In a previous article, we examined the practice of advertising real-world products within the virtual world of video games, studying both its origins and its implications for the future of marketing. This time out, let’s take a look at some of the most noteworthy examples of this form of advertising.

Two Distinct Forms

As video games have become more sophisticated, the range of options they present for advertisers has expanded considerably. In the early days of video games, any advertising they contained was limited by the available technology of the time. Gaming technology (like all forms of media) has taken massive strides in the last few decades and now presents many novel marketing opportunities.

The current gaming landscape is comprised of two dominant forms: platform games and persistent-world massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). Though platform games have been around since the Atari days, it is only with the advent of gaming consoles with internet connectivity (such as Xbox 360 and PS3) that in-game advertising in this format has become truly viable. Developers now have the ability to manipulate advertising that appears in a game so that the ads can be altered even after the consumer has purchased the game. A notable example is the case of the game Burnout Paradise, in which then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared on billboards within the game. This time-sensitive messaging was only possible because of developers’ ability to alter in-game content on the fly. This has been a game-changer (pun definitely intended) for the industry, as companies now vie for the prime real estate of advertising space in a newly-released game. The older the game, the less valuable the opportunity to advertise within it as playership falls off dramatically in the weeks and months after release.

The real estate analogy is even more apt when it comes to the other main form of video games:  MMOs. Though many of these games, such as the wildly popular World of Warcraft, take place in fantasy settings where real-world advertisements would be ridiculously out of place, some take place in the modern world, and advertising real-world products in environments such as these actually help facilitate the illusion of reality within these games. The added benefit of advertising within this space is that, unlike the platform games previously discussed, there is a much longer shelf life for MMOs—indeed, many of these game worlds have been active for over a decade and show no signs of decline. Another consideration is that in the static, linear worlds of platform games, a player might pass any given advertisement only once in a one-time effort to get from Point A to Point B, never to see it again. In MMOs, the same player, playing a character he or she has played consistently for months, might pass the same advertisement literally hundreds of times while traversing the in-game universe. That’s a heck of an ROI for the advertisers using this medium!

An extreme example of this MMO model is the game SecondLife. Positioned as less a game in the traditional sense than it is an alternate on-line existence, SecondLife mimics the real world down to the smallest, most mundane details. A character in SecondLife may own property, buy furniture and clothing (often from real-world businesses that appear in the game, such as American Apparel and Sears), and otherwise engage in activities that could yield real-world benefits for the companies appearing in the game. Microtransactions within these games, whereby players would buy clothing and products for their characters, might even result in virtual products being purchased for real-world currency.  

At least, that was the way it was supposed to work...  

In the final article in this series, we’ll take a look at gamer reaction to advertisements in the game space and where this model has worked and where it has failed, and hopefully draw some conclusions about the best possible future for this form of marketing.