Video Games Why You Should Always Choose an Experienced Advergame Developer

Advergames are a unique medium that crosses two very different disciplines, game development and commercial graphic design. Because of this you need to be very careful when choosing a company to create your advergame.

With the increasing popularity of advergames, more and more companies are offering advergaming services. The problem is, many are either web designers who decided to start making games, or independent video game developers that saw a lucrative opportunity in taking on additional commissioned work. This sounds fine in principle, but both are often lacking experience in one necessary side of the process, this can be problematic.

If You Choose an Independent Video Game Developer

A good independent video game developer will have all the necessary experience and skill to make your game a great, engaging and above all fun interactive experience. The problem is, they often don't have experience of working on commercial design projects, so can struggle with the process of producing commercial advergames.

It's likely your developer will be clueless when it comes to working with agencies or in-house marketing, brand guidelines and the process of pitching and quoting for commercial design projects. Being in alien territory can also cause problems with project management and ultimately getting your game delivered on time and on budget.

Without the necessary experience of commercial design projects, independent game developers can end up completely out of their depth on advergaming projects.

If You Choose a Web Designer

"Why not just use the company that does our web design?", I hear you ask. That way you can keep all your contract work in one place and you're working with a company you're already familiar with. If you go down this route however, there are a different set of problems.

A good web/graphic designer will have all the necessary experience to deal with the commercial design side of the project. The problem is, there's a world of difference between designing and producing basic interactive content, such as websites, and producing a video game. Web designers rarely have much experience of the specific challenges presented by video game development. Even if they do claim to offer advergaming services, you can guarantee that because they aren't making games day in day out, you're going to end up with a far inferior and likely over-simplified "game".

Of course, there is an exception, when a web design company sub-contracts their game design work to a specialist. So it's always worth asking if they are doing the work in-house or not.

Always Choose an Advergaming Specialist

Choosing a company that primarily focuses on advergames is always preferable. With extensive in-house experience of both commercial graphic design and video game development, you're not only more likely to get a finished product that satisfies all your business goals, the project is much more likely to run smoothly, with no surprises.

Otherwise, it's highly likely you'll end up with an unnecessarily difficult development process and a finished product that doesn't meet your goals, both in terms of successfully communicating your marketing message and providing a truly engaging and above all fun gaming experience to your audience.

Simon Walklate is co-founder of Bristol, UK based advergaming specialists The Motion Monkey. The Motion Monkey primarily work with Adobe Flash technology to produce multi-platform games, for more info on flash games see the website.