The more the video game industry grows the more attention it draws from the entertainment industry. Movies, TV and Radio all are built upon or support advertising as a way of making revenue. Soon almost all popular video games will be subjected to the same shameless advertising campaign. I think this could be both good for the industry and bad for the industry. In order to fully understand the way this advertising campaign works we need to look at one of the leading in-game advertising corporations; Massive Incorporated.

Massive Incorporated is the first ever video game advertising network. The big draw to this network is that it caters to males ages 18-34. Also it is a huge network spanning several major developers and hundreds of games. I am not trying to give Massive a free plug I am attempting to show how big a population this network can target. Now that we have an idea of the gravity this network holds we can look into the effect of these ads on the video game industry.

I think that the ads could be useful to games and the video game industry if used in a certain way. Placing advertisements in some games would definitely add to realism. This would be if the advertisement were placed in a tasteful manner where the main character sits down to have a Pepsi in stead of just a soda. I also think that MMO games could benefit from ads. Because of the dynamic make-up of a Massively Multiplayer Game the revenue from ads could reduce or eliminate the need for a subscription fee. Unfortunately I think that video game advertising will follow the same path of advertising in movies.

When you sit down in a movie theater you are bombarded by ads and other nonsense before the movie actually starts. You pay for a ticket and for the first twenty or so (sometimes more) minutes you watch commercials. This will most likely be the model that videogames follow. I suspect that advertisements in games will start to become more obvious and show up much more often. This will be especially bad in certain MMO games.

For many MMO games now there is a virtual “waiting room” where you try to find a server or a game. Many of these waiting rooms already have ads plastered everywhere and I would expect to see that number grow significantly in the near future. Also I would think that soon we will be seeing ads during the loading screen for many of the same games. While regular MMO games will be a key target the persistent worlds of MMORPGs seen to be the flavor of the month.

MMORPG games and their unusually fanatical following have grown considerably in the last few years. The draw for the advertisers is that these gamers makeup a very predictable market of males from age 18-34. Just to give an example of in game ads we can use the very popular game Everquest 2. Everquest 2 created a command so that when “/pizza” is written into the console a webpage is displayed that allows you to order Pizza Hut straight from your computer. I am sure this is only paving the way for more incredible stunts by advertisers and promoters.

To sum everything up ads will be coming to a game near you. Not just adds for similar games, because EA and other production houses have been promoting their games this way for quite sometime, I am talking about ads from other industries. I expect soon most MMO games will have similar functions as Everquest. I think we will also start to see brand names on clothes and other items in games. As games continue to grow in the market we will continue to see more and more attention devoted to interactive media. I just hope game designers try to hold true to a virtual experience and don't sell out for the extra buck.

-Seth (28-Mar-2005)

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