Feature: 'Event Wrap-Up: Advertising in Games West'

In today's main Gamasutra feature article, Eric-Jon Waugh presents a wrap-up of last week's Advertising in Games West conference in San Francisco, which consisted of six panels, a keynote, two breaks, and a lunch, all covering the subject of how to intelligently twine the worlds of game development and consumer advertising. Waugh covers the plethora of content available at the conference, but starts by describing opinions on the shape of the market: "United Talent Agency's Jonathan Epstein began the Market Overview panel by establishing the day's themes: that there are some superficial parallels between videogame advertising today and Internet advertising a decade ago; that one key argument for a shift to in-game ads is that the key advertising demographic of males aged 18-34 has been watching less and less TV over the past few years, while overall demographics for videogames keep inflating. He also suggested that both casual gamers and wireless gamers are primed to override “hardcore” and “mainstream” gamers; that women constitute the largest demographic of online gamers; that there are a number of different approaches to advertising, all of which need to seamlessly fit the game in question; that not a lot of games really lend themselves to in-game ads; and that substantial market differences exist by region (New York prefers Ninja Gaiden and Metal Gear , while Los Angeles likes World Of Warcraft and Doom 3; they both like Resident Evil 4 about the same)." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).