Post #9- Advertising in Videogames

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Last year when Pretty Little Liars came out, my sisters started asking my parents for the Kin cell phone. A small circular phone, it was brand new on the market, and while it crashed and was not revived after a year, it was featured as the phone of choice on the popular teen television show. Each girl on the show had a Kin and instead of using a generic phrasing when someone called such as "I need to check my phone" the girls would expressively say "I need to check my Kin" or "I’ll send you a message on your Kin." And, the television show did its job promoting the phone to such an extent that the phone sold big. It sold big and for lack of experienced technicians working on the phone, it crashed.

Advertising, as Bogost begins his second section of his book, is pervasive. It is everywhere, informing "us of something that we’ve longed for all our lives even though we’ve never seen it before" (148). Much like the political processes involved in garnering supporters, advertising has undergone various changes, morphing to adapt to new technologies as culture changes—a move that is indeed warranted, but which, Bogost claims, opens up new and sometimes treacherous opportunities for advertisers.

Types of Advertising

There are three main types of advertising: demonstrative, illustrative, and associative. Demonstrative advertising is basically all about the facts. It deals in facts, figures, and tangibles—often times not expressively trying to sell a lifestyle or image. Illustrative advertising focuses on both tangibles and intangibles of a product as well as focusing on a "cultural and social context" (158). The associative type of advertising often only shows the personality of a product, the "people who buy [enter product] are fun and relaxed."
And of course, these show up in video games (both as products within the gamescape and as the center for the product, ie- the advergame). While associative advertising is the most popular, demonstrative advertising is often used—especially when procedural rhetoric is at stake. However, within advergames (games whose pure purpose is to promote a product) often do not provide a procedural rhetoric.

Videogames

I think, to understand how this sort of advertising works hand in hand with procedural rhetoric, I need to stick with examples, much as Bogost does throughout this particular chapter. Licensing and Product Placement is often done in video games more and more now, and I believe we notice the licensing aspect more often with games that spawn from the Harry Potter books, The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, and other well known books and movies. These original products, such as the Harry Potter books, are then created into games that allow the player to adopt the role of the hereo (in this case Harry) and complete various tasks. While allowing the players accessing to the minute details of their latest cinematic/novel hero, the Harry Potter games also serve as an advertisement for the movies/books.

Because of the nature of video games, advertisings’ previous tactic of placing and leaving products/ads is defunct. A videogame "has to allow the player to do something meaningful inside its interpretation" (175). Which, of course, leads to one of the large problems within videogames as advertising space—for the advertisers. Because of the procedural rhetoric of many videogames, games which feature strong product placement, such as Carnival Cruise Lines Tycoon and SeaWorld Adventure Parks Tycoon, face the challenge of having players reconsider their allegiance to those specific organizations after playing. Basically, because these games allow the player to see under the hood of an operation, players are exposed to perhaps some unsavory practices such as poor working conditions.



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In the third chapter, Bogost goes into detail about advergames. Advergames are meant, according to Bogost, to be "simulations of products and services" (200). These games, such as the Budwiser game, try to sell the "coolness" of drinking Budwiser with the importance of seeing how irresponsible it is to drink too much. I think perhaps my favorite example from this book is the Tooth Protectors game from 1983 by Johnson and Johnson. The game worked on two levels—one as a way to advertise their products such as specific toothbrushes, floss, and mouth rinse, but also as a way to speak about the "responsibility of oral hygiene" (202). The game shows the child how they can care for their teeth by bypassing sugary snacks sometimes but, knowing full well that it is not possible to also forgo the snack, also how to actually care for the teeth after the snack has been consumed. The games is a wonderful example of procedural rhetoric as well as advertisement.

And then, of course, there are anti-advergames, and idea which I found interesting. These are not made by the companies advertising their products, but rather by often disgruntled individuals who hope to show a flaw within a product or company—such as Bogost’s Disaffected!, a game about Kinko’s.
While not many people enjoy being bombarded by advertisements, advertising is everywhere and it has begun to be incorporated into videogames—a platform both useful and potentially dangerous for the advertisers. And, coupled with procedural rhetoric, the companies being advertised begin to face a more critical crowd as their products are examined much closer than the constant bombardment of name repetition or some celebrity/popular show/etc we get when watching movies, tv shows, and see billboards.

Questions

1) When advertisements are placed within your games, do you pay attention to them? Or do you absorb them as part of the atmosphere within a second thought?

2) Would you consider all simulations as procedural rhetoric? If not, what has to be present for it to be considered an example of procedural rhetoric?

3) And, how exactly is a product proceduralized?