Well, it was only a matter of time. WoW is a money-printing machine, this is pretty much an undeniable truth in the MMO world. It’s surprising it took this long before advertisers unleashed their monstrous plans to infiltrate these areas to try and get their hands on some cash.

Luckily, they are willing to admit that in-game advertisements probably won’t work for a fantasy-themed game like WoW, but they aren’t going to give up yet. JJ Richards, who works for Massive, a company aimed at total destruction of all things that gamers love, erhm, I mean getting advertisements in-game, had this to say about it;

“While the previous montage showed a number of in-game implementations for real-world-set titles, that approach cannot convincingly work for fantasy and sci-fi games like World of Warcraft and Halo — but Richards noted that advertisers still want access to those games’ lobbies, websites, and other peripheral spaces.”

Read more about in-game advertisements and world domination after the jump…

Apparently advertisers want to get in on the action even more so because of the economy, with the economy tanking, gaming is still supposed to grow. With “Males aged 18 to 34 also cite video games as their “favorite leisure time” activity.” (again with the males and picking gaming above all else, even sex?!... What is going on?!) There’s no denying that people are playing video games, and the market isn’t going anywhere.

With estimates that about $56 billion being spent on in-game advertising in 2005 and it projected to grow by 1.8 BILLION by 2010, they are not going to give up. We are going to see game advertisements. How, when, and where is the question and should we try to fight this?

At least it “seems” they realize that intrusive in-game ads are going to not cause anything but anger, rage, and forum trolls. Here’s a quote from Richards and what else he had to say about intrusive in-game ads;

“In-game, as cool as it is, is always going to be limited,” Richards acknowledged. “Coming from the game space, I’m not going to want to do an intrusive ad. The gamer is going to hate it. They’re going to cry foul at the developer, and nobody wants that.”

In-game… as cool as it is?! AS cool as it is?! I’m sorry, armor splattered with Pepsi logos, or  even more realistic backdrop pictures of Mountain Dew in a racing game are not COOL. But they are willing to admit that most likely with WoW and Battle.net, they’d go more with banners or ads rather then actual in-game advertisements, but the fact that in passing he mentioned the shear “coolness” of this form of advertisement is a scary thought indeed of what may happen. What could happen.

What if predictions are wrong, what if gaming does take a substantial hit… Would the developers be willing to sink to new lows for revenue? It’s pretty clear that the advertisers would love this opportunity.

With the fact that game advertising and using game web-sites to advertise goods isn’t going away.. Just how comfortable with game advertising are you and if you had to submit, what advertising would you be okay with?

Will we see advertisements more and more soon enough in more Blizzard titles, WoW especially? Only time will tell… We’ll be here to let you know! That is, if you don’t find yourself shopping for real-life goods from Ironforge first.

[Soruce 1, 2, & 3][Pic]

~~~

If you enjoyed this post, visit our illustrious Wandering Goblin main page. There’s lots more tomfoolery just like this.