User Generated Ads in Video Games
Team Fortress 2 is a great multiplayer FPS by Valve that recently came out for Xbox, PS3 and PC machines.
The PC versions have a unique feature where you can upload images and then “spray” them on walls for all the other online players to see. It was obviously made to give the players a place to smack talk and show off.
But here’s the interesting thing….recently I’ve begun to see user generated ads created and placed in the game..
Most of them are for various clans that play together or websites that collect and share information about the game. It got me to thinking, what would happen if this idea really caught on and what would it evolve into?
Would independent musicians start uploading info of themselves like they did with MySpace? Would other video games start spraying their logos around to grab some early buzz? The limits of this format are, like its concept, fuzzy and undefined.
Here’s my favorite video of a user uploaded spray. It shows just what happens when you realize your teammate isn’t what he seems to be.
Frenzied Waters, Campfire’s big summer campaign for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, was a huge success. Bloggers, radio personalities and the general public hunted for mysterious “Shark Attack” capsules, capsules that contained the artifacts of oceanic tragedies. Some from times past, some that hit closer to home than anyone could have imagined.
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