Insurance Company Tempts Customers With Videogame

vansau

Mortician of Love
May 25, 2010
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Insurance Company Tempts Customers With Videogame


Insurance provider Liberty Mutual has released a free web racer that not only rewards you for finishing first, but finishing safely, too.

Liberty Mutual might want to change its motto. There's nothing wrong with, "Helping people live safer, more secure lives," but the company might want to consider adding in something like, "thanks to the magic of videogames." The insurance provider has launched a free Flash game on its website that teaches players how safe driving is equally as important in a race as speed is.

The game, 2099 is a top-down futuristic racer where players compete against five opponents on a small variety of tracks; upgrades and new vehicles become available as one progresses and achieves certain milestones. If you damage your vehicle, you can use your insurance coverage to repair it and replenish its strength, but your driving record dictates how much coverage you have access to.

There are both single and multiplayer modes available. If you play against others, you can invite friends or family to play with you, or you can join public games against random opponents who happen to be online. Unsurprisingly, there's a Facebook Connect option, where users can challenge each other to races or provide updates about their in-game statistics.

When it comes to promoting safe driving, this isn't the only time in the past few months that games have been used to help with the marketing. Hyundai <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdmBBFXksk>recently ran a commercial featuring a teen playing Crazy Taxi while a narrator talked about how parents might want to consider getting a safe car for new drivers.

Whether or not this will convince you to sign up for a policy with Liberty Mutual, 2099 is certainly a cute little web game. For any of us who grew up in the early 1980s, this is a send-up to those classic top-down racers that we all played at the arcades. That said, the controls felt a little too-sensitive when it came to movement, but that was probably intentional since it becomes harder to avoid damage that way.

I'm pretty happy with my current insurance provider, but I enjoyed 2099 before I went back to work. However, if a company creates a Crazy Taxi clone for me to play on my web browser, I might just be tempted to sign up with them.

Source: Liberty Mutual

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DividedUnity

New member
Oct 19, 2009
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Good idea. I think the ads on TV where children playing football get slaughtered by a flying car are slightly more effective at promoting safe driving though.
 

Tzekelkan

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Dec 27, 2009
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I think it's a neat idea and it looks like they actually did a very good job with the game... one gripe though: I just played it and the steering is just awful. Is that on purpose? The controls are way too sensitive and a light tap of the key sends you into a wall. I'm wondering if this is on purpose now...
 

Strategia

za Rodina, tovarishchii
Mar 21, 2008
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That's pretty cool, I hope more companies pick up on this trend. But honestly, all I could think of while reading this - and yes, I know it's not the same company, though I had to look it up - is beetisbeetisbeetisbeetis [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pod4jIKT_kA].
 

Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
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Certainly unique, wish mine would let me administrate something like this!
 

Danpascooch

Zombie Specialist
Apr 16, 2009
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Time to crash some insured virtual cars into an orphanage!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
 

manythings

New member
Nov 7, 2009
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I applaude new ideas but most of the assholes who need to learn about safe driving will write it off as a game about having to pretend you are queer.
 

vansau

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May 25, 2010
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Tzekelkan said:
I think it's a neat idea and it looks like they actually did a very good job with the game... one gripe though: I just played it and the steering is just awful. Is that on purpose? The controls are way too sensitive and a light tap of the key sends you into a wall. I'm wondering if this is on purpose now...
I think that's intentional, so that you have to work harder at controlling your car.
 

DividedUnity

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Oct 19, 2009
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Straying Bullet said:
DividedUnity said:
Good idea. I think the ads on TV where children playing football get slaughtered by a flying car are slightly more effective at promoting safe driving though.
Amen. I would like to see this. More vulgar shit into our indifferent/apathic faces.
I'm unsure wheter or not you were being sarcastic. Forgive me if i'm wrong. Here is the advertisement I mentioned.

 

samsonguy920

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Mar 24, 2009
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An insurance company using a videogame to make a point, while also gimping the controls seems rather two-faced to me. Now if they included a reason, like being drunk or driving while on the phone or texting, that would be something. Oh well, I don't deal with Libmut anyway.
DividedUnity said:
Straying Bullet said:
DividedUnity said:
Good idea. I think the ads on TV where children playing football get slaughtered by a flying car are slightly more effective at promoting safe driving though.
Amen. I would like to see this. More vulgar shit into our indifferent/apathic faces.
I'm unsure wheter or not you were being sarcastic. Forgive me if i'm wrong. Here is the advertisement I mentioned.

Well there went my appetite, but I applaud in-your-face ads like those all the same. They shouldn't be necessary, so hopefully one day they won't be.