Alternative marketing thinking

Kids in Japan will learn to save in a new RPG adventure with the soon-to-be launched game, Bankquest. Kids can shove money into the slot of this piggy bank tower, allowing the game to progress, and can then buy weapons and armor to slay dragons and beasts on behalf of their chosen protagonist. The game comes from Takara Tomy, the leading Japanese toy and entertainment company that has give Japan some of its favourite toys and games. This latest fascinating game is played through a small LCD window mounted in the side of the bank. Buttons underneath the screen let players control the game’s hero as he fights his way through a monster-infested tower. More than slaying and fighting, the game is mainly an incentive to save: equipment for the hero, necessary to defeat the tower’s denizens, can only be purchased by putting real money into the bank. The idea of taking a piggy bank further ahead in a gaming avatar is certainly making it a fun way of collecting money. Due to release in August, one will have to wait and see how this picks up among the Japanese kids. Read more here.

Mint, the Indian avatar of Wall Street Journal has an interesting story on how ICICI Bank trains it new recruits on dealing with customers. They play online games. “Gaming is an integral part of our induction programme,” says K. Ramkumar, group head, HR, ICICI Bank. More than 2,000 ICICI employees have been playing games, and winning prizes, as preparation for handling customers. The use of online games fits in nicely with the HR department’s focus on e-learning. “The gaming initiative reinforces our brand proposition of anytime, anywhere learning,” Ramkumar adds. The bank uses four games—queue management, cheque clearing (operations), cheque payment across the counter, and savings accounts. As the names suggest, these games present situations with customers seeking services in these areas. Experts say gaming could become an important tool in learning, and not just for children. “Games can be used to capture key real-time information about people, activities and outcomes and to provide more frequent guidance and link performance to recognition,” says Daniel Dias, director, IBM India Research Laboratory. The ICICI HR team is now busy working on a larger game—a branch simulator that will recreate all the functions of managing a branch. Read more in LiveMint.

BusinessWeek Magazine spoke to Gary Kitchen one of the fathers of computer gaming on the growing business of advergames. Where he talks about Burger King and how they took the concept to the next level by launching a successful campaign with three advergame-type titles of their own for Xbox/Xbox 360. One of the complexities of making a successful advergame is that it still has to be fun and make the player feel glad he played it, and at the same time, the marketer has to believe that the game created a positive product association or good old fashioned branding. Here’s more from Gary’s Advergame.com.

Many of us in advertising have dreamt of getting a job in a TV station. Look around and you will find some friend or colleague who has recently moved to one such gig. TV Station Manager is a SIMS like game that lets you take control of a TV station about to go bankrupt. In this game, you’ll take the role of a new manager, just graduated, hoping that you’ll be able to fix the situation and maybe even raise the TV Channel popularity.

Benetton has an online interactivity quite unlike any other on the web today. Benettonplay is a gaming site that enhances the player’s sense of creative potential and allows them to share their creation with others. Created by Benetton’s very own design studio — Fabrika, these games are open rather than closed – “where the player brings their own creativity to the experience, rather than follow a pre-defined path”.

Searching and retrieving on the net becomes far simpler now. How many times have you typed keywords in vain waiting for that elusive image to pop-up? At www.peekaboom.org you can play a game that actually lets you add words to the metadata.

Since the trafficking of virtual goods from games like “World of Warcraft,” and “Star Wars Galaxies” on exchanges like eBay sets their fair market value, the online game players are collectively holding millions of dollars’ worth of these digital assets. So should online game players’ assets–the weapons, characters, clothing and such–they’ve accumulated but not yet sold for real-world cash, be taxable by the IRS?

The market for ads embedded in video games is booming, setting the stage for a spat over whether they’re intrusive, or a “creative element”. Some claim that in-game ads and product placement could make it more realistic, even more interesting to some players, while the opposing team rejects the odd intrusion into an online world.

Growth in on-line gaming enables constant refreshment of in-game placements. This allows brands to synchronise virtual communication with real-world campaigns. But brand-owners should be wary of merely transferring real-world methods into game-worlds. And agencies need to discover new ways to make this connection possible. PDF Playing games with brands.