3月27日晚间消息，在深圳IT领袖峰会晚宴上，华谊兄弟董事长王中军接受采访时表示，目前华谊兄弟确实在考察网游方面的项目，也和一些公司洽谈合作问题，并购或者参股都有可能。

　　此前巨人史玉柱接受媒体采访时透露正和华谊洽谈网游方面的合作，华谊兄弟今日确认正在考察网游，并跟一些公司洽谈合作。“或者是并购、或者是参股，其实都是在探讨。”

　　王中军认为，网游和电影非常相似，实际上就是故事创意，只是玩法不一样。“比如一部电影成功，推出了一个3D的网游，如果电影是系列的，游戏就可以永远更新，做出一款非常好玩的游戏。”

When Activision Blizzard - the joint venture between the Western gaming companies responsible for hit titles such as World of Warcraft - called a media pitch for its global business in January, executives embarked on a real-life quest to expand its empire into Asia.

Activision Blizzard, formed by a US$18.9 billion merger in 2007, is the largest gaming publisher in the world, ahead of ElectronicArts (EA). Yet it so far has had a minimal footprint in the region.

Following in the footsteps of developers including EA and Giant Interactive, both of which maintain offices in Asia, Activision Blizzard has visions of regional success and 2009 may be the year to test the waters, a spokeswoman said.

“When the companies did the merger one of Activision Blizzard’s goals was to gain a footprint in Asia - Asia is absolutely important given the profitability of the online games business,” she said. “The company has general plans for the region. Without releasing any specific timing or details, Asia is clearly in the long-term plan.” 

Asia is already World of Warcraft’s biggest market. When the game hit 10 million users in January 2008, 5.5 million of them were in Asia. What’s more, gaming is one of the few online areas in the region that turns a decent profit; Asian gaming firms have developed businesses based on micro-payments - basically, giving the game away for free to gain scale then charging for extra elements within it. 

Local developers have long staked their claims to become regional powerhouses. North Asia is the heart of the region’s gaming industry, with players such as Nexon in Korea, Namco Bandai Games in Japan and NetEase in China. But that doesn’t mean Western developers are shut out, analysts say.

For example, Japan was among the first international markets to license Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings online, signifying its acceptance for Western games. And, according to InGame Ad CEO Steven Hu, Korean gamers have seen interest in local games plateau, making way for companies with an outsider’s perspective to enter the fray. 

Last year WPP invested in InGame Ad in expectation of growing revenues from advertising within games. Online gaming allows so-called ‘dynamic’ ads to be placed - these are slots than can be updated as campaigns change, unlike ads that are embedded into traditional games.

This is still an emerging model, though it is one the gaming firms are understandably excited about. Pratik Thakar, EVP and chief planning officer for China at McCann Erickson, argues that the market is still being educated about the possibilities, though he cites an online game his agency set up around the Puma China website. 

China is now recognised as the key market to enter within the region. According to a recent survey conducted by the China Youth Social Service Center, 73 per cent of Chinese youth have played an online game, and nine per cent of those say they play for more than four hours each day.

For multinational brands, the arrival of Western gaming firms may provide an easier way into this demographic. Hu for one welcomes their focus on the region. “In the long run,” he says, “the more Western gaming companies seriously commit themselves to the Chinese market, the higher level the overall industry in China will compete at.”

Farming games are China’s latest online craze, racking up tens of millions of users and disrupting workplace productivity. Now brands are looking to tap into the fad.

1 Happy Farm appears to have started as a community game on social network Kaixin001 around May 2008. However, Happy Farm didn’t fully take off until more recently, by which time variations - or exact replicas - of it had cropped up on Tencent’s QQ portal and social networks Renren.com and 51.com. Tencent launched its version, developed by app company Five Minutes, on QQ in September, driving the game’s popularity. Facebook has also launched a version.

Incarnations of the game include Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond and Happy Pig Farm. Tencent is looking to build upon Happy Farm’s success by announcing the launch of Happy Garden earlier this month.

According to reports, Tencent’s Happy Farm may have as many as 30 million registered players (Five Minutes keeps its figures under wraps) and allows two million new players to join the game daily.

2 Happy Farm players tend a plot of farmland, grow crops, irrigate their tracts and eventually harvest and sell their produce. Points are gained when players engage in an array of farming activities, or when they help on their neighbours’ farms. Good neighbours can help advance a player’s farm, but bad ones can steal their crops.

According to Ning Liu, principal analyst at BDA China, Happy Farm was initially more popular with the 25- to 30-year-old, white-collar urbanites on social networks, but tales of workers being fired for playing it have stymied that rush. The average player is now school-aged.

