By night, I am a video games writer for In Third Person, and Splitkick. By day, I work as a project manager in the advertising industry. I’ve always wondered when my work life would manifest itself into a video game, and it turns out that time is now. Campaign: The Game by Insolita Studios is arguably the first advertising agency simulator. While I wasn’t expecting this to be a true-to-life representation of my everyday life, I was curious to see how successful it would be as a video game.
The the game follows the roug day-to-day of an advertising agency. You’re responsible for choosing the clients you work with, influencing creative, planning media, as well as bowing down to client feedback when it inevitably comes in. Between campaigns, you’ll get to hire new staff members, or even attend award shows, where one of your campaigns may earn you some hardware.
As someone on the inside, I can appreciate some of the agency in-jokes present, from the fact that you have no choice but to accept a client’s feedback, to some humorous takes on real-life ad agencies, and industry figures. I let a bunch of my coworkers try it, and they appreciated the nods to their everyday lives that are present here.
As a gamer, I can’t help but notice that this is in many respects, identical to Game Dev Story, which is one of my all-time favourite iOS games. However, it wasn’t made by the same developer; a point that Game Dev Story fans will notice after spending a few minutes with the game. Beyond its core premise, it was successful because every decision had a noticeable, and mostly predictable consequence. With Campaign: The Game, I never got the sense that my decisions mattered. Using common sense, I would go out of my way sometimes to make the worst campaign possible, and somehow win, while in other cases, I’d make what appeared to be every logical decision and lose. While my gut doesn’t think the game is completely random, it really isn’t clear how your decisions impact the outcome. Without that predictability, there almost isn’t a point to playing this at all.
The above point is essentially a deal-breaker for me, but there are some other criticisms worth pointing out before letting this one go. The interface for everything is clunky, and slow, particularly on the hiring menus. The act of hiring is weird, and unrealistic to the point where it irritates me as someone on the inside. Job titles mean nothing in this game, as you could create an entire team of account managers, and still perform better than a team with the right mix of people. Not sure how I did it, but I also ended up hiring two of the exact same guy, which is more weird than anything. Throughout the campaign creation process, you’ll get put into a number of scenarios, such as, “The Intern wants to get hired. What do you do?”, where you’ll be required to provide an answer. These questions repeat way too often, which end up making them more annoying than entertaining.
Using the Game Dev Story framework for an advertising agency simulator sounds like an idea that should work as a video game, but its poor execution in Campaign: The Game makes the concept fall short. Next time around, a focus on getting the gameplay right, rather than focusing on its superficial elements, would go a long way to making it an enjoyable experience.
In Third Person 