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Google Businesses The Internet Entertainment Games

Google Files Patent to Monitor Gaming For Ads 101

Posted by Zonk from the stay-out-of-my-head dept.
Tookis writes "In a recent patent filing, Google has proposed a real time profiling of players of online games such as World of Warcraft. Soon players of such games may see in game ads directly designed to appeal to their persona. Last month Google filed a patent in both Europe and the US which outlined plans to psychologically profile people simply by their style of play in popular online games. 'From the patent; "User dialogue (e.g., from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterize the user (e.g., literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc). Also, user play may be used to characterize the user (e.g., cautious, risk-taker, aggressive, non-confrontational, stealthy, honest, cooperative, uncooperative, etc)." Taking this a step further, Google also believe if a player likes to explore their new virtual world, that they would be interested in the real world, as such would target the player with travel ads.'"
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Google Files Patent to Monitor Gaming For Ads More

Google Files Patent to Monitor Gaming For Ads

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  • Skewed results (Score:5, Insightful)

    by igotmybfg ( 525391 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:47AM (#19130173) Homepage
    How I act when I play online is pretty different my normal behavior, and I suspect that it's the same way for most people. We play these online games because they let us escape from our normal problems & fears, so why would they expect our behavior in a fantasy land to parallel our real lives?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
      But if they can find that they differ consistently, then they can still get some important information. For instance, if they found that people who spend all their time killing boars in the woods also drink a lot of Mountain Dew, then if you started killing lots of boars in the woods, then they'd show you ads for Mountain Dew. Not to say you like Mountain Dew, but people in your demographic do, and that's good enough for them.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Mr_Toph ( 843301 ) *
        "All this killing... why do I have a sudden urge for Mountain Dew..."

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by symes ( 835608 )
        Indeed - and one of the more interesting pieces of information they will collect is risk taking attitude. There's a bunch of psychology studies suggesting that risk attitude measured one way (e.g. in a poker game) can explain risk taking in a bunch of other domains. For example, smeone who enjoys gambling would most likely like the odd alcohol drink, or investing in more risky stocks, etc. There are, of course, a lot of other factors which mediate this relationship but when you are aggregating across a l

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by steveo777 ( 183629 )
        Can you see the new commercials? A night elf female ranger and a male dwarf warrior hacking away in some EXTREME fashion at boars and shouting, "Do the Dew" or whatever catch-phrase they're using these days.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by d0rp ( 888607 )
        Except that those people are probably already drinking a Mountain Dew at the time, so there's no need to advertise to them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dave562 ( 969951 )
          There is a term for doing that, but I'm not quite sure what it is. I think it's called "mind share." You see it during big sporting events, where companies like BASF will advertise. They aren't really trying to sell their product. They're just making sure that you know that they're out there. Advertising Mountain Dew just serves to reenforce to the consumer that they really did make the "right" choice, and it rewards their behavior.

          Unless of course they're some sort of emo non-comformist who gets turne

    • Re:Skewed results (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @11:01AM (#19130467)
      Based solely on in-game behavior, Google has come to teh startling conclusion that 98% of humans are racist homophobic white men. The other 2% are hot teen female cheerleaders.

    • Re:Skewed results (Score:4, Interesting)

      by the dark hero ( 971268 ) <adriatic_hero.hotmail@com> on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @11:07AM (#19130585) Homepage

      ...so why would they expect our behavior in a fantasy land to parallel our real lives?

      I don't think they understand the concept of role playing games. While many people have virtual traits that parallel their personality it still isn't enough to determine a target audience. This is just plain silly and intrusive. When i pay for a service like that i don't want to see ads. However, if they made a subscription MMO for free, but with adverts. Why not?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Poltras ( 680608 )
        I think you underestimate the game part as well. I play World of Warcraft because I play a game. And my behavior between the two are not the far apart. If I wanna play a role, I can as well, and then those results won't be accurate anymore, but much of the time I wanna play a game and if someone piss me in the game, there is a good chance he'd piss me in real life. I don't take the time to change my behavior just for the sake of it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by the dark hero ( 971268 )

          I think you underestimate the game part as well. I play World of Warcraft because I play a game. And my behavior between the two are not the far apart. If I wanna play a role, I can as well, and then those results won't be accurate anymore, but much of the time I wanna play a game and if someone piss me in the game, there is a good chance he'd piss me in real life. I don't take the time to change my behavior just for the sake of it.

