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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

Game Advertising Expanding, Becoming Dynamic? 39

Posted by simoniker from the just-in-time dept.
Thanks to Business Week Online for its feature discussing the rise of videogame advertising, as it charts "spending on in-game advertising, currently estimated at around $200 million a year today worldwide, [and which] could reach $1 billion by 2008." As well as kid-oriented gaming sites such as Neopets.com, where "a player might stop by a Disney theater where he can play a Walt Disney movie-related game to earn Neopoints - good for buying shop space and land in the game", the article mentions Massive Inc., an "in-game advertising specialist" which is now signing up advertisers for "campaign-based advertising" in forthcoming titles from Ubisoft and Atari, explaining the innovation by describing a possible scenario: "The gamer goes online to play a racing game, for example, and a batch of ads is served. When a gamer plays offline, Massive continues to serve ads. The ads are integrated into billboards, posters, and even into the plotline of the game, and they change in real-time."
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Game Advertising Expanding, Becoming Dynamic? More

Game Advertising Expanding, Becoming Dynamic?

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  • Cheaper? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PhuckH34D ( 743521 )
    So... Does this mean that games will be cheaper (or free) in the future?
    Probably not I guess, but they should be IMHO.
    • In theory, if games put ads in them, then shouldn't that create a cheaper game? I don't see why we couldn't price the $50 games as being the ad-free ones and the sub-$40 games as being partially subsidized by the companies whose ads are in the game.

    • Re:Cheaper? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by abandonment ( 739466 )
      no, probably littered with spyware as a result of the ad-monitoring that goes on - why should games be able to track our every action and provide ads but not online? is this not spyware?

    • Re:Cheaper? (Score:2, Informative)

      by MarkPNeyer ( 729607 )
      A game "should" be cheaper if there is a fluctuation in market supply or demand - the price of an object "should" have nothing to do with the cost of production, aside from being higher. If these new ads lead to a decrease in the demand for games, then in a true market situation the price of games would fall; unfortunately the economics of video game distribution have always been screwed up [slashdot.org]. Otherwise, if demand for the games is unchanged by the ads, and supply stays the same, then the price shouldn't chang

      • Re:Cheaper? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by anon*127.0.0.1 ( 637224 )
        The other scenario which could cause game prices to fall would occur if the in-game ads turned out to be extraordinarily effective. Then the game publisher might drop the price of the game to get more viewers for the ads, offsetting the lower profit from game sales with higher advertising revenue.

  • I'm not so sure people will bite... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chrispyman ( 710460 ) on Friday June 25, 2004 @03:50AM (#9525817)
    Considering the fact that you have to pay $50 for the latest title, I don't think too many people would enjoy playing a game littered with advertisements. For the most part I find them distracting but I suppose that if the games themselves were free (advertisement subsidized) I suppose I could live with 'em.
    • Do you think most people would put up with the in-between "cheaper, but not free" step? Seems like they'd have to jump from gamer money to ad money, or people might feel they're not getting a good enough deal in the transition period.

      What I fail to understand though is how advertising does -anything- anymore. Too much of it. Targetted ads don't help me either -- if I want something, I generally already know I want it, and will do my own searching for the best product and price. If I don't, telling me about
      • You see the shit that is on TV these days? All that reality tv and talkshow shit? The people that like that crap do pay attention to the ads.

        sad, very sad

      • Appropriate quote (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Spuffin ( 466692 )
        "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
        --HL Mencken
      • Advertising is about brand recognition. Thats why it works, not because it makes people go out and buy stuff NOW, but because when they decide to buy something, they associate it with that brand.

        Now a company that doesn't adevertise in games is going to have much less brand recognition with the game playing public and the company that does. Some people will do their research and buy whats best for them, the rest will buy the brand they recognise.
      • More people need to follow the rules that I do.

        1)If I see your product advertised on the web, I won't buy it for a month
        2)Radio is 2 months
        3)TV is 3
        4)Snail mail is a year
        5)spam is eternal

        More than that- when you get little advertising surveys, tell them that ads fucking annoy you.

        At the very least its saved me money :)

    • Re:I'm not so sure people will bite... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation&gmail,com> on Friday June 25, 2004 @06:51AM (#9526244) Journal
      Considering the fact that you have to pay $50 for the latest title, I don't think too many people would enjoy playing a game littered with advertisements.

      People happily fork over $50 for a Nike shirt which has a huge Nike advertisement plastered on the front -- the swoosh logo. Why people pay a premium effectively to advertise company logos is beyond me, but I honestly don't see the average consumer caring. If it distracts from the gameplay, then people will take notice. However, for games which integrate advertising in a real-life way (eg: billboards along a city street, ads along the boards in a hockey rink, Smith & Wesson shotguns in Doom...) I think people will happily accept it because it's what they're accustomed to.
    • Did movies get cheaper because of advertisement and product placement? Not the last time I checked. I still paid the same price to see ET with it's Reeses Pieces product placement as I did to see any regularly priced movie that year. The cost isn't going to go down for games with advertisements, but the game makers will have to be careful about making product placements and advertisements fit in with the game or at least not get in the way. For example, if your character has to drive a card for some act

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Friday June 25, 2004 @04:04AM (#9525858) Journal
    So at first I imagine it will just be product placement in games, like the vending machines are all Coke or whatever. You see that today in some games.

    Then maybe some banner ads.

    Then before you know it, you crash your car in Need for Speed because you couldn't see the road because a huge popup was in your way.

