Business & Games: The Blog

"One of the benefits of working, is that on occasion you get to travel on someone else’s dollar. When you own your own company this isn’t strictly true, but it still feels better handing over an IV card rather than my own. This week I went to the Casual Games festival in Amsterdam. The first question you may ask is “what is a casual game”? Some say it’s “Easy to learn, hard to master”, but from what I could glean it is in fact, any game that you can stuff full of advertising.

The latest ground-breaking discovery from the leviathons of the industry, is that people concentrate when they are playing a game – they sit two inches from the screen - and so what a perfect opportunity to shove some crap in their face. Brilliant. Right at the moment when you are about to wield your master-stroke and prove your supremacy, right when your finger is poised and the sweat breaks on your brow as your about to achieve your destiny, right at the point when you have reached that single instant of pure joy that defines the very existence of interactive entertainment, right at that point the game will cut to a two minute video for burger-king.

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that Publishers will go to in order to undermine their own industry. It’s almost as if they have a small team of people, who spend each day dreaming up new and creative ideas on how to make games a little worse, a little less entertaining and a little more “lucrative”. Someone I met at the day told me he had no problem shutting down a studio if it failed to perform, I wander if he applies the same logic to his marketing team when they bugger-up a title by cramming it full of the latest mascara ads. Somehow I doubt it.

Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes ads in games can be a good thing – think about all the racing titles. Somehow chasing round a perfectly recreated version of brands-hatch would be a little odd, if there weren’t some billboards to pass. Given those billboards are in there, why not charge coke 1c every time you put their logo up? Seems to make sense. My problem is that we need to debate those limits and talk about what is sensible and what isn’t. We must value the experience of the gamer, treat it as the most precious thing we have and preserve it at all costs whilst ensuring that we are taking advantages of any new sources of revenue. Where was the session on that? Probably covered up with a sign advertising Ikea."

That's how the thread starts and the message comes from no less than a staff member. Should note that this is the Introversion Software forum (you know, the guys who made Uplink).

The replies follow immediately, with forum members providing wonderful examples of "gamevertising done wrong" and again, claiming some of the common fears about the concept as their own.

"Anyone who has ever played Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory knows the depths publishers will stoop to when putting advertising in games. It's the I, Robot of the game world - painfully obvious product placement!

As you said, game advertising has a place - anywhere in the real world you'd expect to see advertising (mostly sports games, but something like GTA is ripe for product placement - although I doubt the advertisers want the controversy)."

Another user chimes in:

"Advertisment is really getting on my nerves at some point. GameSpot always has the Best & Worst awards at the end of every year, and the 'Dubious Honours' includes an award for the game with the most despicable use of in-game ads. Battlefield 2142 won this award:The future may be uncertain, but one thing is for sure: There will always be in-game advertisements. Even more than 130 years in the future, apparently companies like Intel and Pepsi will be plastering ads all over the place, just in case you're thinking of drinking a soda or upgrading your PC while the world comes to an end."

Below are the rest of the messages that caught my attention.

"To a certain extent, I believe it's comparable to the 'racing track' situation - if real companies etc. add to the authenticity of the environment, then go right ahead. The problem is when it's out of place, and when there are restrictions on what can be done to things wearing a brand - e.g. the Coke building is indestructible."
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"Personally I prefer the in-game equivalents which often satirise the original brands which they are imitating, although I use the word satirise loosely depending on which game it's in. Mmm sweet sweet Quafe." [see: Eve Online. Also, GTA 3 anyone?]
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"personally, i wouldnt mind some minor advertising in a game if it fits....the only case i wouldnt mind weird ad's in a game is a game by introversion or another small company...if it helps you make more money, and puts a roof over your heads, and lets you race cars, and more importantly, lets you make another, better game, than im for minor minor minor advertising."
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"When Sierra Software was alive, they had some product placement for their other games. I seem to remember a rather famous one involving King's Quest and a cannon."
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"I bet it wasn't as bad product placement as the ads for PoP in Chaos Theory. Two NPCs:
"Hey, did you hear about the new Prince of Persia"
"Yeah man, we should totally go out and buy that, it's gonna be the best game ever"
ACTUAL game dialogue. Hate." [Some people actually saw that as no more than a humorous easter egg.]
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Regarding the Splinter Cell ads:
"I have played that game (for PS2) and I don't know what you're talking about. There may have been times when you walk past vending machines or a billboard, but none of that detracts from the game experience.
When I think of product placement in video games, the only game that comes to mind is PIKMIN 2. And even then it doesn't detract from the experience."
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Kudos to the user posting the screenshots below.
"Possibly the oldest and most iconic form of advertising I can remember, followed by Pushover. "

