Not so long ago, the term ‘advergaming’ was a big no-no with gaming crowds and reviewers around. The idea that you can see an ad for the latest flavor of soft-drink while doing an uber-cool Jedi Move in the latest Star Wars game had me worried a little too. Let’s be honest, gaming is for most people a way to immerse themselves in a world other than our own in most of the cases. When you put too many objects from the real world in the game, you shatter the immersiveness.
One of the big plusses touted by the industry was that they would be able to recoup some investment this way, so the prices would go down. Well, everybody with a memory that is longer than last year, can surely make the link with the digital distribution advantage that was the prime selling point at that time. We were told that buying games directly from the publisher, without middle men, would inevitably lower the cost for the end user. Sadly, no such thing happened. After a while, no price advantage was mentioned any more, but the fact that you don’t have a physical CD or DVD that can get damaged, rendering your game useless.
As mentioned on GameIndustry.biz and Eurogamer.net , publishers would use ads on full-price games. There are several reasons I can see. After the costs of the ad network, which charges for every ad shown, publishers are paid for the entire life cycle of the game. This makes the production of non-MMO games more alike to the Massive Multiplayer games. Instead of the pay-to-own, one goes to a pay-per-use model, in fact ‘leasing’ software. This would mean that the party getting the revenue from that kind of license would be very compelled to get the people to play the game as long as possible.
