In a patent filed last month by Google in both Europe and the US, Google has detailed plans to psychologically profile millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games. Google believes it can glean information about an individual's preferences and personality type by tracking their online behaviour - revealing data which could then be sold on to advertisers in a move to customise adverts.
The patent says that people who play online RPGs (role playing games) like Second Life and World of Warcraft would be particularly good to target, due to the fact that players interact with each other and make decisions that are likely influenced by their behaviour in real life. It states:
"User dialogue (e.g., from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterise the user (e.g., literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc). Also, user play may be used to characterise the user (e.g., cautious, risk-taker, aggressive, non-confrontational, stealthy, honest, cooperative, uncooperative, etc)."
Google claims that the information gathered could be used to make adverts that appear inside the game more relevant to the user. Players who spend a lot of their game-time exploring their surroundings may have an interest in travelling, so the system may show advertisements in-game for vacations, while players who engage in a lot of dialogue with other characters could see advertisements for mobile phones, Google cited as examples. The patent also inferred that not all of the viewed ads would be determined by 'psychological' clues and, as another example, the patent stated among others: "If the user has been playing for over two hours continuously, the system may display ads for Pizza Hut, Coke, coffee."
However, the patent doesn't stop at online games played through a personal computer. It also details plans that Google could monitor people playing on any games console that could connect to the internet - including the Sony Playstation, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft's Xbox consoles - stating that information stored from previous games and saved on the console's storage media could be retrieved. In the patent, it is claimed, "Such saved information may be thought of state information, and offers a valuable source of information to the advertisers."
The plans have caused significant dissent among privacy campaigners, who said that the ramifications of compiling and storing such detailed information were 'alarming'. Sue Charman of online campaign Open Rights Group said:
"I can understand why they are interested in this, but I would be deeply disturbed by a company holding a psychological profile." She further commented: "Whenever you have large amounts of information it becomes attractive to people - we've already seen the American federal government going to court over data from companies including Google."
Google have said that it did not have any plans to roll out the technology in the near future and that the particular patent was just one of a large number of patents that the company had filed in recent months. A spokesman for Google commented, "Google registers different patents irrespective of whether we actually intend to use them."
To fully utilise the techniques proposed for profiling, games publishers would be required to actively build Google's technology into their games. But with games publishers looking for new ways to make money, the financial carrot that could be offered by Google for publishers' co-operation could well see the plans come to fruition.
With more games being optimised for advertising, industry experts estimate that around $500 million will be spent on in-game advertising this year alone, rising to two billion pounds by the end of the decade. With Google having already bought game advertising company AdScape earlier this year, along with a number of other high profile acquisitions, this new move suggests Google plan an aggressive move into the online gaming world.
Currently, games centred on online casinos are already seen as extremely lucrative; but experts have predicted that virtual three-dimensional worlds and online role playing games will soon be among the biggest money-spinners on the net. Should Google's plan go ahead, the potential market is enormous: World of Warcraft is already enjoying more than eight million subscribers worldwide, each paying around nine pounds per month to participate in the online fantasy world.
