The dread of many gamers is the eventual arrival in mass of in-game advertising. They’re about to get a lot more of it if one analyst prediction is correct, with expected in-game advertising spending to double in the next five years. While product placement is nothing new in games (you can find it in many NES era titles and earlier), the idea of served ads appearing in games is relatively new.
eMarketer predicts that in-game advertising will rise from $295 million in 2007 to $650 million in 2012. They base this upon, among other things, the continuing increase in revenue in hardware and software in the game industry. The interesting part is that this may actually be an under estimate of the increase gamers will see.
With the recent news of Quake Live and other games moving to an advertising supported model, this is perhaps not too surprising news. As game budgets climb into the tens of millions of dollars, game companies can no longer count on sales alone to recoup much of that money. Unlike with films, there is very little ancillary market for video games since the demise of the arcade.
So, should gamers be worried? Gamers should just accept their inevitable fate. Game companies, like film and television producers, are simply looking for any area they can milk another dime. In-game advertising may never be as intrusive as a commercial break in the middle of Halo 5, but it will undoubtedly be more and more part of the scenery in the games you play.
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