Taiwan issued a ban on all internet games in Government offices, after employees were found playing Happy Farm during work hours. Among other well-circulated stories about the game is the tale of one boyfriend whose alarm clock didn’t wake up his pregnant girlfriend to tend his farm while he was at work. The ensuing argument led to a break-up and, say reports, the abortion of the couple’s unborn child.

3 Brands are beginning to take notice. Among the earliest campaigns launched on a farming game was one from Lohas, a juice launched by COFCO in late 2008 that was positioned as a natural juice beverage and targeted white-collar workers in Beijing. JWT incorporated Lohas-branded seeds into farms on Kaixin001. These were planted, grew into fruit plants and were harvested to make Lohas juice. An option to send the bottled juice to players’ friends was also incorporated into the game.

After two months, more than 22 million active members were registered on the campaign. Lohas brand awareness among game players rocketed to 36 per cent from zero, with sales 50 per cent higher than the client’s target, according to Charlene Lee, head of the Lohas account at JWT Beijing.

4 However, in-game branding on these sites has been sparse. According to Steven Hu, CEO of InGameAd Interactive, engagement is difficult to achieve because there’s a limited capacity for brands to integrate their messages. “It is not easy for advertisers. There may be banner ads or billboards on the farm, but it is difficult to embed brands in the process of the game. The companies that created it are not professional game-design companies; there is little sustainability in their games.”

Liu is more optimistic about this sort of in-game marketing. “It is a kind of advertising at an early stage, though has a promising future,” he says. “Web games attract million of users in China. Brands have a huge opportunity to make an impression on end users, who are often 25 to 30 years old. This is the target audience for many FMCG products.”

5 Hu’s advice to brands looking to advertise successfully in the space is to be fun and make the campaign relevant to audiences in the context of the game. “For in-game advertising to be successful, it should be in the form of storytelling or part of the game’s multiple storylines. You can’t really leverage a brand off of straight advertising as the game has been created to be very light. It’s because of this that we haven’t seen lots of ads in this platform.”

What it means for…

Online media owners
- Happy Farm is China’s latest gaming trend. China’s social network space revolves around entertainment, with the games a site offers being a key part of its appeal. In an extremely fluid market, failing to keep up with the latest trends - or to anticipate the next ones - can affect share.

- Sites are largely dependent on app developers to produce these games. As a result, the process of making money out of them through tie-ups with brands can be complex - though not impossible.

Advertisers
- The games offer an avenue to reach millions of young users. Inserting a brand into the game can drive awareness, as shown by Lohas.

- Marketers should be mindful of how their brand fits into the game and not force their ads into an environment just because there are millions playing it. There are now plenty of genres of casual gaming
to choose from beside Happy Farm.

- Don’t expect the Happy Farm craze to last forever. Last year Parking Wars was the game everyone was talking about. Next year it might be something else entirely.

This article was originally published in 19 November 2009 issue of Media.

Sometimes, when targeting a particular consumer group, stealth is key. When buying a condom, for example, a little privacy is in order. In a campaign for Jissbon condoms launched in Shanghai during this year’s Golden Week, the product was bundled with a specially designed gaming disc and shelved side by side with its unbundled, gameless counterpart in selected Watsons and Carrefour stores across the city.

“Buyers could say to themselves, ‘Hey, I’m buying this gaming disc,’” says Steven Hu, CEO at InGameAd Interactive, the agency that created the game and marketing strategy for client, Jissbon. “This helped the brand achieve a huge differentiation in consumers’ eyes, and sales nearly doubled during the campaign.”

In hindsight, the Jissbon digital initiative seems an obvious marketing ploy, but brand owners have been slow in adding games to their China media mix, despite the heavy migration of young consumers to virtual realms of play.

Digital games arrived late to China. But after a few short years, the country can now lay claim to the world’s largest gamer population - and that will only grow larger as PC penetration expands beyond tier one cities. Unlike the West, where console games are dominant, Chinese gamers use the PC as their platform. In fact, PS3s, Wiis and Xboxes are technically still illegal, though available in China.

Few foreign games have traction in China, the exceptions being blockbusters like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and NCSoft’s Lineage, both of which are online subscription-based games. In contrast, most of the top 10 game list consists of free-to-play games offered by Chinese developers and publishers Tencent Holdings, Shanda Games, NetEase.com among others.

Chinese gamers are willing to spend on virtual items, and revenue is growing fast - up 39.5 percent to 6.2 billion yuan (US$908 million) in this year’s second quarter. Six Chinese game companies have already listed on the NASDAQ, and all are committed to launching global gaming blockbusters.

With this backdrop, China would seem fertile ground for game-based marketing, but not much is happening. Asked what milestones the in-game advertising industry has so far witnessed, Hu says, “We are still waiting.”

