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| Message Board > Malarkey > Advertising in Games |
| September 30, 2006, 12:09 | |
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Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac 703 posts 
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Gamer.tv did a section on advertising in games that I thought was quite interesting. In-game advertising is becomming more and more popular in commercial games these days. In sports games for example you'll see cars/kits/arenas with "real" logos, brand names and ads. Some guy was arguing that its a good thing because it'll bring down the cost of games, perhaps until they're completely free and funded entirely by in-game advertising. Someone else said that this will never happen and its more likely to just offset the rising production cost of games and stop the price to the consumer going up (its going up? Since when?). They also said that its great because it makes games more realistic when you have the rights to put a Burger King ads all over your virtual city. Peter Molyneux seemed to be of this view. And I did notice that there was product placement all over his game The Movies - Motorola phones, Crysler cars etc. But the arguement against in-game advertising was simple: advertising corrupts. If you rely on money from advertisers to fund your game, eventually you'll end up with the advertisers dictating what content goes into that game. We'd start seeing more and more sports and driving games for which in-game adverts fit suitably, and less and less RPGs or historical strategy games. You can't get away with putting Ye Olde McDonalds in Age of Empires. Game producers are going to choose to make the games they can get the most advertising revenue from. When I first saw ads in games I thought it was a kinda neat idea, but now I'm worried! ____________ |
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| September 30, 2006, 12:35 | |
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Woody
HEAD BLACK MAN 722 posts 
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Commercialism has such a stranglehold on the game industry that there's no chance of anything interesting ever coming out of it that doesn't directly involve sucking more money out of customers and the sooner it all goes down in flames the better. PS3 games at $80 ololololo ____________ boredome is the bitter fruit of too much routine |
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| September 30, 2006, 15:07 | |
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Rincewind
programmer 1545 posts 
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If we'd start seeing more and more sports and driving games for which in-game adverts fit suitably, and less and less RPGs or historical strategy games as Frimkron says, then exactly *that* creates a market for those kinds of games. If there are fewer games of those types then there's a lot more money to make with them too because of a lack of rivalry. The gamer will be interested anyway. So I think the game types will keep eachother in balance and we won't be seeing such polarising. Anyway what I have read about ingame advertising is that unskippable ads will be shown inbetween the logo screens & intro movie when you start a game. So then Age of Empires can also become suitable fucked up. However I don't really see how it can work in the first place. If you compare games with internet sites which offer certain services, you will see that those sites with much ads are free to for whatever service they offer (because of the ads), and that you can remove all the ads by paying. There's no way that paying customers are ever going to be annoyed with full screen ads in games and everyone will still buying them! ____________ Personal website: http://www.loijson.com |
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| September 30, 2006, 20:16 | |
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yonni
None 420 posts |
You say advertising companies will dictate the contents of games? Surely the content of games is dictated enirely by the target audience, as that is where the money comes from (even if money does come from adverts, they're useless if noone wants to buy the game). The advertising industry is also totally reliable on the target audience of it's product. Noone advertises for the hell of it. I understand the argument that this kind of capitalism can dictate peoples lives, but I do not agree: Capitalists want money > to get moeny, they sell a product of service > to sell this product or service, they need to a) make it something people want and/or b) advertise it to those who might want to pay for it > this means that their income entirely relies on people wanting their service/product > if people don't want their service/product, it stops being made/advertised. So the product and the advertising all relies on us (broadly speaking), the target audience/customer. So, even if advertising companies do say what they want in the games, they have to make it something that we want, or it wont sell. Therefore, the content is still largely in the court of the consumer. Thats what I think anway. ____________ |
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Message Board > Malarkey > Advertising in Games