"Advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long enough to get money from it."

Chuck Blore, a partner in the advertising firm Chuck Blore & Don Ruchman, Inc., quoted by Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), p.185.

Is advertising part of the ignorable landscape, or is my dwarven paladin going to be doing quests for Pepsi?

If you thought advertising was hard to ignore before, look out. Or should I say don?t look out, because just when you thought they?d found every possible place to slap an ad someone came up with a new one. It?s like a Whack-a-Mole game except we?re the ones being knocked in the head and they keep walking away with the prize, which not so coincidentally is our hard earned money.

Funcom announced yesterday that they will be implementing "dynamically delivered video ads" within Anarchy Online. Panasonic and Channel 4 are the first companies to sign on for these 15-second spots and audio messages which will be seen by players when they zone or on selected billboards. According to Funcom, these ads will not interrupt gameplay, cause latency issues or gather player information.

Morten Byom, Game Director for Anarchy Online, stated that "I now believe that advertisements and games may form a perfect symbiosis in the years to come as long as it?s tastefully implemented." I hope so.

Perhaps I am a "grumpy gamer", but I am still scarred by my purchase of Darkened Skye over three years ago. Eager to play a PC role-playing game that involved a female main character, I bought it without knowing the much about the story behind the game. That story my friend, involves Skittles. Yup, the "Taste the rainbow" kind. The main character Lynlora, goes about saving the world by collecting Skittles in order to restore the Great Rainbow. Never again will I buy a game without knowing more about some game-play ahead of time. Not once since then, have I purchased a bag of Skittles candy.

The optimistic side of me believes that yes, game developers are good people, and would never allow in-game advertising to become overly pervasive. However, product placement and advertising in movies (the game industries? older cousin) has at times come to the point of being offensive. I have to admit, as a kid I loved Reese?s Pieces...because of the movie E.T. How can you watch Cast Away and not think of FedEx? Ray-Ban reported that sales of its Predator 2 sunglasses tripled to $5 million after they were used in the film Men in Black (Bassett 1).

From my stance, all I can do is sit back and watch. I only hope that the use of advertising is used tastefully, where it belongs such as on a billboard or a bus stop bench in a relatively modern-themed game. Beheading orcs, goblins, trolls and then taking a big swig of Nestea healing draught would make me furious.

Source

Bassett, Mike. "And Now A Word From Our Sponsor ?." 4 pages, 30 June 2002 http://www.media-awareness.ca/eng/med/class/teamedia/bond2.htm