Today, id Software opened up the BETA phase of the browser-based and ad financed first person multi user shooter game Quake Live for everyone. The game can be played for free as long as the user views some ads that come with it — I tried it out, but could not see any ad apart from their own Quake ads, so I am not exactly sure what the advertisement will look like. Probably there will be banners on the website right next to the game window and maybe also whenever you have been fraged (killed) and wait to respawn (play again).
This idea has been around for a while and there certainly are several advertisement agencies that enable companies to place ads inside or next to Games. Nielsen Media Research offers a video games ratings service (similar to Nielsen ratings) called GamePlay Metrics to serve in-game advertisers.
At least now that the offer is new, Quake live seems to be successful in terms of usage: when I logged in to download the ActiveX plug-in, I was in a line at position # 10947 and had to wait more than 30 min to get to the download.
I have not had too much personal exposure to this kind of advertisement, yet, but think it is pretty interesting. I could not find current figures, but the game advertising market is estimated to grow to $1.8 billion by 2010 according to Massive Incorporated. This is pretty impressive and once again shows how much money is moved with digital/internet advertising.
I just figured out that ads in games is a topic in next week's class - you may view this as an appetizer ;-)
1 comment:
I just read that someone is complaining about the license agreement and the guy posted some excerpts that are really interesting:
Excerpts from the Punkbuster (installed with the game) License agreement:
"...
Licensee understands and agrees that the information that may be inspected and reported by PunkBuster software includes, but is not limited to, Licensee's Internet Protocol Address, devices and any files residing on the hard-drive and in the memory of the computer on which PunkBuster software is installed.
...
Further, Licensee consents to allow PunkBuster software to transfer actual screenshots taken of Licensee's computer during the operation of PunkBuster software for possible publication."
This is also a way of gathering information for marketing initiatives, but not one I prefer and so I immediately uninstalled the whole software.
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