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Advertising is a
necessary irritant in the world today. You
can't drive down the street without coming
across an ad, either a billboard suspended over
a road or a large poster plastered down the
side of a bus. If you walk into a shopping
centre it doesn't matter where you look, you
see an advertisement of some kind. Even the
tables in the food court now have ads embedded
in them, and on my last trip to Melbourne I
noticed that they were starting to embed flat
screen TVs into the tables to deliver the full
commercial experience to your meal. If you jump
on the Internet you have to contend with
pop-ups and banner ads, with some advertising
agents being ruthless enough to write malicious
code that embeds the ad into your computer so
that you still receive the pop-ups even when
you're not at the original site.
In the past, pop-ups
and banner ads have been easy enough to avoid
with the right software installed
(incidentally, am I the only one who finds
pop-up ads that advertise pop-up blockers
tremendously amusing?) but now the software
developers have worked their way around that
little problem. The solution was simple; sell
advertising space in your software, not just on
your web page.
As much as I like to
complain about this new idea, it does come with
a significant upside. These days, not all
Shareware applications drop out after a limited
period of use, nor do they constantly remind
you to register. Having ads in the software
provides the application developers with the
necessary funding to live but leaves the user
free from having to pay to use the software. It
ends up being in the developer's best interest
to ensure that the user continues to use the
software for as long as possible, because that
means an increased income. In my opinion this
was a brilliant idea, and I wholeheartedly
supported it until they started building
unblockable pop-ups into the
software.
The gaming world is
getting in on the act as well, which could be
both positive and negative. The Internet
provides the functionality for games to
constantly update the virtual world with new
billboards, TV ads, clothing and so on, keeping
the content fresh and the ads current. From an
advertising standpoint it's an amazing idea,
people are spending less and less time watching
TV and more and more time immersed in virtual
worlds. The interactive nature of the ads means
that they will remain in a player's mind for a
lot longer than the TV ad break that can be
walked away from, flicked over or simply
ignored. The game developers on the other hand
now have an added source of income, meaning
that they can take more risks without the fear
of losing money.
Advertising in games is
not a new idea, the soft drink '7-Up' created a
game many years ago called 'Cool Spot', which
had the player controlling a red dot with
sunglasses in his quest to collect 7-Up logos.
The game was remarkably solid, leaving the
players to enjoy the game while still getting
its message across. I played it a long time ago
as a child, but I still remember how much fun
it was and exactly what product it was pushing.
Pepsi released a Playstation game called 'Pepsi
Man' that involved a blue and white striped
super-hero running around collecting cans of
Pepsi. Red Bull got in on the game with
'Wipeout' featuring 'Red Bull' banners and a
loading screen bearing the phrase "Increase
your reaction time with Red Bull". 'Worms 3D'
featured Red Bull as a power up. 'Crazy Taxi'
had customers jump in the player's taxi and
holler "Take me to KFC!" or any of the numerous
other licensed locations in the game. 'True
Crime' had the characters dressed in 'Puma'
attire, with the main character changing his
outfits several times throughout the game.
Until now I've always thought that the ads in
games were amusing and, so long as they didn't
interfere with the playing of the game, I was
all for them. However, there are new ideas
afoot that seem set to change my
mind.
The main problem I have
with ads in games now is the same as my issue
with Pay TV. You're shelling out a lot of money
for a product (new games being sold for upwards
of $50.00 U.S.) and you're still getting ads.
If developers are going to start flooding my
entertainment with advertising, I'd like to see
a significant drop in the price of
games.
The other big issue is
that of spyware. Until now, spyware has been a
hated part of existence. This malicious
software digs its way into your system and
collects information about you: your Internet
surfing habits, the contents of your hard
drive(s) and even the unblocked ports available
on your computer. This has lead to the
necessity of loading a system with anti-spyware
utilities to run alongside the pop-up killers,
anti-virus programs, firewalls, registry guards
and whatever other protective measures a
paranoid PC user has to implement. Now
paradoxically, someone has had the 'fantastic'
idea of building spyware into software, and
games in particular.
In the future the games
that you've just paid such a high price for
will sit there monitoring you in the
background, watching your every virtual move.
Then they can target ads that are more likely
to have an impact on you based on the contents
of your hard drive or your Internet surfing
habits. The best part about it is that as soon
as you click 'I Agree' and install the
software, it becomes legitimate and you've
agreed for them to access information about
you. Many software products already feature
clauses in their license agreements that have
the user permitting the developers to collect
'anonymous information in order to provide the
customer with a better experience'. The other
part of this that irks me is the fact that I'm
going to have to have my computer connected to
the Internet and chew through my download limit
just to play a single-player game.
In the end, I suppose
that there's no way to avoid advertising in our
current world. Having it implemented into
software and games was simply the next logical
step. I suspect that I will be looking to
download the inevitable 'Ad Blocker' cracks
that I imagine will appear shortly after the
wholesale introduction of advertising into the
gaming industry, but I do believe that with
appropriate tact and respect for privacy,
advertising could turn out to be a positive
addition to the interactive
experience.
About The
Author
Daniel Punch
M6.Net
http://www.m6.net
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