I am developing a MMO based in cities and I was wondering how people felt about advertising like on billboards and things like that. I also had an idea that if I could get companies to do this I could rent out store space where companies could sell virtual representations of their products to advertise them. Like for example lets say you walk down the street and walk into a Nike shops you could buy a pair of Nike shoes for your avatar and theres advertising for Nike for that product.

No its not fantasy its a present day city themed game. Its about Gangs and stuff. We are going to be doing a stress test the end of the week.

Quote:Original post by downgraded
If you have a fantasy game in which people drink elixirs called "Pepsi", you'd have to rethink your strategy, for example.

I have the feeling we'll be seeing something like that some day, though. Just give it time... :(

Its going to be pretty tough to do since, like Antheus touched on, you will want to directly work with them. Theres no "middle-man" system like there is with websites. If you just use Nike without asking them, the tables can turn and you may end up being the one paying them. Same goes for just about any product.

I wouldn't even try considering advertising in an online game like this until you have a huge user base. Unlike websites, people are not willing to randomly minimize their game and bring up a web browser to the advertiser's page, so you will have a hard time persuading advertisers that your advertising is going to be at all beneficial to them and worth their time and money.

You can try knocking on metaphorical doors and asking if people want to advertise in your game, but don't expect much. But if you do pursue this, I'd be interested to know your results.

In any case, I'm not sure networking geeks are the best ones to ask about this. ;)

Quote:Original post by Antheus
Do you plan on letting Nike know you're advertising? Have you already signed a contract with them?

Careful here...

I was just using that as an example but thats what I would like to do.

There are companies that will aggregate advertisers, and put their content into your game. This is starting to become a fairly well beaten path, although not super lucrative.

Names to check out may include Unicast, Advergame/Skyworks, and DoubleFusion, although it sometimes seems like this particular market changes monthly. Don't expect to make tons of MAD!! CA$H!1! though.