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Computer Games Product
Chapter 2 - Review of Literature
2.1 Introduction
This chapter deals with the academic literature and pre-existing studies on the subject of product placement in computer games and its impact on the consumer. This chapter’s aims and objectives are to afford better clarification of the topic and the variables that affect consumers. Existing studies will be explored further and perhaps bring new understanding to the subject. This is achieved through the way in which this chapter is structured; by looking at the definitions presented by academics of product placement; subliminal advertising; brand recognition and recall; brand equity and trust; considering various studies and selecting the most appropriate ones for this dissertation to prove the research questions.
2.2 Product Placement
Since the 1940s and 1950s, films provided brands being served as background scenery, props and character developers. Economically, advertising supports media, yet for product placements, the practice began with branded products being donated, bartered or bought (Nelson et al., 2004).
Today, companies usually are paid by film-makers to appear in the movies (Chunovic, 2002) and that shift was then being observed in the game industry, too.
Brand properties or placements are different from traditional broadcast advertising in at least three ways: First, placements do not interrupt the consumer’s media experience like paid media advertising, which operates between media content (Nelson et al., 2004). Second, placements are not always paid by the brand (Wasko, Philipps, Purdie, 1993). Third, it is important that placements may not be perceived by consumers as commercial messages (Nelson et al. 2004).
The extent of consumer awareness and knowledge about product placements is considered an important measure in a public policy debate. Product placements are presented as subversive, subconscious techniques, even though others assert that most consumers are aware of the practice (Nelson et al. 2004).
The continuous advances in technology like for example expanded television channels from cable and satellite transmission, remote control, VCR and DVR have made it incrementally easier for consumers to circumvent traditional advertising messages. As a result, advertisers needed to find alternative ways to attract consumer attention to buy their products. Product placement in entertainment media is one such strategy that advertisers have begun to make use of (Lee, Faber, 2007).
2.3 Definition of games and information about the people playing them
While taking all the time about games; what is a game in the sense used in this paper? Jesper Juul (2003), a video game theorist, analyzes seven well-known definitions of games provided by academics. Based on a screened list of features being necessary for something to be a game, he then defines it as “a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable” (Juul, 2006). This description will later become helpful to understand the characteristics of the computer games as a distinct medium.
To understand the entire matter around games, there should be explained the type of people who play games. According to a study conducted by the Interactive Software Federation Europe (2008) the average gamer in Europe today is 33 years old. It is also claimed that in a typical week 45% of the PC owners play games more than 1-5 hours while 29% play more than 5 hours. In case of console owners it is more or less the same so this does not need to be considered separately as in this paper this component is not taken in account. The main reason of playing is for most of them to play just for fun (80%) followed by relaxing and de-stressing (55%) and playing when they are bored (41%) (Interactive Software Federation Europe, 2008).
Gamers are people who immerse themselves in an alternate reality which allows brands to have the permission to behave in a way that helps players to do this. Shortly this means, if a brand appears in or around a game, it makes sense to use it as an enhancer of the virtual reality (Mediaedge, 2005). Nevertheless it would be pointless to place billboards of real world advertising like Coka Cola in games with a fantasy setting like for example the well known World of Warcraft. That kind of product placement would not turn up realistic and it would disturb the player’s experience. World of Warcraft is a persistent multiplayer world that was subscribed by about 8 million at the beginning of 2007 which (Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., 2007) has increased to 10 million in 2008 (Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., 2008). The expert Samuel Turcotte (Lehu, 2007) claims that ‘product placement isn’t about sales; it’s about brand awareness’. Aiming on increasing sales and making the customer aware of one’s product, marketers should not try to disturb the player’s word but enhance it. Examples like World of Warcraft show that those players or subscribers are out of advertiser’s reach.
Today in generally things have changed as product placements are part of many games. Depending on the setting and the kind of placement, many products found their way into the games. Whether BMW in car racing games like for example Need for Speed or ordinary products like Axe deodorants and Airwaves chewing gums in Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory, most products that appear in the games are products that surround gamers and non-gamers daily.
According to a study conducted by Nielsen BASES and Nielsen Games on behalf of in-game advertising network IGA Worldwide, 82% of gamers react positively to contextual In-Game Ads (Androvich, 2008). Results of this study showed that of consumers with the strongest opinion about in-game ads, both positive and negative, over 70% felt the ads made them feel better about the brand. They felt more favorable toward the brand and it made them more interested in the brand. Ultimately they believed that the ads are for innovative/cutting edge brands. More than 60% of these most opinionated customers feel ads do not interrupt their attention while experiencing the game. Also, the ads catch their attention and make games more realistic as well as the brands shown in the games are promoting relevant products. According to Lockergnome (2007), most of today’s computer games give the impression being made for men. An industry report published by IBISWorld (2008) reveals that women and older adults are the new driving force behind the success of the video games industry. According to IBISWorld (2008) it is also claimed that today, more and more women begin to play action games.
