Surprise! Video Game Advertising Works!

So it's just after dusk in the land of Whizbangya and you've been hacking your way through the Forest of Dunderbrush for hours with your Ooloo of Liquidation, wearily lopping heads off mutant Rabittoids and Chipskunks in hopes of leveling up. Suddenly you pop into a clean little clearing and spy a troupe of Maying Pranti perched on logs arranged in a circle and warming their thoraxes around a cheery little campfire. One of them hops off its log, antennae waving merrily, and skitters toward you.

"Salutations stranger! Boy, you sure look thirsty!" it chitters, produces a small cylinder with a pop-tab from its rucksack, pries the can open with its tibia, then tilts its egg-eyed head back to swig several gulps. Come to think of it, that actually does sound good, you think, as two sets of golden, glinting words fill the screen.

- 12 PACK COLA, $8.99 - ORDER NOW, 15 MIN. DELIVERY!
- NO THANKS

What the heck, you think, thumbing you gamepad to make your barbarian-ogre "Clubby" reach up and select the 12 pack. Instantly, a second message appears.

- HOW ABOUT A PIZZA TOO? $2.00 DISCOUNT WITH PURCHASE OF 12 PACK!
- NO THANKS, JUST THE 12 PACK

Pizza...pizza...nah, you just had pizza. Besides, cheese tends to make you const--

Before you complete the thought, a loud "whoomph!" draws your attention as a tree at the edge of the clearing topples and a mob of Hoblins lumbers into the camp with spiked cudgels raised and murder writ plainly on their pug-nosed faces. The Pranti cower. Pizza forgotten, you raise your Ooloo and charge, twisting and slashing, skivering and skewering, until the Hoblins lie in catawampus corpse piles. Hoblins, you think. As if. But as you're turning back to the Manti and that soda, another gold-lettered message splashes across the screen.

- KINDA SLOW THAT TIME, BUCKO. HANDS SORE? HOW ABOUT SOME ACTIV-ON? APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREFINGER...

Okay, so any marketing types reading this are probably wincing because in-game ads would never be that moronically disruptive, but with stories like this and results like the ones below, the golden days of completely ad-free games are almost gone. Check out today's press release from Double Fusion about the effectiveness of in-game ads (news flash -- they work!). Among the findings:

- 75% of gamers engage with at least one ad per minute across most, but not all, game types; 81% of gamers engage at least every other minute

- The data obtained from the study forms the basis for a new view on gaming measurement, which will allow gaming media plans to be constructed in a way that is both comparable and additive to other media plans

The best we can hope for? That it drives prices down and not gameplay annoyance skyward. For the same reasons I'd pay more to see a movie that did away with those stupid, annoying commercials that precede the previews, I'd rather pay more for a game that's essentially ad-free.

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