Level Up! gameboss cites huge advergaming biz in RP

By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter INQUIRER.net "THE KEY industry that can benefit from advergaming is basically everything." This was the statement of Level Up! gameboss Ben Colayco, who spoke during the recently held Asian Gaming Journalists Association Workshop in Taytay, Rizal. Colayco’s presentation centered on a fairly new concept called “advergaming” wherein product advertising is done within a video game. However, Colayco went beyond in-game advertising and said traditional consumer product manufacturers are willing to create cross-deals to promote the games on their own. “That’s because the [player] traffic that comes from online games can be drawn toward the consumer products,” Colayco said, adding that online game player traffic is easier to measure and can be translated to real revenues for the consumer product. Colayco identified several of their early advergaming partners where they experienced huge positive reception from the gamer market. Among their partners are a fast food company, a soda beverage firm and a popular men’s magazine. The deals that Level Up! made through these companies provided measurable traffic for both the games that Level Up! publishes as well as for the consumer brand products. In one instance, Level Up! amassed over 120,000 redemptions of game time for Ragnarok Online and Freestyle. The redemption items were the cans with special designs from the soda beverage firm. Colayco added that brand recall is strengthened in the game when players are given tasks to complete to form a specific real-world product. In some cases “consuming” the products in the game actually increases the player's XP or experience points or HP or health points. Eventually, the players themselves would also consume the real-world product as they would in the game. On the other hand, Colayco said the advergaming business is neither easily sellable to traditional advertisers, nor is it easily executable. The main issue is that traditional advertising has a more massive market effect compared to advergaming where products have to be carefully chosen to be represented in the game. “We have to select the type of advertising on each game. You don’t want to upset players,” Colayco said. Instead, both the game publisher and the advertiser would be able to cut deals that would maximize their market potential, such as bundled services. “What we’re doing now is getting advertisers excited with the game industry,” Colayco said. The first AGJA workshop was sponsored by INQUIRER.net/hackenslash, IP e-Games and Level Up! Inc. Editor's note: Photo by INQUIRER.net reporter Alex Villafania