ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how examination of virtual direct experience (VDE) with brands through video games is uniquely suited to inform both in-game advertising and digital media research efforts. Another phase of gaming research began to consider the impact of game-produced and player-based factors on in-game advertising effects. Many of these studies would find that such factors either moderated or mediated the direct relationships between physical message attributes and brand-related outcomes. With digital spending consistently increasing within media advertising budgets, such insight would seem to further validate gaming research as more critical than it already is to the larger fields of digital and interactive media. And when one considers the limitless interactivity that playing a VDE game allows the media user, such findings could be informative toward the understanding of whole new theories or methods of marketing communication of brands to consumers.
