Opinion: Gamevertising (And the History of Prostitution)

[Tinman]

Dan Parmenter airs his view on in-game advertising

Opinion: Gamevertising (And the History of Prostitution)

[iOverflow]

lol funny and some accurate views, especially the part where everyone whores themselves

[Keldarza]

And advertiser all for advertising, wow what is the world coming to when professionals advocate their profession?!?!?!

But really, advertising in games has been around for ages... "runs best on itel i7", "nvidia, the way it's meant to be played", "Sound blaster 32bit gold death edition, sounds best!"

And how many adverts actually sell things to me? 0. The world has become flooded with advertising, of which we now totally ignore it. Too much of the same thing over and over again. Sure, advertise in the game, but you become so detached to traditional adverts that you wont even be able to name that brand on the poster in the game.

In today's freedom of information, you find that good products dont need a flood of adverts. Because I can find anything I'm looking for online, and because I can read another human being [or many] opinion on a product it poses the question of "why advertise on the internet?"

Problem comes in the freedom of information - Read a review on a good product is more likely to make me buy that product than seeing an advert. Adverts are full of lies, reviews are generally sound. And further more, you can read more than one review. Even worse yet for the product world is a good search for alternatives via "word of mouth".

Throw in online shops such as take2 which allow searching, and people to post comments on the product - you start to slaughter adverts in place of a good product.

Of course this doesn't apply to all products, but usually the target market of gamers would be these online products.

[Solitude]

I enjoyed the article.

Keldarza, you make some good points. However the big reason for advertising is brand awareness. There are some great products out there that very few people know about. There are also some awful products that sell really well because we are all bombarded with the name the whole time.

Subconsciously we know these names and we tend to buy what we know.

I'm pro ads in games. If it lowers the cost of games then I'm happy. I'm so used to advertising being everywhere that it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Some ads are funny or look great and that even brightens up my day.