Game Advertising Expanding, Becoming Dynamic?

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."

Comments

Sounds like a bad dream

[Datasage]

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