This was going to be the space where I talked about the sweet sleek awesomeness of the Fury add-on for Wipeout HD. But after having to sit through a State Farm ad that almost doubles the game's loading time, I've changed my mind. Instead, I'm going to talk about the inconvenient, inappropriate, and duplicitous intersection of State Farm and Wipeout HD. Which is why that's a picture of a State Farm ad up there instead of one of the sweet sleek awesome ships you can pilot in Wipeout HD. Incidentally, in the lower left corner of the ad is my reaction every time I have to sit through that State Farm ad again.

But let me assure you I'm not just some knee jerk videogamer with the usual sense of entitlement.

I actually think there are times that ingame advertising is appropriate.

But first, when is ingame advertising inappropriate? Let me lay it out very simply. Ingame advertising is inappropriate when:
1) it negatively impacts the gameplay
2) when it detracts from the game world, or
3) when it's deceptively introduced into the game's business model.
What makes the State Farm ad in Wipeout HD so galling is that it does all three of these things.

1) The State Farm ad negatively impacts gameplay by extending the loading time for a track. That's inexcusable. Loading time is anathema to gamers. Game developers know it. They know they need to do everything they can to minimize it. If you play early builds of games, the loading screens often have timers much like the timers inside a fast food restaurant for a car in a drive-thru. The point is to get the customer from one end of the process to the other as quickly as possible. From selecting the stage to playing the game. From pulling up to the lane to driving away with a Sourdough Jack. This is dead time and we all know it's a regrettable necessity that we'll get through because everyone agrees it should be gotten through as quickly as possible. Everyone except Sony, that is. They would hold onto your Sourdough Jack, letting it get cold, while a commercial played on a monitor that swings down on a metal arm in front of your windshield.

2) The State Farm ad detracts from the game world. The Wipeout games have always existed in a world steeped in ads: a high-tech professional sporting event attended by throngs of fans and presumably televised. You'd expect the tracks would be littered with ads. And they are. Supercool ads built from really shrewd iconography and nifty designs. And all of them fake (it's worth noting that Wipeout had a brief dalliance with Red Bull about ten years ago, but it was short-lived and discrete). But when a smarmy State Farm ad plays on the way to the track, it's sadly out of place. Because when I'm psyching myself up to soar along Sol 2 or twist through Sebenca Climb, I'm not really concerned with the rates for my homeowner's insurance. In fact, they normally don't even occur to me at that point.

3) Finally, the State Farm ad was deceptively added to the game after I had already purchased it. The game came out last year. The ad was introduced last week. But Sony and I already had a deal. I give them twenty bucks. They give me a really cool game. That was the deal. Sony changed the terms by selling my time - time I had intended to use to enjoy Wipeout HD - to an ad agency that has no compunction about cramming out-of-place advertisements onto a loading screen, even if it has to extend the loading time to make sure the entire ad plays.

This is ingame advertising at its worst: inconvenient, inappropriate, and duplicitous. So let me give you examples of when ingame advertising is appropriate.

An ad that does not impact the gameplay is okay with me. If you want to include in your game some sort of flyer for ten dollars off my next visit to Jiffy Lube, I'm okay with that. If you want to sell ads in your game manual, be my guest. Be sure to charge advertisers extra for that prominent back cover. If you want to ask me if I'm interested in installing the Pepsi Tool Bar on my browser when I install a game, feel free (protip: I am going to click "no"). None of these things inconveniences me. Nor are they terribly effective. But that's your problem, not mine.

Now here's where it gets tricky. When is an ad appropriate to the game world? I noticed recently in Quake Wars that one of the scuffed up GDI recruiting billboards had been replaced with a bright red Netflix logo. I nearly cancelled my Netflix account then and there. Well, I would have if I were playing more Quake Wars. That was clumsy, Activision. Less worse are all those Axe Body Spray ads prominently placed through Las Vegas in Rainbow Six: Vegas. Those are only only silly if you stop to think. Can the creator of cologne cum deodorant aimed at adolescents afford to buy placement at, say, the Bellagio? At least it's not as bad as Sam Fisher sneaking through shipyards in Russia and coming across an ad for Dell.

It really depends on the game. Sports games, for instance, are expected to have ads (leave it to Electronic Arts to push this too far with one of their Fight Night games shrilly shilling Burger King). But consider carefully-built worlds like Grand Theft Auto IV and Far Cry 2. They've got ads. But like the Wipeout games used to be, their ads are entirely fictional, built to immerse you in the game world. Publisher THQ signed a deal with ingame ad agency Massive last year, but I was delighted to discover that Saints Row 2 and Red Faction: Guerrilla, both very carefully built worlds that relied on their own self-contained fiction, consisted entirely of fake ads (Saints Row 2 shilled for a clothing manufacturer called Unkut, but only in a free downloadable add-on).

Which brings me to one of my favorite and most gratuitous examples of ingame advertising. Rockstar's superlative Midnight Club: Los Angeles is positively crammed with ingame advertising. You can't drive two blocks without seeing a Pizza Hut, a 7-Eleven, a Best Buy, or a Hollywood Video. In other words, it's exactly like Los Angeles. The game is a faithful and evocative recreation of a real world place that happens to be full of advertising. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. I hope it made Rockstar even more filthy rich than they already are.

Finally, if you want to base your revenue model on advertising, have at it. Videogaming is flirting with all sorts of business models these days. Among them is free-to-play, supported by advertising revenue. You can play Quake Live for free, but you do it in a window that shows an ad. Fair enough. Anarchy Online is a futuristic society way out in the galaxy that happens to have ads for contemporary Earth. But it's also free to play. Yeah, a Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo ad pretty much ruins the sci-fi mood, but you get what you pay for. Do you want to be $15 poorer every month, or do you want to look at Rob Schneider posing as if the Leaning Tower of Pisa is his penis?

Come to think of it, that's actually quite a dilemma. And yet another example of Sony's duplicity when it comes to selling you games. Because people who paid to play Planetside also had to look at that infamous Deuce Bigalow ad. And now Sony's at it again with State Farm.

The real tragedy here is that Wipeout HD is such a good game. If Sony insists on disgracing their games (and there are apparently more ads to come), I'd rather they started with the ones that aren't very good. Hey, Sony, think of all that billboard space in Killzone 2 going to waste...