Know your enemy

Viral shoot ‘em up misses the mark

The Enemy, currently sitting at the peak of the UK album charts, are promoting their most recent single ‘Had Enough’ with an online sharp shooting viral game.

The game invites you to shoot various pop-up targets across an urban setting with a splat gun, with the single playing away in the background. Although there is a sound off option available. The game offers the opportunity to win an “amazing prize” (although there is no indication of what that might be) and a day out with the band for those with the highest scores.

In game advertising for the single and album release dates feature as fly posters on a wall within the game.

Had enough? Of click and shoot 2D based paint ball games? Maybe not if you’re living in a 2004 penguin-clubbing yeti game timewarp.

The Enemy have created the online gaming equivalent of setting up a coconut shy. When consumers are demanding massively involved virtual experiences is there still la market for lazy gaming?

Apparently there is. A UK car insurance broker recently attempted their first viral advertising campaign with the release of Ace Driver. The simple driving game received more than 1M visits in less than 2 weeks, playing in 177 countries from Albania to Zambia.

The main problem with The Enemy’s game is that it underestimates its market. Ace Driver utilised its core car based product as its main gaming feature, whereas music is very much a tagged on element in this paint ball venture.

www.theenemy.com/hadenoughgame