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Running Over Virtual Pedestrians Helps In-Game Ad Recall
neuroworld writes to point out a study which found a correlation between in-game violence and a player's ability to recall advertisements seen while playing. The test subjects were given two versions of a driving game, which included "unobtrusive" billboard ads, and their eye movements were recorded by a camera. One version had players hitting targets for points, and the other version had them running down pedestrians. "[The researchers] found ads displayed along with violent scenes to be more memorable to players than those shown with nonviolent content, even though players spent less time looking at them. The results are contrary to expectations stemming from research on television, where violence has been shown to decrease attention to advertisements."
So advertisers love violent video games. Maybe they should put some of their revenue into defending some of the games under attack because of violent content.
"But this one goes to 11!"
But maybe the basic game sucks and is boring, and running down pedestrians and seeing the blood splatter is the only thing that spices it up and gets the player to actually pay attention.
The enemies of Democracy are
Ah, but what if they offered you a version without commercials for $60 or one with ads all over it for $20 - which would you choose then? (And yes, in this scenario you must only choose one or the other - saying "I would download the torrent for free" isn't what I am looking for as an answer.)
And as a follow up - have you gotten rid of your television, radio, and internet as well, because they also have ads everywhere. Forget going to the movie theater too - even forking over $12 won't let you escape the ads. (Except for a cool old school theater in my city where they have zero ads or previews, but instead have a real live person playing a pipe organ before they show the feature.)
"But this one goes to 11!"
When hitting targets, the reward is more points. You get the most satisfaction from getting a high score. When hitting pedestrians, even if you get points for it, are like the points you get in Super Mario Bros. 3. You don't remember there being a score? Exactly.
This isn't about violence, it's whether you have you sights hard-set on a goal (points), or if you're just taking your time and enjoying yourself (who cares if you miss a pedestrian - there's always more).
If it's good enough, I would certainly pay the $60. I'll never play a game with in-game advertising.
As for the rest - TiVo was sufficient for getting rid of advertising on TV, but now that TiVo is a damned advertising company, that's not viable anymore, so Netflix has almost completely replaced cable TV for me (I used to say I was going to cancel cable TV as soon as The Simpsons ended, but I don't think I'm going to make it that long).
I change channels to avoid radio advertisements when I'm in control of the radio (i.e., when driving). On those rare occasions when I'm subjected to radio advertising I can't avoid (mostly the barber shop, or occasionally at a sub shop), it's pretty painful.
Adblock/noscript and a few others are doing a fine job of keeping the Web ad-free for me so far.
I don't go to movie theaters anymore since the inception of non-trailer ads before movies. A silent slideshow was acceptable; I could ignore that. Unfortunately the last small local theater in my area has started playing loud voiceover advertising before the movie starts, and I haven't been back since they started that earlier this year. Even before that, I was going to the movies less and less often - I was very rarely interested in seeing anything anyway... Netflix is covering this for me now, too.
Here's my hypothesis to explain the "contradictory" results.
In the case of a violent TV show that is periodically interrupted by an ad, the brain perceives these
as two different situational episodes or contexts.
Another analogy would be if you were both reading a crime novel set in London, and periodically glancing up from your book
to look out the train window at the sweeping mountain vistas. The brain/mind can separate those episodes, similar to how they
would be separated if they followed each other in time.
In the case of the billboard ads in the driving game, these ads are impressions that are part of the in-game world, seen while
your brain/mind perceives you to be in the driving situational episode.
Why this distinction is important is probably that your brain adds strong-emotion-related "tags" to memories of the traumatic
situational episode. These tags (first biochemical, then reflected in the structure of the long-term memory) assist to prioritize
later recall of important memories. Of course, this recall may be somewhat uncontrollable (as in PTSD), but there is no
doubt that these memories will be recallable for longer than memories of unrelated and unremarkable episodes near in
time to the traumatic episode. This is as it should be for our survival through avoidance of future similar situation function.
So, to sum up, the billboards are part of the situational episode context for the traumatic incident, so are included in the
emotion-tag-enhanced strong memory of that incident, whereas the interstitial ads (which take your brain/mind to a different
situation in the world of the ad) are committed to memory as uneventful situations worthy of only moderate recall. And it
is even probable that situational episodes near to (but different from and not causally related to) the traumatic episode
are in fact inhibited, because memory-commitment resources are being used to strongly commit the traumatic episode,
or perhaps to set it in sharp relief to the irrelevant nearby episodes, for more distinct and more certain recall of the "correct"
important episode around that time period.
Just a guess.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?