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Well, in-game advertising has been around for years. But mostly in games that it's appropriate. Like sport games or racing games - skateboarding/snowboarding games. etc. Anything that's enviroment would naturally be filled with billboards anyways. It makes the enviroment more realisitic if you've got a real pepsi ad on the billboard of the racing track, rather then having Bebci Cola, cuz they didn't get a liscence to the logo... If you're gonna have billboards in the game, why not sell the space to real advertisers and help your profit margine?
All massive is doing is making the ads dynamic so that the developers can rotate and update the ads and continue to make a buck off of it, instead of it being a one-time thing with a static ad that never changes.
I think in the end, the game-play doesn't change at all. When you watch a (real) basketball game, there are ads in the background and you don't really pay attention to them. When you play a basketball game there are ads in the background and you don't really pay attention to them.
Our studio had talked about in-game advertising but we just can't come up with a way for it to work so we aren't going to bother. It wouldn't work in our game. And studios aren't going to go out of their way to find a place to stick an ad if it's not going to work with the enviroment. I HIGHLY doubt you'll be seeing any pepsi ads in any RPGs! hehe.
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