Today in general the consumer research on product placements has focused on attitudes towards the practice and the effectiveness (Nelson et al., 2004).
2.4 Gamers’ attitude towards product placement in computer games
Advertising placements that mimic real-world ads – such as billboards in sports or racing games – are generally accepted by gamers because they have perceived to add to the realism of the game (Thompson, 2006) which is also in accordance with Nelson (2002). He claims the research on consumer attitudes to in-game product placement shows that participants were in the main positive about practice and did not perceive any disruption in the experience of the game used in the study. As already mentioned above, brands should be used as enhancer of the virtual reality (Mediaedge, 2005), some participants of the study just mentioned reported that product placement enhance the realism of the game as well as it would add value to the gaming experience (Nelson, 2002).
The argument that consumers are more positively disposed towards brand placements relative to more conventional forms of advertising is also supported by research investigating consumer’s attitudes to product placement in other media (Nebenzahl and Secunda, 2003). They also found that product placement was related favourably by 70% of people going to the cinema, extensively higher than ratings for pre-movie advertisements.
As attitudinal surveys and focus groups showed, questioned consumers generally find product placements to be acceptable. They even said that it would enhance the value of the media as well as the entertainment value (Nelson et al., 2004). On the other hand, some of the polled consumers, in most cases women from countries like the U.S., Austria, France and Singapore are not that positive about the acceptability of ethically-charged products. They claim that such things like guns, cigarettes or alcohol in media would be targeted at children (Nelson et al., 2004). According to information from PRNewswire (2008) women do also play computer games with that kind of content like action games or shooter. So it depends on the attitude of the individual and the kind of placement used in the media.
In most cases when guns are placed in a computer game, it target adults (PRNewswire, 2008). In Germany for example, it is controlled by law what kind of games need to be censored or not. All this is the executed by an institution called USK. If a computer game is not checked by the USK, it is not coming out. And if it contains explicit violence and language, it may only be sold to adults which is from 18 years on.
2.5 Brand Equity and Social Trust
Many customers buy needed goods by habit, are drawn to purchase by promotions, or simply do not pay much attention to which brand they buy (Walshe and Fearn, 2008). Therefore it is important for marketers to draw customers’ attention, convince them to prefer their product blindly and make them to trust in the product.
Yoo and Donthu (2002) depict brand equity to be known to create customers’ blind preference for a brand over its competing brands. Brand equity also increases the company’s value by affecting the decision making in terms of merger and acquisition, stock market responses and the extendibility of a brand name. Brand equity measures most of which have long been used by marketers but which are only now being brought together as single intangible asset which in accounting terms, is brought forward at the start of the period and carried forward to the next (Ambler, 1997).
Before the marketers don’t do something dreadful, established brand leaders will remain brand leaders which can be seen in the fact that the brand leaders in the 1920s were mostly the leaders 60 years later (Wurster, 1987). Lower ranked brands hold their places.
Ambler (1997) claims that the awareness is cognitive, as is our knowledge of a brand’s functional performance characteristics and price. Attitudes towards the brand are primarily affective. Most importantly, our use of frequently purchased brands is likely to be merely reinforced by advertising.
To blindly believe in a product, people need to trust in the company. To understand the meaning of trust there will now follow a definition of trust at this point. ‘Trust is one of the most important synthetic forces within society’ (Simmel, 1950). To obtain customers’ blind preference for a brand, trust is needed. Only customers trusting in a company’s products and its established brands will buy these products in future. So it is an important factor for marketers, that trust is built. This implies that trust is mentally controlled. According to Ambler (1997) customer mental stages cannot be ignored as the marketer is concerned with what changes behavior. As the customer perceives that a product implies high profit, it is likely that the product will be purchased in future. That is why it is hard for a company to convince a customer to consider another - the own - product to be better. If the customer favours a product, then the marketer needs good arguments to change the preferred product.
By looking at features like customization in computer games like in many car-racing games it can be seen, that product placement can be implanted differently. Even the design or the car’s power can be adjusted. Very famous for that is for example the car racing game series Need for Speed. By implementing such features the player identifies himself with the brand, which in real life can results in an increased brand loyalty of the respective player. The virtually perceived quality then may have an impact on the gamer.
