by Ack Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:10 pm
Do you believe contextual advertising has a place in online-enabled video games? Say, for instance, a game like Battlefield 2142 or Saints Row 2 may have billboards which change every few updates to advertise real products because companies pay the respective creators to issue new texture packs featuring brand logos?
It used to be that companies had to make games based off of major properties and then watch as those games lived or died based on their quality (consider many property-based games such as Pepsi Man, the various Batman games, Knight Rider, etc.) But, with video games now connected to online servers for real time updates, you could effectively show a character drinking a carbonated beverage in a scene, then follow that with an update which changes said carbonated beverage to a Coke, followed by a later updated which changes it to a Pepsi, and then eventually reverts back to the original off brand beverage. Could this be a new and viable means for dev. companies to gain advertising revenue (possibly allowing them to make additional revenue to help lessen the perceived blow of the used game industry), or does this sort of internal and evolving advertising tarnish the image of video games?
If I need to explain that better, let me know.