Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
that represent the application in the Windows Taskbar and the
Dock on the Mac. And you may even want to go ahead and think
about the icon for the Windows system tray because you may just
need it.
One more thing to mention before I move on is the install badge.
The install badge is a .swf file that you can put on a Web site for
seamless installation of your application. Not only does the badge
present the opportunity to install the application directly from within
thebrowser,italsocheckstoseeiftheuserhastheAIRruntime
installed (which is kind of important here). If they don
t, it installs it
and then moves on to installing your application. If they do already
have it installed, it jumps right to your application and installs it
from the site without requiring the user to save it to their system
first. For quick and easy creation of your installer badges, check out
the Badger AIR application that Grant Skinner put together for
Adobe. At the time of this writing, you could get Badger at http://
www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/badger_for_air_apps.html. If it
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'
s
“
”
not there any more, a quick search for
Grant Skinner Badger
should yield some good results.
Conclusion
Well,likeIwassayingearlier,thiswasabitofahigh-levelover-
view of linking games and applications to your advertising. With
the enormous growth that Flash-based games have seen over the
last few years, advergaming is definitely something to pitch to your
clients when coming up with a campaign strategy or even just for
brand awareness. And because people are spending more and
more time playing games in their browsers through the Flash
Player, there are more and more opportunities to really get them
immersed in a fun, branded experience. Remember also that the
experience can be very subtly branded by just placing your client
s
logo in a strategic location or it can be completely designed around
the brand from the ground up.
Another thing to think about is how to get players coming back
to play the game again and again. Some of the tactics to achieve
that goal are in features like allowing them to save their progress
or collect points to spend on in-game items. Something else that is
good at drawing players back in is competition. Generally speaking,
people are naturally competitive and love to challenge other people
to games where one of them will be a winner and the other will be
a loser. Make it interesting for them by taking the competition a
step or two further and offering actual prizes (client branded of
course). Introducing that element into the mix will not only make
more people come back more often, but also get the brand
physically in their hands. Again, don
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t forget about security.
