Google, your move!
3 comments November 10th, 2007
[tag]Google [/tag]makes another move: it’s [tag]gamevertising [/tag]initiative will see the daylight before the end of the month. Earlier this year Google bought Adscape, an [tag]in-game advertising[/tag] company, for $23 million.
Google will first launch a beta test with Redwood City, California-based casual gaming startup Bunchball Games by embedding “video-type” pre-roll and mid-roll gamevertising ads in some of the games Bunchball offers. Rumors go around that by next week this first in-game advertising project will be announced by both Bunchball and Google. For now, it’s just ‘no comment’ on both sides.
In december the next step will take place. By that time Google will unfold its game-focused advertising strategy. An ad-supported version of the PC game [tag]Psychonauts[/tag] will hit the internet as a downloadable game. Free, I suppose, because the [tag]in-game ads[/tag] will provide the money to the editors.
According to some well known gamers, Psychonauts is not a casual game but an award-winning, story-heavy, cult hit. This “gamer’s game” from veteran adventure game designer Tim Schaefer and co-written by Erik “Old Man Murray” Wolpaw is now “out of print;” and can only be downloaded via Valve’s Steam network it can be accessed via such download sites as GameTap and Valve’s Steam network.
Is that the real innovation? It looks more like a try-out. It’ll probably take a while to get Google’s [tag]game-related advertising[/tag] plans out of the beta-stage. Anyway, this new move comes at a time when an increasing interest in [tag]gaming [/tag]and in-game advertising unfolds rapidly over the internet. To be continued.
