In-Game Advertising Comes of Age

TotallyUseless writes: "Yahoo News is running a story about how in-game advertising is becoming more and more popular, and could become the norm soon. It is an interesting article and explains the reasons why game publishers and advertisers both see great potential in this." Bleh.

Comments

"bleh", says michael who has never had to pay rent

[hatless]

First of all, as others here have noted, there have been ads in games for years now. The Red Bull ads in the second Wipeout game were among the more clever, but look at sports titles too. When you see Coke, Panasoinc, Valvoline and Reebok logos in racing games, those are paid ads. There has also been product placement in RPG games for a while.

Michael, Michael, Michael. Do you have any idea how much it costs to create a new game these days? It's millions of dollars, often tens of millions. You want RPGs with giant worlds with realistic streets and buildings full of furniture,and knickknacks, and dozens of voice actors saying lines for a hundred or more animated characters? You want sports games where hundreds of motion-captured athletes are simulated down to physical tics, and cars are simulated from their oversteer and gear ratios to the pitch of their exhaust noise? Fine.

Now bear in mind that the publisher is selling the game to retailers for less than half the suggested retail price--often much less, because they're also paying for shelf space and local advertising even beyond their own national ads. And that's the publisher. The developer, unless they're a one-stop shop like EA or Sega, gets a small fraction of that.

You whine whine whine every time a game development shop you like gets bought out or goes out of business, and you whine whine whine when they try to sell ads to offset those insane development costs.

what if...

[humungusfungus]

You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

>open mailbox

The mailbox is overflowing with all sorts of gaudy mail with pictures of various commodities and colourful logos.
You feel slightly uneasy...

>run away

You can't do that right now.

>west

You are standing in front of a McDonalds(tm) restaurant.
There is a can of Coke(tm) here.

>drink Coke

It's very refreshing...

>west

It is dark here. You might be eaten by a grue(tm).

Corporate-sponsored world

[legLess]

The most frightening aspect of this is what's going to happen in 10 years when game developers are dependent upon corporate advertising. What happens now when a major sponsor pulls ads from a TV show? The show dies (c.f. Dr. Laura's show, recently cancelled). It's often happened that a network has pulled or altered a show to suit major sponsors.

Could this happen to a game? hard to say. TV is very advertising-dependent, and game development seems more like movie-making. But check this out (from the story):

"Our expectation is, we'll cover the cost of the games where we do the in-game advertising, partly because of the large audience we're able to realize." (John Riccitiello, EA president)

Here's EA straight-up planning to use advertising as a prime source of game funding. Will this be reflected in better contracts with content producers? Yeah ... hold your breath.

question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

Re:Does this mean we can stop paying for games?

[AntiNorm]

I mean, we're forced to have ads in the games, why should we have to pay to get ads??

Same reason you pay for newspapers/magazines/etc. The advertising subsidizes it. IOW, if the ads weren't there, it'd cost a lot more. For example, without advertising, your average newspaper would cost around $5 (rough estimate). But add in ads and you get a 90% discount.

---
The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:

Mario 128!

[byronbussey]

Me a Mario!! I shop at the GAP, and jump a super high in my Nikes. I have to save Princess Britney Spears from the clutches of the evil coke can, but need to collect all the Pepsi Products before I have enough energy to take on the darkest evil in the universe.

next thing you'll see...

[DragonPup]

"Smith And Wesson shotguns! As seen in Quake IV!"

-Henry