Your grenade has cleared a path. You reload your machine gun as you race forward, only to be assaulted by a billboard flacking Subway sandwiches.
Television commercials have been disrupted by TiVo, and many young men are spending the prime-time hours on Xboxes and PS2s instead of watching TV. So advertisers are turning to games to reclaim that prized-demographic.
Virtual ads are still viewed by real eyeballs: Now at more than $60 million, the in-game advertising industry is predicted to grow to half a billion dollars by 2009. One of the biggest players, Massive Inc., has inserted ads in almost 50 titles; it dropped the Coca-Cola logo into SWAT 4 and put Diet Sprite Zero vending machines in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Massive can also place updatable graphics on billboards - each rented to the highest bidder - in netéworked games like Anarchy Online. CEO Mitch Davis says gamers will soon be able to, say, test-drive the latest Porsche in a racing game or outfit their characters in Rocawear's new fall line. "Imagine if a certain brand of sneakers increased your avatar's dexterity," Davis muses.
So far, there's little sign of consumer resistance. According to Nielsen Interéactive Entertainment, most gamers think ads make virtual environments more realistic. But then, the first spam emails you ever received probably seemed like an amusing novelty, too.
John Gaudiosi (jgaudiosi@aol.com) wrote about a videogame developed by the US Army in 13.07.
Can you spot the subtle marketing messages in this videogame?
Can you spot the subtle marketing messages in this videogame?
Dream Machines
Street Fighter
Bad Day in LA
The Culture War
Good Nintendog!
Golf 2.0
Spore!
You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired!
Gaming Gurus
When Virtual Worlds Collide
Warning: Adults Only
The Late Late Show, Live From Inside Halo
The Massively Multiplayer Magic Kingdom
3BR W/VU of Asteroid Belt
Global Gaming Crackdown
Generation Xbox
Product Placement to Die For
Acropolis Now
Geekonomics
The Players
Fighting for Their Lives
One-Minute Games
Just Tough Enough
The Hollywood Trap
How the Reds Conquered Unreal
My Second Life as a Muckraker
Orcs: Origin of a Species
My Favorite Games
