With the shift towards games being served over the internet, advertising groups should start hiring design artists to create in-game media.

The advertising group would provide specific pieces of media, and pay to have them in games.

The game designers would also be free to focus on those bits of media design that they cared about, not churning out generic widgets that just make games look plasticky.

The gamer would then get a cheaper game, and have higher quality media that additionally could alert them to things in the real world they might want. No more generic 'soda' in your computer game, it can be real Coke or Pepsi, or even your own favourite ethical alternative.

And to make it easy for the game designers, there could be advertising providers and specifications, so that the designers can just sign up for advertising, provide the relevant details to the provider, and the in-game content can be served dynamically, a bit like adsense, but super-powered.
-- conskeptical, Jun 01 2007

About.com: In-Game Ads http://internetgame...ews/i/ingameads.htm
State of in-game advertising in the real world. [jutta, Jun 01 2007]

http://www.massiveincorporated.com/ [jutta, Jun 01 2007]

User Friendly http://ars.userfrie...060527&mode=classic
[jutta, Jun 01 2007]

That's an existing (cottage) industry, e.g. in Second Life.
-- jutta, Jun 01 2007


[jutta] - except that I don't want to have to play Second Life to have to benefit from this. An open specification would enable an entire market of games to benefit.
-- conskeptical, Jun 01 2007


[jutta] - ok, massiveincorporated does seem to be doing exactly it. Should've done my prior art research at all :)
-- conskeptical, Jun 01 2007


Yes Massive Inc. (that was bought out by Microsoft for $400 million) does that...more specifically, they allow game companies to have generic spots in-games (think of them as blue/green screen type banners) and advertisers go to Massive and make a deal and then "bam" those green/blue spots will get replaced by those ads dynamically...Simple solution and simple implementation with tons of wealth for the founder.

The problem with in-game advertising that has been found out in studies is that gamers NEVER notice the ads they are too focused on the gameplay. What seems best is an advertisement that is part of the experience rather than just a passing gimmick.

Nonetheless i am giving you a [+] because you would be one very rich man today if you thought this up 3 years back.
-- quantass, Oct 21 2007


I read an article recently that was talking about the British 'Secret' Service embedding adds into online computer games in just the way described. I'll try and find a link...
-- zen_tom, Oct 21 2007



random, halfbakery