Perceived quality has been identified as a key; possibly it is the key, which might be the indicator of future performance (Gale, 1994). Nevertheless as we do not know the connection it is hard to predict which seems probable between perceived quality and trust. In a computer game, the perceived quality in a racing game may lead the player to believe the car he is driving with is unbeatable, but it is questionable whether it can be trusted in that car to be equal in reality. These examples show that the options of marketers in the game segment are enormous.
Brands simplify decision-making by acting as ‘summarized knowledge’. A brand reduces the need of the customer to undertake the time-consuming activity of ‘researching’ products (Morrison and Firmstone 2000).
2.6 Subliminal Messages in Media
As already mentioned above, subliminal messages also appeared in media or still do. Embedding material in print, audio or video messages so faintly that they are not consciously perceived is called subliminal advertising (Rogers and Smith, 1993). Besides the attention, the capacity and the perception of in game advertising, there exists another theory. A lot of scientists say that subliminal messages do leave a mark on the brain. By using brain scanners, they found “we often record images we are not even aware of having seen” (Jha, 2007). Researchers from the University College of London found, the first psychological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain’s attention on a subconscious level. Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren’t aware of – but one that reaches the retina – has an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe. Subjects’ brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of having seen it (Smith, Lewis, 2007). At a basic level, people perceive messages differently when they are presented in the form of an advertisement than when they are written in the form of other types of communications as the same literal content can result in different consumer perceptions (Rotfeld, 2008). The research of the University College of London challenges the theory of the pioneering American psychologist and philosopher, William James, (1842-1910), who once said: “We are conscious of what we attend to, and not conscious of what we do not attend to” (Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain, 2007). Within several tests scientists found out that there are situations where consciousness and attention don’t go hand in hand. Nevertheless, the research also indicated that when the brain doesn’t have a capacity to pay attention to an image, even images that act on our subconscious simply do not get registered (Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain, 2007).
According to Rogers and Smith (1993) many in the public are aware of the term ‘subliminal advertising’. They also claim that as the public understands the basics of the concept they believe it not only to be used by advertisers but also to be successful in influencing brand choice and purchase behavior. Zanot (1984) examined 38 studies of American attitudes to advertising from the 1930s to the 1970s. He found that these became increasingly negative over time, perhaps reflecting increases in the volume of advertising, the growth of consumerism and rising concerns about the social responsibility of business.
According to studies conducted by Zanot, Pincus and Lamp (1983) after a survey of 209 adults in Washington, DC it was reported that 81% had heard of subliminal advertising and that respondents believe that subliminal advertising is widely and frequently used and that it is successfully in selling products. According to Rogers and Smith (1993), these results were confirmed in separate surveys conducted later. They also conducted an own study to prove whether the results are still valid or not, and it was proved again.
Heyder et al. (1992) compared attitudes across several East and Western Europe countries. They also found more positive attitudes in Britain than in France or West Germany, although Czecheslovakia emerged as the country best disposed to advertising. Attitudes were however less favourable in Poland, Hungary and East Germany.
2.7 Effectiveness of Product Placement - Brand Recognition and Recall
Even though advertising through digital games appears widely in popular print media and industry magazines there are only a few empirical studies attempt to explain the effects of the ads that target game players.
Among the most common goals advertisers have in using product placement in games is the increasing brand awareness. It is often assumed that the number of people playing a game is equal to the number of people actually paying attention to the brand names embedded in the game. A game player is engaged in playing the game, however, and that is what occupies primary attention. Since brand names displayed in a game are not the focal object of attention, it is important for advertisers to determine whether their brand name is actually being noticed (Lee and Faber, 2007).
According to Lee and Faber (2007), most cognitive psychologists believe that attention is the progress of allocating cognitive capacity to an object or task. Furthermore, researchers often focus on two aspects: its selective aspect and its intensive aspect. Lee and Faber (2007) also claim that the intensity of attention refers to the amount of cognitive capacity that is allocated to a particular task as well as the selectivity which refers to selective allocation of cognitive capacity to a particular task in preference to others. Beside the attention, there is also the capacity that should be thought of. As the player is attentive it might be that the brain does not have enough capacity to handle all the absorbed information.
To explain the selective and intensive aspects of attention, the limited-capacity model of attention was developed (Kahneman 1973). According to Kahneman (1973), this model assumes that one's total attentional capacity at any one point in time is limited. Even with a strong attention, it might be difficult as there is no capacity to handle the mass of information. The total capacity allocated to process all activities can be divided into two parts: on the one hand ther is capacity devoted to the primary task and on the other hand there is spare capacity (Kahneman 1973; Lynch and Srull 1982). Spare capacity is devoted to secondary tasks and other surroundings. It is believed that capacity being used to perform the primary task cannot be used to perform the secondary task. Thus, the more capacity being used for the primary task, the less a person has available to accomplish any secondary task.
