Do you see the ad potential?

I recently ran across another article in Gaming Insider from a few weeks ago that interested me quite a bit. I opened the link just for the title, which mentioned Bioshock, which is my new favorite game to watch my boyfriend play (yes, I'll admit right now that I don't play much, but I am an avid game-watcher). Unfortunately, the article itself not only seemed to contradict later posts, but also just didn't make much sense. It talked about the emotional involvement that players get from games such as Bioshock, which deals with some pretty heavy topics, and how this will allow advertisers to better sell their products in-game. The article mentions how effective this strategy is in television programming, where people who are more deeply involved in the characters or story will come back week after week, and get exposed to more advertisements.

I have several issues with this train of thought. First of all, even though a truly engaging game may keep you glued to your television or computer for 20 hours or more, you are almost never being exposed to advertisements throughout the entire game, or even in regular increments, so no matter how invested you are in the characters, you may never notice some scattered ads.

Secondly, most hard-core games such as Bioshock and others in the RPG or shooter categories are not conducive to advertising at all. Most games in this general vein take place on other worlds or in different time periods where most if not all advertising would be seen as wildly inappropriate. Can you imagine a billboard for a new car in a Zelda game? Or even having that car to drive around in the game? No matter how invested you were in the character, that would be a big turn-off to most gamers, because no one likes to be advertised to that blatantly. Even ads that only appeared during the loading menus would likely only take people out of the game and make them care about it less. Ads are, with few exceptions, relegated to sports games, racing games, and casual online games. So unless a very good, realistic game that takes place in present-day comes around, this likely means that no matter how detailed and engaging these new games become, they will never be good marketing tools.

And lastly, because big hard-core games are not and have never really been good places for advertising revenue, it's more likely to be casual gaming that is going to be the big pull for advertising in the future. This is where the author of Gaming Insider contradicts himself. I would argue that when people are less involved in a game they are more open to advertising, and less annoyed when it is getting in the way of their game-play. Plus, there is no limit to what can be advertised in a casual game, where as ads in games such as Bioshock would have to be limited to products and styles that existed in the time period. Once again, and I know I sound like a broken record: Go casual games!

We love the Wii

I discussed the falling attention given to video games by advertisers last Sunday, and yet this article from Media Post's Gaming Insider states that "In-game advertising is projected to grow like wildfire, from $77 million in 2006, to nearly one billion by 2011" - about a 1000% growth spurt. This is an interesting projection when one considers that the only traditional industry games that can support advertising are racing games, sports games, and a short list of shooters that take place in real-world based cities. Even some that could reasonably incorporate advertising, such as the Grand Theft Auto games, simply don't.

So what is the author's opinion on how this amazing advertising growth is going to take place? As described in Sunday's post: casual gaming. It reaches a wide variety of demographics, and can easily incorporate advertising into any game - not just a few. But how do advertisers reach the traditional gaming demographic? Square Enix, the brains behind games such as the Final Fantasy Franchise has announced a partnership with Nifty, a Japanese game portal with the intention of making casual games which would have ads between level loads. Would more hard-core gamers follow if their beloved game producers started making more of these games? Maybe, but I think probably not.

The most logical answer most likely lies with the Wii. This moderately priced system dedicated to the kind of casual games that attract everyone from traditional male gamers to women to older people seems to be the future of gaming. Indeed, it seems to finally have made gaming a mainstream pastime. But is the potential for advertising there? One concern there could be the willingness of consumers to pay $60 for a game that now includes advertising. Another concern is the propriety of ads in Wii games. Most casual gaming takes place online, in sites that are entirely supported by ads, which people can accept. What place to ads have on the sidelines of Wii Sports or Wii Play, or even on the loading screens? One way or another, some major changes are going to need to take place in the gaming industry in order to support the kind of advertising growth projected. Perhaps some of these questions will be answered by the OMMA conference in New York coming up on the 24th. One thing is for certain - this is not the last time I will be mentioning the Wii.

The downfall of the gaming industry?

Game Business and Its Crisis of Attention is a blog post by Wagner James Au that I recently read and found intriguing. The article talks about the video gaming industry's various failures to adapt to a changing gaming environment over the last several years, and how it has negatively effected the attention that they are getting from both advertisers and gamers.

They (meaning major consoles and game publishers) are a highly insulated industry, meaning that young men are creating games for young men and being reviewed by young men who have all been gamers since before they could talk. They are only interested in epic, Hollywood-esqe games such as Halo 3 and Gears of War which appeal only to their own niche market, and have been ignoring the much more simple user-generated and flash computer gaming trends that have popped up recently.

The rise of non-game virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Secondlife as well as casual, web-based games, which do not originate from major publishers have been slowly chipping away at the attention given to the gaming industry. However, they continue to ignore these gaming alternatives as if they expect them to go away and for the content of their own big-budget games alone to be enough to hold their consumers attention.

Real evidence of the difference between the interests of the gaming industry and that of their consumers can be seen in the latest generation of consoles. While the PS3 and the Xbox 360 were expected to dominate, the Nintendo Wii, with it's low resolution graphics and few major games, has vastly outsold either system. This made EA, a major game publisher, cut its profit estimates dramatically for their lack of titles for the Wii.

This raises several questions for the future of the gaming industry as a whole. Can they regain the attention they have lost? The Au certainly doesn't seem to think so, as he predicts that user-created online worlds will dominate. Other questions to arise are, how do we catch the attention of young males now? As gaming becomes an increasingly universal pastime, how does advertising in video-games change? When the extremely sectionalized young male market can no longer be reached by their traditional medium of choice, where do advertisers turn? And lastly, are we really seeing the downfall of the gaming industry?