The ad is right

>> Montreal developers Ludia push product placement to new heights with their casual
gaming title The Price Is Right

LINKING MARKETERS AND GAMERS: Alex Thabet

by ERIK LEIJON

Casual gaming, a term used to describe video games designed with non-hardcore gamers in mind, is the industry’s big buzz word for 2007, and new Montreal developer Ludia is betting casual gaming will become more than just a marketing concept. The five-month old independent and privately owned company believes they have a leg up on bigger companies such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, who have recently announced major plans to invest in the largely uncharted casual gaming market.

“There’s an opportunity right now for a company like Ludia to position itself as a pretty strong independent player by just focusing on what traditional players are having a hard time addressing,” Ludia manager Alex Thabet says from his studio in Old Montreal. “At the end of the day, EA has to post quarterly revenues. I think we all know the casual gamespace is still at its infancy level—so it’s hard to justify allocating resources and budgets to games that aren’t big-name titles like Need for Speed in terms of revenue.”

Thabet is confident casual gaming is poised to capture more of the market share in the next couple of years, and Ludia’s recent announcement that they are the exclusive rights-holder of The Price Is Right game show for the next five years could represent a brand capable of attracting non-gamers. The PC version of the Price is Right is expected to be released online this December, with Xbox 360, Wii, Mac, PC retail and Nintendo DS (the only one not being developed by Ludia) versions coming out in 2008.

Marketing matters

CHANNELING BOB: Ludia”s The Price Is Right

It’s surprising that no one has ever attempted to release a Price Is Right video game before, and Thabet suspects it was trepidation from the industry to widely accept product endorsement as an integral part of a video game. The 22-employee-strong Ludia is not only embracing the rampant advertising (Thabet says the show features 40-60 ads per hour, which is his goal for the game) for which the game show is known for, but it’s the primary business strategy for all the company’s games going forward. They also secured the license of a popular reality television show, and have plans for five or six other games that rely heavily on in-game advertising by the end of 2008. The company’s Web site even features an e-mail address for businesses interested in hawking their wares.

There’s a fine line between corporate sponsorship and all-out whoredom, and Ludia is poised to explore that gray area while hoping to maintain its artistic integrity. Not surprisingly, The Price Is Right is the one property that could not be done without actual products, but even the amount of in-game advertising in the upcoming title will be unprecedented. Players will have the ability to purchase the many lovely products they are bidding on: clicking on the products will open separate Web pages. Gamers will be able to buy directly from these sites and potential online deals could exist for The Price Is Right gamers. It’s a brave new world for in-game marketing, and Thabet says interest from companies has exceeded his expectations. Ludia plans to develop all their games with this business strategy. “Product placement is increasingly considered an additional source of revenue to help finance rising budgets,” he says.

What’s your bid?

Thabet says his company is specifically picking game properties that are suitable for in-game advertising. He points out how strange it would be if The Price Is Right did not feature real products. “The trick is to not put the ads in at the end of the development cycle, so you’re not imposing it on the player,” Thabet says. “We wouldn’t put ads in an RPG (role-playing game)—it wouldn’t fit the environment.”

In a demonstration of an early build of The Price Is Right, players can click on the items being bid on, which will immediately bring up the product company’s Web site on the PC’s default Web browser. The game will be based on the Bob Barker-version of the show, and Thabet could only state that discussions were taking place to include Barker’s likeness.

Ludia may be putting all their eggs in the casual gaming basket, though Thabet doesn’t feel a paradigm shift is necessarily imminent in the industry. “I think that’s being overstated right now in the media, people are sort of panicking because they’re seeing games like Nintendo’s Big Brain Academy and Majesco’s Cooking Mama shaking up the charts. I feel that. Personally. It’s very refreshing because teams are really focusing on gameplay and not just creating the next 3D, perfectly modelled world that costs dozens of millions of dollars to develop.”