Primary task capacity and spare capacity are important in understanding the effects of product placement in games on brand memory. According to Lee and Faber (2007), playing the game is the primary task for game players, whereas processing advertisements embedded in the game is a secondary task. The more attentional capacity that needs to be devoted to playing the game, the less will be available for processing brand information.
Similar to industry measures, academics have relied seriously on memory-based measures. Examples for those can be aided and unaided recall, recognition, and sometimes on acceptance, reported usage behavior and perceived ethical factors related to product placement (Gupta and Gould, 1997; Karrh, Firth, and Callison, 2001; Morton and Friedman, 2002; Russel. 2002; Sargent, 2001).
André Sonder, New Business Director of IGA Wordwide, subsidiary of Microsoft responsible for co-oper sations in matters of advertising, provides reasons for computer games as advertising medium. On one hand, he claims, that investigations showed that in particular men between the age of 18 and 34 have a six to seven times higher cognition while gaming than while watching primetime TV-Shows. In-game ads are for that reason very effective as the player is very concentrated and ads can be better recognized than in television. (Aichinger, 2006)
Displaying a brand identifier in games may be similar to product placement in television shows or movies in some ways. In other ways, however, playing games differs in some way from watching a movie or television program, and the impact of product placements may, as a result, differ. The biggest difference may be in the realm of involvement and its impact on attentional resources. Unlike passively watching television or movies, a game player actively interacts with the game by modifying and controlling the course of events (Nicovich 2005). As a result of its immersive nature, getting a brand noticed and remembered may be far more difficult in the game context than is the case with movie or television product placements (Chaney, Lin, and Chaney 2004; Nicovich 2005). This difference may also interact with other variables to create a somewhat unique situation for product placement in games.
According to a study to investigate the effects of product placement in games on brand recall which was analyzed by Nelson (2002), it was found that 95% of the participants were able to recall the brand of the car they drove during the game spontaneously. Nevertheless, on the other side, recall declined to 0% after a five-month post-play period.
2.8 Effectiveness of in-game ads - studies
There are a few studies around product placement concerning computer games. The British company Bunnyfoot offers the opportunity to measure the effectiveness of in game ad investment for companies that intended to place their products in computer games. Bunnyfoot claims that it would not just be about brand awareness or brand recall anymore as the new era of digital improvement provides an array of rich media to communicate with the increasingly cynic consumer (Walton, 2008). They also argue that games would offer a huge untapped market with a broader profile than assumed before. Beside Lee and Faber’s (2007) limited-capacity model of attention, Alison Walton (2008) also claims that the key benefit to a gaming environment is the ability to capture consumer attention. For that reason, as the player is confronted with a rapid gameplay, it’s a moot question whether he has enough attention to notice the in-game ads or not. Virtual environments often are not diluted, so that the player can be bombarded with irrelevant advertising. Games rather provide a virtual environment where campaigns can be contextually important, relevant to the game content and consequently this has a greater impact on the player (Walton, 2008). Bunnyfoot analyzed and captured attention by developing an emotive engagement model that can measure, quantify and predict consumer response to advertising in games. The study implemented a methodology that included eye tracking in order to find out the effectiveness of ad location, dimension and design (Staff, 2007). Eyetracking is a technique used to determine where a person is looking at. With reference to this independent study which was performed by Bunnyfoot, a lack of engagement between video game players and in-game advertising in sports titles was revealed (Usher, 2006). The titles used for testing were for example racing games like Gran Turismo 3 and Project Gotham Racing. Also other types of games like wrestling (Smackdown vs. Raw) and basketball games (NBA Live) were used for determining the results (Usher, 2006). When it comes to video games capturing consumer attention Usher (2006) also claims that the study results apparently reflect a low level of player engagement, recognition and attention.
Often it is deliberated whether in game ads disturb players while playing or not. According to Staff (2007), a Study conducted by Double Fusion showed what many have assumed but which was never proven – that gamers not only notice ads in games but are impacted by them positively. Double Fusion’s study surveyed the impact of 36 different kinds of in-game ads. In the study, 10 games of varying genres, including FPS, action, racing and sports have been investigated. Same as in the Bunnyfoot study, the Double Fusion used the method of eyetracking. 75% of gamers engage with at least one ad per minute across most, but not all game types; 81% of gamers engage at least every other minute. The findings of the Double Fusion study also showed that less-cluttered ads are three times more effective at garnering gamers notice than ads that are either cluttered or within cluttered environments. In addition, placement of the ad in the primary camera plane (eye-level) is more important than large size ads (Staff 2007). This study shows, that depending on different variables, the results may vary.
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