Addictive, engaging, and fun are the few qualities, which we normally associate with social media games. Businesses are using social media games as a tool for building brands. Brands like Oreo, Asiacell Connect and Old Dominion Freight Line have tried social media games to engage their target audience and received tremendous response. In this post we will try to see how technology has evolved in recent years, making it easier to integrate social games in the web browsers. We will also see how games are useful for social media campaigns.
Rise of HTML5 games
There was a time when the tools available to develop rich and highly interactive online games that can run on web browsers, were limited to third-party and proprietary solutions like Java Applets, Macromedia Shockwave, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Unity 3D. On the other hand, if users want to use these applications, they have to install browser plugins. There is another catch to it; developers have to pay for expensive integrated development environment (IDEs) to develop them.
Web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript were not good enough to give users a quality experience that could only be achieved through tools like Adobe Flash. Browsers with JavaScript were slow and they lacked support for native video, audio, and local storage. Those browsers were only compatible for simple games.
Things have changed now, with major web browsers implementing latest versions of HTML5 and CSS3. These standards allowed better runtime performance of JavaScript applications. Almost all recent versions of modern day browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer 9 as well as the smartphone browsers on iPhone, Blackberry, and Android-based phones have already adapted the latest technologies that are required to run (develop) a full featured video game.
Social side of the HTML5 games
We have seen the evolution of real-time social games from the likes of Farmville to modern day hits like Candy Crush and Pet Rescue Saga. At Cygnis Media, we have developed some very interesting HTML5 games for our clients. Statistically, these games have proved to be more effective in terms of people engagement as compared to simple text based posts, image and video sharing.
Consider Oreo Land, an HTML5 game which we created for the world’s leading cookie brand. We created a board-game targeted towards a younger audience. Oreo Land went viral and was an instant hit. The campaign ran for 31 days and reached 9,925 unique daily visitors on day one. More than 5,848 fans shared the app. An average of 5.2 minutes of gameplay was recorded for each player, which was a far greater engagement ratio as compared to brand’s previous attempts.
Wrap Up
HTML5 games are a fun way to engage fans on social media platforms. For any reason, if your brand can’t have a social game of your own, then you can try what McDonalds tried back in 2010 with Farmville.
Major brands like HBO, Progressive Insurance, WWE, and Disney are already up to it and have made HTML5 games a part of their digital strategies.
