Response Week 11

For my first question I asked: In class we have discussed the evolution of in game advertisements.  Just how effective are these?  What is the market for these?

As we saw in the movie in class some in game advertisements are incredibly ineffective such as the Second Life clothing brands.  These in game virtual clothes were pretty much useless and did not gain the companies that put them out very much money.  Other in game advertisements are very effective.  As a group that presented last week showed, Obama advertised on in game billboards and these were seen as a success.

My second question was: In class we discussed how video gaming has increased recently.  Is this due to the fact that gaming systems such as the Wii, or more recently the Kinect is bringing the entire family into the game?  If this is true, why does this ad campaign work for these modern games when it didn’t work as well for the Atari.

I think that gaming has increased for multiple reasons.  First of all games have become much more affordable.  When the Atari first came out games cost about the same as they do now.  Also, games are much more accessible and gaming systems are in homes across the country.  There are also a variety of systems the choose from and most games have versions across all platforms.  Finally, while gaming has gotten much more advanced so have basic skill levels.  That is, most know how to play video games pretty instinctively since gaming has been around for so long.

My final question was: The music industry has been falling since the introduction of Napster in the 1990s, but with games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, music is being put out there more so than it has been in years.  Has this affected the music industry at all?  As in are people purchasing albums based on songs they love to play on their favorite video games?

From the brief research I’ve done on the Internet, my presumptions about the music industry do not seem to be true.  If anything, more songs are being downloaded illegally now than ever before.