Advertising in Games: An Unwanted Invasion
Product Placement and Brand Endorsement - Destroying Video Game Art
Jun 2, 2009
In its report on the future of in-game advertising, the Internet Advertising Bureau glowingly reported that “product placement in-game allows for complete integration of consumer products into the scenery of the game” and “plot integration...when the products play an active role in the context of the game, allowing the audience to experience specific product attributes e.g. drinking a can of Red Bull to give the character energy.”
So it seems that, like film before it, the computer gaming industry is moving further into the real world of marketing, with the next generation of entertainment hoping to make a very firm use of product placement and brand enhancement.
This movement had its antecedents, as computer gaming has come over the years to more fully represent the living world; though it has until now lacked the brands, it has employed the form, ready to be filled, of consumer society, which has already infiltrated, dominated, and begun to control, several aspects of real life.
Consumerism in Games - Creating the Wineskin, Ready to be Filled
As one pertinent example, take the Grand Theft Auto series, which has grown in size and stature as it has also grown in popularity, and has developed an increasing faithfulness to the form of consumerism as its fan base has grown.
One continuing motif from the series, the use of in-game radio stations, has morphed from simple musical repetitions to full blown mimicry, with parodied adverts, talk-shows, and discussions. Moving from the first GTA, which contained original compositions, to GTA4, which contains three talk-radio stations, and makes use of a proportionally high number of licensed tracks by real-life bands, the GTA series is a perfect example of the increasing movement of computer games towards the 'real'. From there, it seems, it is to move into the world of consumerism.
There are numerous further examples. Max Payne, using medicine cabinets and medical supplies as health boosts for its protagonist, invokes cosmetics; diazapan and cigarettes as items in Metal Gear Solid mimic aspects of their true effects.
The Point of Departure – More Money Means More Realism
Such motifs are a bold departure from the original explosion of the computer game industry, with the cartoonish fantasy worlds of Sonic the Hedgehog and The Super Mario Brothers series, defining mainstream games of their time.
It seems that, as technology and finances in the industry have developed, game makers have chosen to create games that are increasingly like reality; instead of using more powerful technology and greater funds for further, more in depth forays into the fantasy world, the current world's most popular games, like Grant Theft Auto, are using that power for the purposes of a kind of symmetry.
What must be said is that this is a definite choice, and it led John Lancaster, in his essay Is it Art?, to reflect that computer games have lost their artistic status exactly because they have come far too life-like. He writes that,
“Most games...are work-like. They have a tightly designed structure in which the player has to earn points to win specific rewards, on the way to completing levels which earn him the right to play on other levels, earn more points to win other rewards, and so on, all of it repetitive, quantified and structured.
The trouble with these games – the majority of them – isn’t that they are maladapted to the real world, it’s that they’re all too well adapted. The people who play them move from an education, much of it spent in front of a computer screen, full of competitive, repetitive, quantifiable, measured progress towards goals determined by others, to a work life, much of it spent in front of a computer screen, full of competitive, repetitive, quantifiable, measured progress towards goals determined by others, and for recreation sit in front of a computer screen and play games full of competitive, repetitive, quantifiable, measured progress towards goals determined by others.”
The Real World in Games – Creating an Artificial World of Consumerism
Lancaster charts the culmination of the path outlined in the move of computer games towards consumer culture. A number of game makers have chosen to use their technology and finance to create games which, far from pushing artistic boundaries, are mimicing life; in mimicing that life, they have, rightly or wrongly, created a virtual arena that accommodates for the movement of advertisers and marketers into the framework of games.
As that movement accelerates, it is quite likely that the computer game industry will see finance come to dominate technology and artistry in an alarmingly disproportionate ratio.
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