In-Game Adverts Could Reach $2 Billion?

Via 1up, a story on the Adweek site positing that in-game ads could reach $2 Billion by the end of the decade. The story discusses Massive, the streaming ad firm, and their success in reaching eyeballs. From the article: "Those customers include the majority of the major film and entertainment studios, according to Davis, as well as brands such as Coca-Cola, Subway, Honda, and Gillette. Davis said that Massive was benefiting from an 'overwhelming trend away from mass marketing' that is making the medium's men 18-34-dominated audience more attractive to more brands, even sometimes slow-moving packaged-goods advertisers."

Comments

gaming costs?

[gEvil (beta)]

Great! Now that the game developers/publishers are raking in a good amount of money, can they use that to offset my online gaming fee? Didn't think so...

Ugh

[TubeSteak]

Video Games are going to be the new Cable TV.

Originally, you were paying for the service. Now you're paying for the service and the pleasure of recieving commercials.

In-game advertising for online games is a tricky business, because it's trivial to block the IP(s) any advertising is coming from. If it's coming directly from teh game server, users can always modify their client to not display it.

This drive to monetize everything is really irritating. I personally don't like to bombarded with ads everywhere I go online.

why not go further

[Tachikoma]

In the next rpg, instead of shops selling potions, why not have this fantasy world be littered with wal-marts with Gatorades to replenish the characters? I won't stay at an inn, I'll stay at holiday inn.
heck, why ride chocobo's when the local Honda dealership is selling atv's on the cheap! No more casting haste, instead drink a star bucks coffee! No airships, but better southwest airships.
i wont use magic, i'll use industrial light and magic!

A horrid thing.

[Lave]

Disclaimer: THis is paraphrased from a previous comment on the subject, but I'm leaving soon, and don't have time to write a new one - I hope it still makes sense, and I realise it's a shitty thing to do. Karmna whoring and all.

We've enjoyed a medium near enough free from advertising. And it is our duty to preserve this. If I pay £40 (and next gen £50) to buy a game, I buy the freedom from ads. You can put them in, but then you must make the game free. There is no middle ground. An XBOX 360 game full of ads won't cost less than some fantasy game that doesn't have them. If you think it will, I am sorry but you are fooling yourself. All it does is succeed in making genres that are not "advertising friendly" less financially viable.

Just because american TV lost the battle to product placement (as the UK might, if the EU stops product placement being illegal), that doesn't mean it's ok for games to lose too. Because this is what this is - Product Placement.

And most importantly I think it's fair to say most people who play games on slashdot want games to be seen as art. Want them to be acknowledged as a new , creative and meaningful media. And how can that happen if the people making the game have no fucking respect for their own creations.

To quote the late, great, Bill Hicks:

"Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink." - Bill Hicks

No.

[keyne9]

Advertisers: Stay out of my fucking game.

Re:No.

[CogDissident]

As offencive as this is, I think that this is the overall mood toward ingame advertising. I feel the same way about it, so long as the advertising would be completely out of place. Medieval settings with advertising are almost (not never, sadly enough) ad-free, while product placement happens in a lot of contemporary games. But there is a argument that it does help immersion in a game setting that it makes sense in. I would personally not care if I were playing a swat game and happened to find a coca cola machine in the lobby of some building. It should offset the price a bit, maybe 45$ instead of 50$, though I know that software makers will never do this. We all know that the biggest problem games are sports games. They are, for the most part, shovelware. When a developer knows the game will sell by the title alone and not reviews or word of mouth, then they will put in every possible ad to make as much money out of it as they can.

Re:Depends on the situation.

[shoptroll]

I can agree to this on some level. I remember Jet Moto 2 having Mountain Dew billboards on the sides of the track, or racing games with billboards on the track walls. I remember Parasite Eve 2 had a couple of coca-cola references, notably a few soda can machines and like one item bearing the coke label (I believe it was a keychain with a coke bottle cap attatched to it).

In my mind, stuff like that is fine. It's not obtrusive or in my face. Heck, You Don't Know Jack's online game had commercial breaks for stuff on the internet, but that worked wonderfully for the game since it was a "game show" and the ads offset the hosting costs. That was a wonderful use.

What I will not agree with is stuff like the recent Counter-strike Subway mod snafu. If that's where this is heading in the long run, I will greatly enjoy avoiding any game involving advertising, and if this forces me to stop playing commercial games, then I'm quite sure I will find enough indies games to play. Otherwise, I have a nice collection of games dating back to the NES to choose from.

I don't mind advertising...

[Nananine]

... so long as it fits into the world. The best solution for all of this is to make more present day/post-apocalyptic MMO's. So, uhh, more post-apocalyptic games in general? Please? Fallout 3, come out soon?

Re:who really started this disturbing trend?

[PatrickThomson]

They also put a discrete NIN logo on all the ammo crates that had nails in them.