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Adver-gaming

Published: Mon 15 Sep, 2008 | 21 Comments

My fiancee has recently been playing a bunch of downloadable casual games from Big Fish and the like.  Some of them are pretty fun, and I've even been developing a small addiction to helping her with the find-the-item-in-the-messy-as-hell games.

 

Now, most of these games some with some sort of trial time before asking you to fork out US$20 for the full thing.  The trial time is generally about an hour.  However, some games offer an unlimited experience if you are prepared to watch an advert between levels.

 

Now, I've been an advocate of this for a while.  While product placement in games might be considered advertising, this only helps the publisher and not the consumer.  They lower their development costs while we are still left paying full price to be advertised to during our gaming experience.

 

However, getting something for free for the small price of having to watch an advert once and a while is a really, really nice idea that I support entirely.  It's like TV; you get the content for free, but you have to put up with advertisement breaks.  If you don't want to suffer the ads, you can always purchase the DVD boxset.  Even some websites offer to remove all the adverts if you pay a subscription fee.

 

If the industry is smart -- and let's face it, it's not that smart at all -- it would be looking at developing two models of presenting  games to the masses.  Stop focusing on this digital distribution mess and start offering two versions of the game.  One can be a full price affair without adverts at all, and the other one can be a free (or at least heavily discounted) product filled with adverts between levels (and, if they must, product placement as well).

 

The benefits of this are immense for both sides.  Developing costs are brought down, as ads gamers are forced to watch will cost more than simply having a billboard they rush past at 200kmh once a lap; and it widens the install base of units as these games are being offered for less or even free.  People who don't want to be subjected to adverts can carry on purchasing games as they already do, and everyone wins.

Except, of course, the industry is greedy and such a thing will never, ever happen.  It's a real shame too, as it could easily widen the market for video games and help establish it as a legitimate medium.  I mean, we sat through three-minute installs between each act of Metal Gear Solid 4 -- why not chuck an ad break in there as well and lower the cost of the game.  Maybe then it wouldn't have ended up in Japanese bargain bins so quickly?

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