Advergaming Developer's Guide: Using Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Macromedia Director MX (Game Development Series) (Paperback)

by Rod Afshar (Author), Cliff Jones (Author), Duke Banerjee (Author) "For years, advertisers have tried ingenious ways to make consumers pay attention to their products and services..." (more)
Key Phrases: bit missile, cell phone distribution, hot spot sprite, Property Inspector, Macromedia Flash, Cast Member Name (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Welcome to the world of Advergaming! Interactive games are one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment and they’re on track to exceed movie ticket sales. Using them as an advertising tool, however, is a relatively new idea that is catching on fast. Advergames are created not only to entertain, but to sell a product, brand, or company. More and more companies are using these free, brand-centric games to supplement, and even replace, traditional branding methods. If you are a Web designer, graphic designer, or game developer, you’ll want to learn more about Advergames. They’re showing up everywhere, on the Web, cell phones, CD-ROMs, even embedded in email.

The Advergaming Developer’s Guide teaches designers and game developers the ins-and-outs of this innovative new form of advertising. It shows you how to create a variety of Advergames from the ground up, even if you have no prior game development experience. The book begins with a detailed overview of Advergaming, branding, gameplay, and the two main creation tools, Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Director MX. From there you’ll learn how to conceptualize, develop, launch, and track the success of your Advergame. In the last part of the book, you’ll create your own games, including a linking, matching, puzzle, memory, pinball, makeover, arcade, and whack-the-mole type game. And finally, you’ll learn about the business realities of Advergames through case studies with leading companies, including Blockdot, YaYa Media, Inc., and AGENCY.COM.

This is the one resource you’ll need to get started with Advergames, whether you’re a Flash/Director developer already involved in advertising and game creation, a game developer looking to expand your development channels, or a Web designer looking for an innovative new tool.

KEY FEATURES
* Provides a detailed reference to Advergaming, including company case studies, a detailed guide to developers, and a glossary of terms
* Teaches you how to create nine, ready-to-use Advergames
* Provides insightful ways to use Advergames to channel Web surfers to your site and keep them there
* Details methods for tracking and analyzing the success of the game
* Explains how game developers can use their existing skills and tools to open this new development channel

On the CD!
* The nine games created in the book and free sample games
* On-line resources that include dozens of games and Advergame sites, industry links, and other helpful tips, tools, and techniques used by game developers around the world
* Trial versions of Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Macromedia Director MX

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS WINDOWS: Intel Pentium III 600 MHz or higher, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, 128 MB of free available system RAM (256 MB recommended), 275 MB available disk space; MACINTOSH: Power Macintosh G3 5000 MHz or higher, Mac OS X 10.2.6 or 10.3, 128 MB or more of free available system RAM (256 MB recommended), 215 MB available disk space

About the Author
Rod Afshar (The Woodlands, TX) is a software team member at the epic software group and a contributing author of Flash 5 Design: From Concept to Creation, and Microsoft Excel 2003: Plain and Simple. Cliff Jones (Magnolia, TX), also of the epic software, group contributed to Director Game Development from Concept to Creation, and Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio Interface Design. Duke Banerjee (Austin, TX) works at epic software as well, and is an author on 3D Interactive: The Inspire 3D User’s Guide.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (February 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584503165
• ISBN-13: 978-1584503163
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #670,477 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This item is part of The Charles River Media Game Development Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting guide, December 29, 2007

By	cristian - See all my reviews

I am a Marketing Manager and also a shockwave/flash developer, so this book was one of those books that I "must" have, and the content is interesting... as MKT Manager, some concepts about "Viral Marketing" and Case of studies of success branding campaign using Advergames, the interview with the Big Fishes of the ADgames revolution... was really inspirational.

For developers, is ok too... Is like a novice-intermediate users level of concepts and programing tricks... not bad... at all... of course you can find more advanced Lingo/actionScript books around, but this one, have the concept of the Marketing oriented games, and concepts about Branding and public profile search, that you will find in Marketing books...

In resume, if you are a Marketing Manager, a lingo/ActionScript geek fan, or you are looking to know better whats the latest move of advertisements in the digital era... this book will help you

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible for Beginners, July 17, 2007

By	J. Kennedy (Gainesville, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are an advanced Flash or Director user this book might be tolerable, but as a beginner it is HORRIBLE. I have spent 3 hours so far on the first tutorial. Not because the concepts are difficult, but the descriptions in each step are so awful. Most simply, they don't explain the basic principles of how to do things, but then just jump into tutorials telling you to do things like " Set up a new layer and type this into the actions panel". How do I set up a layer, where is the action panel? The book never told me.

Even if you are an advanced user, the tutorials are very poorly set up. For example on one step they tell you to place a bunch of items on the timeline. After placing all 15, in the next step they start referring to different layers that the items are on and how to manipulate them. What they didnt tell you at any point before is that you were supposed to put all the items on specific layers and that the layers have to have specific names that they refer to later. How could this book possibly have gotten past any editors?

Conceptually: Great idea. Could be a very handy book.
In execution: Don't know how it ever got published.

2 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, March 17, 2004

By A Customer

I love playing the games and this book tells the story behind some of the greats! Blockdot has a game site called www.kewlbox.com where you can play all of them!