    And the flashing "shock the monkey and win your free ipod" ads are all over the place.

    Then we can expect rogue advertisers to get into the swing of things. So in splinter cell, before you can steal the secret plans from the briefcase, you have to read this letter from president mugabe's uncle that says he has TEN MILLION US DOLLARS hidden in geneva that he trusts in complete confidence for you to send your bank account details to him so he can give you the money because of political strife.

    Hopefully we will see some good members of the modding community hack the ads out of PC versions of games. Console gamers are doomed tho.

  • Sounds like a bad dream (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Datasage ( 214357 ) <Datasage&theworldisgrey,com> on Friday June 25, 2004 @04:17AM (#9525899) Homepage Journal
    But its not going to go away.

    You pay $50 for a game, it shoulndt have advertisments so people are going to go for games with this. Well... look at cable TV People pay $50-100 per month for channels that have more commercials. But there is content on cable that you cant get anywhere else. Making a game compelling enough for people to purchase, well, and they maybe wont notice the ads.

    But then, games themselves have been made strickly for marketing. Look at any game based on a movie licence. Ok, they are not selling other unrelated products, but they are selling a movie.

    But there is a good thing in all this, not all game worlds are really compatible with advertised products. Your probably not going to be finding a +1 magic pepsi anytime soon. If you dont like advertising, dont play the games that use it. Just like you dont have to watch movies with product placement(with is about every major hollywood movie).

    I could go on about creating art for profit as opposed to creating art for art, but i need sleep.

    later

  • When done poorly... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wheresdrew ( 735202 ) on Friday June 25, 2004 @05:12AM (#9526048) Journal
    ..it's crap. Run Like Hell, anybody? The game that had Bawls drinks for powerups and health. POOR

    The Jet Moto series always did it well, though. They tied in the appropriate "eXtrEmE" products whose image (and real world advertising campaigns) matched the game's attitude - Mt. Dew, Doritos, etc.

    Odds are we'll see more RLH-type ads than Jet Moto ones.

    • Re:When done poorly... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 )
      I agree that Jet Moto was a shining example of how to do in-game advertisement, but Jet Moto is a sports title and sports titles will always have easier times figuring out produce placement and advertisement becasue the real live sport (or sports in Jet Moto's case) that inspires such a game has already worked out advertising logistics.

      Figuring out where to place products and advertisements in something like a new Alone in the Dark game or an Everquest game will probably be significantly harder. I can see
    • Worse. Anyone remember Darkened Skye, or something named similar to that? A fantasy game with a massive Skittles tie-in?

  • Ads as part of the experience (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neglige ( 641101 ) on Friday June 25, 2004 @05:43AM (#9526113)
    IMHO there are severaly ways to integrate ads into games, not all of them necessarily bad. I think one of the first games to introduce some advertising was "Theme Park", where from time to time you could see a banner of a UK bank (IIRC the first few screens and the accounting screens). That didn't bother me much.

    Another point is that advertising can make a game more real, e.g. in sports games. In a typical soccer/ice-hockey/... stadium there is perimeter advertising. Using this space for real, in-game advertising creates a more realistic atmosphere. Sure, the banners could all read "ACME Rockets Inc.", but it just wouldn't be the same. Racing cars would also look a bit different :)

    All in all, if in-game advertising is subtle and does not interrupt or deteriorate my gaming experience, I (personally) don't mind it. And this definetely rules out commercial breaks in a FPS :)
  • In-game ads have been around for at least 15 years. I'm sure many of the readers here remember seeing Pizza hut signs and logos in the Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles Arcade/NES game. But out of all the adverts I've seen within games most have been background noise. From the banners lining a stadium in something like Madden to popular music being sneaked in. Other times they're blatent and obvious, like many of Namco's shameless plugs in their games. Most notably the e-mails your character may recieve in Xe

  • Marketing department: (Score:3, Funny)

    by CarrionBird ( 589738 ) on Friday June 25, 2004 @07:59AM (#9526417) Journal
    Definition: A bunch of mindless jerks who were first against the wall when the revolution came.
  • So instead of needing the blue key to open the door I'll need to find the Crystal Clear Pepsi?
  • I for one can't wait until the day that I am playing GTA and decide to pull over for a slice of pizza and instantly my door bell rings with a delivery. The best part is it should only cost me 4 hub caps from the game car I just jacked... Now if only I could redeem coffee and dough nuts from the game to clear my parking tickets...


  • In-game ads are commonplace nowadays, but does anyone know what game featured the FIRST in-game ad?

    The earliest I can think of is ET featuring Reeses. Well, I *think* the game had Reeses, I can't remember for sure. Although that was more product-placement than a true ad. A lot of games feature in-game billboards, but for a long time I think it was only the publisher's name and logos.

    What about other early examples?

  • The problem with advertising in Video Games, I think, is the same problem with advertising on the internet. The problem is that advertisers have failed to understand the consequenes of the shift from passiver entertainment (TV, Radio) to active entertainment (video games, surfing the web). Commercials on TV are annoyining, but I doubt anyone finds them as annoying as those flash ads on certain websites that you have to sit through before continuing on to see various content *cough* IGN *cough* This is be
  • I recognize that advertising is important to get your company's product in the consumer eyes, and I think that this method is a lot better than ads with +20 volume SHOUTING at you about their new product. I would rather have subtle advertising (read: _not_ subliminal) than something that's in my face.

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