          I understand the game aspect of it all, but you're immersed in a virtual world. You may respond to stimuli the same, but your reaction is quite different. If someone pisses you off in game do you cuss them out? Do you proceed to beat them? Will you react the same in real life? I'm more of a diplomat and a pacifist than i am a fighter, but when i play games (including MMOs) i become ravenous and i'm not even trying to roleplay. I use sly tactics in games when in real life i'm rather honest. Gaming (esp on

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by dave562 ( 969951 )
            The reality of the situation is that YOU are the same person on a deeper, subconscious level no matter if you're playing a game, or hanging out in real life. While you are playing online you might manifest different aspects of your personality in different ways. However, marketing can still be targetted to THAT portion of your personality. To think of it another way, if you're in your online world and view that as an escape from "real life", you'd probably be even more succeptible (sp?) to ads that targe

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by tibike77 ( 611880 )
      Well, contrary to "nerdculture" beliefs, the way we play games LONG-TERM actually DOES reflect our personalities and even desires FOR MOST PEOPLE.

      However, they don't reflect it directly, they don't reflect it for all people, and they certainly don't reflect it short-term.
      And it's a sad thing if "the ad servers" would take everything you do in a game literally, as you do it.

      Like, for instance, if you explore the virtual world a lot, it certainly does NOT mean you like to travel in real-life.
      Sure, if the expl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by omeomi ( 675045 )
      How I act when I play online is pretty different my normal behavior, and I suspect that it's the same way for most people.

      heh, that's true. The only games I play online are first-person shooters...and it's pretty rare that I play capture the flag with live ammunition in real life ;-)
      • Paintball exists for that! So it's possible that you'll end up seeing paintball field advertisements next time you play Unreal Tournament.
    • I agree that this isn't a fool-proof (or even decent) method of obtaining a psychological profile on someone.

      But if nothing else, they can monitor what kind of shopper you are. Do you hoard your money like I do, trying to accumulate everything for that one large purchase; or are you a spender, expending your on-hand cash every time you see something you want then and there. To know this is to know what kind of ads to show you.
    • I usually play several different characters and they can have diferent play styles :)

      Not that i want them cataloging my chat,movements, and attacks in the first place. Oh well, when worse comes to worse make a game of seeing if i could change the type of ad by altering my playstyle.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dave562 ( 969951 )
        Oh, so you like to play lots of different kinds of characters instead of sticking to a few tried and true ones? You play on multiple servers instead of one single server? You're socially permiscious, like new experiences, get bored of the same old thing after a while? Why not travel to Dubai? =)
    • I expect to see a lot of ads for the renaissance fair.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dave562 ( 969951 )
      Because from a neurological/psychological point of view, you have some deep seated structures in your brain that emerge as patterns in your behavior that you probably aren't even consciously aware of. The fact that Google is going to analyze that kind of stuff is pretty scary, but uber cool at the same time. It would be interesting to work with the folks involved in NLP research at Google.
      • It's just pure data mining.
        But if you're google, you are going to turn everything into an attribute, and you have the luxury of running your classifiers over gigantico training sets to pick out minute details and correlations. And you can settle for low support values; all that matters is that some profitable subset of people targeted by a campaign respond to it. So if that target is to "reach" 1% of the market, and 10% of the people in the training set have a correlated action and responded to a survey a c
    • Something that popped into my mind while reading this was along the lines of;

      I find myself constantly exploring, hence the travel advertisements, however I also find myself intentionally going out to find the biggest baddest thing I can in the area and see how long it takes for me to get killed. I suppose I'll see advertisements for "happy pills" soon.

      While I can understand in SOME circumstances the need for additional revenue, the fact that the possibility of seeing it pop up in a game like World of Warcra

  • Hi, this is Google GameAds... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cliffiecee ( 136220 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:50AM (#19130247) Homepage Journal
    We've noticed that you're playing a female character. Perhaps you'd like to *BE* a woman, all the time? Here's some links to popular transvestite and sex-change informational sites. Enjoy!

  • In soviet russia... (Score:4, Funny)

    by davecrusoe ( 861547 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:50AM (#19130255) Homepage
    Evil does no Google! But this is the US, and Google does no evil. Er... right?
    • Evil does no Google! But this is the US, and Google does no evil. Er... right?

