Advergame: Are they really helping Advertising?

The advergame is the cross between video games and advertising. It can be compared to the cross between radio serials and household-cleaning products. The main goal of these advergames is to try to appeal to players of video games and advertisers. The main question is, are these advergames as effective as advertising on television and in ads.

Advertisers are trying to fix the problem of the decline in the watching of televisions by teens and younger people because of the interference of video gaming. Not only are creators putting these advertisements in video games, but they are also being put on computer games and software. Creators feel that gamers seem to feel more positive towards in-game advertising. Having real advertisement and not the generic brand of products makes the game more real. I believe if I could see brand name products used in sports and racing games I would be able to relate more with the game and it would seem more real having things that I’m familiar with.

Most of the advergames today are played on the Internet or PC because many game consoles can’t be connected to the Internet. One example of an advergame is America’s Army, which is a realistic war game promoting war missions and different tactics of war. Another positive of advergames is that they are less expensive than television advertisements and are easier and take less time to develop. These games are used in the awareness of global hunger, advertising feminine sanitary products, and to promote real trees over plastic ones. Even though these games have a realistic approach and can increase a gamers’ interest in advertising and possibly playing more games, not everyone plays games and the increase isn’t that effective.

The use of these games can help in increasing advertising to young people but not all teens play videogames. There is still a large percentage of the teen population that doesn’t play video games and advertisers have to come up with a way to reach this population. Advergames is a good idea to reach the video game population, but how will advertising increase with such a larger population of people not playing these advergames. Are these advergames really causing a huge increase for advertisers? In the future advertisers need to think of ways to reach out to the population of non-video gamers.