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Advertising and the Video Game

11.08.06 - 10:37pm

With the advent of the Internet and directed advertising the daily computer user is constantly assaulted with advertisements to buy various products and services. Directed advertising has nearly become synonymous with the Internet and more specifically Google ad-words and I will admit that occasionally advertising has been effective in my purchases. The secret to advertising lies in the fact that the advertisement must not be annoying, obstruct my view, and above all not piss me off. The age of the pop-up advertisement seems to have slowly passed however a new market is opening up, the video game.

Video games have the potential to generate enormous amounts of income if in-game advertising is approached correctly. Unlike television and the Internet, gamers will not take kindly to obvious advertising such as pop-up ads and banner advertisements. Advertisers won’t like to hear this but a successful advertisement within a video game must not stand out, if it looks out of place it is going to simply frustrate the user and distract them. Just imagine you are playing a lively game of Battlefield 2142 and you are flying your attack jet at high speeds through an urban area and you see a billboard approaching at highspeed on your right. Now imagine this billboard is trying to sell you American Eagle clothing complete with partially nude female model. I almost guarantee there would be a large increase in plane crashes as users struggle with wondering why there is an American Eagle advertisement in the downtown portion of a city based in the year 2142, especially if it features clothing from 2006.

Now imagine instead of American Eagle there was an advertisement for Sony featuring some sleek futuristic laptop and perhaps the billboard itself has a few bullet holes and maybe is missing a corner due to an explosion. This advertisement would help add to the immersion effect of the video game, unlike the American Eagle advertisement I would actually notice the advertisement, maybe make a wise-crack about it, and probably still crash my jet into a building however I wouldn’t be frustrated or angry at Sony for distracting me. The fact that the advertisement attempted to blend in with the environment and the actual “story” of the video game would have helped with my immersion within the game and my overall experience.

To shift gears away from a sci-fi FPS and to something a bit more common lets focus on Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. With the video game based in the early 1990’s I would have no problem seeing a huge billboard for Nike shoes or perhaps a branded softdrink machine such as Coca Cola or Powerade. While a good portion of the products available in the early 90’s would be out of date in 2006 I wouldn’t have too much of a problem if a variety of products that haven’t changed much were advertised in game. Due to the enormous amount of landscape within the GTA series corporations could have their own buildings, real restaurants could exist, and your character could wear branded clothing to your tastes. These forms of advertising would do a great job for companies to expand their presence within the gaming industry in a non-intrusive manner.

There have been claims that the future of the gaming industry hangs on the adoption of in game advertising however I believe this mindset is very narrow minded. Costs for AAA video games have increased while prices have remained in the $40-$50 range however video games have a larger userbase than ever before. Now video games can easily cross between the platforms with a single title being playable on the Playstation, Xbox, Wii, and PC, all with varying degrees of detail. Developers that bring new and exciting video games would do their best to have their game spread across all the platforms to help improve their ability to sell copies of their title. While I have no figures of how much it costs to develop a game, how much revenue in-game advertising could pull in, and how much of a profit developers gain from video games, I am confident that advertising will only be able to supplement and not replace the developing costs for video games. In the near future I doubt we will see free video games however there is the potential for overall costs to be dropped or peripheral services such as online gameplay be further supported with higher quality servers. I can pick out a game or two that could highly benefit from some additional monthly income devoted towards server upgrades.

I believe advertising is here to stay, but it will only be successful if the advertisers market towards the gamer, not force the gamer to view their advertisements. With the ability to collect basic information from the users, gaming advertisers should be able to better direct advertisements to their userbases meaning I won’t receive advertisements for breast enlargement however I might receive an advertisement for the 2007 Supra, if it ever manages to surface. I believe advertising can be done in a tasteful, non-intrusive manner, and if it is done this way could pave the way to a new age of blockbuster video games and post-launch support.

Notes: Screenshots taken within Electronic Art’s Battlefield 2142 Demo version.

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