It is pretty inexpensive and simple to cheer up a company’s website or advertising campaign with some gamification magic. Sometimes, with more budget, companies make more and more gamelike advertisement to engage their customers with.
I found this Magnum campaign a bit over the top (well, it seems that they’ve had quite a budget with it!), but quite entertaining anyhow – I kept playing and playing just to see how utterly far had they taken the idea. In the first version the heroine travels trough several websites – the sequel takes the player to run around Bing maps (Y U no Google?). The site also offers five mini games where the player saves a kidnapped prince. Not a great game – but a pretty great ad IMO. Would not have spent this time watching a tv-spot, for example.
Here’s another fine example of games as advertising: Finnish railway company VR made a game to prove its customers how much more effective and comfy it is to travel by train than get lost into the traffic instead.
Using games as advertising can be a good choice if one has enough money, ideas or humor to make them interesting for a while. Or one can just make something epic instead, like this low-budget priest-game. Srsly.
