James Delahunty
15 Apr 2005 7:52
It looks like the Gaming Industry is finally started to realise that more young people are spending their time playing games than watching TV. The gaming market just keeps growing and growing and now corporations are looking for more ways to cash in off this addiction that has a global reach to people of all ages. Massive Incorporated thinks that the future of the games industry will be in-game advertisements and has managed to attract attention from companies like Coca Cola, Intel, Honda, Nestle, T-Mobile, Universal, Verizon, Dunkin’ Donuts and others.
While games do already have advertisements, maybe these new ads may be a little bit more intrusive, making sure they catch our eye, just coming along while we are playing our game. Here's a quote from Massive: "By delivering ads seamlessly to fit the context of the game environment, Massive has created the most effective model for reaching young men. Gamers are completely engaged in their play—they are not multi-tasking or fast forwarding ads. Unlike their consumption of television and other media, gamers are 100% focused on the game."
While they do have a point that not many people actually focus on the advertisements on TV, no gamers want to see stupid ads appearing on all their games and still have to pay full price for the game. It also now looks like fast-forwarding past advertisements you have recorded from TV with PVR devices and similar will not be tolerated much longer. If a game were to be separated into different levels or missions, let’s hope the future games will not have 2 minutes of video advertisements between them. Massive plans to have their in-game ads incorporated into at least 40 titles from over 10 different publishers by the end of the year.
Sources:
Joystiq
Massive Incorporated