Sony Pictures and Big Fish Games decided to experiment with advergaming in 2006. Sony was releasing a movie called Friends With Money, and both Sony and Big Fish knew that their audiences were similar, so I developed a Friends With Money-themed puzzle game that was hooked into the Atlantis game portal.
A promotional still frame was used as the puzzle source. It was divided into smaller pieces and then scrambled. Players would click on pairs of pieces to switch their positions. If a piece was placed at its correct location, it would disappear, revealing a grayscale version of the photo underneath. Once the full image was revealed, the movie’s trailer would start playing. When the trailer was finished, Atlantis tokens would be awarded to the player as a reward for completing the game and watching the trailer.
Thousands of people watched the trailer in this manner, proving that advergaming combined with rewards can work.
The game is not officially available online. These guys stole the game, so it is somewhat playable there (as of January 2013…). They are missing a file, so there’s a black box where another Flash app should be. The black box makes the game hard to finish. However, there is an auto-solve button hidden under the black box, and you can click it to view the trailer.