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During the development of Seventeen.com, the decision was made to combined custom advergames—ones that fit in with the publication's branding directly—and rebranded games. The resulting game center allowed people to engage with an equally rewarding branded experience that reinforced Seventeen's message. The rebranded games still accomplished its goal of offering users additional reasons to visit the site and ultimately was a more cost-effective solution.
4. Evaluate community elements. Creating games often goes beyond just deciding what content to put into the game play. Here are a few items to think about:
- Viral: Give your players the ability to challenge or invite friends to play along.
- Personalization: Let visitors create a customized avatar and profile for use inside the game and throughout your Web site. By integrating community elements outside of the games, players can carry over to other elements of the site.
- Leaderboards and points: To encourage competition and game play, use leaderboards and point tracking systems to display score leaders.
- Ratings: Encourage people to rate the games they enjoy the most so those games can, in turn, be recommended to others.
- Prizes: To reward repeat game play and promote play of select games, incorporate prize or sweepstakes entry redemption with game play points.
5. Consider revenue options. With the addition of games on your site, you are able to instantly increase the amount of valuable advertising and sponsorship inventory. For online games, the most popular means of advertising include around game, during game load, in between levels and postgame ads, in addition to game or game community sponsorship.
Neal Sinno is the vice president of business development at New York-based game software company Arkadium. He can be contacted at info@arkadium.com.
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