Would rather see this -- like you said... in places where you would normally see adverts in a game world -- than microtransactions galore.

*cough*Street Fighter V*cough*

that's why.

I feel like the devs of Moto Racer 2 may have done this. The billboards around the track all sport real companies, so it may have been sponsored.

This isn't a new idea; in game ads and sponsorships have been around since the early days of video games. I still remember way back with TMNT: The Arcade Game for NES having Pizza Hut billboards in-game and a coupon for Pizza Hut included in the manual.

Companies have also experimented with dynamic in-game ads that would stream externally. Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 having this capability as in-game billboards would change on different play-throughs, advertising different real-world products.

For whatever reason, in-game advertising never really caught on in a big way. Though as video games have become considerably more mainstream, it's a bit surprising that never happened. It could be that companies just haven't found quite the right business model to make it sustainable.

I guess it would be a great idea using ads to offer a cheaper/free game and (help) pay the development using ads, but it seems that it won't happen in this world.

Kerr Avon wrote:

So why didn't the developers go to various real life companies, and offer to sell them the advertising spaces in the game? The billboards could advertise anything that would appeal to the same demographic that plays Batman: Arkham City, the in-game vending machines could advertise soft drinks such as Pepsi Max, or Irn Bru, or Coca Cola, etc. And given that the PS4 doesn't let you choose which post-release patches you install (and allow to take up space on the console's hard drive), then the game's developers could later on produce subsequent patches to change the adverts over time, to advertise other products or companies.

Keep on mind that it would mean that the player needs to be connected to internet while playing (if the ads are downloaded every time he plays) or will need to download patches for the game to get the ads updated.

infiniteclouds wrote:

Would rather see this -- like you said... in places where you would normally see adverts in a game world -- than microtransactions galore.

TheMLGladiator wrote:

I feel like the devs of Moto Racer 2 may have done this. The billboards around the track all sport real companies, so it may have been sponsored.

I've seen games with real brands ads, and they costed the same as other launchs. I don't like to pay to see more ads, they're free on TV 😉 Seriously, it seems that developers actually have to pay to include real brands in their games (like when they have to license car brands/models for racing games). I think that it should be the opposite (brands paying developers to show their ads)... and I don't know if it would be included in the price tag (lowering price, they've recovered some developing costs via ads).

My guess is that they don't do that anymore because of licensing issues.
Back in time, games were originally only sold once -or twice- as a physical release by one publisher/company.
Since then it has become common pratice that games are re-released (compilations, on-line releases) and license holders are changing over time.
In some case, the original game studio nolonger has the rights on "its" game it once made. Or worse, became a rival to the current license holder.
In that case, all the in-game advertisments for the original game studio's other games would cause licensing issues and extra work for the new license holder (changing the ads in the re-release).
Anyway, I'm no experts when it comes to law, but I could imagine that this is one reason why developers don't do this anymore.

Edit: Another reason might be that they like to avoid public debates or critism.
Imagine a game had an in-game ad for a popular brand for a sugar-rich drink. That surely was okay in the 80s-90s,
but in these days of health and anti-sugar movements, it could cause serious trouble for a game studio.
Or just think of real world emergency signs that are protected (r*d cross sign);
showing them in-game could ban a game quickly or cause the game studio to close.

Shponglefan wrote:

This isn't a new idea; in game ads and sponsorships have been around since the early days of video games. I still remember way back with TMNT: The Arcade Game for NES having Pizza Hut billboards in-game and a coupon for Pizza Hut included in the manual.

Yes, SEGA platform games did this a lot. Pepsiman and a host of McDoncalds games (Mick and Mac global gladiators) come to mind. There was walso coolspot (7UP).

Last game I remember doing this was Wipeout 2097 which had RedBull billboards everywhere. Psygnosis even had deals to have these games in dance clubs, obviously attempting to appeal to a certain demographic.

Could be an interesting topic for a thread?

Shponglefan wrote:

For whatever reason, in-game advertising never really caught on in a big way. Though as video games have become considerably more mainstream, it's a bit surprising that never happened. It could be that companies just haven't found quite the right business model to make it sustainable.

Agreed, I think it's also a case that AAA games these days have huge budgets and the publishers are behemoths in their own right... they don't really need to sign away royalties to get funding as they can survive on their own.

Years ago I read about some advertising guy who was playing a sports game on Xbox, and seeing all the fake billboards he decided to start a company to place real ads in sports games. This led to the usual "this guy made millions of dollars with his business" type articles in our local mainstream media. Sports, racing games and world sims are probably the best places for real world advertisements.

I guess for games that are dark or dystopian or warlike (most FPS), as an advertiser you wouldn't be too keen on placing your product in that type of environment for the negative associations; this is similar to how car manufacturers used to want to have a say on how their cars got damaged in-game (https://au.ign.com/articles/2007/02/26/virtua … nterview?page=2)

More broadly, there is a Wikipedia page about the topic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising

Sony did that too with PlayStation 3. There was an API through which games could say this surface here texture can be an ad. Then Sony would place ads there (you were online so they were "live"). Then based on where your camera would point they would know how much each player looked at a "billboard" and that is how games got paid for advertising.

Look at free mobile games...