Industry analyst, Lisa Cosmas Hanson, managing partner at Niko Partners, says in-game advertising is still small in China so far, with less than three percent of revenue for online games coming from advertising. Hanson says the culprit is game content. “In surveys, Chinese gamers say they don’t mind in-game ads provided they aren’t disruptive. But the problem is that the mythical and historical themes of most Chinese games don’t lend themselves to advertising.”

The same view is held at Taiwan’s largest game developer and publisher, Softworld International. “Most in-game advertising would be for modern products like drinks or clothing,” says vice-president and CFO, Hsing-Po Chung. “How could a developer incorporate that into an ancient Chinese game theme.

In Taiwan, ZenithOptimedia estimates that the country’s in-game advertising spend totals less than NT$1 million (US$31,000) annually. In China, that figure would be much larger, though still relatively small given the country’s gaming population.

According to Hu, one reason for the low level of in-game advertising in China is the traditional digital media bugbear - the lack of third party metrics.

That is not to say that the measurement technology is not available. InGameAd Interactive, for instance, has backend systems that can track the position of each gamer’s avatar at three-second intervals and record what is visible on their PC screen. “Traditional market research companies don’t have the technology to do this,” says Hu. “When asked to analyse results for a game, they turn to traditional sampling and pick, say, 20 cities and interview 500 gamers and try to determine if they have seen the product placement.”

In spite of yhese measurement concerns, however, some brands have taken the plunge, especially on social networking platforms such as kaixin001.com, where branded web-based games are highly popular. Brands are incorporated into game play through a variety of methods - from straightforward branded gaming environments or game sponsorship to more sophisticated offerings such as in the popular Sale of Slaves game where users are able to reward their ‘slaves’ by purchasing them a Pizza Hut lunch.

Still, the in-game ad culture in Greater China is far behind that found in neighbouring Japan and South Korea. Similar to China and Taiwan, gaming in Korea is predominantly online-based - the country led the gaming industry shift from consoles to online games a decade ago when NCSoft launched its online hit Lineage. Korea also played an equally important role in developing the free-to-play model with Nexon’s Maple Story and other games exported across the region.

Unlike Taiwan and China, however, South Korea has a thriving in-game advertising industry. Korean games tend to veer towards modern themes such as car racing or dance, and as a result are much better suited for advertising.
In Japan, in-game advertising is also growing, and will continue to do so despite the current recession, says Richard May, director at the Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute (JCMRI). For years, Sony has deployed in-game ads via several generations of its PlayStations, and more recently it has worked with IGA Worldwide, one of a dozen global in-game placement firms, to place other company’s messages as well.

Last month, Sony began work with another multiplatform in-game advertising company, Double Fusion, to place advertising in games played on PlayStation3, and the service debuted Konami’s soccer games.

Research conducted by JCMRI shows that in-game ads appearing as billboards within a scene or even in its background or wallpaper are clearly seen by gamers. But May notes that one of the more interesting trends in Japan, and one that the rest of Asia will surely follow up with, is the already advanced use of advertising in mobile phone games.

“On a subway or train, commuters will find stickers on the windows them to a URL where they can play the game. These games are embedded with advertising, and are designed for a short duration for play, usually under three minutes, which is slightly less than the average travel time between stations.

This article was originally published in 3 December 2009 Winter issue of Digital Media.

Taking advantage of high-speed internet connections and ever more affordable computers with increasingly-powerful graphical capabilities, millions of young people in China log onto various online games to interact with each other and collectively explore 3D virtual worlds on a daily basis.

Among them, the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is the most popular and addictive genre. The prevalence of online games as a huge daily-consumed digital platform on which more than 40 million young Chinese dwell makes it critical for marketers and agencies with a target on youth to understand the motivations of those gamers.

Online games, by nature, encourage players to buddy-up and form communities in order to tackle more challenging tasks within the game and rise to higher power levels. An MMORPG has its own financial and economic systems, in which players choose different careers and manage resources to their best interests according to the supply and demand situation within the virtual world, which is extremely similar to the real world.

As a result, online gamers are motivated by multiple and varied reasons in the virtual world, just as people are in the real world — seeking relationships, immersion, escapism, power and money. In comparison, most console or stand-alone PC game players are motivated to play mainly for entertainment, or at the psychological level, mainly for pleasure and relaxation.

Relationship-seeking
As the one-child policy was implemented in China from about 1978, almost all Chinese aged 30 or younger do not have siblings. Many of them are young professionals or college students who tend to stay with their parents until they get married. Most Chinese are not party animals and are much more conservative in making friends compared with their western counterparts. Still, they have a strong desire and need to make friends, so many of them do that online and in virtual worlds, where the pressures of making a good first impression on others via appropriate body language and decent dressing are much less.

