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November 08, 2005
In-Game Advertising for the Casual Games Market
An obviously important item in any software development field is revenue, how does one go about making sufficient revenue in order to fund continued development of content? In the casual games space there are many ways in which folks are driving revenue, subscription services that offer games for a monthly fee, pay-per-play or games that offer a free trial download followed by an offer to purchase the full version, and so on... But one revenue stream that seems to be cropping up more and more lately is in-game advertising. This is advertising that's built right into the game much like we've started to see in movies. For example, imagine you're playing a car driving game and you're driving along a highway and the billboards going by have actual sponsor ads on them. It's an interesting option for those in the games development world, especially those that have sufficiently high traffic levels to command good advertising prices. ;) Here are few articles that appears in my Google Alerts today, they all discuss how shockwave.com is adopting this advertising mechanism in some of their game titles:
Shockwave launches in-game advertising
Shockwave Brings In-Game Ads to Online Casual Games
Ads Start To Pop Up In Web-Based Games
I think for myself this is a good opportunity to keep an eye on both in terms of revenue potential for games developers but also in terms of ensuring that the game play experience isn't degraded too much. While I personally wouldn't mind billboards and whatnot to appear with real ads in the games I play, I don't want to feel as if the game is one giant commercial.
Eh, food for thought. Read the articles above as they will hopefully get the juices flowing in your own mind about how you feel about (for or against) this new way of driving revenue.
Enjoy.
Posted by thiggins at November 8, 2005 09:52 AM