Angry Gaming 03.19.07: After These Messages
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 03.19.2007
If you take a lump of human feces and paint it up like an Easter egg, it does not become an Easter egg.
Welcome to Angry Gaming, where witnesses see us leaving the bar with the gaming industry, only to see its picture on an evening news missing persons report the next night. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and I despise both snow and sand. Take me home, country roads.
After These Messages
Ah, what a great week it has been. Having finally achieved all the single player reward cards in Need for Speed Carbon, I happily jumped online to challenge the world's most experienced underground race enthusiasts to good old fashioned runs through the city streets and mountain roads. Perhaps many of you recognized me: I'm the only one who doesn't constantly use the Audi LeMans Quattro and Chevrolet Corvette Z06, you front runner, cheating bastards. But that's next week's topic.
While zipping by some poor slob to take the lead on the highway in my Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX MR, I noticed something interesting out of the corner of my eye. It was a billboard, much like a billboard placed near a highway in real life. On it was an ad featuring a pair of human eyes, some poorly cut bangs, and thinned cheekbones that left me confused whether the face was male or female. Next to the genderless face was a big, bold slogan that seemed garnered toward race fans which read "BOOST UP". Underneath that was a logo I'm all too familiar with by now: a white star on a green and yellow background, representing the US army. I think there was a recruitment phone number as well or something.
"Oh." I said to myself while sliding around the next corner and slamming on my nitrous and thus ensuring my victory, "I've heard of this before. This must be one of those ‘in game ads' certain companies have been incorporating into their games. I think many people are upset about it too. I wonder why?" As the race continued, however, I got my answer. Two turns later I saw the same ad again, only this time the face looked more like a guy. Three more turns and there it was yet again, looking feminine as a flower. By the fifth time I saw the same billboard, I was more than annoyed enough to jump on the computer and start writing.
To be honest, at the very first I thought the ads might have been a good idea. Advertisers certainly have had more trouble hitting their target demographics than ever before, especially in the video game generation. So far, it hasn't been all that bad. Thanks to the Discovery Channel, Gears of War players were treated to two new multiplayer maps and an Xbox 360 theme to go with it. Movies like Smokin' Aces, Shooter, and The Reckoning have also distributed Xbox themes and avatar picture packs as well, and its even possible to grab free episodes of new shows as well.
Yet, what if ad campaigns get even bigger as the gaming industry grows? How far will advertisers try to go, and how much will gamers accept? To answer this, we'll be looking at the current trend of in-game advertising, and see what we can determine what could be the future of gaming's social reputation.
Brought to You By
We'll start off by looking at something next-gen specific: online content. Console games are now experiencing the benefits of patching, just as computer games have for a long time. Games with online content now have endless replay value as developers continue to release new maps, characters, vehicles, stages, and pretty much anything you can think of to add on to a game you already enjoy, keeping it fresh and new. Add in player created mods created with code like Microsoft's XBA and you have a great update system that gamers will continually flock to as time passes.
What you also have is a great medium for advertising. Much like those brief ads at the end of each show on your local PBS station, downloadable content will now have company logos and slogans plastered all over it. "This map pack was made possible by a grant from Old Spice! Experience is everything!" This means more content for gamers, made faster and cheaper by developers who are all too excited to make their names and company known to some of the top industry ad agents out there.
This sucks. Oh sure, the sheer amount of content being added onto our games will be great, and most likely it won't cost gamers a dime. But that in itself is the problem. Game developers do know which side their bread is buttered on, and primarily they are concerned with the needs of the paying public. That makes sense, regardless of what business you are in your job is ultimately to please the person who is writing your pay check. But what happens when gamers aren't the main source of profit anymore? What happens when we aren't the ones who spend the most money, and instead developers begin to worry about the wants and needs of their sponsors?
Think about it. AOL already had issues with Janet Jackson whipping out her chest on live TV, so why would they back a game that they feel is too violent, has too much sex, or is too left wing for them? This is where advertising gets dangerous. Eventually, it's the sponsors who begin to control the content itself, and that's when games start to get toned down for no reason. Wave goodbye to your precious headshots, chainsaw kills, and plastic bag executions. Pepsi doesn't think you're ready for that, and their logo most certainly won't be appearing on any game that promotes that sort of thing.