Therefore, making-friends has consistently been ranked as the number one reason why Chinese people play online games in all surveys on online gamers in China. Just as in the real world, in order to make good friends online, people need to invest an enormous amount of emotion and trust, in addition to time. To a large extent, they must do so in a virtual world anyway.

When players embark on an adventure with their friends in an online game, they will have to know that those friends are trustworthy. Otherwise, they will be in big trouble when they meet enemies within the game which they certainly can’t fight and win alone. Many of them have later met people they first got to know in games and become very good friends because they share a similar interest, and having gone on those adventures together in the virtual world makes them warm and trusting towards each other. Realizing this, marketers should be well aware that viral marketing can be extremely effective in online game communities as they are built on relationships and trust in the first place.

Immersion
Immersion here refers to the fact that some players love to imagine they are their avatars in the virtual world, be it princesses, kings, wizards or monsters. Lots of people, especially female players, take great pleasure from such fantasizing. Those virtual clothes and accessories that people buy like crazy on QQ to show off their virtual QQ personas are essentially a simplistic way to appeal to such immersion motivation. Therefore, products like clothes, accessories and cosmetics are perfect to market in virtual worlds.

Despite common misconceptions, luxury brands are also suitable to market in virtual worlds because people love to imagine owning things they still can’t put their hands on at the moment. Most Chinese online gamers may not be able to afford luxury goods, but it makes business sense to try to influence them via brand marketing in a platform they love even if they are still too young to buy, or you’ll face intense competition when they do become older and richer.

Escapism
Booming consumerism and dramatic economic and social changes in China over the past decade have increased the various burdens on young people’s shoulders. For example, it is very hard for a young guy to tie the knot without owning a house before the marriage these days. Renting a house is usually not an option. In a metropolis like Shanghai, you probably need to put a car as an item on the list when you propose to your fiancee. This is sad for most guys, but it is a fact.

With real estate prices in China’s cities being ridiculously high, young people are under tremendous pressure. Online gaming therefore becomes a natural place to escape into. So, it makes sense to market in the virtual world any product or services which help them soothe their restless mind, relieve stress, find a job or make money.

There are also other relatively minor reasons for people to play online games in China, such as purely treating them as a way to make money by selling virtual items and leveling services, and seeking power which usually ends up in PK (Player Killing, meaning player versus player battle). PK is especially popular among young men and this is almost universally true. Burger King in the United States has appealed to this by creating a 3D character in the form of a Burger King (”the King”) as a corner man in the game called Fight Night.

Deeply appreciating the motivations of Chinese online gamers is a must for advertising professionals before they can help marketers design and implement a truly interactive and effective in-game advertising campaign in China

Two critical factors in measuring in-game advertising were discussed in my previous article — “Cracking the mystery of measuring in-game ads“: Long ad exposure and interaction. In this article, we will elaborate on some successful early attempts to measure in-game advertising. None of these attempts represent the ultimate methodology for measurement in this arena, but each of them sheds some light on how in-game advertising or advergaming can be measured.

Statistics on concomitant campaign forums
Usually, when an in-game advertising campaign is launched, a forum to go with the campaign will be introduced either as a sub-forum of the game’s existing official forum, or as a dedicated brand club kind of forum in order to promote the campaign and more importantly urge more gamers’ participation in the engaging in-game advertising campaign. This forum also serves as an extended information platform on which some information-heavy, not interaction-heavy, communications between advertiser and gamers or among gamers themselves can be conducted. For example, one gamer may post information in the forum regarding how he manages to obtain more in-game benefits, some virtual gold for example, by better following the in-game advertising campaign. Such postings will dramatically enhance his peers’ enthusiasm and attention on the advertising campaign that is going within the game.

To take one of the in-game advertising campaigns from LG within an online dancing game in China, for example. After the three-month campaign, the number of registered users of LG Club, one of LG’s LCD screen forums, grew 25 times more, from less than 3,000 pre-campaign to almost 70,000 post-campaign, while the total posting count grew from less than 1,000 pre-campaign to more than 10,000 post-campaign. Posting within forums requires a series of actions from the users’ side to finish, so users will typically not do this unless they are really motivated by some value and are paying adequate attention.

Serial number redemption
Another common way to measure in-game advertising campaigns is via the redemption number and rate. Simply speaking, redemption in this case means that gamers will first obtain a unique serial number by participating in a gaming-related campaign — such as successfully completing specially-designed in-game ad based tasks, or buying a snack or a bottle of water and scratching to find the number on or within the package; or trying a virtual item within a game specially designed to resemble a newly-launched product from an advertiser.

The gamers can then enter the serial number within the game while they are playing to obtain virtual items or virtual gold or simply a right to enter a special activity within the game. Because the redemption of every unique serial number will be kept and monitored from a database, advertisers will be given a convincing report after the campaign on exactly how many targeted participated in the campaign and how many of them went so far as to redeem the serial numbers.

