At the start of 2011 I made 8 predictions for 2011 and the crossover area of gaming and marketing, with a sprinkle of social thrown in…

I’m going to rate each out of 10 points for accuracy and then give an overall grade for my efforts.

1. In 2011 there will be a game created as part of a marketing campaign that is so successful a port is made to one of the major consoles.
Well this isn’t a promising start, I’ve not been able to find any examples of a game created for a marketing campaign that made the leap to console.

There could be many reasons for this, and although I don’t have any data to back up my claims, I mostly suspect it’s because advergames simply still aren’t as fun as dedicated games. Many brands still feel that when creating online content, forcing through business messages is more important than creating excellent and engaging content.

Whilst your brand is important we often find ourselves pushing clients to tone down the business message. Make a game that’s fun first and it’ll get your message out there.

SCORE: 0/10

2. Facebook will become less important. (But only just)
Depending on who you read, either Facebook is actually losing users, or maybe just it’s growth is slowing…

Either way, it’s a good but not another fantastic year for the guys in Palo Alto.

The big disappointment in the social network space was Google plus, launched in June it quickly had press clamouring to tout the “Facebook killer” as the next big thing. Very quickly it had users in the tens of millions, but without ALL their friends and their content on the network users very quickly drifted back to the familiar blue and white of Facebook.

Score 8/10

3. Marketing agencies will continue to see memes on the web and copy them badly for major campaigns.

There have been several times throughout the year I’ve seen adverts and though to myself “oh that’s from xyz” but in my hectic schedule forgot to copy any of these down. Now it’s review time I can only find international examples …

Toshiba outright steals an idea
Chevrolet copies a popular and creative photo blog
McDonald’s “borrows” a joke from a 2009 sketch.

Technically I think this should be a 10/10 score, but due to my own disorganization I’ll mark myself down for noy being able to provide any UK examples…

Score 7/10

4. ePaper will appear on a cereal box

Technically, ePaper didn’t appear on any cereal boxes in 2011, unless it went very unreported.

However breakfast cereals continued to be a canvas for pushing marketing innovation with technical demos such as the illuminating box or more conservatively the use of QR codes as part of a campaign by Kelloggs

3/10

5. Multiplatform competitive advergames

Well this one is a joy to write about as it was 100% accurate and the best example of the year was something we were actually involved in creating. (It hadn’t been discussed at the time of making last years predictions – honestly!)

Doritos launched a campaign over the summer around the Dip Desperado concept. This involved an integrated campaign across all media including in store and on unit promotions, driving users to play the game.

The game was available either as flash through facebook or as a free standalone game download for Android or iPhone.

Each device used the same mechanics so that users would compete against each others scores agnostic of which platform they were using.

I’m not able to provide exact figures but downloads on each mobile platform was measured in the “hundreds of thousands” in the UK alone.

Score 10/10

6. Buzzword of 2011 will be “cloud”

Well cloud was certainly everywhere in 2011 with it being a core part of microsoft’s advertising campaign and many other companies like Amazon and dropbox pushing their wares.

Of course you know something is mainstream though when Apple gets involved. And what more original name could they have picked than iCloud. Yes, hosting your files on a server is now within reach of the man on the street thanks to a shiny logo and yearly fee (Even though their top offering of 55Gb is smaller than the space needed fora full iPhone 4s 64Gb)

Although “cloud” was the buzzword of the year, it thankfully wasn’t as prevalent as I expected so -3 points for what turns out to be a saving grace!

Score 7/10

7. Advergames that integrate as part of larger campaigns.

The doritos campaign mentioned in prediction 5 certainly pushed the advergame as a core part of a whole campaign. The journey took users from television adverts to purchase products in store. These crisps and dips then funneled users to play games on their mobile or online.

By entering unique codes from the crisps or dips, in combination with their best scores they were able to win prizes either for being the best player, or as part of a daily prize draw.

Whilst this wasn’t quite in line with my original prediction of users crossing from games into the real word there have been several examples of social media content being integrated into “live campaigns”

Porsche prints facebook names onto a car.

Ellie Goulding inserts titter users into her dynamic music video. (Chrome or Safari required to view this one)

Aviva projects photos onto buildings as part of a “feel good” PR campaign.

So the elements were all there in 2011, they just didn’t quite overlap as predicted!

Score 8/10

8. The last quarter of 2011 will see more Android apps downloaded than iPhone.

It’s still to early to have all the data for this one, but I’m going to call it a win for me.

