Digital United Announces Games Development Division

With the Game Developers Conference underway in San Francisco this week and our man Dominic over there to hopefully secure some lucrative publishing deals for a couple of major brands, it's a good time to introduce Digital United's Games offering...

As part of DU's broad AND deep offering to clients, we're pleased to formally introduce our games development division, consisting of an ever-so-talented bunch of guys with 40 years cumulative games industry experience and three 1m+ selling console games, in a studio headed by John Steels (formerly Character Artist for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) and delivered to clients by Dominic and Ralf.

This new division gives Dominic and Ralf an opportunity to really deliver on their fervour and zeal for games (be they high-end online casual games or games for consoles, mobiles and handhelds) as extremely viable core elements of campaigns and branding. 

Sadly, what is common sense to us here at DU is not at all widely understood by most agencies. Therefore, too many people avoid games simply because they are being sold alternative media by agencies bad-mouthing something they don't understand or, worse, they use games because their agency think it's a simple way to eyeballs...

Our common-sense approach isn't tough, we get together with clients and work out whether the people they want to reach play games, if so when, on what devices and in what way.

Can't we just reach everyone through casual games these days?

A lot of people play casual games... but there are over 60 sub genres of casual games. Luckily by tracking the top gaming sites, we know who's playing what types, which allows us to tell brands what makes a 'sticky' experience and where and why (and why not) to use the brand in the game.

Consoles, mobile and handhelds 

More and more brands are experimenting with consoles, mobile and handhelds. In the crowded world of iPhone, where awareness rules, brands can get a lot of power from integrated campaigns.

How should brands represent themselves in digital games?

This is an interesting challenge. The worst ideas cram inappropriate brand values into terrible games, but there's also a lot of medicore games that miss the mark either on game type, gameplay design, branding, visual design or fun value. I saw a great little platform game once that insisted on pausing the game to extol the virtues of the client's mortgage products... kiss of death! I've also seen game types meshed together because the agency involved was trying to be 'creative' and just created a horrible mess. At the end of the day... if a brand doesn't fit into a game easily, then there's no harm making a great game and tagging it with 'brought to you by' or 'our brand says enjoy this great and original game'.

Why people ever think that an tired old game that involves exchanging the central character for the client logo will create impact, is beyond me.

What's the best way for people to benefit from our expertise?

We appreciate a lot of this is fast moving and highly specialist, but we offer a free games consultancy meeting around a strict agenda. It's an hour's free consultancy where clients set the agenda! Speak to the experts, ask questions about campaigns, try out some cool games, find out what your customers are really playing online and offline, ask how much things should really cost - people can get our opinion and share their questions. This is no dry pitch, it's up to them what we talk about.

...what about the costs?

Well you can't argue with free, but people are always free to go elsewhere and get a worse service for double the price. Also, have a look to see if your agency really are experts in games, or if they are white-labelling someone else...giving you second hand service. Or they might be selling you the A team and you get the C team, some web developers who are learning how to make games at your expense as they can't afford to have games guys sitting around.