 

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Also to this bloke:

"Anyone else remember this. An early example of an entire game based on advertising! But it was quite fun..."
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As always, kids have been subject to new marketing practices, long before adults realise...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/86/13
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"I remember ads embedded in neopets from years ago...
Often marketing execs know more about what a child is doing online than the child's parents...
'Viral' advertising started with online games & sites for children - the whole idea of ads in games, or even ads as games, is not new, and is still aimed at kids like the McDonald's cartridge of yore...
Unfortunately, the tactics aren't quite so blazen as they used to be. At least a parent could refuse a kid to play a Chuppa Chups game, beacuse they could clearly see it for what it was..."
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"I heard they were putting Ads (billboard ads) in Counter-Strike 1.6. There's a way you can run the beta version of this ad system and it has painfully obtruse placeholders from the screenshots I saw.
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=120512 and I think those are just placeholders until they get real sponsors."
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"God I didn't know they were doing that in 1.6.
If i had paid for that game I would be thoroughly cheesed off (in a bf2142 kind of way) but as cs 1.6 is free, and I don't play it anymore, It doesn't bother me so much.
Ads in context are ok. I think it will be hard to avoid online ads in games for much longer."
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"Over the next 5 years I'm predicting a large increase in the amount of in-game advertising, especially from the console games sector(predominantly 360+PS3, but I'm sure the Wii will get in on the act - even if producing on that platform is much cheaper than the other two), which will spill over into PC games also. Costs for next-gen production are set to go through the roof, so all avenues of money saving will need to be used.

Also with the rise of the anti junk food advertising campaign in the uk(and globally also), I'm sure people like MacD's + burger king are looking around very hard for other avenues to get their messages across to 'the kids', now that tv and other traditional mediums get squeezed.

And i totally agree with Mark in that we can expect to see it used in the most game intrusive places(Hey great I've nearly defeated my medieval foe...and look an advert for nike, fantastic!), just a quick analysis of the industry proves that the marketing and PR guys only care about one thing - the money, f**k being proud of the product and any kind of artistic credibility; just get the punters money = job well done.

Still there is a place for sure - like the billboards in a grand prix title etc, and that i never have had a problem with. Even the billboards in Elite(frontier onwards) like 'recycle or die' had a purpose, and to draw from films - Blade Runner had that Atari logo in its cyber-punk world. Stuff like that works fine. I just wonder as the ball gets rolling and the 'money is everything' guys get to work if it will get used sensibly and in context - probably not, and yet another reason to buy less games(imho)."
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"Racing games are perfectly suited to game adverts.
However, I feel practically any other game will suffer. Can you imagine your favourite Adventure game with ads for mortgages plastered on a billboard?
In Counter Strike, do you really think that some desert landscape in an Asian country will have an advert for Half Life 2: Episode 2? It looks silly. Not to mention, I doubt people will be persuaded to buy objects which appear in adverts they despise. In fact, they're less likely to buy the object because of their associations with ruining their FPS experience. "

So, what's the big idea in all this? At a glance, you've got a group of rather vocal people denouncing gamevertising and preparing the proverbial forks and torches. You've also got me beating a dead horse. Not like a handful of people posting under the comfortable cover of anonymity will top the expensive, in-depth surveys and reports that keep coming out, right? Well they won't, I'll be the first to admit it. Does that make the above messages worthless though? Far from it, I should say. In fact, I'd take them over statistics any day of the week. As subjective and whimsical as they may be, they're at least breathing with life. And, well, if your job involves you saying 'community', 'web 2.0' and 'conversation' a lot every day, this is the kind of stuff you should be looking at. Join me next time for a rant about professionals who swear by Second Life but don't even have an account. Alex out.