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Opinion from Starks - Thursday, 22 April 2010 @ 12:44pm

Frankly, this is going to be one of those rants that people are either going to love, or hate. To be frank, I do care where you sit in this. To me, this topic is going to determine where games are in the next 20+ years. If not a great deal less, given the speed with which the Video Game industry is growing at.

Honestly, I see this as a far more pressing issue in some cases than an R18+ classification.

The topic is in game advertising. I’m going to give a quick rundown of some research I’ve done on the subject. Please follow with coffee in hand:

• In the 2008 election, President Obama had ads placed in 10 of Electronic Arts video games – One of the more notable being Madden 09 – were able to be viewed in 10 states of the United States. Appearing as stadium signs, these were classed as ‘swing states’, and in the election, President Obama won all 10. In 2004, Bush had won 9 of those 10 states.
• A study, results released in February, found that ‘38% of sports Video Game players say they spend as much or more time playing a sports game as they do watching that same sport on TV during its season’,
• Another study, results released in March 2009, showed in game advertising was up to 500% more effective than TV advertising when delivering an increase in consumer brand awareness.
• This same report stated that spending on in game advertising was set to grow from $736 million (US) to $1.8 billion (US) in 2010. That’s a 120% increase from March 2009 to March 2010.
• Added to this was a study in 2008 of gamers, 82% of this who said that they enjoyed the game just as much despite the advertising itself.

They, might I state, are some pretty massive statistics to be wielding. Not only are the above incredible, but when comparing the Top 5 first week sales for Video Games versus Movies, I’m staggered to see the following:

Top 5 Games first week
1. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2: $550m first week sales (US$)
2. GTA IV: $400 / $500m first week sales (US$)
3. Halo 3: $300m first week sales (US$)
4. Fallout 3: $300m first week sales (US$)
5. Guitar Hero III: $115m first week sales (US$), surpassed $1b (US$) in total life span

Top 5 Movies first week
1. The Dark Knight - $238,615,211 (US$)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $196,019,502 (US$)
3. The Twilight Saga: New Moon - $188,077,665
4. Spider-Man 3 - $182,070,572 (US$)
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - $160,099,024 (US$)

Now, the games figures themselves aren’t necessarily conclusive. It was a difficult task to find those initial figures and I am not sure how entirely valid they are, given the developers and publishers won’t release the actual numbers and although the information is available through GfK, I need to pay for them. But that’s what I’ve gathered from various press releases, so who knows, other games could be up there. The movie data I sourced from here if you're interested.

But the fact that the fourth highest game is an additional $60m (US$) above than the highest movie is, to me, simply incredible.

So you must be asking ‘Where are you going with this my homie Starkemus Prime?’

Well... I’m trying to make the point that I think that we, the gamer, are looking at the cusp of the complete and total commercialisation of gaming – That is, if it hasn’t happened already and it’s simply a case of its going to get worse.

‘WTF dude, talk some sense!’ you might say.

Here it is in plain English – I believe that the industry is undergoing an evolution that will ultimately change the face of video gaming and take it well into the same league as any other mainstream entertainment industry. And this evolution is moving at a very, very fast pace.

As Jeff Goldblum said in Jurrasic Park – “If there is one thing the history of evolution video games has taught us it's that life video games will not be contained.”

The last few years, I’ve felt an... uneasiness? I don’t know, but I’ve felt like the gaming I was a part of as a kid is quite different to gaming today. And it isn’t a ‘Back in my day’ monologue from Grandpa Simpson. It’s a literal observation that gaming is no longer quite the same as it was. I'm not talking about the graphics or game play. More the intent of the developers themselves when designing title.

So what does this lead me to conclude?

The massive power that gaming is becoming means that it will now have advertisers knocking on the door of every developer from and publisher in an attempt to get their clients products in the game. And I don’t know if I really like that.

Case in point, when viewing the Alan Wake launch the other night, I was watching Luke play the game and take charge of the main character. As is the premise of the title, light plays a particularly important part and so torches and batteries play a crucial role. When opening a box to pick up some additional supplies, I couldn’t help but notice the Energiser batteries cleverly placed as the object for Alan to pick up.

Its things like this that will become more commonplace within games itself. So, for instance, when playing Call of Duty 32: Back to the Future Modern Style But Retro Warfare 4, in the year 2040, loading screens could be replaced with advertising for McDonalds, army uniforms could have sponsorship patches for Ford Motors on their arms, gigantic neon Coca Cola signs could sit fixed to the building you need to rescue the hostages from and sign writing for opening an account with American Express could be seen overhead. Not to mention the fact that Activision are blatantly beating a dead horse given the iteration the franchise is going through.

To me, this is the risk that in game advertising presents. All the while, game prices stay the same and additional costs for downloadable content are maintained even though we’re forced to see in game advertising which, quite frankly, would have increased profitability tenfold.

This tends to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. As a consumer I tend to find myself paying nearly $120 for a quality game, in some cases splurging $150 - $200 on excellent limited editions, only to then see advertising in the game that should have brought down the cost of purchase.

I’m all for developers and publishers recouping their costs, enforcing strict DRM’s to prevent piracy and releasing content at a price later on. But when they do that AND charge me a high price for the game itself that contains fairly high levels of advertising in it, I tend to wonder if I’ve just paid money to be advertised to by big-name corporations.

What are your thoughts?