RECENT COMMENTS

ADVERTISERS

Advertise via Culture Pundits





Water Cooler Games

a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment



ABOUT
About This Site - RSS Feed

Ian Bogost (editor)
Gonzalo Frasca (editor emeritus)


SPONSORS
Visit Persuasive Games
Visit Powerful Robot


COMMUNITY

Games on Amazon.com?
May 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Not videogames for sale, but online games. I happened onto the following headline during an impromptu visit to Amazon.com today (click to make it bigger):

Amazon Games?

From the looks of it, you'd think that Amazon had their own online advergames. But when I clicked the links, they just took me to the product pages for the corresponding films. Anybody know what's up?



Comment from Michael Wood on May 21, 2007

Ian,

This was a strategy we discussed with a number of online retailers a couple of years ago. The logic is twofold:

- as a retailer you want (and usually get) a significant proportion of your supplier's marketing spend (normally for in-store advertising, placement of product, etc.). This works online and offline. The opportunity for online retailers is to grab as much of these marketing budgets as possible as the budgets migrate online.

- the other way of looking at it is that an advergame is an advert. If the supplier believes that it will generate sales then it should be placed where it can have the greatest impact e.g. on a retail site. I don't know who originated this instance but I would imagine that payment will have been made by the suppliers to Amazon as a media deal (though its possible that some kind of revenue share has been done though i would be surprised if Amazon agreed to this [unless they feel it can build an audience for an 'Amazon arcade']).

Michael

Comment from Ian Bogost on May 21, 2007

Michael -- nice to see you here. I understand the logic you present, but where are the actual games? I can't find them on Amazon's site...

Comment from Michael Wood on May 29, 2007

Sorry Ian - misunderstood.

No I cant find the actual games either!


POST A COMMENT

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?



TRACKBACKS

SELF PROMOTION

RECENT ARTICLES
New Journal: The Computer Game Education Review

RIT professor Stephen Jacobs is the editor-in-chief of a new journal, The Computer Game Education Review. Here's the blurb he ...

You Drive Like an Old Man

Insurance company Liberty Mutual has created Driver Seat, which they bill as "the world's first senior driving simulator." The game ...

Games for Change: Documentary Games

A bit late, I suppose, but I wanted to post my notes from the Documentary Games panel at last month's ...

Humana's Games for Health Contest

Humana's games for health division has announced a new contest, Insert Coin for game concepts that meet the broad goal ...

Distraction, Comfort, Sedation

I've known for some time that hospitals have used videogames for some time as experimental tools to help children relax ...

Games for Change 2009: Nicholas Kristof Keynote

Toilet Training for iPhone

Bailout! the Board Game

1066

Guru Meditation for Atari and iPhone


FAVORITES

ALSO VISIT
  Copyright © Ian Bogost & Gonzalo Frasca, unless otherwise noted. Re-printing for commercial purposes by permission only (contact us: ). Re-printing for educational purposes is allowed with proper attribution.