Oh So Many Free (Adver)Game Types

Xbox Live Arcade portfolio planner David Edery also runs his personal Game Tycoon weblog, and as he explains: “I’ve been compiling a list of “free game types” in preparation for my GDC Lyon lecture [next month]. When I look at the list on a single page, its breadth and depth are a bit stunning. There’s already a mountain of free game content out there, and the mountain is growing fast.”

He then lists an insane diversity of free titles – ‘Advergames’, ‘Advertising-supported casual games’, ‘Old AAA games re-released with ads’, and ‘Games as Features / Promogames’, to name but a few. He notes of the latter:

There’s a bunch of games (with noticeably large and growing budgets) that are designed primarily to promote the sale of tangentially-related (if not barely-related) physical products. This includes the now-famous Burger King Xbox games… as these games continue to perform well, watch for a wide variety of advertisers (toy companies? gas stations? airlines?) to begin deploying them.

So… is this good? Do you guys want more free games with less sophisticated gameplay and more commercial/advertising agendas? Or is it all insane commercial overkill?

Lions, Tigers, Free Games… Oh My! [Game Tycoon]