Why Isn't Microsoft's Visual Studio Branding A Game?

An ad campaign for Visual Studio (which appeared in the print version of this magazine, among others) looks like a screen capture from a video game, only it isn't. I think it should have been.The image features a marvelous mishmash of elements: a manga-elf girl with a bow; an armored, winged-helmet sword guy; the prerequisite evil monster, here a red, three-headed cross between an angry dog and a stegosaurus; and a protagonist hero, dressed in the blue shirt and khakis of a geek (or a Blockbuster employee), wielding a glowing magic staff. A giant, golden winged Shiva-thingee hovers above him, the Visual Studio logo shining between her hands.

This is brilliant nonsense, like it was ripped from one of those Japanese RPGs that liberally borrow from mythology, religion, and teenage fantasies.

Only the branding ends with the ad. The copy is minimal and mostly inert, even using a typeface that makes the message about as engaging as the warning on a cigarette ad. The call-to-action takes you to a Web site that requires a download of Microsoft's Silverlight (duh), and you can pan left and right in what looks like a game.

It lets you check out movies. Make your own. Appreciate how the scenery is rendered. This is a rich multimedia environment, for sure. You can even click on a button that reveals a very corporate and dull Web site full of all the information about Visual Studio one could ever want, presuming one wanted any of it.

Why isn't it a game?

Imagine if the site greeted you with that blue-shirted nerd from the ad, only now you were him, and you were in the middle of a live battle with Cujo-head. Or maybe you simply had to answer a question, with a timer that made it, well, timely. Couldn't some sort of accomplishment ladder be a mechanism to learning more about the tool (literally unlocking it, like in a game), and offer something sticky to keep you there and/or coming back?

Since the ad and Web site use the term defyallchallenges, I guess I'm just wondering, where's the challenge?

Jonathan Salem Baskin writes the Dim Bulb blog, and is the author of Branding Only Works On Cattle.