In-Game Advertiser Annoyed at Lack of Recognition from Gaming Industry

Logan Westbrook

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Feb 21, 2008
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In-Game Advertiser Annoyed at Lack of Recognition from Gaming Industry

The former European VP of IGA Worldwide says that no one has done more to raise the profile of the gaming industry than in-game advertisers.

Ed Bartlett, a former executive for one of the top in-game advertisers, says that one of his biggest frustrations is that many in the gaming industry continue to ignore that contribution that advertisers have made to making videogames more mainstream.

The reasoning behind Bartlett's claim is fairly simple. As part of the strategy for selling advertising space in games, Bartlett, and others like him, educated the press about gaming, and encouraged them to write positively about it, thus increasing its visibility both to consumers and to potential advertisers. He said that the efforts of in-game advertising agencies had resulted in broader and more even-handed coverage of the gaming industry as a whole, and thanks to the work of the three biggest in-game advertisers - Double Fusion, Massive Inc., and IGA - the perception that gamers were "12 year-old boys in their bedrooms," had been changed in an incredibly short amount of time.

Bartlett's claims are likely to cause a bit of a stir; he himself acknowledges that they're controversial. While I'm not entirely sure he deserves as much credit as he seems to be giving himself, it's unfair to suggest that he and his industry didn't contribute to making gaming more mainstream. Of course, the PlayStation advertising [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA] of the mid-to-late 90s and the Wii advertising [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGSmC-FllNk] of recent years helped a great deal too, as did high-profile characters like Lara Croft, who was being talked about in Time Magazine [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992753,00.html] and Newsweek [http://www.newsweek.com/1997/11/09/lara-croft-the-bit-girl.html#] years before IGA Worldwide was founded.

Source: Games Industry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-11-24-in-game-ads-pivotal-in-changing-perception-of-games-business]









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Feb 13, 2008
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I don't think I remember any ingame ads ever. Apart from perhaps the Degenerator on GTA:VC, where you have to guide your red square monkey through the green square jungle.
 

Vaccine

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Feb 13, 2010
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No, go away, ads are annoying.

I play games to get away from reality, not be reminded I'm in it.
 

tehroc

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Jul 6, 2009
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Are there ads in Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (I assume yes since this is EA we're talking about)? I really haven't noticed, I was too busy racing.
 

seekeroftruth86

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Nov 20, 2010
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I'm calling shenanigans.

This guy's claim is waay too out there considering how much I've seen in-game advertising, which is very little.

In-game advertising is clearly not that widespread, and Mr. Bartlett's claims of "affecting the industry" are bogus. Rather whiny attention seeker in my opinion.
 

DraconianGamer

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Nov 24, 2010
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seekeroftruth86 said:
I'm calling shenanigans.

This guy's claim is waay too out there considering how much I've seen in-game advertising, which is very little.

In-game advertising is clearly not that widespread, and Mr. Bartlett's claims of "affecting the industry" are bogus. Rather whiny attention seeker in my opinion.
It's not that it isn't widespread, its that gaming isn't conductive to advertising and no-one ever notices it.
 

UberMore

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Sep 7, 2008
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The only in-game ads I ever recognised were in 2142, because they were persistent and changing. Never bought/saw anything because of them.
 

seekeroftruth86

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Nov 20, 2010
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DraconianGamer said:
seekeroftruth86 said:
I'm calling shenanigans.

This guy's claim is waay too out there considering how much I've seen in-game advertising, which is very little.

In-game advertising is clearly not that widespread, and Mr. Bartlett's claims of "affecting the industry" are bogus. Rather whiny attention seeker in my opinion.
It's not that it isn't widespread, its that gaming isn't conductive to advertising and no-one ever notices it.
All the more reason for this guy's claim to be BS in my opinion. If he had a legitimate effect on gaming we would notice.
 
Apr 28, 2008
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I only remember one ad, and that was an ad on a sign for the new season of South Part that I saw in Saints Row 2 a year ago.
 
Oct 14, 2010
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It's not the in-game advertising he's talking about. When someone wants to advertise with a marketer that provides in-game services, they also receive some outside-the-game press as well. After all, what good is having their product in a game if people don't know it's there to buy?

What rubs me the wrong way about what Bartlett said is the means through which the press may have been "educated" about games. It's no secret that advertising dollars have a big influence on media outlets. Did these marketing companies really make an attempt to help journalists understand games, or did they simply strong-arm them into writing whatever puff pieces they wanted? That's not how I'd like to see the stereotypes broken down.
 

Celtic_Kerr

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May 21, 2010
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
I don't think I remember any ingame ads ever. Apart from perhaps the Degenerator on GTA:VC, where you have to guide your red square monkey through the green square jungle.
Ads, not ad-ons... The mountain Dew and Coke billboards you see in games...

OT: It would be nice to give him recognition if I even knew what he was fucking doing. SO he talks to a few magazines about in-game advertising and suddenly he's changed the image of gamers away form "12 year olds living at home"? DUde, the stats have told us that alot of gamers are close to middle aged.

I don't this should get QUITE the recognition he deserves.
 

Weaver

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Apr 28, 2008
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I remember fighting in battlefield 2142 around a bunch of Intel labeled crates at a shipyard. It was really weird.