Robin McNicholas; How Ads Benefit From Games

The new issue of shots magazine, issue 154, which is out this week, is a gaming special in which we discuss adver-gaming, ads within games and also talk to a host of creative minds about the symbiosis between advertising and video gaming. 

As a pre-cursor to that issue, we asked Robin McNicholas [above], creative director at immersive experience studio, Marshmallow Laser Feast, to relay his thoughts about how the advertising industry can continue to learn from the world of gaming.

Contemporary creativity is a veritable melting pot of experimental ideas where different disciplines gleefully borrow from each other. One such discipline is gaming. But it’s sometimes undervalued by the advertising industry.

Gaming is often stereotyped as the sanctuary of spotty, socially-awkward teenage boys, a demographic that has little bearing on advertising. But that stereotype is way out of date.

Why? Those handheld mega-machines otherwise known as smartphones and tablets. Their processing and graphics capabilities are increasing at breakneck speed and catching-up with consoles like PlayStation and Xbox. They have catalysed a radical shift in the gaming world by creating new genres and new audiences.

No longer the sole preserve of “shoot ‘em up” battles, mobile and tablet-friendly games like Candy Crush attract a diverse audience, as proven by a recent IAB report that found more women than men in the UK now play video games.

Add to that the fact that games can demand budgets that features can only dream of  (the latest gaming blockbuster, Destiny, launched with a half-billion dollar budget – twice that of a ground-breaking film like Avatar) and you have compelling evidence that gaming is an influential creative force. Some might even say it’s a huge part of our cultural and tech zeitgeist.

Perhaps one of most important things gaming can teach us is that people have an insatiable hunger for immersive and interactive experiences. As Shuhei Yoshida, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, rightly says: “We used to say seeing is believing. Now we have to say experiencing is believing.” This hunger for experiencing over seeing can’t be adequately fed by the 30-second TV commercial… or even the superficially interactive digital campaign.

At a time when creative disciplines are interbreeding like rabbits, we find ourselves on the cusp of an emerging new advertising medium. By taking sprinkles of filmic values, sprinkles of theatre and sprinkles of gaming, we are nurturing a more immersive form advertising creativity that results in amazing experiences like Paramount’s virtual reality promotional campaign for Interstellar.

https://interstellar.withgoogle.com/

But it’s not just gaming’s cultural conventions that are proving influential. Gaming technology is also quietly shaping future campaigns. Without the video game industry, we wouldn’t have the game engine – the technology that enables live and interactive CG.

Game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine (the darlings du jour) are incredibly significant tools that open-up a whole new world of creative possibilities in the shape of real-time campaigns. They become even more powerful when software and hardware improvements work in parallel, like Apple Metal and the Unreal Engine.

Unity’s newest version even allows developers to create experiences in WebGL, which gives us a broader reach into web-enabled mobile and tablet devices. This means more creative interactive experiences, like the examples found at three.js, can engage huge audiences.

So gaming’s ability to foster new cultural conventions and futuristic tech is helping us create more immediate – and inspiring – advertising experiences. From a creative perspective, it’s the most wonderful thing.

As proven by gaming-initiated innovations like Oculus Rift’s new virtual reality headset, Crescent Bay, production values are insanely high and output can be more varied. These types of tools are fuelling the fire of adventurous ideas and encouraging multi-discipline experimentation.

But it’s not solely about using cutting-edge tech like VR. Honda’s online film, The Other Side, perfectly encapsulates the collision of advertising and gaming… but in a refreshingly simple way. Users just press a key that toggles between two worlds. This level of accessibility and interactivity is par for the course in gaming, but pretty unusual in advertising.

The Other Side illustrates how the gaming industry and interactive web content present new storytelling challenges; more creative opportunities with branching narratives and multiple perspectives… things that have been nurtured within the computer game writers’ community 

for years. When gaming and advertising converge, the results can be mind-blowing. So instead of looking down on gaming as an irrelevant pubescent pastime, it’s time to look up, appreciate… and embrace. 

shots 154, the gaming special, is out on November 13. To find out more about becoming a shots subscriber, please click here.