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In-Game Advertising Coming to Anarchy Online
Swedish company Funcom has signed a deal with Massive, Inc to stream advertising into public areas of Rubi-Ka, the online world within Anarchy Online. Gamespot has the story. The ads are likely a direct result of the recent subscription free business model that the company has adopted for new players. From the article: "As consumers spends less time watching television and more time playing games (as indicated by numerous studies, including one from Nielsen), the game industry is turning its attention to understanding the potential to drive additional revenue from in-game advertising." Are all massive games going to be moving in this direction, or the direction that Guild Wars will take?
The summary here is inaccurate as to how the ads are going to be presented. It makes it sound as if they're chopping blocks out of the interface for them (and that's already a kinda crowded interface).
According to this post by the developers:
"These images will be similar to existing in-character advertisement already found in the game today, example of this would be Bronto Burger advertisements."
They'll be on billboards, which are all over the game as it is. The game already has in-game (while also in-character) advertisement for the expansion packs, as well as the Alienware billboard near the entrance to Old Athen (which from my understanding isn't an advertisement for Alienware computers, but for the Alien Invasion expansion pack), but they're changed to fit character. The dev posts sounds as if the real life ads being run will also be made to fit the game's background:
"We are also doing our utmost to ensure that these advertisements blend into the environment without being intrusive or break with the spirit of Anarchy Online. All of the advertisements that will be shown are going to be screened by Funcom personnel where we will weed out any advertisements that we feel are inappropriate before they get the chance to appear around Rubi-Ka."
Also, it's not only "Likely" because of the free subscription, it is definitely because of it. Paying customers won't even see them:
"This is being done to maintain our ability to keep providing the best game for everyone while keeping the monthly fee as low as we can... I want to reassure everyone that the new advertisements that will be introduced to the game will only be affecting players that are taking advantage of our free offer. All paying subscribers will be shown in-character images in place of the advertisement."
Lastly, they did take the time to address privacy concerns. They assure users that they aren't sharing personal information, only registering that somebody watched an ad and which ad it was, not who watched it.
I'm working under the assumption that this model will only be relevant in MMO games, as advertising in regular, stand alone games is old news (see Tony Hawk and Gran Turismo for examples). Those are usually called/considered market tie-ins.
Something I would like to see is a system for game mod creation teams to sign up for some sort of GoogleAds type system, so that their mods have some billboards and whatnot of advertisers placed in them automatically and they get a check for each exposure. It would really help some of these extraordinarily talented people get some reward for their labors.
If you play the SSX series, GTA, GT4, and a few others, they already have in-game adverts. SSX 3 does it with dnL (the 7up with caffeine thing), Honda, and a few others. I can't remember what all was part of the GTA advertising, as I never played much of it, but I know it was there.
Personally, being a little new to the MMORPG type games, I have already found that as new updates/versions come out, they are raising the prices of them. That's one reason I haven't tried WoW or EQ2 yet. I can't see spending more than the $12 I pay for FFXI.
Although, with EQ2 now letting you order pizza from within the game, I might be a little more interested... (now that's a product tie-in.. just type /pizza in the game to order one from the local Pizza Hut).