Advergames to the workday rescue

Before we begin: No, I have not been hiding under a rock, hunkered-down in a tree house or off writing some weird manifesto (although my inability to post an entry for the last month or two would suggest otherwise) - I know that Advergames are nothing new. For the most part, although I knew they existed I never delved into the weird little world of advergames or any online games, really*.

*with the exception of Fowl Words or Bejeweled - those games are great. Okay and the occasional crossword puzzle...and maybe some other games.

Or maybe I have been hiding under a rock. Either way, this all started this morning when I saw an ad at the top of my Gmail for a mind reader game. I would have not clicked on it, except for the fact that it was going to a Honda website and the connection between these two was intriguing. One lunchtime later and here we are.

I thought a little investigative research was in order to see what other odd little advergames could be turned up - so here is the edited collection.

The Honda CR-V automobile and a mind reader game
http://automobiles.honda.com/cr-v/crave
Basically because the CR-V and the word crave have 3 letters in common, they have an online game that guesses what you are craving through the Honda website. It is one of those 20 question games and at the end it gives its best parsed out response. It correctly guessed my craving for beets (a new food I just discovered I liked after 20-some years of hating.) The advertising scheme must work on at least a handful of idiots since I actually clicked on the link from Gmail and I now know there is an automobile called the CR-V, whereas 5 minutes ago I didn't. How clever.

M&Ms - 50 Dark Movies
http://www.mms.com/us/dark/dark_game.jsp
Speaking of clever little promos...this takes the cake as the best game I found: 50 Dark Movies. One click and it loads an illustrated montage of 50 Dark movies. You click on a section and type in the hidden movie title until you get all 50. The link to M&Ms? It is 'sponsored' by the dark chocolate line of M&Ms.

The Dyson Ball game
http://www.dyson.com/about/games/
James Dyson is clearly a man of action - anyone who actually does something about vacuums that lose suction to the tune of starting a new company is a person of action in my book. Apparently Mr. Dyson was also sick of not having fun games to play online - so they added some games to the Dyson website including a quirky little telescope game and a ball game. Again, a man of action - even if the games are a little goofy.

The ORBITZ game site...and a dozen others like it
http://www.orbitzgames.com/index.aspx
What amounts to little more than a collection of very simple eye-hand coordination games is available online through ORBITZ, the online travel search tool. I guess I can see how promoting good eye-hand coordination can help them train legions of people so they can quickly and accurately click their way through the ORBITZ website next time they want to book a getaway. My *favorite* aspect of this is that each game has a background (beach, mountains, etc.) and the edges of the 'gameboard' encourage you to book now for ski trips or beach getaways. You may ask yourself why, but perhaps after 4 hours of mindless clicking to stack colored balls and you feel that little getaway is just what you deserve for that personal high score...