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Of course, the first argument most people will make for putting ads in games is that this money will help to offset development costs on games for future generation consoles, something just about everyone is indicating will be very expensive in the years to come.  The problem here is that the chances of publishers using in-game ads to pass savings on to the consumer are slim and none.  Seriously, whenever year-end profit reports come in for a publisher and it looks like the company under performed, shareholders are far from pleased.  The notion that the vast majority of captains of industry in gaming care about passing the savings on to gamers is laughable.  If publishers can use in-game ads as an additional revenue stream, you can bet your ass they will.  On top of this, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they still hiked up game prices for next gen games.  If anything, in-game ads provide a smoke screen that makes it even harder to tell how much a game costs to make, giving publishers a lot more leeway to increase game prices.  Now they could say, “You think the game is expensive now?  Imagine how much we’d have to sell it for if we didn’t have ads in it.”

Another thing one has to look at is the expectations one has when buying media.  When someone goes and buys a DVD for the latest season of Seinfeld to hit store shelves, they are forking out this money not just to be able to watch the show whenever they want, but to watch it without being beaten over the head with advertisement.  If we watch the show on TV, that’s fine.  In that entertainment medium we know part of the dance involves regular commercial breaks.  If we read a magazine, or go to a web site, we know ads are part of the deal.  It’s how all of these mediums make money.  When we buy a DVD, the retail cost is where the company who released it makes its money.  We may see the occasional product placement in the flick, but by and large there just isn’t a whole lot of advertising happening in the film we bought.  From all of the talk about in-game advertising lately, there’s a very real sense that there’ll be more ads to be dealt with, with some places going so far as to be experimenting with business models that have a striking similarity to how banner ads work on a web site.  As far as I’m concerned, game companies have their chance to make a buck at retail.  If the game bombs, next time the publisher should look at making sure they don’t release a crappy game in the first place, price it to what the market will bare, and not releasing it at Christmas just to watch the game get its ass kicked by the latest version of Halo.  Gamers shouldn’t have to deal with advertisement in their games just because game publishers can’t line things up well enough to get their games to sell well in the first place.

One can also look to movie theatres as a point of comparison for how increased advertising hasn’t done much more than lined business people’s pockets.  Ticket prices have been rising steadily for years, and now we’re also seeing more and more ads before the feature presentation, as well as ads all over the theatre.  Has the money made from these advertisements stopped ticket prices from going up?  Nope.

The one major possibility each and every game fan should be fearful of, though, is the possibility of potential ad revenue impacting developers and publishers decisions on what sort of game they want to make.  These ads depend on a relatively contemporary setting in order to maintain believability.  As such, titles set in a fantasy world of swords and sorcery, for instance, isn’t a very viable subject to place advertisement in.  That being the case, how many game companies will be less inclined to make a title that takes place in this sort of setting, looking at it as a less lucrative source of ad revenue.

This isn’t to say that any and all forms of in-game advertising are a bad thing.  In the latest Splinter Cell, there were a couple of instances where ads could be seen in the background, most notably in the form of a large billboard for Axe deodorant.  If publishers keep the advertisement in context, that’s fabulous.  At least then the things don’t look out of place.  It’s the potential for people to abuse this sort of thing that is worrisome.  We’ve seen it in professional sports, music, awards shows, and countless other areas.  Let’s just hope that the level of tasteless advertisement polluting other entertainment mediums doesn’t creep into games as well, let alone negatively impact what sorts of games appear on store shelves.

Mr. Nash

(April 18, 2005)