JASON CHAMBERS(2005)The Sponsored Avatar: Examining the Present Reality and Future Possibilities of Advertising in Digital Games

From Digital Culture & Society

Contents 1 Article Title: 1.1 Find Article: 1.1.1 Context: 1.1.2 Overview: 1.1.3 Strengths and weakness 1.1.4 Assessment and Final Thoughts:

[edit] Article Title:

The Sponsored Avatar: Examining the Present Reality and Future Possibilities of Advertising in Digital Games - JASON CHAMBERS

[edit] Find Article:

DOI:10.2501/S0265048709200680

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d54f/3b0c1d0335fe3d3f0de8220487adda19174f.pdf

[edit] Context:

This papers aim is to examine the present practice of advertising within the space of digital games, as well as make predictions for future development. The article highlights the opportunity for future development within the gaming industry in terms of game sponsorship, product placement and brand integrations; similar to the movie industry. Throughout the paper the author seeks neither to neither bury nor praise the practice, but to offer a careful and reasoned examination. The examination is carried out by a careful analysis of advertisers, game publishers, designers, and end users perspective. This analysis is done in order to gage the rate at which digital media is growing in contrast to traditional media. The overall outcome of the findings, found that currently (2005) there are already multiple approaches to in- game advertising that have a very high adoption rate with core users or gamers if you will. The article suggests this only builds on notions that in game advertisement is a growing form of marketing, and will continue to grow in the future. ‘Advertising agencies welcome the opportunity to develop an additional outlet for their work, and game developers welcome the additional revenue to offset development costs’ (p.5)

[edit] Overview:

This article first summarizes the current media climate for advertisement, defining what is described to be the decline of traditional media in terms of ’30 second ads’ as cable television fades in popularity. The author gives examples for large corporations like Coca-Cola who in the past have pulled resources away from television advertisement and re allocate them back into different media streams such as movies, social media, and video games. The article supports the move to alternative advertisement methods. “A recent survey by the Yankelovich Partners research firm revealed that two thirds of all consumers feel as though they are “constantly bombarded” with advertising messages. Furthermore, 65 percent of respondents said there should be more limits placed on advertising and nearly 70 percent agreed that they would like to have more mechanisms to help them block advertising. Yet the one area which research indicates consumers accept, if not appreciate advertising, is product placement in entertainment programming”(p.2). Therefore the author highlights the proposal of ‘advergaming’ which is simply advertisement intergraded into video games similar to popular movies, utilizing the strategy of product placement. Product placement works in pair with the video game allowing for models of games that incorporate the business needs of advertisers while still providing a game that will make it to the mainstream. “Carolyn Feinstein, an executive at game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) noted, “We’ve begun to aggressively build a business model around our games as an advertising medium. EA is placing a huge bet on the fact that this is a real business opportunity”(p.3)

Once the fact that advergaming is extremely prevalent in today’s video games, the author switches gears and provides a framework for measuring the success of the product placement. 1) “Screen placement” (the brand is visible in the frame, 2) “Script placements” (the brand is verbally mentioned), and 3) “Plot placements” (the brand is incorporated into the story). This framework helps advertisers acknowledge when their message is being properly communicated and received. As there are some limitations mentioned such as processing capability, which is essentially the gamers attention. Often games are quite consuming and repeatedly advertisement of product placement is missed or ignored due to some aspect of the game being more interesting. This is one of the foreseeable limitations of advergaming suggested. Overall it is predicted that both advertising and gaming will grow at an impressive rate for at the very least the near future. The growth will continue as long as advertisers and game developers can follow suggestions proposed by the author, keeping the integrity of the games alive. “Hence although the development of synergistic efforts between the two industries is developing slowly, it is clear that parties on both sides want the effort to succeed. Advertising agencies welcome the opportunity to develop an additional outlet for their work, and game developers welcome the additional revenue to offset development costs” (p4)

[edit] Strengths and weakness

Some of the obvious strengths of this article are in the fact that this topic is one that has blown up in the last couple years, making this paper released in 2005, extremely accurate in its predictions. Describing the relationship between both game developers and advertisers as a mutually beneficial, was very insightful and simplified the somewhat of a social phenomena. The biggest strength of the article came in the recommendations portion where it is made very clear how to properly go about advergaming. The weakness of this article lies in its limited research with only short case examples offered there was little in the way of statistical values to back up claims made. Even when making accurate claims there was still little in the way of support for those notions.

[edit] Assessment and Final Thoughts:

Overall this article was an informative one that allowed for a brief look into the predicted future of gaming and inter graded advertisement. By breaking down the target audiences perceptions of advertisement the author was able to highlight what methods of advertising will work on a younger generation and furthermore how to essentially mesh successfully advertisement with already successful video games. The new definition of advertisement and gaming; ‘advergaming’ now serves as a benchmark for the future.