Are you game for

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

: through this medium that the next gaming destination would be the handsets. Big brands are concentrating 20-25% of their ad budgets on below the line activities, mainly aimed at this gaming group.”

In Jain’s estimate there are roughly two million casual gamers in India, a small proportion of whom are regular visitors to Internet gaming cafes at Reliance World and Satyam where they are addicted to multi-player editions like Counter Strike 2x2, or 4x4 or popular strategy games such as the Age of the Empire.

“Even though bandwidth is an issue, with cable and PTV coming in, things would improve,” he enthuses.

“If content developers were to localise the game features, instead of copying from the West, the games would be more popular,” he adds. Right now, most games are a straight rip-off from popular Western versions. Customisation in the sense of featuring a racing track that stretches from India Gate to Chandigarh, if tied to CRM programmes, can be used to unlock gamers’ psychographic profiles for lead generation.

One, big advantage with advergames is that once downloaded, the games stay on the handset for as long as the gamer is interested in it. In other words, the shelf life of a game is longer than that of any other media. One international study reveals that a mobile game is typically played for 28 minutes abroad; but in India, a session sometimes averages 38.9 minutes.

The end application can be used in a variety of ways, in cyber cafes, on merchandise, digital TVs, shop in shops; console game kiosks, time-based subscriptions (surfing hours), external façade branding, desktop branding, furniture branding or on other promotional material inside cafes such as on trans-lites, posters etc.

Indeed, the choices for an ‘out-of-the-box’ brand manager could be many in the form of an in-game placement; ad flash while the game is being downloaded, the use of a brand jingle or the call to action with the sending of an SMS.

“If portals like Zapak.com launch MMOG, the subscription model could also become popular,” asserts Alvares, who has worked with a host of clients, including MTV India, Singapore Tourism, LIC, Reliance ADAG, Times Business Solutions, UTV Bindass and Citibank, to name a few.