The Bottom Line

Issue date: 3/7/07 Section: The AT Wire

Let’s face it; advertising is a daily part of our lives.  When you turn on the television or browse the Internet, you’re bombarded with more advertisements than when playing a free massively multiplayer online game.  Nevertheless, most people don’t complain about the overabundance of banner ads placed all over their favorite website.  Yet, when gamers play video games, one of the biggest problems, they claim, is the use of in-game advertising.

When is in-game advertising appropriate? When is it just ridiculous?  There are debates all over gamer-oriented message boards regarding this topic, but there are simple and unarguable rules that apply: my rules.  These rules are different depending on the genre and the setting of the video games. 

Sports games like Madden ‘07 are definitely advertisement-heavy games.  This is acceptable because it helps pull the player into the game’s setting.  During a debate on G4TV’s Attack of the Show, one participant said that he hated the instant replay features in Madden ‘07 because the screen would display the name of the replay, which read, “Gatorade Instant Replay.”  He claimed that this was distracting to the player, making the game less enjoyable.  Apparently this guy has never actually watched a sports game in his life.  I can’t think of a time when sponsors didn’t have their names attached to the parts of the show.  Whether it’s the Verizon Half-Time Show or the Gatorade Instant Replay, advertisements are a huge part of televised sports events, and therefore have part to play in sports games.

For the first-person shooter, real-time strategy, role-playing and massively-multiplayer genres, the rules have more to do with the time and setting of the games.  While many gamers believe that real-world, in-game advertising is a plague, they couldn’t be more wrong.  In-game advertising can, and does, have its place in our video games.  I am currently playing Battlefield 2142. The issue of in-game advertising is of huge debate.  Gamers shout, “I don’t want to see Pepsi ads while I’m driving a hover tank through the streets of Berlin.”  As the title of the game suggests, this FPS is in the science-fiction genre and set in the future. That doesn’t mean that modern-day advertisements wouldn’t work.  Who is to say that Pepsi won’t exist by the year 2142?  In this case, most of the maps for the game are set in destroyed cities and, as in existing cities, there are billboards with advertisements on them.  Personally, I don’t even notice these billboards, and anyone who does enough to care about the advertisements on them is a noob.

Games that take place during the present time are also candidates for in-game advertising.  It isn’t until you start dealing with games that have a fantasy setting or historical setting that you run into problems.  If you saw a Pepsi billboard sitting in the middle of a field on your way to The Outlands, you would say, “WTF.”  In games like World of Warcraft, where being a part of a realistic, imagined world is important, a random Pepsi or Coke billboard would cheapen the experience.

In-game advertisements work in sports games, science-fiction games across all genres (as long as they stay within our current universe) and games based in a modern setting.  They don’t work, no matter how small or subtle, in games based in a fantasy setting, games that take place in a world with imagined creatures and historical games (if the time in which the game takes place is prior to the creation of the product being advertised).  Some industry developers spew the idea that in-game advertising will reduce the costs of video games and monthly rates for MMOs.  Well, they may reduce the costs eventually, but right now all that advertising revenue is just lining their pockets.  In the end, until game developers start realizing how to properly manage in-game advertisements, do your part and say “No!” to Pepsi-drinking, Nike-wearing, iPod-listening Elves.

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