If such a method is supported by a simple companion website application, a web form for instance, even more information about the participants, say their name, age and contact information, can be acquired into the advertisers’ CRM system if necessary. In one such case related to a major MMO game with an average concurrent user number well above 300,000, the redemption rate was as high as 46 percent of all the players of that game.

Of course, in addition to these results-oriented methods for in-game ad measurement, there are also technology-based ways to measure them. For example, there have been some technologies that can monitor if a player has been near to a virtual billboard or a 3D virtual advertising object within the game, and then only record a delivered impression of that player when his or her avatar stays in an effective advertising area for a certain period of time. Such technologies of broadcasting and monitoring advertising, especially across multiple games, have great potential in forming the foundation of some highly quantitative and measurable tools for in-game advertising. They also lay the groundwork for more qualitative and creative ways to measure in-game advertising, including the ones mentioned above.

Advergaming and more
Advergaming, a variation of in-game advertising, can be deployed on various platforms including SNS sites, dedicated mini-sites, Second Life types of virtual words, or as part of the advertisers’ existing website. Based on the different platforms on which such advergaming is deployed, there can be some very interesting and innovative ways of measuring and selling advertising campaigns. For example, in terms of an advergaming application within a SNS website, a promising way to measure its results and effectiveness can be the total number of applications installed by the users on that SNS website. This figure in many ways holds even more value than the click-through figure of traditional internet display ads. A more detailed discussion on this goes beyond the scope of this article, so more information may be covered later in other ones.

Employing the traditional survey methodology of research, Nielsen Games polled game players in August last year and found out that 11 percent of the surveyed gamers said they purchased a brand that was advertised in a game, about 19 percent said they talked about it after seeing an ad, and 10 percent said they recommended the product. There is bound to be some very interesting methodologies or even standards as more and more advertisers use gaming as a vehicle to deliver and drive highly interactive and engaging campaigns.

The year 2009 has been very tough for digital marketing. Even in such a challenging year, the in-game advertising, or advergaming (IGA), sector has managed to grow fast in China and has been adopted by quite a few advertisers to combat the economic downturn and baffled consumer confidence. Let’s highlight and review several cases to get some insights into the trends in this sector.

1. Minsheng Bank Monopoly
Due to its risk-averse nature, the banking and financial services industry is arguably one of the last industries you’d expect to leverage on IGA for marketing or branding. However, one of the most successful IGA cases in 2009 was actually initiated by a fast-growing domestic bank in China — Minsheng Bank.

From the very start of this year, Minsheng launched a 5-month-long campaign employing a classic game: Monopoly. By answering the “Minsheng Fortune Q&A” and other related surveys online, users could accumulate points to be used as virtual currency to, for example, buy and sell stocks in the virtual stock market embedded in the game. By participating, users became acquainted with many of the financial services provided by Minsheng Bank and took away some valuable financial knowledge as well in the highly-entertaining game environment. The top 10 online winners of the game were later invited to compete in an offline event.

Educating targeted audiences to the point where they can be knowledgeable enough to buy the services provided by financial institutions has been one of the biggest challenges to the industry. If you embed such knowledge and your brand into a game, the audience may just love to learn on their own and your brand will be differentiated from the competition.

2. Livina drives into games
The auto industry has inevitably driven into the gaming area in the past year. Among the several cases, one of the most noticeable was Livina’s launch of a Bejeweled-like game that features the car’s parts as the “Bejeweled” items, and a series of levels that feature different aspects of the car. Though it does not have in-depth gameplay, the very high popularity of the Bejeweled genre has given this campaign the same kind of result that the auto industry has been spending heavily over the years to achieve, through in-film ads in the Transformers series, for example. The campaign claims to have attracted more than 200,000 people to register and play the game and dramatically enhanced the brand’s image among young people.

3. Experience Lay’s not by eating, but by producing it yourself
The IGA sector has given almost 4 million people in China the interesting experience of growing their own potatoes and producing their own Lay’s potato chips, without even having to get their hands dirty. In the two-month campaign, Lay’s embedded itself into one of the most popular social games in 2009, Happy Farm, encouraging gamers to grow potatoes in the game as opposed to other crops, and buying virtual factories to produce the Lay’s-named chips. This campaign brought out one of the most important beauties of IGA — experience and fun. According to one of the campaign results, the favorability level of the brand has almost doubled from 39 percent to 72.4 percent, which has once again proven that we are indisputably in an experience economy.

In one of the latest cases, Lipton launched a similar IGA campaign that took advantage of a dedicated card game application on social networking sites and extended the campaign to offline products by putting small cards with serial numbers on it within its product packages. Users could redeem the serial numbers into points to be used in the Lipton game online.

