JCPenney is looking to attract young college-bound women to their new 'Dorm Life' brand by launching an advergame where you dodge dorks and find true love. GameDaily has the story.
By contrast to many twitch-based advergames, actions in Dork Dodge are determined by choices made in a pop-up menu. In general, the way you blow off the dorks is very passive-aggressive as well, between giving out fake email addresses and the like. These elements struck us as being very particularly female, and Kline assured us that was not a coincidence.
"Women designed this for a teenage girl's brand; we felt it had to be very female," said Kline. "We ran a few other ideas for incoming freshman girls, like what if you got a creepy roommate? Ultimately, this one centered around the men you might encounter really clicked , and I think the game functionality raised it above the others. It really clicked with that generation of girls; what you're seeing is more women do gaming [today]. We find women that want to interact with each other online and be helpful or send emails out to each other."
