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April 16, 2005

Advertising in Games

I have to admit, recently I've been baffled by the sudden interest in advertising in games (I've also marveled at the irony of the game industry advertising in games instead of advertising better for games). I mean, obviously, wherever there's a potential revenue stream, there's going to be hordes of suits following it, but I hadn't given any real thought to putting commercials inside games.

This afternoon while procrastinating from working on other projects, I decided to read the responses to a couple of articles on gamedev.net about a conference on Advertising in Games and IGN starting its service. Reading some of the plans made me grimace... I mean, I guess it's pretty standard fare to hate marketing. Topics include "Product Placement, Dynamic Campaigns, online POS, Campaign Tracking, ROI (Return on Investment, I think), etc"

The hardcore audiences are a pretty picky bunch. I'm guessing they probably won't tolerate any invasive advertising in their games. I'm also wagering that companies like Blizzard and Nintendo will try to abstain from it. Sega littered Super Monkey Ball with advertising for DOLE. Most of the game playing community saw it as a big joke, I think, which is probably what Sega intended.

My first gut reaction to the idea of advertising in games is disgust. I mean, the thought of being spammed in the middle of my games is just greasy. I mean, most people hate being marketed to. One of the nicer things about games is that they don't feature commercials every ten minutes, and they aren't preceded by 20 minutes of movie trailers and pokes to get up and get a Coke. (Man, even some DVD's are starting to have trailers at the front, ugh). "Interactive"
advertising (by which I mean pop-up ads on the internet) seem to be the most annoying type. Man, I really hope that it doesn't come to that in my games....

It's worthwhile to note (although it's probably pretty obvious) that many game developers have an active hatred for this discussion of adding advertisements to their games. There's plenty of mockery on the message boards. But some of the more mature responses are equally interesting (and surprsing) -

"Maybe they can reduce the cost of the current software if they are getting advertising dollars from 'sponsors'.

This is no difference from any major sporting event where banners, logos and flash advertising is everywhere. You don't see people not going to these events. It all relates back to the average people tends to ignore it just like commercials on TV. All the average viewer does is change the channel temporarily."

Could this be a way for independent game makers to finance their projects? Would it really be that bad? I'm not sure... I wouldn't feel too comfortable doing it myself. But I suppose it's a similar economy to a popular webpage having a banner ad. When I visit these pages, I just ignore the ads. They don't bother me too much, but I admit that it kind of taints the experience to know that some business is really trying to separate me from my money while I'm reading. On the other hand, it's a really nice thing for the people who work to put the content up. I can't begrudge a group of guys who work over a website trying to get a buck out of it at the end of the day, especially considering it's not costing me a cent.

If Indie game developers could start up a self-sustaining series with something like this, I guess I wouldn't begrudge them. But I certainly would try everything else first, I guess. Advertising in games is nothing new, (old arcade games had it back in the day) but if it's advertisers are actually starting to put up serious dough for this, then it's probably something worth watching.

Eh, anyhow, just my two cents worth.

Here's another interesting note - After writing the stuff above I decided to check out Slashdot games to see what the slashdotters were thinking about this kinda stuff. I was expecting them to be pretty much up in arms, spitting fire, etc. Turns out I was wrong.

These guys actually don't seem to mind too much, as long as the ads are appropriate. There's a lot of talk about how Advertising for real products in a fictional game world like GTA makes sense, and actually makes the world seem more "real." However, it's not apporpriate for games like World of Warcraft to feature ads for Pepsi or Nike.

Interesting... Here's my question. If advertisers catch wind of this, will this lower game publisher's incentive to create games where the advertising is less appropriate? Are we going to see game makers turn to cyberpunk MMORPG's from Medieval because they can get away with advertising?

Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Posted by efn at April 16, 2005 12:45 AM

Comments

Posted by: sfisher at April 16, 2005 07:02 AM

Posted by: kellee at April 16, 2005 08:32 AM

Posted by: SEDinehart at April 17, 2005 03:36 PM

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