By December android was calling a rise in downloads at a growth rate of 1 billion apps downloaded a month. While Apple were claiming “over 1 billion” a month. So the figures look very similar, but when Decembers numbers are in I’d be confident the quarter 4 totals are a victory for Android.

Score 10/10

Summary and conclusion

The numbers speak for themselves really – 53/80 or 66% accuracy in predicting the future. Based on some of these being rather “out there” at the time of writing I’d say it’s a rather good result for MBXGames!

The big question is can we repeat this success with a good look to the future? In the next few days I’ll be making some more bold assertions as to what we can expect over 2012 in the social/gaming/marketing world!

Banned iPhone game is now FREE on Android!
MBXGames have removed the price tag from  their recently released game ‘Tapass’.
It is now FREE for the Android Market.
The Android game can be downloaded from here:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mbxgames.android.tapass

It’s a fun and cheeky ‘Simon Says’ inspired game. You have to tap the rear-ends of the girls in the correct order.
There are 52 glamour model images (or ‘awards’) to collect.
A recent mention at YogTrailers describes the game as having hours of playtime;)
http://youtu.be/WKSdigwortc
Screenshots and a video demo are available here:
http://www.mbxgames.com/games/tapass
View the Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/TapAss/98970446045
About Tapass
After a 6 month battle during 2009-2010 MBXGames finally succeeded in bringing the cheeky game to the Apple AppStore masses. This success was short lived when the iTunes terms and conditions were altered, restricting ALL adult themed content from being featured on the AppStore.
Of course, there are no such restrictions on the Android Market and the launch went ahead without a hitch.
About MBXGames
Founded in 2007, MBXGames have produced games for web and mobile devices . Tapass is one of the many games that the developers have published for themselves but MBXGames are more commonly known for producing web and mobile games for major brands including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Walkers, Doritos, Adidas, Nickelodeon, ITV, Aviva, EA Games, Activision, Lucas Arts, UEFA, Betfair and Virgin Mobile.  Visit http://www.mbxgames.com for more information.

Our capacity has increased here so we can create more games in the same space of time, but we’re focusing on quality even more to ensure that your campaigns get better results for the same cost!

If you or your clients have got any speculative work you’d like to chat over, drop us a line: enquiries@mbxgames.com

Happy New Year!

Developed with the simple brief of “a word game in flash” we thought about what the judging panel were looking for and weighed this up against making a fun game  that word enthusiasts would enjoy.

Initial play testing found that many users were finding the game a bit challenging, but after talking to them about their usual gaming preferences, we chose to keep the difficultly level high knowing most word lovers wanted to be tested!

Thanks to those who tested the game for us and thanks to the judges of course!

MBXGames currently has a 100% record of podium finishes in competitions entered!

Play the game at: http://www.mbxgames.com/games/meaningfall

(* iPhone apps are custom written applications and software made available for free or a fee on Apples iPhone)

OK so what?

Well, to date, there have been over a million iPhones sold in UK and 10 million sold worldwide in 2008 alone. These have been predominantly sold to Highly Engaged, Upper-Income Media Consumers and in the UK 75 percent of iPhone users are males, mostly between the ages of 18-44.

For any brand looking to get in front of this demographic the iPhone represents a known path direct to information hungry users who are actively looking for content to consume.

Even an application that is considered a commercial failure can achieve 220,000 downloads in the first two weeks. It is worth noting these are customers that are open and ready to receive your message having already invested time and effort into downloading your branded app!

Brands have the advantage!

Free downloads have a huge advantage over paid applications, 7 and a half times the advantage actually. (see slide 22)

This means that a developer trying to make money from their games will find it hard to compete with a download sponsored by a company that’s able to push it’s software out for free without having to try and recoup it’s costs (either through up-front charges or in game advertising).

Exposure and coverage can all be tracked in detail to measure and report on the success of a campaign which has a long life cycle at no additional ongoing cost!

End thoughts.

As with any new “hip” technology expect Marketing agencies to begin taking notice over the next few months and a year from now the iPhone App store will become saturated with simple yet mostly uninspiring copycat games with a logo slapped on here and there.

So yes the bandwagon is rolling, but there is still time to jump aboard and make your brand stand out to a large audience on the iPhone.

In a follow up post I’ll discuss the types of game best suited to iPhone marketing and how to insert your brand message effectively but unobtrusively.