Ingame Advertising and the Future of MMOs

June 28, 2006 on 2:49 pm | In MMO (Upcoming), General Gaming, Playstyles, Industry

Through an ongoing series tracking the rise of ingame advertising in MMOs (now with Huxley), I had originally thought the trend was to attempt to integrate ingame advertising into games that seemed to have low market potential or are having declinig market success.

However, now I'm wondering if the realities of delivering these games may compel a shift in the sorts of games we play at all, as a way to make ingame advertising successful.

Right now MMOs are clearly dominated by unique custom IP mostly in a fantasy setting. Given the setting, ingame advertising doesn't really work to enhance the experience. Ads for any modern IP would be at odds with the lore of such games. Because players wouldn't readily accept its presence, the options for ad support would be so limited they'd become hard to sell as ad space at all.

But the costs of these games just continues to go up. Asset costs alone are a big chunk of the budget, and the fidelity of higher resolutions only makes creating those assets more complex. And while Spore is a nice idea to resolve this perennial problem, it would be at least years before the genre could retool their entire production pipeline and business methodology to benefit from the procedural approach of development.

Until then, add 10-20% per anum (or more) for development budget and either:

  • Up the purchase/subscription price to offset it
  • Hope you get sell-through in the millions at a time when the low hundred thousands is considered a win (probably by upping your own marketing budget).
  • Offset both by selling and revolving ad space.

So, skyrocketing costs, no clear guarantee on skyrocketing ROI to match, and a genre dominated by a theme not suited for ad space.

As I see it, a few things could happen here:

  1. Fantasy (Eastern or Western) will go away in favor of more experiences conducive to advertising, like sci-fi, contemporary or modern history settings. Of course, this could happen anyway, and some think it should. The sheer number of fantasy games out right now is enough for anyone to ask "do we need another friggin fantasy game?"
  2. RPG statistics-based gaming goes away in favor of hybrid systems that lean RPG (Tabula Rasa), FPS (Planetside) or are entirely FPS (like Huxley).
  3. Greater focus on Eastern Fantasy experiences integrating modern or futuristic settings with the trappings traditional Western Fantasy trappings. I'm thinking specifically of Final Fantasy here, but others could work.
  4. Taken together, all of the above could shift the appeal of the genre across age groups, genders and lifestyles.

All of these question expose a deeper change that could be coming.

MMOGs are an advertisers' dream. You have a dedicated installed base of viewers who pop in for a few minutes or a few hours at a time, living within a single environment where they don't even think of changing the channel, and can't even they wanted to. I can think of no other experience where advertising could so easily hit, and keep the attention of, the player. This of course is well-known, and the reason why we've seen a number of attempts already to integrate advertising, either by making a licensed MMO or by placing ads in them.

As a result of this sheer potential, we could see subtle changes to the games to make them more conducive to ingame advertising.

Coincidentally, this is in line with my thinking on how games could or would be modified to make them more conducive to ingame item sales as well. For example, I am currently arguing that Space Cowboy was built specifically for this purpose. 

And ironically, shifting the genre to integrate advertising more readily could actually result in the delivery of one of the most requested brand extensions to date. Unlike WoW, a Galaxy of Starcraft could be more conducive to advertising.

I want to fast forward five years and see if I'm right.

Reference:

Comments are closed.

Site powered by WordPress. Pool theme designed by Borja Fernandez and modified by Darniaq.
RSS Article and RSS Comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^