4. Game helps buying Jissbon condoms easy
Buying a condom may have baffled quite some young people in China. Buying a game disc, on the other hand, is so natural and common to them. So, what if we combined those two things together?

Jissbon became the first mover in this direction and enjoyed a huge success. The popular condom brand in China launched an advergaming campaign across 45 Watson’s stores and four Carrefour stores in Shanghai during this year’s Golden Week, by bundling a specially-designed gaming disc with its products. The targeted consumers could spot the difference and, in many cases, almost immediately had a smile on the face by just taking a quick look at the shelves which display more than eight brands of condoms.

Many users chose to upload their game scores to a dedicated minisite at the end of each play to get into the top ranked lists. Even today, there are new scores uploaded on a daily basis. To perform well in a Jissbon game is a pretty cool thing for young men; they want to show off a bit online. Sales nearly doubled during the campaign and it was achieved by removing the normal small gift box bundled with the product and replacing it with the game disc.

There is a clear trend in 2009 that the use of in-game ads as innovative and effective ways to reach young audiences has been extended from FMCG and IT industries into the auto and even financial services industries. The New Year will undoubtedly see much more successful cases in the in-game ad sector as gaming has inevitably become mainstream media to the youth in China.

《阿凡达》有望成为内地首部票房过1亿美元的影片。更令人叹为观止的是，很多人是手里拿着从网上下载的其他网友观看阿凡达的攻略走进电影院的。这种攻略从观看之前的准备工作，比如穿什么衣服，吃什么东西，喝多少水，到现场坐什么位置比较好，怎么尽快适应，如果出现不舒服怎么办等等，应有尽有。《阿凡达》摧枯拉朽般的巨大影响力再次证明了电影是以内容为本质的产业。

而游戏产业同样是一个以内容为本质的产业。一个好的故事情节、游戏策划、主题、创意是一款游戏成功必不可少的要素。游戏和电影之间有太多的相似。阿凡达的导演卡梅隆在接受X-Play的访谈中，就提到最近“对游戏方面的工作非常感兴趣”。他说：“我有很多出色的故事，但是却没时间将他们都拍成电影。”卡梅隆还提到了游戏公司育碧(UBISOFT)说，“这也是我要和UBISOFT探讨的，看看是否有可能在游戏的世界里实现我的想法——电影只是一种表现手段，好的想法和视觉效果让电影和游戏的区别不再明显。” 卡梅隆显然并不是随便说说，几乎就在阿凡达上映的同时，育碧就推出了同名游戏。

事实上，除了阿凡达这个名字和游戏有千丝万缕的关系以外，从影片本身看也具有太多和游戏相关联的元素。熟悉《魔兽争霸》和《魔兽世界》的玩家罗列了一系列的证据，包括UD成了人族，而暗夜精灵成了巨魔，就连《阿凡达》中潘多拉星球上女主角种族的模样都和暗夜精灵如出一辙。而电影中出现的坐骑又仿佛是源自游戏里的DK马和双足龙。最终成为魅影骑士坐骑的则是《魔兽世界》玩家梦寐以求的火凤凰。这也从一个侧面说明，很多人其实早就在不知不觉中感受并热爱着游戏元素，即使他们平时并玩游戏。生活中这样的例子比比皆是，从早些时候的网上偷菜，再到近期火热的三国杀，都说明希望体验游戏娱乐性的群体异常庞大。游戏三国杀是和杀人游戏同类型的桌面类游戏，有时也被称为卡片类游戏。这个线下娱乐活动在上海等大城市的白领和大量公司中高层群体中有非常雄厚的用户基础，每有空闲，他们就相约围坐一起，扮演其了三国杀游戏中的不同角色，玩得非常忘我。目前三国杀已从开始时的线下聚会活动发展成有独立客户端、允许不同地方用户进行联机对抗的成熟网络游戏。该款网游受众里有非常大比例的是以前从未接触过网络游戏的人，但这并不妨碍他们基于三国杀的客户端来体验本已非常熟悉的游戏乐趣。

游戏这种无处不在的娱乐形式毫无悬念地也在广告业大行其道。仅以红得发紫的阿凡达题材为例，已有不少世界级广告主对此热点做出了相应的游戏解读，这其中就包括了可口可乐零度的“阿凡达计划”和麦当劳的“化身阿凡达（Avatarize Yourself）”系列游戏。可口可乐零度为《阿凡达》启动了一个名为“阿凡达计划（AVTR）”的病毒式营销网站，以文字、图片、视频的形式描绘了电影《阿凡达》中地球与潘多拉星两个迥异的世界，充满了游戏的元素和感觉。而在麦当劳 “化身阿凡达”游戏中，用户只需上传一张自己的正面照，便可看到自己化身蓝色纳美人后的“阿凡达”模样了。麦当劳为资深阿凡达爱好者提供了一系列在线游戏，其中包括潘多拉任务(Pandora Quest)：通过完成在不同的潘多拉场景中寻找隐藏物品等任务，玩家将获得对《阿凡达》电影迷人场景的独家体验；麦当劳幻境(McD VISION)：将玩家引入潘多拉世界，通过增强现实技术(AR)体验电影角色和场景；发现潘多拉(Pandora ROVR)：这是一次在线的发现之旅，他们可以坐在驾驶舱里，通过互动式的体验，去探索潘多拉世界。玩家的任务就是在这个世界中漫步，寻找和分享他们的奇异发现。

