Except for the cases where an advertisement showed me a product I was actually interested in and maybe even gave me some piece of useful information, I’ve generally been insulted and annoyed by the majority of the ones I couldn’t outright, completely ignore. I’ve seen just about everything from blatant product placements in major motion pictures to being told I wasn’t cool unless I had the latest gizmo by the very people who made that gizmo. In a lament voiced by The Rolling Stones over 40 years ago, I’m just the latest version of the dude who can’t get no satisfaction.

We’ve reached a point where it seems like people won’t invent something unless there is a way to monetize it. In media, for example, the easiest way to make money is to make enough room for advertising. Therefore, where media is, advertising usually follows. Games are no different. Take “Hellgate: London”, for example.

This recently released, massively multi-player, online action role-playing game with aspersions to first-person shooterdom set in a quasi-futuristic sword and sorcery ridden London is offering players the chance to enjoy playing on the internet for free. Aside from the initial payment of $50 to purchase the game and a completely optional monthly subscription which nets you some extra goodies, playing online with other players is being funded, 100%, by the advertisers. All you have to do is be able to stomach a couple advertisements.

While “Hellgate: London” is hardly the first game to “feature” in-game advertising, the way it does so is rather clever. The real-world London Underground is no stranger to advertising, so it only makes perfect sense that the developers, Flagship Studios, would choose to make this area the main space for in-game advertisements. The in-game London Underground will serve as a space where players will be going to buy and sell weapons, spells, armor, and upgrades for their characters. I find that I approve of this idea and appreciate the developers’ sense of context awareness by putting advertising in places that seem natural and almost beneficial. After all, it’s the poor context awareness of ads that I find so disparaging to begin with — nothing does more to damage a player’s sense of immersion than a blatantly placed advertisement for something completely unrelated to the gaming experience. Flagship Studios, it would seem, have managed to get it right.

“Battlefield 2142″, developed by Digital Illusions CE, however, would appear to have gotten it wrong. Another title that attempted to display ads to players during the game, this futuristic first-person shooter displayed ads across objects such as billboards in-game. The game had the ability to report which ads players were shown and how long the player looked at them, which raised a vocal backlash against the system by many of the players. Although, for a majority of the players, it wasn’t so much a problem with the placement of ads but what information the game was using to determine what ads to show to each player and what it was doing with the information about that player once it had been recorded. Speculation and rumors about “spyware” circulated the ‘net despite arguments that the game doesn’t access any files on players’ PCs that aren’t relevant to the game. In the end, though, did the advertising do any good for the advertisers? Most gamers reported not even noticing they were there.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, except for those instances when I can’t, I’ve managed to ignore most advertising aimed my way. At times, I’ve been absolutely disgusted at the amount of dishonesty an organization can get away with while simultaneously being impressed by both their sheer audacity and skill with which they use to skirt certain accepted practices and laws. For example, you can’t say you have the best bacon in town unless it turns out that you actually do. In case you don’t, however, you simply preface your false statement by claiming that this is simply your opinion. As such, we’ve seen some pretty bold opinions and I’ve learned to appreciate formulating my own before making any purchase. But even when advertisers aren’t making bold claims and bending the truth, they’re usually playing down to the lowest common denominator and hitting us with gimmicky, attention grabbing commercials that sometimes end up confusing more than entertaining and informing. This is where advertising loses any value it had left as we tend to remember the method in which the message was told over the message itself. How many times have you hung around with your friends talking about a really funny commercial while being completely unable recall what product the commercial was actually for? I rest my case. But that’s not to say that I’m totally against advertising, I’m just trying to find a way to justify putting a distraction within something that is, essentially, a distraction.

Hey, I understand that getting people’s attention is difficult, but so is paying $50 to be force-fed advertising that I find irrelevant and distracting. On the other hand, how do advertisers hope to make money on a commercial no one even sees? You have to wonder if it’s worth the backlash to include such a system in your game… I would assume it must be, otherwise, no one would do it. Flagship Studios certainly thinks it is.