Analyzing the use of advergames as an ad- vertising medium 2.1 Definition of the term advergame Advergame (a portmanteau of "advertising" and "game") is a term used for describing a digital game that was specially designed to pro- mote a certain product, service or a brand[57][48][49]. Usually, it is an on-line game in which some kind of advertisement is integrated in. This advertisement is then perceived by the player of the game. Advergame is therefore an advertising medium, not unlike television commercials or websites banners, but compared to them, it has some advantages and disadvantages. In this work, but also in scientific lit- erature generally, the term advergame is not used for games that do contain sponsorship advertising but were not developed primarily in order to promote them.1. While the concept of advergaming is not new and has been around since the 1980’s[52], only the recent increases in the global gaming market’s size[20] and the recent shifts in popularity from console ga- mes to simple mobile games[22] have allowed the advergame format to gain significance and popularity in the current trends of digital marketing. 2.2 Gamers statistics and demographics In the year 2015, more than 40% of the world population was con- nected to the Internet. Today,this number is increasing steadily[37][30]. However, the portion of connected population is much greater in de- veloped countries[13]. In Czech Republic and Slovakia, around 80% of population was connected to the internet in 2015. In United King- dom, it was around 90%. But the record is currently being held by 1. For example: sport games developed by the Electronic Arts studio. This studio allows renting of a virtual billboard located in the virtual space of its games. How- ever, the games themselves were primarily not developed for the purpose of renting virtual billboards and the billboards are also available to anyone, not just to some specific company or product[18] 3 Iceland who had 92% of its population connected to the Internet in 2015[31]. According to various studies, an average person connected to the internet spends more than 20 minutes daily by playing ga- mes[38][15]. These data may appear to be more interesting after a closer inspection. For example: according to the study made by The Entertainment Software Association[6], more than 42% of Americans play video games regularly (which is around 133.9 million of peo- ple) and according to an international market research company NDP Group, more than 37% of Americans play video games regularly[5] (117.9 milions of people).2. Similar results were attained by an in- ternational company Newzoo, which specializes in global market re- search and predictive analytics in the area of computer games. Ac- cording to studies made by Newzoo, by the end of 2016, over 30% of the world population (2.2 billion of people) will consist of regular players of computer gamers[20]. However, the portion will be even bigger in developed countries. For example, in Germany, the portion of the population that plays video games regularly is around 52.4% (42.3 million of people)[23]. According to an independent market re- search company eMarketer, the global gaming audience is expected to grow even more in the upcoming years[22]. 2.3 Games as a marketing strategy The studies mentioned in the previous chapter yield some interesting findings. It is obvious that people worldwide spend massive amount of hours collectively by playing computer games. Considering the fact that the age of an average gamer spans between 35 to 37 years of age[38][15][44][5][19] (An age where the ability to earn and spend money is at its peak for most people), players of computer games ap- pear to be an ideal target audience for marketing strategies of var- ious vendors and companies.