就如谷歌CEO埃里克•施密特指出的那样：“未来网上的一切看上去都像是多人游戏。如果我只有15岁，这就是我现在要去做的。”

        银行及金融服务产业以规避和控制风险为行业本质之一。在很多人看来，这样一个产业开展IGA这样的新锐数字营销推广恐怕还待时日。然而，小荷才露尖尖角，早有蜻蜓立上头。2009年的开年之作，而且也是最成功的IGA案例之一正是出自金融服务业，开展此次营销的是中国本土高速成长的民生银行。

        2009年新年伊始，民生银行即展开了为期5个月的“创智大富翁”游戏营销推广。顾名思义，其选择了经典游戏类型：大富翁。“创智大富翁”为一款拼智游戏，玩家采用积累金币的形式来角逐名次，并最终参加落地活动，夺取丰厚大奖。拥有民生银行网银账户的成年玩家可通过参加“民生财富课堂”问答、民生银行业务调查问答等活动来累积自己的虚拟财富。虚拟财富累计达到一定程度，玩家即可参与游戏中的虚拟股市等操作。

        通过玩游戏，参与者逐步了解了渗透其中的民生银行多个金融产品及服务，并在轻松有趣的游戏氛围里获得了一些基础但颇有价值的金融知识。对银行业来说，目标人群基本金融知识的匮乏正是一直以来困扰着他们金融产品服务推广的难题。直接培训成本太高，效果有限，而消费者通常又不会购买他们完全不懂的金融服务。民生银行这种独辟蹊径的方法取得了巨大成功。而通过有趣的游戏方式学会了重要的金融基础知识的消费者自然对民生银行赞许有加。

        这个案例向我们揭示了IGA产业即使从内容体裁角度看，覆盖面也是如此之广。事实上，人类任何一种社会经济活动都有与之相对应的游戏类型。

        2.  骊威高速驶入游戏领域

        过去一年中，汽车产业再次毫无悬念的驶入了IGA领域。在多个汽车产业案例中，骊威连连看游戏营销是其中比较值得关注的。它以经典游戏“连连看”为载体，以车型的精致部件做连连看的主要对象，并配以逐步提升的通关难度。虽然其游戏性本身不是很强，但连连看在广大用户中的普及和受欢迎程度也许正是商家看中的。个中逻辑其实和汽车行业长期以来在变形金刚系列电影中大肆开展电影内嵌广告别无二致，收到的效果也是相当不错，但花费则要少得多。该游戏推广还在多季中不断加入应景的流行元素，比如其最新第四季中就糅合了杜拉拉职场风云的噱头，吸引了不少眼球。

        抛开天量的浏览量不谈，骊威连连看第一、二期活动相继推出后据称就共获得了近20多万的游戏注册人数。IGA的力量由此可窥一斑。

        3.  自己动手“生产”乐事薯片

        IGA产业在2009年还神奇般地帮助了至少4百万人完成了他们人生中的一次奇特体验：从自己种植土豆开始，最后亲手制作由乐事冠名的薯片。完成整个过程，用户都不需要摸到一粒土，因为这一切都是在网上完成的。在两个月的推广过程中，乐事将自身产品植入到2009年中国最火的社交游戏之一农场系列游戏中，并鼓励用户种植土豆，然后用亲手种植和收获的土豆通过购买乐事加工场虚拟道具来自己生产乐事薯片。

        该IGA推广体现了IGA产业最有价值的元素之一：“在快乐中体验”，因而收获了丰硕的成果。相关调研显示，此次推广之后，乐事品牌“知晓度”从活动之前的90.8%提升到95.1%，品牌喜好度提升近1倍，从39%，提升到72.4%。