      I think Google is officially a typical corporation now. Profiling its users etc... Also WTF is up with that god damn google toolbar? Its practiaclly impossible to install anything now days without being prompted to install it. Just wondering if anyone else is annoyed with this stuff.
      • Yeah i agree that is annoying, just about anything you install asks about it, it's just habit now to find the box to unclick.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by toolie ( 22684 )
        I think Google is officially a typical corporation now. Profiling its users etc...

        Now? Perhaps you missed that whole gmail add thing they have going on? Or the fact that they purchased DoubleClick, etc etc.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      I don't understand why people still buy 'no evil' from Google. Google is large corporation that is driven by profit generation, and like Microsoft or Monsanto, will perform tasks that do not benefit or improve wellbeing of general population in order to turn profit.

      I personally find advertising in games extremely detrimental to my enjoyment of them. Advertising detracts from my leisure gaming activities, breaks immersion and attempts to brainwash me into purchasing things I don't want by playing off my fear

  • rpgs -- dialogue inaccurate for targeting? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:51AM (#19130261) Journal

    "User dialogue (e.g., from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterize the user (e.g., literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc).
    So now all the balding, overweight middle-aged men playing hot female characters in rpgs will be targeted with ads for cosmetics and tampons?

    Awesome.

    Seriously, though, this makes me wonder if people who truly roleplay are going to be served ads based on their in-character dialogue -- could lead to some interesting (and profitless for the company being advertised) ads being served.

    Not that there's much roleplaying in most popular games anymore, other than the above-mentioned example.
    • Better yet, I can't help remembering some CS servers where most of the conversations involved people:

      - calling each other gay, faggot, cock-sucker, and the like,

      - calling each other "fucking camper" and/or "fucking cheater", (remember the keyword "fucking)

      - telling each other how good their mom was in bed,

      - trying the most underhanded sexist pickup lines on anyone whose name sounded, no matter how improbably, like it might be female. (And to some people even Chtulhu sounds feminine.)

      Etc.

      I shudder to think w

  • Obligatory PA comic (Score:5, Funny)

    by MeanMF ( 631837 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:53AM (#19130309) Homepage
    http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/19 [penny-arcade.com]
  • What kind of ads do cheaters get?

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What kind of ads do cheaters get?
      Recruitment ads from the Republican National Committee?
    • Report from Google Ads - Enjoy exploiting the world around you? Become a Google Patent Lawyer
    • Gold selling and power-leveling ads? Ah wait, thats already there, blast!

  • Dynamic types (Score:4, Funny)

    by RichMan ( 8097 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:56AM (#19130357)
    I will be "polite" until I encounter an in game add.
    I will then become "profane" for a short period of time.

  • blargh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by djasbestos ( 1035410 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @10:59AM (#19130425)
    Am I the only one who is sick of:
    a) being advertised at during things I ALREADY FUCKING PAID OUT THE NOSE FOR?!?! (Movies, games, etc)
    b) yet more additions to the Patent Minefield. I seriously fear that if I ever try to be innovative, I'm going to wake up in the (proverbial) hospital with my (proverbial) bits and legs blown off and a couple million dollars in "doctor's" fees.

    • Re:blargh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sporkinum ( 655143 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @11:16AM (#19130753)
      I didn't buy Battlefield 2142 due to the in game ads. My son bought it though, but did so only after finding out it was trivial to block the advertisements. They playfields are littered with blank billboards now. BTW, I like the way BF2142 plays, but there are a lot less servers available than BF2. Judging from the scuttlebutt I have heard, it is due to paying $40 for a game that is full of ads. Targeted ads would be even more annoying.
      • One thing that gets me. The lack of decent bots (that are configurable and act more like humans). I'm really tired of either having no bots or bots that are perfect and make no mistakes [or strategy for that matter].

        While I like a good bout online as much as the next guy, sometimes it's nice to just play on your terms [and not put up with other players, net lag, retarded hacked servers, etc].

        Plus I'd play party games if I'm with peeps. Wii Smoothmoves y0!

        Tom

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jesser ( 77961 )
        Why would targeted ads be more annoying than untargeted ads?
        • Agreed, if I had to see an ad, I'd must rather see an ad related to something I like than something completely unrelated to my tastes.
    • if only i could mod you up, i would!

      your comment really highlight the fact that ads are there, no matter what the hell they tell us.