This leaves game designers with a choice: both drop their freedom of speech and get themselves a well earned pay day (they did spend months designing and coding without sleep after all) or stay true to their artistic vision and toss a check for a few million dollars out the window. Knowing what you know about your fellow gamers, really consider it. If you were designing a game for the ungrateful internet masses, which way would your moral compass be pointing?
Brand Name Games
Games are no strangers to licensing for popular movies and music stars (Britney's Dance Beat anyone?) but much like the comic industry, games also get the distinct pleasure of using licenses that double as ads. If memory serves, the first official ad spot game was actually Kool Aid Man for the Atari 2600, but the trend really started around the first days of the NES. This was when games like 7up's The Cool Spot and Dominoes Pizza's Yo Noid! were released. Although the characters featured in these games were obviously more concerned with pimping out their products instead of an actually decent storyline, I have to admit that each character was also popular enough with the kiddies demographic at the time to actually warrant their own game.
In the 16-bit and 64-bit eras, ad agencies backed off a bit and instead tried to slip products into a character or two rather than dominating the entire game. It wasn't uncommon to see Bubsy shooting a NERF cannon at his enemies or to see Aki man wrestling against Stone Cold Steve Austin. When the fourth generation rolled around, Darkened Skye showed console gamers the magical power of Skittles in an amusing and fun way without shoving too much promotion down gamer's throats.
Then Burger King stepped in. Releasing three ad based games on the Xbox and Xbox 360, Burger King promoted their new "king" character at full throttle by offering these games for under $5 as a special in-store offer. This time around however, there were no illusions behind the fact that these games were intended for promotional use. The games were sold at Burger King and strictly involved Burger King characters. Gamers either bought these titles out of curiosity or a simple affinity for Burger King commercials. When players loaded up the games and realized they sucked, it didn't really matter because they were so cheaply priced. No harm, no foul.
It stands to reason that we will see more of these ad based games. Fortunately for gamers, advertisers can't force us to buy their video games anymore than their food products. It's equally difficult to hide the fact that an entire game is based on a character from a TV commercial also, so word does get around and if a game sucks it does so of its own accord. It can't really be said whether these games will become more mainstream in the future, but at the very least gamers have the option of avoiding them.
I do wish they'd make something involving the Coca Cola polar bears though. The graphics alone would make my day.
Going Subliminal
If you take a lump of human feces and paint it up like an Easter egg, it does not become an Easter egg. By the same token, advertisers and game developers can call subliminal advertising whatever they want but it will still be subliminal advertising. Take for example, the Army recruitment ad in Need for Speed Carbon I mentioned before. First of all, I saw that ad while going at about 160 virtual miles per hour. I didn't have time to read all the fine details of that ad as I would a real life billboard. It zoomed by. Of what use to advertisers is a billboard that gamers can only catch a short glimpse of? The answer is very little, unless of course that same billboard continues to zip by every few seconds throughout the game.
The US Army has absolutely nothing to do with underground street racing (I hope). It's not as if the Army has suddenly decided to start selling aftermarket auto parts. There is no logical reason that anyone would see a recruitment billboard in Need for Speed Carbon while thinking to themselves, "Hey the army advertises in my video games! I should sign up right now!" The reality is that the Army wants you to see the billboard countless times so that you'll recognize their logo, their attitude (which is meant to appeal the same young males who play Need for Speed) and to remember their phone number. They accomplish this by advertising subliminally.
I know this is not the same form of subliminal advertising we see in science fiction movies. Nobody feels compelled to do anything just because an ad is slipped into a story or game. Nobody is being hypnotized here, but that doesn't mean we aren't having messages implanted into our brains. If Coca Cola were to stick a silhouette of a 12 oz bottle of their product on the side of a wall in the upcoming Shadowrun game, you can bet everyone playing would know exactly what they were looking at, and Coke's mission would be more than accomplished. This is the direction that game ads are headed in, and the stuff we have seen so far is only the beginning.
The Anger
Some gamers actually wouldn't mind in game ads bringing in extra revenue to developers as long as the savings are passed onto gamers as well. I can somewhat see that point, as the thought of getting cheaper games in place of a few ads is quite appealing. Being realistic though, we know this will never happen. Game development is a business and there is no reason for anyone in this business to simply give up their hard earned profit just for the sake of having a little conscience with their capitalism. So on we go into the next generations, where Lara Croft will keep fresh with Summer's Eve brand douche and Solid Snake wipes his ass with Charmin toilet paper. Laugh now, it can happen sooner than we think. Until next time, embrace the hatred.
