In-game advertising – it’s been around for a while but only became a hot subject in the past few years. Brands, consumers, media – they’re all talking about it and everyone has a different take on the subject. The chart above is meant to illustrate a few of the stances gamers take on the subject and where these stances fall, on a Skepticism/Believer and Purism/Opportunism system. Comments and explanations inside.
1 .The NaysayerI don't want any kind of advertising in my games, period.2. The PuristAdvertising ruins the immersion. 99.9% of the time.3. The Fed-up ConsumerThere's a reason I stopped watching TV, you know?4. The Skeptical GamerCui bono? The only ones gaining anything from this are the advertisers. Developers have to worry about ads now, instead of game design and the quality of the game experience degrades.5. The UndecidedI don't mind ads, as long as they're non-intrusive and I get to pay less for the games. Although, for some games, it seems that the price doesn’t go down at all, despite the ads. 6. The OpportunistYeah, yeah, never mind the ads, they're everywhere anyway. Just point me to the free games.7. The EnthusiastIf done in the right fashion, this may be the next level of immersion in gaming. With proper execution, it will only enrich the gaming experience, instead of subtracting from it. Besides, this may be the next kick the gaming industry needs. Let's only hope greed doesn't make it all crumble into a pile of dust. On a basic level, these would be the main categories on the map. As you probably expected, each of them has different needs, fears and dislikes and an argument that will work for one of them may be completely useless for the other. In other words, there’s no such thing as The One Approach. So, over the next few weeks, we’ll return to the chart with an in-depth analysis of each stance, extended definitions, short case studies, dos and don’ts and the occasional off-color joke. In the meanwhile, as a simple exercise, pick any category on the chart and figure out the following things, in larger detail: * - What exactly they dislike about the whole deal; * - What worries them; * - Where are they right; * - What would make them migrate to a different category; As a closing note, just to remind you that this is a pretty damn complex matter, I encourage you to have a look at this post, containing some rather nuanced examples of the categories on my chart. Enjoy.
This blog reflects the personal opinions of individual contributors and does not represent the views of Futurelab, Futurelab's clients, or the contributors' respective employers or clients.
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Joe Vazquez says:
01 Apr 2008, 00:14
I like the post. This is an interesting way of visualizing the different ways everyone feels about ads in games. This is certainly a hot topic, especially as the both the number of people playing games and the numbers of publishers willing to put ads in their games continues to rise. As a student i have just started to keep an eye on this issue in my blog http://adsingames.blogspot.com/
Right now everything i read seems to be conflicting, some sides supporting the use of ads while others are against it. Hopefully as more attention is given to this issue in the following years more reliable data will follow
Joe Vazquez says:
01 Apr 2008, 00:29
I love the post and the way you broke down the different opinions concerning advertising in videogames. I keep my own blog on the subject at http://adsingames.blogspot.com/ and would be interested in knowing where good places for industry information so i continue to build upon my discussions
Alex says:
01 Apr 2008, 11:04
Hey Joe, thanks for the comments. They don't get approved automatically, which explains the delay.
As far as starting points go, this blog's archive is as good as any. We go back a few years and there's a ton of stuff in there. As for other sources, one thing I do is follow in-game advertising articles on big portals and check the comments/trackbacks. That's always a good way of seeing who else is writing about the subject :)
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