Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Free Ad-supported Mobile Games

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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Free Ad-supported Mobile Games

by Ian Bogost August 21, 2006

categories: Advergames , Casual Games

One of the ongoing complaints about in-game advertising is the fact that, unlike television, radio, and print, game adverts are not removing or even subsidizing the cost of videogames for consumers. In fact, console videogame prices are rising, even as advertising messages in games are increasing. Who wants to pay more to be marketed upon?

Well, here's an interesting example of the opposite strategy: free games supported by advertising.

I've known about Greystripe for a while now, but their service was still very B2B; offer publishers and advertisers a way to participate. They've just announced their consumer-facing service, called GameJump (or if you're on your mobile, visit their WAP site). You pick a game and it downloads. You view a preplay ad ("you'll typically see a two second ad when you launch the game and then another ad when you quit").

Admittedly, these aren't console games -- they are mobile games, which are already much cheaper to develop and buy. But it might be a good start. Sites like Shockwave.com already use the pre-play ad model, and there's no reason why Xbox Live couldn't do it to -- save their obsession with gardens of variously high walls. I'm not sure if developers can make much money from it, but based on my dabblings in mobile game distribution, I can definitely say that it's a huge mess, so Greystripe might be worth a try. And for mobile consumers, the risk is quite low, so long as the games aren't all crap and the ads don't swell out of control.

Comments (9)

Thanks for the GameJump link, looks very interesting!

John on August 22, 2006 8:39 AM

Hrm, too bad the ads have to be d0wnloaded over the internet when you start for the games to run. For those of us who don't have a prepaid 'net access plan on our phone, playing these games could cost as much (or more) as purchasing a mobile game simply due to the d0wnload fees.

(cheesy l33t spelling due to the spam filter)

josh g. on August 24, 2006 7:53 AM

Good point Josh. It seems that Greystripe will have to find a way to get their advertisers to subsidize that cost, but I can't imagine it would be simple to reapply a credit to individual customers via their carrier.

Ian Bogost on August 24, 2006 5:30 PM

Please take a look at Cellufun. All the games are free, and can be played without requiring a network connection -- though of course playing over the network is the most fun.

You can demo them on our website using the emulator, and get them from http://wap.cellufun.com

Arthur on August 27, 2006 6:18 PM

holy crap!

don't write "mobile phone" on your blog ever!

tim on September 28, 2006 7:24 PM

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sell new nokia n80 at $200 treo 700 at $160 nexteli930 at $110

larry on September 29, 2006 3:15 PM

Another site to try is http://www.mobilerated.com. They have ad-supported games too, but they also have free trials/demos, and totally free games (full version with no ads).

Paul Forester on September 30, 2006 9:24 PM

I see spam even with the spam filter! Anyways, I checked out www.mobilerated.com and it seems pretty good. Free stuff and demos are mixed together but you can tell which is which before you download and it is easy to find what you want. Thanks for the pointer!

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