What you thinkthe job is: Hand-picking the irritating product placement that will appear in some otherwise great game while cackling and twiddling your thin, oily moustache.
What it really is: Working with developers to identify the specific advertising they want and then selling that advertising space to companies, thereby lessening the insane financial risk that is modern game development.
Lopez wasformerly a Games Integration Manager for Microsoft. He’s currently enjoying some well-earned leisure time. His site ishere.
How did you end up doing this?
Lopez: "I was studying media in college when they added a videogame class that actually focused on the social media impact of community-based games as well as the economic future of gaming. Then when I graduated, I saw a posting for an online startup doing advertising in games, so I applied."
What qualifies you to do it?
"Being with one of the first companies to do dynamic advertising, you’re both learning on the job and helping shape the market. You learn from good examples as well as mistakes from the past. It’s also still evolving as an industry and finding the ideal place between the gamer and advertiser, so there are a lot of things I learned in my first two years that are no longer relevant."
What misconceptions are there about in-game advertising?
"Probably the biggest is that it’s just a big ‘cash grab’ for developers. Look at the price of games, which has been almost the same for about 15 years, and then compare it to the growing budgets of current titles. Next-gen graphics, celebrity voiceover talent, team and player licences – all these things cost a lot of money, so the financial downside of a game that doesn’t sell is much larger than it used to be. Ads are just a way to find a new revenue stream to facilitate these features without (hopefully) raising the price."
How strict are your criteria for what you’ll accept?
"The decision to accept an ad falls to the game developers themselves. They can set what kinds of restrictions they have in their games for our ads, so it’s really a game-by-game decision. Developers will often specify that they want an ad to match a game’s environment, so if a game is cel-shaded, they would have the option to veto an ad with real world photos; or if the game has a level in a post-apocalyptic setting, they might not want ads for a movie coming out next weekend."
Above: Anarchy Online managed to stave-off demise by adopting in-game advertising and offering free-to-play subscriptions
Do you ever take into account what will irritate the gamer?
"Absolutely. Along with the game developers having the ultimate say in where an ad is placed, it also had to pass an unofficial ‘gamer’ test within the company. People who work in the industry are huge gamers themselves, and you definitely think to yourself ‘If I saw that game at home, would it bother me?’ Between the devs, the ad managers, and the QA testers, if something is considered obtrusive to gameplay or unrealistic, the issue definitely gets brought up."
Do you consider what you do immoral, in any way?
"Not at all. Advertising is part of almost aspect of life and has been a part of videogames for a long time. I remember playing Yo! Noid (a mascot for Domino’s pizza) on the Nintendo as a child, as well as thinking the ads in FIFA Soccer were so cool on the Super Nintendo. As games get more realistic, I think it is actually weird to see fake ads in some of these photorealistic landscapes. If I’m racing through Times Square in Gran Turismo, I want to see ads where I’d see them in real life. As long as it’s done in a responsible way and does not interfere with gameplay or realism of a game, I don’t see anything wrong with it."
Do you expect in-game ads to grow with the industry?
"It cannot help but keep growing. As far as the advertising budgets go, it’s still in the experimental phases for now, but pretty soon advertisers will include videogame as a standard line in their ad budgets, along with web banners and television. Also, as the game player demographic gets older, gamers will begin to populate more of the ‘decision maker’ roles in advertising, which will surely help push in-game ad revenue. On the development side you’re seeing more and more ad revenue built into game budgets, where you’re expected to make a certain amount of money at retail and a certain amount in ad revenue."