      From a free content point of view, i would understand, but from a service we already pay for, it just frustrates me. Didnt they used to say that the paying service was there to compensate for the lack of revenue from ads.

      and about the patent minefield, you're so right. you can be innovative all you want, but dont you dare being successful, or that is, have money, because someon
    • I partially agree, although I do find some form of in-entertainment advertising to be okay. For instance, in a lot of Will Ferrel movies they find ways to make the advertising part of the joke, and in that instance I usually laugh at it ("if you don't chew big red, f**k you!", etc). Also, if the things in the game are supposed to be there, why not have the game earn some revenue off of it? (red bull in rainbow 6)
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I feel it's legitimate to complain to a vendor of a good or service that the enjoyment of their service is detracted from by the excess of ads. Passive billboards in a game like BF2142 aren't a big deal to me...but when they interfere with the entertainment that I paid / am paying for (for you poor saps addicted to Warcrack), I get a little miffed. Especially in the case of BF2142, which is an enjoyable game, albeit i've only tried it at a friend's house against bots.

        But I guess that's why I buy the DVD s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dave562 ( 969951 )
      The sad thing is that I can pretty much bet there is a think tank out there that did some stastical analysis and concluded that the revenue lost from those who hate ads enough to not purchase a game were compensated for by the potential ad revenue generated.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Kuvter ( 882697 )
      Agreed:
      Cable TV used to be commercial free.
      Music used to be DRM free.

      So are you going to just complain about it or fight back?
      Personally I don't watch TV, but I watch shows on DVD.
      I also listen to commercial free radio.
      I only buy CDs from concerts, where the band profits most, and from Indie bands with out DRM

      It's not much, but it's a start to fight back.
      • I release all my music for free, and when I get around to publishing it on discs / online stores, I will only make it available WITHOUT DRM.

        I rarely watch TV. I also watch the shows on DVD that I like. I don't listen to the radio, except occasionally the student radio, which has no commercials (but mostly because nobody plays industrial...I suppose I could just listen to streaming radio too...but that's what my vast collection of completely legitimate mp3 files are for). NPR and the local classical stati
  • I can't see adverts happening in-game for RPGs. Although WoW does have a lot of gold advertisments going on ingame (some conspiracy theories suggest Blizzard are linked to these companies).

    Valve I could doing this, they sell their soul for any form of revenue.
  • The analysis to do this could be run by the client, as it observes your usage, then uploaded. Sounds like spyware or crapware if they do it.
  • ...we've noticed that other people who like shooting people purchased the following semi-automatic rifles."
  • We have enough illiterate, moronic ads from Gold Sellers in WoW thank you very much. I can't seem to go an hour or so without getting a whisper from a level 1 character whose name seems to be a random string of chars saying "hi plz meet you, you buy gold, you buy now! sucky sucky ten dollar!" Obviously the last part is fictional, but I'm irritated. I can't wait to get whispers from idiots in game telling me to spend my money on their shitty product.

  • Annoying ADS!!! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LordBafford ( 1087463 )
    It's already in CS 1.6, and I find it annoying, but I can deal cause at least ti is just games off steam ads, like TFC2 and Portal. If I buy future games and it is plastered with Coke, Ford, and GAP ads or crap like that I will just return it. Ads are just wasted space fr something else. Now I do remember a CS map that had a bunch of phony ads a while back that were funny. that was ok cause it was part of the map. They made fake billboard ads for a town.
    • Since when a movie called "Shooter" and Intel part of Valve and Steam?

      Also they put them in the weirdest places. A map like Office would suit it yet Dust doesn't, so which has ads again?
  • I have Bipolar, good luck keeping your tracking on me straight!

    Seriously WTF though. How the hell can profiling like this even be legal when you consider all the info Google already has? These guys know more about people that the government does.
    • It's just one small conspiracy theory away from linking to law enforcement. We've all read fiction where the rulers (government or industry) watch everyone's every move, to root out dissent and "criminal" behavior. What if they could get their subjects to willingly volunteer their time and money in order to build up their own personality profile?

      Too bad I'm a terrible creative writer, this sounds like an interesting story. Yeah...story...
  • How do they plan on collecting this data? personaly I dont like spyware, maby they should send me ads about how to remove there own spyware
  • Don't let the blindingly bright holiness of the 'Don't Be Evil' company blind you from the obvious.

