As I mentioned on Twitter earlier (for you planks who aren’t following me !) , today I was off sick from school (AKA the educational prison). So, I’m sat on the sofa all ill and tired, just watching T.V when an ad pops up and for some reason it irritates the heck out of me! I spent hours trying to figure out why it had annoyed me so much, when it hit me ; I’d seen that ad before, many times before in fact. This scenario from earlier made me think about how many gamers have complained about advertising in video games and why nothing is changing. The image above (via blogs.indystar.com ) is an example of in-game advertising that has caused an uproar (in 2008) but more recently Joystiq featured a post stating that there are plans for A LOT (trust me, I meant the capital letters) of ads to be put all over the in-game world of the new Splinter Cell video game. So I ask “How Far Is Too Far?”.
While us gamers realise that sometimes ads are used to cover the expensive developments costs and in this futuristic day and age they are generally guite high, but like many of you reading this, I played through Call Of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 , a game which cost approx. $150 million (!!!!!) to develop by the way, and I didn’t find a single advertisement in the game ! So to any money-hungry video game companies *cough* Activision *cough* EA *cough* out there who are reading this, consider us, the consumers and the avid video gamers and our hatred of ads in the games that we love because one day, when your average game consists of 10 Coca-Cola banners and a McDonalds mini-game , no one will be buying your games anymore.
Are you for or against in-game ads? Post your thoughts below via the comment box.
