Recently videogames have evolved from pure entertainment to increase their presence in other fields, becoming one of the most relevant industries regarding entertainment, creativity, and culture. The brands have found and are exploiting new ways to use the new formulas of interactive entertainment to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns and their communications. This article studies and analyzes three of them: advertainment, advergaming, and the metaverse. The authors analyzed the most relevant actions carried out in the last year and performed a qualitative and quantitative research to assess the knowledge, awareness, and impact of them. The main conclusion is that there is a positive predisposition of the Spanish population between 15 and 35 years old towards advertising in video games and that there is a preference for companies to perform in-game advertising over advergames.
TopIntroduction
The digitalization, the Internet, and the mobile technology together with young people's disinterest in traditional media and their rejection of advertising (Obermiller & Spangenberg, 2000; Bonales & Miguélez, 2022), are forcing brands to seek new ways to contact with their audiences. Virtual reality, augmented reality and gaming are emerging together, in the real world and in popular culture much more widely than before of the branded entertainment strategy.
The digital ecosystem is evolving towards a new conglomerate of new mediums with corporate synergies (Barrientos et al., 2021) that bring new channels and new opportunities for innovative communication based on the integration and adaptation of messages (Bonales & Mañas, 2022) in different formats. In this context, the organizations have developed certain transmedia strategies to link successfully with their target audiences trying to attract and convince them.
Companies from different sectors, such as BMW, Netflix, Balenciaga, and even public institutions, are implementing branded entertainment strategies that place advergaming at the heart of communication. Netflix, one of the companies that invest more in advertising, creates video games of its most successful series to approach to their potential users. In 2017 it launched its first video game, Infinite Runner, which has been followed by others such as: Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3: the game (Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC).
These companies go a step further and begin to take their first steps using the metaverse: a universe of virtual spaces (Márquez, 2011). A new modality to define an almost perfect virtual reality based on 3D animations that match reality. One or more people can participate at the same time and in this space, where the reality is mixed with the virtual spaces. This concept is also present in Steven Spielberg’s 2018 film Ready Player One: The Game Begins. The story is about a young video game player in the year 2045 who, like the rest of humanity, prefers the metauniverse or Black Mirror, Matrix, etc. rather than the real world. The metaverse will be like the next version of our Internet with hybrid worlds populated by digital avatars.
Gucci, Prada, Balmain or Calvin Klein, for example, have done fashion shows through these avatars. One example is Lil Miquela, a computer-generated character (CGI) and artificial intelligence (AI). In 2020, rapper Travis Scott gave a concert in Fortnite that was watched by more than 12 million viewers at the same time. Fox, for example, is going to launch a music show in which the contestants will be avatars. Contestants will be able to act out the form of the “image of their dreams.” Other brands, such as BMW, even create a virtual factory, pursuing the improvement of speed, accuracy, and efficiency of the planning process (BMW, 2021).
After an exhaustive literature review, this research analyzes the new interactive entertainment formulas, focusing on advergaming due to its importance in this industry and its future projection thanks to the metaverse. An analysis of the searches for “meta” and “metaverse” in the Google search engine was carried out through data obtained by Google Trends, and to complete this, a descriptive analysis of the case studies and a questionnaire were conducted. Finally, and thanks to the data collected, a series of solutions and recommendations were made at the end of the chapter.