News : February 20, 2010 : 8:46 pm
One Step Closer to an Interactive Future
I’ve written before about video games as the future of entertainment. I have another post brewing in me about the difficulty of merging the active video game experience with the passive entertainment experience we’re already familiar with (primarily the printed or moving image).
I just read a preview for a new XBOX 360 game called Alan Wake. Read the preview here.
The game seems to offer a more matured story experience than what we’ve seen in the past, and that’s already a good sign as far as serious artists getting involved in the craft.
But what caught my eye are the mentions of product placement. Energizer batteries, for one, and an unnamed car company.
If this works, then I think we can expect to see a lot more of this in the future, and perhaps see much of the advertising dollars that have dwindled from television and print rush into this new medium.
Remember, no one was interested in California, new medicines, or that sticky gunk called “oil” until someone figured out how to make money from them. Right now, video games have only tapped the existing models of income used by books and movies: develop a product, and sell it to consumers.
But if the video game — a fixed form product — could tap into the advertising model that supports the constantly-renewing products like newspapers and television, the potential revenue could be staggering.
