VGRC

Advertising is something that we are all familiar with. One cannot live in the society we exist in today without being able to recognize the GEICO Gecko's cute Cockney accent or know that the reason Bud Light is superior to other beers is it's "Drinkability." Advertising touches all forms of media from the $3 million dollar commercial slots during the Super Bowl down to the raggedy band stickers stuck to the liquid soap dispensers in public restrooms. It therefore makes sense then that advertising would work it's way into video games in some degree. Since the booming growth of the video game industry in the past decade (especially online gaming) advertising agencies have begun to understand that the digital world is a highly lucrative medium to display the messages that they want gamers to see.

However, what does this do to the game experience? Do we, as gamers, want our games that are so near and dear to us to be just another vehicle for companies like Coke and Axe to inundate us with their product's sales pitches? I'd like to think we wouldn't want that. Considering the findings of recent marketing studies though I highly doubt agencies would ever let our games be.

Massive, is an advertising company that specializes in in-game advertising and is responsible for product placement in games series such as Guitar Hero, Need For Speed, and Madden.  On Massive's web site they cite a Neilsen Media study that claims companies saw a 64% increase in brand familiarity and a 41% increase in purchase consideration after gamers saw the advertisement in the virtual worlds of their games. Another advertising agency, Neoedge, cites a similar study done by Frank N. Magid associates which has even more staggering results. The associates' study found a five times increase in brand awareness after viewing video advertisements during gaming experiences. With numbers like that there's no way agencies can stay away from the video game market.

That being said we have to accept that advertising within video games is going to exist. Many even argue that advertising is necessary to the realism of many video game experiences. Advertising IS a part of daily life and simulation games require that certain brands and companies are featured so that the realism they strive for is achieved. Examples of this being actual car models in racing games like Gran Turismo and game jerseys for sports like soccer that allow advertising on jerseys (The big AIG on the Manchester United in FIFA 10). The authenticity of these games, which attempt for realism, would be forfeited if we wanted our games to be totally pure of capitalistic perversion.

What the argument then becomes is, where is the line? What forms of in-game advertising blend in to support the realism of the game environment without ruining the game experience, or without causing an adverse reaction toward the game by gamers who are against advertising within games as a principal (a problem that companies like Massive are well aware of and claim to address in their work). I think we can find an answer when we separate ways in-game advertising is done into two categories, static and dynamic.

Static advertising is advertising that has been hard-coded into a game before packaging and release. This is the purchasing of Ferraris in Project Gotham or Gibson guitars in Guitar Hero. The developer has already been paid the advertising dollars to include the product in the game and most of the time the product placement is incidental, meaning it is part of the realism that the game is attempting to achieve. 

Dynamic advertising in games is integrating advertisements into the digital world in real time to a predetermined location in the video game space, it should be noted this can be done in online play only. Basically it's like a digital billboard. Companies can rent out the space through advertising agencies to display a message. This is a constant income for the designing companies as they can rent this space out, as they would a billboard, and make more money off the game in the long run.  However this makes for a more dangerous form of advertising as it is real-time and the space can go to the highest bidder just as a commercial on television. Barrack Obama ran advertisements during the 2008 campaign in Burnout Paradise, Madden 09, and Skate. Politics aside this is a dangerous precedent. It shows us that the digital space of our video games have the potential of being nothing but another battleground on which corporations, and more despicable demons (politicians), can fight for the louder voice and drown the game experience in pandering messages. 

If dynamic advertising can rent out a billboard what's to stop it from becoming more direct in interrupting the game to inundate it's audience? Imagine being forced to watch Progressive insurance commercials while in the lobby waiting for a match to start in Modern Warfare 2, hoping that you could put a digital bullet in Flo's quirky little head. Or a scrolling billboard next to your spells in World of Warcraft so that while you're smashing in a Gnome's tiny skull you can see that your thirst for battle could better be quenched with an electrolyte infused Gatorade. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that this would detract from, and cheapen the game experience.

Dynamic advertising in video games is nothing but additional and residual income to line the pockets of the developers and advertising agencies and the worst part is the precedent that these billboards set. Dynamic advertising has the potential to make the video game industry just one more Eiffel Tower in the clusterfuck orgy that is the commercialized media, with the dedicated gamer playing the role of the coke head runaway with broken dreams in the middle.