Reward-Based Ads May Not Be Good For Gaming

Reward-based video games ads have snuck up on us like a bad attack of the flu in the summer. But whether good or bad, only time will really tell.

13:46 23 June 2020

Smart and subtle advertising make the world go round. Being rewarded in return for engaging with smart and subtle advertising knocks it completely off course. In the best way possible. But to put matters into perspective and explain what we’re on about, let’s for only a moment travel back in time to the release of Nintendo’s Cool Spot. The game was different to other titles released at the time in that the entire thing was one big 7Up advertisement.

 

Even though many adults looking back now will be quick to point out that Cool Spot may have grabbed the attention but didn’t exactly manage to hold onto it, there existed at the time a certain hype around games based solely on advertising campaigns. But then, those were simple times in advertising as well as in gaming. That’s no longer the case.

 

We Hate Ads – It’s No Secret

 

Advertising in apps as well as in video games has always been and still remains as tricky an aspect of the digital revolution as any. A constant bombardment of intrusive content has numbed us into a people quite fond of ignoring email marketing blasts and scrolling past online advertisements as if they do not exist at all. We’ve become experts at filtering out anything even vaguely smacking of digital manipulation and we’re professionally trigger-happy when offered the luxury of “skip ad”.

 

So much so that we’re now told that only a very minute percentage of people watch ads all the way through – 3.6% minute, to be exact. Furthermore, statistics tell us that at least 96% of us engage actively in ad-avoiding behavior. Also, we seem to have lost 0.4% of the people somewhere along the way – but that’s a story for a different day.

 

Meet Versus Systems

 

One would think that this would leave the entire advertising industry at a loss for clever and manipulative ideas. But not so! One particular company has come up with a pretty nifty way of shoving often-unwanted products and services down our pie-hole exits. Meet Versus Systems and potentially the worst thing that could possibly happen to the very video games industry we so love and cherish: rewards-based advertising.

 

Thankfully at present limited to HP’s OMEN Command Centre, Versus Systems’ OMEN Rewards platform allows players to opt in on earning real-world prizes including gift cards, trips and even otherwise-costly experiences in return for completing challenges presented throughout the course of the video game or games of their choice. Even more tantalising (to some) is that players can select which prizes they would like to compete for before being instantly whisked away to start playing to win. That’s right; that’s playing to win and not playing to play for the sake of the game. Something that you should never do at a casino movil en linea Mexico has to offer, or in any game – playing should be part of the fun!

 

On the positive side, perhaps what Versus has managed to do is to forever rid the world of advergames. But we’ll have to wait and see about that. What Versus did without a shadow of a doubt do was to create an idea that could very well revolutionise the way advertisers do in-game marketing.

 

Good or bad thing? Again – we’ll have to wait and see.