Games.net

How do three million copies of games disguised as advertisements get sold? GameDaily examines the biggest surprise the Xbox 360 has ever seen; the Burger King games.

OK, we may be a bit obsessed here with the "Burger King Trilogy" here at Games.Net. We've played it from a vegetarian perspective, examined the overall rankings of the titles, heck, we've even taken to the streets and put the lessons learned in Sneak King into practice. We're not the only ones who've taken a sick interest, though. GameDaily's Industry News section recently took a look at the success of the advergaming series. Some of the secrets hidden under the crown may surprise you:

While he [Philip Oliver, CEO of Blitz Games] wouldn't reveal his budget to create the three advergames, he hinted that it came close to what it costs to build a full-size retail game.

Really? Those three games? You could've had me fooled.

Oliver believes there's a big future in creating games for the ad market, and he has set up a separate dedicated division -- Blitz Arcade -- to cash in on what he sees as a trend, and he's already signed on several clients.

Super. Now I don't have to let gaming dictate which fast food restaurant to visit... they'll ALL have advergames for sale! The kicker is the closing paragraph, which likens the games--sanctioned by a multi-national fast-food company--to indie filmmaking:

"One in a million advergames gets the kind of publicity that the Burger King games got," he [Darren Herman, co-founder of IGA Worldwide] explains. "I liken the BK games to indie movies. How many of them are ever seen outside artsy theaters? The Burger King games became the My Big Fat Greek Wedding of the advergame world."

And that, my friends, is probably the only time you'll ever see "BK games" and "artsy" in the same paragraph.

This took effort, apparently.

games

Comments [ 0 ] Post your comment subscribe to this rss feed

Post Your Comment

Games.net's Countdown to...