Lab+4+-+Second+Life+and+Adveritising

=Do you see that conventional means of mass media advertising can translate into Second Life? Provide reasons why or why not? =

As Second Life grows to become one of the largest popular multiplayer online games, we can see that this is untapped market for advertisers. Mass Media advertising if not already will be a part of Second Life very soon. It is such a large area to invest in with the best outcomes. Essentially advertisers make themselves present in the game will have users interacting with them on a daily basis. We can see this through companies establishing a digital market for other users to partake in their content. In the documentary we see how Second life can create a virtual self in a dynamic open ended world. Players of the game are adding new content through open source mediums and players are purchasing from them. This user generated purchasing power could allow advertising to translate easily into Second Life. As companies caught on and flooded Second life with advertising prowess a backlash in user activity occurred (McCarthy). It is hard to say why the backlash occurred but through past experiences one can argue that mass media advertising can be quite annoying. Throughout the years people have hated seeing; hearing or looking at advertisements, most of the time they were a huge bother. Now imagine this newly creative world where everything you want to do is possible is now constantly blocked and water downed with millions of companies bugging you. The users realized that it was not fun anymore and they had to back out because advertising was intruding there game. For Second Life advertising to work its going to have to be as simple as the user generated marketing approach. The users are not going to want to hear about coca cola or lose weight fast tips when they are playing a game, they are going to want to advance in the game. This is why user generated content is marketed so well because it is what the people want on that medium. If advertisers are going to be successful they are going to have to find a balance between flooding people with advertising or create silent gestures. Adveritising in games is not a new thing, in fact its already been done throughout the years with sports games. However the advertising strategy there was not to flood the user with advertising incentives, but to have a small poster here and there on the sidelines and if the user wants to look they’ll look. (Rand) When advertisers create the same approach to Second Life, by adding a presence that is not to intrusive only then will it be successful. They have to understand this as a new medium not as similar to the advertising approaches they were usually successful with.

Resources: Caroline McCarthy [] Radd, David, []