Featured Discussion: Advertising Revisited

Featured Discussion: Advertising Revisited

A while back, I purchased WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 09 for the Xbox 360.  I’m a wrestling fan, and it’s been a while since I played a wrestling game, that, and I got it cheap.  The set up in game is similar to the real thing; your guy comes into the arena to theme music, walks to the ring while doing whatever poses you select for him to do, then he waits for his opponent, who does the same.
The arena itself is pretty simple, in fact, I’d say overly so.  The crowd is, for the most part, 2-D cutouts, many sections with the exact same fan in 8 of the 10 seats in that section.  There are fake ads up as well.  Signs for Wrestlemania, WWEShop.com, The Book of Eli, and other…wait.  What?  The Book of Eli, that doesn’t make sense.  This game came out Nov. 8, 2008 (ref: Wikipedia), while the movie The Book of Eli wasn’t released until Jan. 15, 2010 (ref: IMDB), there is no way this was programmed in ahead of time.  After noticing this, I started keeping an eye on the background during entrances.  A couple days later, there’s an ad for the film Legion, which has a release date of Jan. 22, 2010.  That’s when it hit me:  “They’re advertising in my game!”

Now I had heard that this was coming, in fact, I thought this was something that had already started.  I never paid much attention to in game advertising because I assumed I’d only run into it in games like Madden, or NBA Live, which I have limited playing time with, or Gran Turismo, which I refuse to play at all (that’s a subject for another article).  Seeing it in a game I did not expect forced me to wonder if I was ok with this.


I’ve had to question myself regarding additional advertising before.  Once upon a time, the only things that played before movies in the theater were trailers for other movies.  Now, every time I go to the movies (which is much less now that I have kids), I see at least one commercial for Coke, Pizza, Snuggies, something.  (Ok, the last one was made up.)  Then I hear talk of commercials being played DURING THE MOVIE!  That was where I drew the line.  If I wanted commercials during my movies, I’d wait two and a half years until they run the edited version on USA or TNT.  I’m not paying an extra $8 to have a minute and a half break right in the middle of Serenity 2:  Wash Reborn.  Why, then, would I accept this in my game?  Well, as it turns out, I have no real choice in this matter. 


Advertisers used to have a captive audience.  In the early days of television, actors would plug items right in the middle of the show (Now Timmy, it was wrong to set Mr. Johnson’s poodle on fire.  Why don’t you grab the Jif Peanut Butter, the Smuckers Strawberry Jam, and the Wonder Bread and make him a peace offering.  No one can resist a combination like that.  And you can pick them all up at your local Kroger’s Grocery Store!)  Before the remote control, stations counted on hit shows to keep people on their stations, because no one wanted to get off the couch to change channels.  In fact, the major reason stations used to (and still do) keep track of ratings is because of the how many advertising dollars can be made.  The invention of DVR, HuLu and the like has nearly killed advertising.  That being the case, they had to find other, more concrete methods of spreading their word.  Thus, the entry into the video game arena.


If I want to play a game, especially if it’s a game that has advertising space built in (billboards, street signs, etc.) I’m gonna have to deal with in game advertising.  The ad firms pay pretty good money to get their ads into the game in the first place, and I’m sure that money goes toward upgrades and development of the next line of games we’ll all be clamoring to get out hands on.  So, as much as it’s an annoyance, in game advertising is here, and we can either live with it, or sell our gaming consoles (as far as I’m concerned, the latter is not an option).


-Drew