[Jump]

So much for escaping reality through online gaming. Looks like Google fired a return salvo across the bows of Microsoft for buying up Massive last year. A company that Google was looking to purchase as well. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks to acquire Adscape Media. Is this a good thing? I don't think so. It's invasive in a world where people are trying to escape such realities as commercialism. Maybe I should shoot them off a letter explaining how gamers never click ads anyway.

From the Wall Street Journal

Google Inc.'s efforts to broker advertisements beyond the Web could soon expand into ads that appear in videogames.


The Mountain View, Calif., company is in talks to acquire Adscape Media Inc., a closely held San Francisco company whose technology allows for the delivery of advertising over the Internet and placement within videogames, according to people familiar with the matter. They added that a deal could be reached as early as next week.

While the possible terms of a deal aren't known, Microsoft Corp. last year acquired Massive Inc., a company that delivers in-game ads, for close to $200 million.

You'll have to subscribe there to read more of that.



And from Game Daily

A Google representative would not talk about Adscape but did admit that in-game advertising is something the web company is looking at: "We are always considering new ways to extend Google's advertising program to benefit our users, advertisers and publishers. In-game advertising offers one such possible extension among many others."

What I want to know is, will we have to shoot the ads instead of clicking them?

[Nohbody]

Isn't there already an FPS that has ads in it as part of the gameplay? (like billboards/posters, I think)

As for whether it should be done or not, for all Google's talk about acting for the benefit of regular people, they're ultimately just a business like everyone else, and advertisers are their real customers. The users (many of whom were gained by the free stuff they offer, kinda like a drug dealer's first free hit) are just an asset for them to offer said customers. The day Google search results started calling up ads to display on the search results page should've been writing on the wall, so to speak, about their real intentions.

Advertisers see !!!BIG!!!$$$MONEY$$$ in advertising to gamers, so of course they're going to get all drooly over it, and go chasing that money at all costs, end-users be damned.

(Is the above cynical? Perhaps. That doesn't necessarily make it untrue, however.)