Ingame Advertising turns 5

March 17, 2006 on 10:29 am | In MMO (Live), Playstyles

Hot on the heals of the announcement that Auto Assault will feature ingame advertising comes news that Project Entropia will as well.

I'm beginning to see a trend here, but not the one assumed.

I am long past the point of ridiculing games in general. If there's people who like an experience, then the designers, developers, and publishers achieved some of what they set out to do. Maybe they didn't set out to do everything, but they've got people playing their games. If I don't play their game, that is irrelevant. A world of options exists simply because different people have different preferences and motivations.

So for me to remark on this impending trend is not to discard the respect I have for the games and their creators. Nobody sets out to make a buggy title or one that will only be enjoyed by less than the amount of people they hoped would. But unfortunately, things happen.

Here's a quick list of MMOGs that either now or will feature ingame advertising:

• Anarchy Online
• Planetside
• Auto Assault

Other non-MMOG titles will also be working with Massive as well, like the Steel Monkey's upcoming 2 Days to Vegasand titles from Call of Duty: Finest Hour developer Spark. But it's on the MMOGs I am focusing.

There's an old adage I recall now:

Once is an accident

Twice is coincidence

Three times is a conspiracy

I'm not donning a tinfoil hat here (which my buddy Baldrake reported may be worse anyway), but the three MMOGs that will have ingame advertising are not what I'd consider market leaders or potential ones.

And that's one issue.

One dream for ingame advertising is that this could defray development costs. Unfortunately, none of the three games listed can benefit from the because they were all done or near completion when this feature was added.

Another dream is that this could diminish or remove the cost of a monthly subscription for players. This is the case with AO, but not Planetside, and there's no word about AA yet.

Advertisement is tricky business anywhere, especially the web and games. There needs to be some measurable conversion rate between those who see the advertisements and those who take action based on them. On the web, banner ads and popups can be tracked for things like page views, click throughs and stickiness, with all parts being monetized. In a game this could happen too, but the industry is still relatively young.

My feeling that ingame advertising is more analagous to product placement, which like its cousin in TV programming, puts products in relevant positions throughout plot and character development. This obviously can work in games as it is part of what Massive does. But it still remains to be seen whether this actually works.

And that's the second issues.

This is sort of chicken-and-egg here. Ingame advertisement could defray subscription costs if they produced enough return on investment, but nobody with a market leading title has signed on to feature ingame advertising.

I don't believe AO or PS prove ingame advertising works or not because neither has a very significant playerbase. By my own impressions of AA, now that it is added to that list to, I wonder about both the success of the game and NC Soft's expectations for the game.

We could still be in a period where developer/publishers don't look at ingame advertising unless they need a way to try and save it. That's a fairly negative reason for thinking about advertising.

So it makes me wonder when that'll swing around. At what point will a game with some true potential, or a current market leader, be considered for ingame advertising? Will it be only when games begin to truly be taken seriously by advertisers?

I ask that because obviously they don't yet. Even though games have more eyes on them for far longer periods of time than television and web pages, advertisers don't seem to be aware enough of them yet.

I suspect that'll change soon, but I have no idea when "soon" is, nor what title(s) will make it happen.

Other references:

• Ingame Advertising turns 3- Anarchy Online
• Ingame Advertising turns 2- Planetside
• Ingame Advertising- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Mall Tycoon