Hitching a ride?

September 29, 2006 on 4:05 pm | In Advergames |

There’s a boom in advergames for cars at the moment, and some are much better than others.

A recent game for the Toyota Yaris was nicely produced, but it squanders this excellent foundation by being too difficult to understand and play.

Worse, it drives straight past its target audience. If the idea was to market the Yaris to young women flaunting their car about town, then this wasn’t helped by the game’s harsh colours, structure and complexity. In fact, the car at the centre of the game comes off like an aggressive prowler stalking the neighbourhood. Not a good look.

My guess is this was not developed by a games specialist, but rather by an in-house web designer or programmer who decided to try their hand at games design. Why is this my guess? The final product seems not to be based on solid market research, meaning that while the production and the design are pretty good, the fundamentals are missing.

This don’t mean I dismiss the possibility of using advergames to market cars to young women — far from it. For example, racing games such as Peugeot Time Trials and Driving BMW may seem masculine, but their simple objectives and adrenaline charged experiences have made them popular with diverse audiences, which naturally would include young women.

At 3RD sense we recently created an advergame for Nissan that we hope is another example of how content and gameplay can be tailored to the particular interests of a target market segment. The idea behind this game was to show how an extreme, outdoors model of car would complement an active lifestyle. In the game, characters ride snowboards down a valley, hurtling towards Nissan Xtrails parked by the finishing line. The game engages with its target audience because it is fun, has an unobtrusive soundtrack, is more graphically advanced than most other car games and above all, it gets the adrenaline pumping.

If we want to make successful games for the car industry, or any industry for that matter, we must be creative, take risks and move onto new things if our idea isn’t working. Above all, we should always tailor the gameplay and content to the target audience and objectives. If we’re not onto something good then we should get out of the drivers seat and find another ride.