Brands have a huge opportunity to make an impression on end users, who are often 25 to 30 years old. “Web games attract million of users in China.
“It is a kind of advertising at an early stage, though has a promising future,” he says. Liu is more optimistic about this sort of in-game marketing.
HAPPY FARMER FREE ONLINE GAME PROFESSIONAL
The companies that created it are not professional game-design companies there is little sustainability in their games.” There may be banner ads or billboards on the farm, but it is difficult to embed brands in the process of the game. According to Steven Hu, CEO of InGameAd Interactive, engagement is difficult to achieve because there’s a limited capacity for brands to integrate their messages. Lohas brand awareness among game players rocketed to 36 per cent from zero, with sales 50 per cent higher than the client’s target, according to Charlene Lee, head of the Lohas account at JWT Beijing.Ĥ However, in-game branding on these sites has been sparse. An option to send the bottled juice to players’ friends was also incorporated into the game.Īfter two months, more than 22 million active members were registered on the campaign. These were planted, grew into fruit plants and were harvested to make Lohas juice. JWT incorporated Lohas-branded seeds into farms on Kaixin001. Among the earliest campaigns launched on a farming game was one from Lohas, a juice launched by COFCO in late 2008 that was positioned as a natural juice beverage and targeted white-collar workers in Beijing. The ensuing argument led to a break-up and, say reports, the abortion of the couple’s unborn child.ģ Brands are beginning to take notice. Among other well-circulated stories about the game is the tale of one boyfriend whose alarm clock didn’t wake up his pregnant girlfriend to tend his farm while he was at work. Taiwan issued a ban on all internet games in Government offices, after employees were found playing Happy Farm during work hours. Good neighbours can help advance a player’s farm, but bad ones can steal their crops.Īccording to Ning Liu, principal analyst at BDA China, Happy Farm was initially more popular with the 25- to 30-year-old, white-collar urbanites on social networks, but tales of workers being fired for playing it have stymied that rush. Points are gained when players engage in an array of farming activities, or when they help on their neighbours’ farms. Tencent is looking to build upon Happy Farm’s success by announcing the launch of Happy Garden earlier this month.Īccording to reports, Tencent’s Happy Farm may have as many as 30 million registered players (Five Minutes keeps its figures under wraps) and allows two million new players to join the game daily.Ģ Happy Farm players tend a plot of farmland, grow crops, irrigate their tracts and eventually harvest and sell their produce. Incarnations of the game include Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond and Happy Pig Farm.
Tencent launched its version, developed by app company Five Minutes, on QQ in September, driving the game’s popularity. However, Happy Farm didn’t fully take off until more recently, by which time variations - or exact replicas - of it had cropped up on Tencent’s QQ portal and social networks and 51.com. Now brands are looking to tap into the fad.ġ Happy Farm appears to have started as a community game on social network Kaixin001 around May 2008. Farming games are China’s latest online craze, racking up tens of millions of users and disrupting workplace productivity.
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