IntroductionThis study presents the findings of a systematic literature review on the academic study of advergames. The evolution of the marketing paradigm has recently opened new avenues for the study of advergames, such as understanding how the brand narrative could be used within a game to achieve diverse marketing objectives, their value for brand engagement through games, or new applications of the specific characteristics of emerging platforms for advergaming. Therefore, this study aims to provide an overview of the state of the art in the academic study of advergames to identify necessary expansions of academic attention to advergames to encompass the full capabilities of branded entertainment and advergame design.MethodsWe conducted a systematic literature review of 122 studies on the topic of advergames published between 2005 and 2021, indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection.ResultsThe results show that academic studies on advergames primarily focused on two key research areas: (1) investigating the impact of advergames on children's health through the promotion of food products (2) and examining the effects of advergames on purchase intention. However, there was a lack of emphasis on two other important themes: (3) brand narratives and innovative forms and (4) the effects on brand loyalty.DiscussionThe results of this study highlight the need for a more flexible analytical approach that considers the evolving marketing ecosystem and provides theoretical insights to explore the effectiveness of advergames from a different perspective while identifying gaps in the existing literature.
This study will examine how branded games in the LEGO Ninjago franchise communicate the brand narrative through their mechanical, semiotic and referential design. Digital games as communicative tools facilitate a new paradigm of marketing focusing on experience creation through integrated marketing communication plans. The LEGO brand creates highly successful games that communicate the brand effectively. To explore the possibilities and counteract the simplistic use of branded games, this study introduces an innovative framework to formally analyze branded games and their communication of a brand narrative through mechanical, semiotic and referential layers. This framework introduces formal game design to advertising studies, while dragging game studies into branded ecosystems. Using the framework, we analyze LEGO Ninjago the Movie – The Videogame, to identify how this paid digital game expands the Ninjago universe and fulfills specific marketing purposes oriented to LEGO toy sets. Our analysis shows that on a mechanical and semiotic layer, the game presents a standalone experience catering to the universe of the Ninjago movie and the values of the Ninjago brand narrative. However, by framing the whole game as LEGO– in its materiality and interactable objects – the LEGO brand narrative of creative construction informs the act of play. The referential design in these games makes use of playful disruption of rules to instill additive comprehension in the player related to purchasable sets and content.
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Theatre and Performance in Small Nations, Steve Blandford (ed.) (2013) Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books, 180 pp., ISBN: 9781841506463, p/bk, 35$ El periodismo volátil. ¿Cómo atrapar la información política que se nos escapa?/Volatile Journalism: How to Catch the Political Information that Escapes?, Nereida Carrillo (2013) Barcelona: Editorial UOC, 83 pp., ISBN: 9788490299814, p/bk. 11.50€, ebook, 5.99€. Social Media and Minority Languages: Convergence and the Creative Industries, Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed (eds) Bristol, Buffalo and Toronto: Multilingual Matters, 265 pp., ISBN: 9781847699046, h/bk. 129,95 € Mort certa, hora incerta. De l’edat mitjana a la societat digital/Certain Death, Uncertain Hour: From Middle Ages to Digital Society, Ernest Benach and Miquel Pueyo (2013) Lleida: Pagès Editors, 172 pp., ISBN: 9788499753188, p/bk, 17.00€ La Guerra Civil televisada. La representación de la contienda en la ficción y el documental españoles/The Televised Civil War: The Representation of the Battle in Spanish Fiction and Documentary, Sira Hernández (ed.) (2012) Salamanca: Comunicación Social, 219 pp., ISBN: 9788415544203, p/bk, 20€, ISBN: 978841544210, e-book, 5.90€ Repudiating Feminism: Young Women in a Neoliberal World, Christina Scharff (2012) England: Ashgate, 163 pp., ISBN: 9781409410300, h/bk, £55.00, ISBN: 9781409410317, e-book, £38.50 La comunicación móvil. Hacia un nuevo ecosistema digital/Mobile Communication: Towards a New Digital Ecosystem, Juan Miguel Aguado, Claudio Feijóo and Inmaculada J. Martínez (eds) (2013) Barcelona: Gedisa, 350 pp., ISBN: 9788497847827, p/bk, 27.90€
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