Comments on: Home Advertising At A Glance

By: cthulu93

cthulu93 — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:19:56 +0000

I agree that this is a pretty informative article and covers alot of territory on this topic.I like that at the end after giving up all those ideas Gideon makes it clear that these ideas are just the beginning and there is certainly room for more.I think when the day comes when we say Home has enough in it and all the good ideas are installed will be the day that Home starts down the road to boredom,I hope that day is far,far off.Good stuff Gideon.

By: NorseGamer

NorseGamer — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:49:00 +0000

This is an absolutely brilliant article.

To quote Nuff, “Said.”

By: Burbie52

Burbie52 — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:21:35 +0000

Wonderful article Gideon. I believe the potential in Home is great as well for any developers to utilize. Unlike television advertising which is costly and the user can choose to either walk away from and/or turn off, Home has more of a captive audience. We are there to talk to friends and play the in -- Home games and therefore are more likely to be exposed to any and all advertising that shows up here.
I agree that the public spaces created by people need to be regularly updated as well, otherwise the initial investment is basically going to be lost as the users will move onto newer things quite quickly.
There was another thing that Rockstar did to promote RDR awhile ago. It was an actual contest between Xbox and PS3 users within their disk based game that earned the users in Home avatar costumes. We had to fill up a thermometer that was cleverly placed on their online homepage to win the costumes. This mot only made a lot of us play RDR like crazy, it also made the customer base happy because we won something for everyone in Home.

By: KrazyFace

KrazyFace — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:44:26 +0000

I’ve always stood by the idea that I’m not influenced by advertising unless it’s something I’m already interested in, however there’s always an element of subconcious bleed where (wether I like it or not) things I see are taken in regardless. So even the humble poster ad can still have an impact.

I remember when advertising in games first started to make its way. When games such as Extreme-G and wipEout first appeared they had less than a handful of companies that were willing to go the distance for such a tiny market segment, people like Storm (watches) Diesel (clothes) or even The Ministary of Sound (music record label) were “cool” enough to jump on board the new generation of Playstation consumers back in the 90’s.

Home has taken this ethos so much further though, and one of my fears as I became a comfortable resident of Home was the ammount of ads that were springing up. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be allowed, more rather the way they present the advertising should be done with creative thinking. This is indeed happening, I myself like putting Nate’s jeans from Uncharted onto my avatar and every time I do my brain tells me who those jeans belong to. It’s a crafty way of infuencing the user, the question is, how far does it really penetrate? A good example of this comes from one of my trips to the Irem beach, where I found a guy weraring a Blue Toad Murder Files full-on toad suit, yet everyone around (including the guy) called it a frog, oblivious to which game (if any) it was linked to. So in the end I think any advertising can only influence an individual as far as their awareness of each product will allow.