Advertising in Gaming

We've all seen major changes in advertising over the last few decades.

Companies are finding more and more ways to get their products to the masses. From TV ads to the dreaded telemarketers, the commercials, special offers, and promotions just keep piling up.

Gaming was largely left untouched. Back when people thought that it was only kids playing video games there wasn't much of an attempt to insert advertising into the games. Now the companies realize that the largest share of the video game market goes to the 18- to 35-year-old bracket. As a result, promotions companies have found video games to be an untapped mine of potential new customers.

Obviously the promotions people have to go through the video game companies in order to even get their product into the games. In the Splinter Cell series, the Sony Ericcson phone became a major part of the game with Sam Fisher receiving most of his in-mission communiques through an interface that consisted of the phone. With the series a success, a humongous amount of people now know how useful the Sony Ericcson can be and they also know exactly what it looks like.

In Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Axe Deodorant made a prominent appearance. As your character was running around Mexico City fighting insurgents, huge Axe billboards loomed in the background. The Axe ads were real world ads that they have posted in major cities in real life.

Strangely enough, gamers didn't complain all that much (it helped that the ads featured beautiful, scantily clad women). GRAW developer Ubisoft argued that the ads were there to increase the realism of the cities. They argued that point because in most games billboards, cars, and general scenery resemble their real world counterparts but are in fact completely made up. With real ads that the gamer might be familiar with from his home city, the realism factor increased dramatically.

So is advertising in games just the next logical step Perhaps it is, as long as the game companies keep it in the background.

I play a lot of World of Warcraft, but I'll stop playing the day that my character sees a goblin zeppelin flying around with Goodyear stenciled on the side!

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