        该案例无疑再次证明，我们无可辩驳地处在体验经济时代。

        4.  游戏营销让杰士邦安全套轻松胜出

        购买安全套可能让不少中国的年轻人犯难。而购买游戏光盘对他们来说则非常自然且习以为常。如果将这两样产品结合起来呈现给年轻人会如何呢？

        杰士邦大胆尝试了这个想法，也因此获得了巨大的先发优势和成功。杰士邦作为中国安全套领域里最受欢迎的品牌在今年十一黄金周期间掀起了一场游戏风暴。它在上海市内的45家屈臣氏门店以及4家位置最佳的家乐福卖场同时推出了捆绑有迷你定制游戏光盘的安全套全线新品。用户一眼就能从货架上认出该线杰士邦新品，因为它实在太“与众不同”了。漂亮的新品盒外，用透明胶带捆绑了一张迷你游戏光盘，游戏味十足的封面设计让众多的青年游戏拥趸一见倾心。用户的目光再也不用因为慢慢几货架近10款不同品牌的安全套产品而感到茫然而无从下手了。拿着绑有游戏光盘的安全套来到收银台的年轻人神情自若，三三两两还开着游戏的玩笑，心理嘀咕着光盘里的游戏到底会是怎样？该批从外到里都差异化程度极高的杰士邦安全套产品一上市即很快脱销，杰士邦在相关屈臣氏和家乐福门店单店销量飙升了几乎一倍，更有多家屈臣氏店在推出游戏后的第一天即出现半日售出300盒以上的佳绩。

        光盘内卡通味十足的“二人三脚”及“跃跃欲试”两款定制游戏，均强在创意，精在制作，帮杰士邦赚足了用户眼球和会心一笑。游戏在完成之后，如成绩不错还会弹出提示框，询问用户是否要将高分传到网上参加“全国硬汉，你排老几”的比拼。这个互动环节的设置为该IGA创新案例画上了最后一笔：完成了线下和线上的完美结合。而这一笔也巧妙地为游戏内嵌广告这一新锐数字营销方式的数据结果跟踪提供了一种新思路。杰士邦的游戏营销活动早已于10月中旬结束，然后时至年底，每天还有不少用户上传游戏高分至活动网站。年轻人对于游戏的热情可见一斑，而广告主则继续高兴地品尝着大胆创新给他们带来的丰硕成果。

        面对游戏是年轻人的主流媒体这一不争事实，随着新年2010的到来，IGA行业必将迎来更大更快的发展。事实上，不少跨年度IGA大戏已在紧锣密鼓的制作和“排练”中。新年伊始，它们即将登台亮相。

        当今市场，竞争激烈，仅靠个把捆绑销售要想真正刺激销售非常困难，必须做到有效的创新，产生足够强的差异化才能让挑花了眼的潜在客户轻易地选择购买你的产品。杰士邦通过结合IGA，为已被商家广泛应用的1+1捆绑式促销手段注入全新的创意，令人耳目一新。作为给客户的第一印象，其异型光盘的包装表现形式和光盘面的趣味设计均非常成功，一方面撩起了受众的兴趣，另一方面又保证了足够的神秘感以刺激消费者的购买欲。当用户怀着浓厚的兴趣将产品和光盘买回家即迫不及待地开始玩光盘中的两个小游戏时，神秘感虽然消失，但紧跟而来的是挑战的欲望和游戏本身的乐趣。

        在游戏中，杰士邦并没有拙劣地将自己的品牌贯穿整个过程，而是很好地结合了游戏的设定，总在玩家会心一笑的时候将自己的品牌特点和优势抖露出来，可谓是每次都抓个正着。通过这个案例，杰士邦表现了对IGA这一新锐数字营销手段的深刻理解和市场领导力。为了促进用户参与并获得进一步的营销效果衡量数据，杰士邦还专门为游戏添加了“全国硬汉，你排老几”的上传积分等互动环节，使整个营销形成了完整的“线下线上联动”、“人机到人人互动”体系。

        换个角度看，杰士邦结合游戏的推广其实是一个典型的故事营销。从一开始吸引用户的注意力到最后满足其好奇并转移到对游戏本身的体验和乐趣上，设计巧妙、诙谐有趣的游戏最终让玩家会心一笑，杰士邦的品牌和产品优势则通过了这种愉快甚至是通感的方式深深地印入了用户的头脑之中。每个广告游戏就是一个为品牌精心策划的营销故事，与其说用户在玩游戏不如说用户在享受故事。

        杰士邦的IGA案例还折射出这么一个事实，即IGA营销方案其实非常适合一些利用传统宣传和推广渠道甚至是大众数字营销手段很难有效传播或传播效果不甚理想的产品及服务。如果你已对众多营销手段感觉审美疲劳，渴望全新营销方案的话，也许杰士邦的案例能对你有所启示。

        效果最好的电视广告往往能在15-30秒内讲出一个摄人心魄的品牌故事。因为每个人心中都有故事，都最容易也最愿意被故事打动。随着IGA在中国的实践领域拓展至故事营销的范畴，我们将很快能够看到一批精彩的相关案例，它们显然将突破15-30秒的限制，更重要的是你的目标人群将是体验你故事的主角。