Should brands be investing in online games as part of marketing budgets or are they just marketing gimmicks played by kids?

It's a common question, but this one has a simple answer: Games are serious digital marketing tools and can work wonders in many unexpected ways. Games are often directly associated with the viral phenomena but because of this association, we often find that clients think producing a game means it will just promote itself -- which is a fool's errand. Yes, games can go viral, but the chances are slim unless your game is near perfect. Remember you are competing with hundreds of thousands of other online games.

First rule of thumb before you begin: your game needs a marketing plan and a seeding strategy, so set a decent budget aside for this. But why make a game in the first place especially if (for example) you are a finance company or other serious business with no interest in 'entertainment'? Here's a handful of reasons to consider this platform:

• Online games are played by a wide audience, in fact, most research suggests a heavy female skew and also taps into older (grocery-buying) demographics rather than kids. In fact, in one of our biggest games last year, the under 18 audience accounted for less than 10 percent of the total, so don't be fooled into thinking games are just for kids.
• Brand lovemarks! Games are great online experiences and usually a welcome distraction from the mundane stuff around us, so if we can be associated with this in some way, we will most likely get some "brand love" back.
• Finally, consider the benefits of search engine optimisation (SEO) -- if everyone is linking back to your game and talking about it, this is great news. This alone could be a reason to create a game, simply for the volume of incoming links it could generate for your business. Some of the game portals that are likely to syndicate or talk about your game carry very high page rankings -- great for SEO.
• The long tail. It can live separate to other campaigns and live forever doing the above. You don't have to do it in conjunction with any other marketing. Games are a great tactical side project and live much longer than the 12-week campaign. Through the long tail, every visitor will reduce the dollar investment made.

Our biggest game of last year (Paper Plane) has been played more than 240 million times. Type in "paper plane game" into Google or Yahoo and you will find it, along with thousands of links to our little paper plane throwing engine. It has also generated many comments on the blog. What a result for such a simple concept. It doesn't happen for all our games, but if you follow certain guiding principles, it is possible to create games that make it easier to succeed. Below are some of my top tips for brands thinking about gaming.

Make it really easy to pick up. If a game requires instructions, then it's unlikely to succeed. Test your game everyday on people without telling them what to do. If they can figure it out, you're onto a winner. Original game-play will also pay dividends -- ripping off Tetris or something else you saw online is unlikely to buy you a lot of love.

Playability is everything. Forget the graphics, they won't save you if your game-play is crap. Make it fun, simple and addictive -- even annoying is good when implemented in a clever way. Be ready to tweak game-play (stash some post-development budget to the side) and listen to user feedback after launch.

Don't design epics. You don't need a 10-level game to do well in online marketing -- in most instances, one level that plays well will be more than enough.

Avoid confusing online games with console games as a guiding principle. Your hardcore Xbox gamers are not who you want or need; the prime target for online games are "social sharers", and these can be just about any demographic.

Think small. Little games can go big, in fact, micro-games that require only a few seconds of play can often end up being more popular and more viral.

Use high score tables with care. They can put casual and new visitors off if the scores appear too hard to beat. There are other ways to encourage competitive behaviour without putting people off.

Make your game Shockwave Flash (SWF), so it's easy to snatch. This sounds counter intuitive but if there are sites that want to steal your game and stick it under their header (like a widget) … so let them do it. Just make sure all your tracking, messaging and links are within the game itself, not the html.

Stick it in a social sharing site. It's not that hard to embed games into Facebook, for instance, if people want to play there rather than in your brand site.

Reduce start screen branding to a minimum. Stick your brand message at the end of the game rather than upfront. People will feel nice about your brand if they had fun playing the game -- don't bash them with upfront branding or they may shut the door before they engage.

Never retire your game. Leave it up forever. As long as people link to it, you will always have traffic coming in from it.

Iain McDonald is creative director and founder of Amnesia.