Non-Invasive In-Game Advertising

[Mozgus]

We've had a thread about the recent announcement (possibly more but the fucking search here just isn't cooperating lately) about Xbox 360 dashboard ads. This doesn't interest me, as I don't have a 360, but what does interest me is subtle advertisements in the game worlds. I was just playing Grid today and noticed this:



I have put in a good couple dozen hours and I didn't even notice that the billboards in the game were not only of real products, but were updating themselves over time. I can only assume it's doing this behind the scenes while the game is running, even when I'm not playing online. The fact that I didn't notice them for so long proves how ineffective the ads are...

I've seen other games do this, mostly from UbiSoft. Generally, I'm in favor of it as long as its handled well. In Grid's case, it actually adds realism to the world. Obviously, this works fine in any game where the setting is a modern urban area. It doesn't work quite so well in games like Counter Strike. Though I haven't played much CS in recent years, I don't recall seeing any ads in it since this news. Maybe they never went through with it.

[superlarz]

I dont mind them, as you said, in games where they make sense. In sports games, they could have real ads placed throughout stadiums, or games like GTA I dont mind realistic billboards. In one of the sandbox games I think it would actually be cooler to walk into say, a Burger King, than whatever fake fast food place they made up. Series like NFS or Burnout work well too.
In game ads work when they arent forcing it down your throat.

[equalsign]

I personally don't like in game advertising in any form. I fear that if it starts being more fiscally beneficial it could start making games in which real world advertising wouldn't be possible/realistic less profitable and they might be given the green light less often. Although I suppose it could also be used to help justify harder to pitch games, it just makes me uneasy. I know my fears are probably blown out of proportion (not all movies use product placement for example), but still.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I don't mind it. I didn't notice the Apple computers in MGS4 until somebody brought it up. It makes some games more realistic. Now if it were in a game such as Warhawk, Bomberman, or LittleBigPlanet, I would have problems with it. One of the reasons I don't like the new Bionic Commando is (as Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation put it) "because it drinks Pepsi". Rather I'm more mad that I can't use the Pepsi machines as toys but still.

[PharmaceuticalCowboy]

If I pay $50 for a game I want NOOOO advertising. If you want to put those fucking billboards in my game then you can A) pay me to play your game or B) give me that game for FREEEEEE! I hate most that it's the big developers that don't even need the money and think that this is the bullshit that we will have to deal with for a long time until we demand some actual product from devs instead of a half-finished game that's begging for cash and also has some adverts in it!

[Mozgus]

If I pay $50 for a game I want NOOOO advertising. If you want to put those fucking billboards in my game then you can A) pay me to play your game or B) give me that game for FREEEEEE! I hate most that it's the big developers that don't even need the money and think that this is the bullshit that we will have to deal with for a long time until we demand some actual product from devs instead of a half-finished game that's begging for cash and also has some adverts in it!

Well in Grid's case, I bought the game for $15. It's a great game. Codemasters has earned the right to collect some bonus funds from the advertising, as far as I'm concerned. Their game deserved more sales than it got.

[J T]

I don't mind, and often prefer when there are Billboards of real products and stores of real businesses in my games. It makes the world feel all the more real since we live in an advertisement saturated world. My concern for this though is that developers may become too dependent on advertiser money and we may start to see way to many urban games because it doesn't make sense to have a Pepsi billboard in a place like Hyrule.

[Mozgus]

I don't mind, and often prefer when there are Billboards of real products and stores of real businesses in my games. It makes the world feel all the more real since we live in an advertisement saturated world. My concern for this though is that developers may become too dependent on advertiser money and we may start to see way to many urban games because it doesn't make sense to have a Pepsi billboard in a place like Hyrule.

My real concern is kind of an alternate theory from that. What if the concept of appropriate in-game ads persuades even more people to design games with real world settings? That would fucking suck. We have enough of those already. I don't want the fantasy element to become a minority in game design.

[dsheinem]

The fact that I didn't notice them for so long proves how ineffective the ads are...

Actually, just because you haven't consciously noticed them doesn't mean they've been ineffective. Not all advertising (or persuasion in general) works through active cognition.

There's a long-running discussion about this in academia...

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sub ... tnG=Search

[Mozgus]

The fact that I didn't notice them for so long proves how ineffective the ads are...

Actually, just because you haven't consciously noticed them doesn't mean they've been ineffective. Not all advertising (or persuasion in general) works through active cognition.

There's a long-running discussion about this in academia...

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sub ... tnG=Search

Everyone has heard about that theory. Don't try to be a smartass. Let's just agree that it didn't work, because I still only buy dry deodorants, and I hate Fast and Furious movies.