Massive Incorporated
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| Massive Incorporated | |
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2002 |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Key people | Mitchell Davis, CEO Katherine Hays, COO |
| Industry | Advertising |
| Products | In-game advertising |
| Employees | ? |
| Slogan | Your Channel to the Gaming Audience |
| Website | http://www.massiveincorporated.com |
Massive Incorporated is an advertising company which creates software and provides services to dynamically host advertisements within video games. It was recently purchased by Microsoft.
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[edit] Service
The service, collectively known as The Massive Network, allows game developers to place advertisements within video games by providing a software development kit (SDK) and servers to host advertisements to be streamed to clients when the game is played. The streaming of advertisements allows old advertisements to be removed and more contextual ones applied in their place. Where games such as Need For Speed: Most Wanted had static advertisements for Cingular and Burger King as examples, advertisements supplied by a streaming network allow more temporary ads such as movie or TV show posters. Both the publisher and Massive can then continue to make money after the game has been sold.
The software is made so as to capture the proper demographic: it would be a problem to advertise an R-rated movie in an E-rated game or to place advertisements that conflict with a game's genre.
First, placement and layout of the advertisements is planned by the developers with help from Massive. Advertisements can be any texture, but to maintain realism, advertisements are generally placed on objects such as posters, billboards, storefronts, and other likely mediums. Massive calls this "Phase I: Design of the Inventory Elements."
Second, the SDK is integrated with the game to act as a client to Massive's ad servers. It allows the game to fetch the ad, display it on a surface, and analyze how the player acts around it. Massive refers to this as "Phase II: Integration of the Software Development Kit (SDK)."
Third is self-explanatory, "Phase III: Testing & Support." These are the software testing and deployment steps.
[edit] Criticism
Video games have in the past generally been seen as an ad-free medium by gamers. With the deployment of in-game advertising, especially by a major corporation, this so-thought "refuge" has been "invaded."
Another argument leveled at in-game advertising is the cost of a single video game. While the ticket price of a movie is usually under $10 US, most games cost $50 US or more. However, a counterargument is that movies generally last about 2 hours while a game can provide tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay.
One of the major problems with any in-game advertising is its current pervasiveness. It will likely take some time to find a level at which the advertising still makes an impact while not detracting from the feeling of the game. Poorly-placed or overplaced advertisements will break the suspension of disbelief.
Some of the most blatant of Massive's advertising can be seen in the free version of Anarchy Online, where gigantic billboards are posted all over, although there are fewer excuses for free games. A running joke is the "Wanta Fanta" ads in a sci-fi setting.
Many Planetside players also became annoyed when small billboards appeared inside of bases. This was extremely unexpected as Planetside is a pay to play MMOFPS.
A detailed review of the advertising technology Massive used in SWAT 4 patch 1.1 can be found here.
A "workaround" can be created by redirecting the queries to a bogus address in the hosts file, a process which usually only takes a couple of minutes of research (to find what domain name to redirect) and a little bit of text editing.
[edit] Purchase
Microsoft purchased Massive Incorporated in May 2006 for approximately $200 million to $400 million. Massive is likely to cut off service with Sony Online Entertainment as it is a Microsoft competitor.
[edit] Links
An NPR broadcast on Massive Incorporated and in-game advertising in general.
[edit] References
- Massive Incorporated, retrieved June 3, 2006
- Massive Incorporated on Google Finance, retrieved June 3, 2006
- "In-game ads go PlanetSide" by Corey Brotherson, Eurogamer.net, September 8, 2005, retrieved June 3, 2006
