Cheap Marketing through ARGs!
March 24, 2007 · Print This Article
I always thought it would be a neat idea to create additional content for a game by way of Alternate Reality Game type materials, and use it as a profit center. For example, frequently AAA games will release Art Books as a premium buy for people who are really hardcore about a product (Blizzard does this frequently). I think it would be significantly more interesting if such books were sold over Amazon.com or eBay under the pretense of being integrated into the storyline. Clearly this isn’t possible in all games, but in a significant number it would be.
Imagine, for example, one made a game based on the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. If the designers of the game were to include part of their story bible, as well as some art work or concept sketches into a book, and call it the Necronomicon, sell it on eBay under some pretense of finding the thing somewhere, and leak the existence of such a book to the gaming press.
Well that’d be kinda cool.
This stealth-marketing ploy could even be possible pre-release to drum up a few bucks. The caveat there would be that the publishing channels one would have to go through would be less conventional, such as Lulu.com. Even so, this isn’t necessarly a bad thing, and in fact opens this up as a possible revenue channel for Indie game designers as well.
And here at GhostRazor, we’re all about the little guy.
The problem I see with using ARG’s as marketing tools is their extremely limited reach. With marketing, the whole goal is to reach as wide of an audience as possible and ARG’s just haven’t reached that critical mass yet. Something like “I Love Bees” is still the exception, rather than the rule.
Matt, I think there are wrinkles to that thought you haven’t completely explored. In many ways, it depends upon where you’re measuring: if you’re measuring “active players” and thinking of them as the target of the marketing, you’re totally right. Sliced another way, that group is like the little part of an iceberg that is visible above the waterline. ARGs are a difficult marketing form, but we’ve made it work for a few companies in measurable ways.
Angus, one day you’ll find it so funny one day when you hear the story of how I managed to stumble by here and the trepidation with which I opened this post. Your imagination is not as theoretical as you think it is.
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I’m into Lovecraft, though not inot gaming. I’d really like to make an icon of this image; is it yours, and if so, may I have permission?
It is not mine, in fact, I just found it to be hilarious. There doesn’t seem to be any clear indication to who originally came up with it, although I’d love to find out.
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