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Games As The New Advertising Frontier

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dance-dance-mcdonald's-mix dept.

TechnoPulp wrote to mention an article running on the CBS News site discussing Gaming and the New Advertising Frontier. From the article: "Advertising in video games isn't like marketing on television or radio. Since each video game title is a world unto itself, advertisements placed inside that world can pollute it and make it uninhabitable. Gamers won't touch it if it becomes fouled with evil ads. To that end, there are companies whose business is to guide other businesses through the gaming universe. Two such chaperons are IGN Entertainment and Massive Inc."

7 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Reporter's opinions != fact... by MBraynard · · Score: 2, Insightful
    But he still reports it as a fact:

    gamers won't touch it if it becomes fouled with evil ads.

    Any examples of gamers not buying any game because it had advertising in it, much less ALL, a majority, or a plurality even?

    I'm glad that there are so many blogs out there because they collectively lift the IQ of the average reporter. But that still doesn't help CBS news.

    1. Re:Reporter's opinions != fact... by alvinrod · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Burnout 3 comes to mind. I recall seeing a few Axe ads in the game. Do these ads make me want to stop playing the game? No. Obviously this is an overstatement. I think buying a game or not has to do with how well it's made, and not if there's advertising in it.

      If advertisements in games are used appropriately, then I really won't care. If you're going to put a billboard in a game by a road because it's realistic, you might as well put an add on there. To a certain extent it makes a game seem more realistic. Just look at games like Gran Turismo, where there are logos of actual manufacturers plastered all over.

      If you start plastering them on loading screens it might get a little annoying though. That's one example of where it's inappropriate to place an ad.

    2. Re:Reporter's opinions != fact... by badasscat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      gamers won't touch it if it becomes fouled with evil ads.

      Any examples of gamers not buying any game because it had advertising in it, much less ALL, a majority, or a plurality even?

      All he said was "gamers", which by definition means any number above two.

      I'm one. Anyone else want to volunteer and turn this into a true factual statement?

      Note that examples are not necessary, as he's speaking in future tense. But I certainly will not buy any game that is "fouled with evil ads" (which I take to mean pretty well overrun with them... one or two unobtrusive billboards in a city in a game is not going to bother me).

  2. Think of the loading screens! by wuie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Someone needs to patent the idea of an advertisement on a loading screen and then never use it. ;D

  3. Games are a big enough revenue already by white1827 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With average games that cost $50+ these days, there is no excuse for placing ads in them.

  4. Splinter Cell by Scutter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just played through SC: Chaos Theory and it had a lot of ads in it as well. They were portrayed as soda machines, wall posters, etc. They were obtrusive in that the non-ads were blurry and out of focus. For example, two soda machines side-by-side, one was a Sprite machine, the other one apparently sold "a suffusion of yellow". So instead of contributing to the immersion by making the virtual world more "real", it just called attention to the fact that it was a product-placement ad and annoyed me instead. I would have preferred two Sprite machines, or perhaps one Sprite and one Coke or something.

    One in-game ad I *did* like, though, was the brightly-lit Axe cologne neon billboard that you had to sneak across while several guards wandered about. I had to shoot the neon out to make it dark enough... ;)

    --

    "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
  5. Depends on the Context by Deathlizard · · Score: 2

    This issue came up in the City of Heroes Message board, and the userbase pretty much declared foul to the point where the devs stepped in to completely deny it.

    My take is a little different. I don't mind in game advertising as long as it follows certain rules.

    1) It drops the price of the game, either in the original cost or in the case of an MMORPG, the price per month.
    2) it doesn't interfere with the game in any way, so that I don't get constantly bombarded by it.

    A perfect example of something I would accept is lets say that they want to add Advertisements in COH. In the game, there are fake billboards everywhere for fake products, and even stores that are somewhat recongnizable to their real counterparts (EX: InFront Steakhouse, Major Flanders Fried Chicken, ETC)

    If they started selling and replacing advertising on all the fake billboards with real advertising, I would be ok with that as long as not every billboard was the same ad, and it followed standard Billboard physics (IE Not Blinking and asking me to punch the monkey by clicking on it or something.) so in this example, if Pepsi Started buying Ad space from Cryptic to put Pepsi billboards around the City, it wouldn't bother me as long as they are the same billboards I might see driving down the freeway. The same thing goes if all the Major Flanders became KFC's overnight. To me, it would make it more realistic since that's what I would expect to see in a city.

    Now if it got to the point where every loading screen is advertising Pepsi, Or The Endurance Inspiration became Pepsi cans, or Crimson is sending me on a mission because the Devouring Earth stole the secret formula for Pepsi in the hopes of using it's own drink to brainwash the populous, I'd be pissed. Also I'd be pissed if I'm still paying 14.95 a month instead of 9.95 a month.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!