Opening my feed reader today, I ran into an article that, for a few moments, made me wonder if I didn't land in a show like Early Edition. Blimey, even the cat's a tabby, it all makes sense!
Well, that bad intro over, let me just say that my comparison to a bloke who gets tomorrow's newspaper wasn't caused by news of some magnificent discovery that is too fantastic to be a part of the present. It's even worse. It was just an article from a timezone where it's already tomorrow. An Australian article.
Seeing how I don't necessarily follow Aussie press, I approached with curiosity and care. in fact, I was in tone with the article's title, I should say: In-game advertising goes deep undercover
This is the part where I lost it, to be honest. First off, how are they wringing money from the gamers by placing ads inside the game? Might it be the money comes from the companies that want their products advertised within said game? And could this money cover some of the production cost and maybe even reduce the game's price? I'm just trying to clear some things up for myself here.
Then the piece moves into picking at companies that sell extra content instead of making it available in the form of easter eggs or such. Ohh wait, so maybe it wasn't an article about gamevertising as I was misled to believe but about software companies advertising inside a game for other parts of the said game? That kind of stuff? I understand! And now I'm really puzzled. As a sidenote though, I'm all against re-releases with a nicer sleeve and a floppy disk's worth of additional content. Still, said content usually springs up all over the web in the next week and can be downloaded freely anyway so where's the crisis?
The article finishes like this:
Aubrey McMullen, 27, who has been playing video games since he was four, cheats in Grand Theft Auto, a game with more cheats than most others. The ubiquity of cheats has turned clever competitors into couch potatoes, he says. "It has really dumbed-down gamers - it doesn't make them think as much."
Yeah, not to sound like a bastard but here's a thought: howsabout, if you don't like cheats, don't use them? They're not mandatory, you know?
I still don't see what that article has to do with gamevertising. Perhaps tomorrow it will become clearer to me. Alas, I am no Nostradamus.
Seeing how I don't necessarily follow Aussie press, I approached with curiosity and care. in fact, I was in tone with the article's title, I should say: In-game advertising goes deep undercover
CROUCHED in military fatigues, you peer through night-vision goggles and brandish a semi-automatic gun as you hunt down terrorists who've taken over Las Vegas.Don't you just hate scantily clad women in your terrorist games? (Well I don't actually). My bad jokes aside though, everything after that point in the article left me a tad..perplexed. Bear with me as I quote a little more:
Incongruously, while patrolling a side street in the video game Rainbow Six Vegas, you spot a jar of body wash. You spray the jar with bullets, and a 60-second video of whimsical bloopers pops up, while billboard advertisements of scantily clad women hawk Unilever's Axe shower gel: "Score with Axe."
Welcome to the new world of video games, as software companies become more imaginative in their efforts to wring money from gamers. In-game advertising has been going on for years as marketers try to reach people who have largely stopped watching television.
Beyond running obvious advertisements on billboards written into the game landscape, many developers now accept product placements for milk, DVDs and other wares, embedding them deep into the game's code. To avoid them you would need the type of secret tips and tricks long circulated for unlocking special powers and other bonuses.
This is the part where I lost it, to be honest. First off, how are they wringing money from the gamers by placing ads inside the game? Might it be the money comes from the companies that want their products advertised within said game? And could this money cover some of the production cost and maybe even reduce the game's price? I'm just trying to clear some things up for myself here.
Then the piece moves into picking at companies that sell extra content instead of making it available in the form of easter eggs or such. Ohh wait, so maybe it wasn't an article about gamevertising as I was misled to believe but about software companies advertising inside a game for other parts of the said game? That kind of stuff? I understand! And now I'm really puzzled. As a sidenote though, I'm all against re-releases with a nicer sleeve and a floppy disk's worth of additional content. Still, said content usually springs up all over the web in the next week and can be downloaded freely anyway so where's the crisis?
The article finishes like this:
Aubrey McMullen, 27, who has been playing video games since he was four, cheats in Grand Theft Auto, a game with more cheats than most others. The ubiquity of cheats has turned clever competitors into couch potatoes, he says. "It has really dumbed-down gamers - it doesn't make them think as much."
Yeah, not to sound like a bastard but here's a thought: howsabout, if you don't like cheats, don't use them? They're not mandatory, you know?
I still don't see what that article has to do with gamevertising. Perhaps tomorrow it will become clearer to me. Alas, I am no Nostradamus.
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