• by Jim Meskauskas , April 14, 2005

Apparently, advertising in video games has finally arrived. The story of in-game advertising (or advergaming or gamevertising or whatever we want to call it) has finally broken with the mainstream press.

This week The New York Times technology section had a piece about advertising on video game consoles and inside video game environments. It focused primarily on Massive's recent announcement of deals signed with some 10 game publishers, among them Take-Two Interactive and Universal Vivendi Games.

The interactive ad industry itself has for some time been enamored with the idea of advertising in video games. With the continued growth in popularity of video games, sales of them surpassing even ticket sales to major Hollywood movie releases, daring advertisers have been looking at the video game format as one more touch-point with consumers.

Audiences spending more time with video games than with other media are lost to advertisers relying on other, more mainstream media to reach them, in particular that oft-discussed elusive male 18- to 34-year-old. It stands to reason that advertisers would go to video games as a platform for their marketing messages.

But advertising in video game environments is a practice that, though seldom used, has been around for a number of years. In 2002, early versions of the online Sims game environment let players get hamburgers from McDonald's kiosks or use home computers sponsored by Intel.

Signage for products now appears in racing games and boxes stamped with logos litter dock and warehouse environments in Splinter Cell.

More and more, brands are appearing in the virtual environment, making them reminiscent of the real environment that many of us play games to escape.

Some have raised objections to this phenomenon, saying that it distracts from the game itself. Others have cautioned against the rampant use of in-game advertising, seeing a future where every object with which a player can interact has been branded.

I don't think this is something we need to worry about, however. In-game advertising is really just another form of product placement, and so long as that product (or logos and signage) are conducive to the environment they find themselves in, it makes sense to have that product or logo be sponsored.

After all, we live in a world of brands. We move in a world where things have been replaced in our minds by avatars, eponymous objects that are indispensable to our lives.

We don't reach for a soda (or pop, depending on where you live) when we want a sugary, carbonated beverage; we reach for a Coke. I don't wipe my tears away during "Finding Neverland" with a facial tissue; I dab at them with a Kleenex. I don't make copies of my taxes; I Xerox them.

In-game advertising and product placement is a natural evolution of the media landscape. In the Sunday New York Times, Jon Gerner called the modern American household a "zoo" of digital devices. It only makes sense that advertising in video games should be used as another means of taming these animals.