    This patent is just taking existing knowledge and technology and applying it "in video games" much the same as the "...on the internet" patents.

    -Rick

  • I don't watch tv or listen to radio (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @11:52AM (#19131377) Journal

    It ain't because I do not like tv. Well I don't, the recent drive to reality tv is one I could do without, but mostly it is because I just don't have time for the ads. Since tv programs are interrupted by them and I just don't have the patience to wait the 5+ minutes before the program resumes I just don't watch anymore.

    Radio? The same story. Apart from the fact that I just don't like a lot of modern music, I also just don't want to have 5+ minutes of ads before the news and 5+ minutes after and that is if you don't count the station jingles as ads. Just how much ads do you need to play some music?

    I run an ad-filter on my pc to filter ads, google including.

    I have a NO-NO sticker on my door wich in the netherlands is the legal way to force ad companies to not post ads in your physical mail box.

    GET THE FUCKING PICTURE! I DO NOT WANT YOUR GODDAMNED ADS!

    It ain't even the principles of ads that upsets me but that the majority of them are so damned annoying. I suppose an annoying ad you notice you work better, I am probably the only person in the world who absolutly refuses to buy products related to annoying ads (or so ad-companies seem to think), but they annoy me.

    And now they want ads in games. Right.

    Google has the motto "do no evil". Am I the only one who realizes that the slogan of an ad company is not worth a goddamn thing?

    • Google has the motto "do no evil". Am I the only one who realizes that the slogan of an ad company is not worth a goddamn thing?
      You're not alone.

    • I understand completely.

      Maybe I'm just weird, but I like my time to be used "efficiently". What I mean by that is, if I want to be doing X activity for some about of time T, I'd like to be able to do X for the entirity of T without interruptions I myself choose to make.

      I do not watch TV because the ads interrupt the activity without me wanting them.
      I do not listen to anything but public radio, and only during non-pledge periods because everything else interrupts my activity with ads.
      I do not buy games with
  • I propose we all chip in to create broad patents on all manner of annoying things, and then refuse to license them to anyone.

  • I was against this... (Score:4, Funny)

    by 2008 ( 900939 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @11:57AM (#19131449) Journal
    ...but then I realised that getting served adverts like "Upgrade your Zerglings TODAY" and "Scourge now two for one at all hatcheries" would actually be pretty cool.
  • The idea that my every move is being tracked and could incur advertising will certainly take the fun out of a MMORPG for me. Sure, I know that the server is watching my every move, but I know it generally doesn't care. What I do is harmless and has no effect in the real world. It's nice. Now I have to worry that every step I make will trigger ads. It would be a real shame if it came to that.
  • I got about 20 of them in 3 hours yesterday. Complain about them and you'll get an automated message from a gm-bot after $RANDOM delay promising to "Look into it". In some cases you'll get 2 or 3 more ads prior to the automated response from the first one.

    Fortunately it's still trivial to block these ads, though I think it's about time to escalate the arms race with a mod to prohibit people who are not on your friends list or in your guild from whispering you. If a game company wants me to pay $15 a month

  • I could see in-game ads for games in contemporary settings, like GTA, but in World of Warcraft, they'd just look silly.

    This is an issue for Hollywood - advertisers can't do product placement in historicals, which makes them unpopular. (Although if you look very closely at Marie Antoinette's closet, you'll see a pair of Converse All-Stars.)

  • I would hope Blizzard would have the sense not to put adds in game... Would you care if they put a little banner add on the forums? In game behavior profiles could easily be used to target adds to forum users.

    To take it a step further, they could associate the IP address you login from with your user account. Then combine your in game behavior profile with other data related to your IP address. Then sell the data to other companies that might use IP address to target banner adds.
  • Google how weak, searching /. for patentable ideas and claiming them as their own http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167009&ci d =13929372 [slashdot.org]

    New definition of the term googley ie. "something is just not quite as it appears and more research needs to be done ie. that work contract is all a bit googley, I'll need to get a lawyer to check it", "the product is a bit googley, I'll need to do a bit more research so I don't get stuck with a dud.", "that patent is all a bit googley and check around and see w

  • Oh wait, they said they aren't evil.

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