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In-Game Advertising Breaks Out
UID1000000 writes "MSNBC reports that companies like Nielsen are implementing tracked advertising in video games. Viacom is also considering in-game advertising. I can't wait until your first person shooter stops and drinks a nice cold refreshing soda."
I'm not quite sure how this is all that new. Many, many console games have ads throughout the game. I was playing Madden 2005 just a few minutes ago... and the billboards in the stadiums are pushing all sorts of EA-related stuff.
What has shocked me is the failure of freeware with embedded ads. For a while it seemed many freeware authors were trying to make money with this concept.
As a freeware author myself, it didn't work well for my product. People preferred the old, buggy ad-free version to the final version with small, tasteful ads. I ended up making more money off the google ads on the download page than I did from the product.
I finally killed the ads and the number of people using the program hit the roof.
AC
Will there be points for Coke vs Pepsi? Can I get all the Gatorade? If I get generic, will get sick?
...should soon be rife with this sort of thing. Want to play the game? For free? Well, here's some ads to enjoy in the mean time. Might bug some folks, but if the game is really that good, hell, i'll buy...if the ads are taken out of the pay-version.
PlanetSide already got ads for Intel on the loading screen, and tbh i doesnt really bother me, if it means more money for development, then they can fill the loading screen if you ask me!
Forget the Coke ads. I want the Budweiser girls!
Can anyone remember an old Amiga games called Pushover? Sponsored by Quavers?
Or Zool not only being covered with advertising but even came with its own Lolipop
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Yeah, I was playing Evil Dead the other day and saw a blatant ad for S-Mart. It was terrible because it wasn't a billboard or anything, it was actually part of the storyline.
If it's unobtrusive or, even better, adds to the game then all well and good. If it jars or is too blatant then back goes the game to the store.
I would compare the appearance of Omega watches and Aston-Martins in James Bond and Starbucks in Shrek (which I think was all well done) with the appearance of Audi in I,Robot and BMW in James Bond: both of which I felt jarred and reduced my enjoyment of the film.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
IMO if a videogame is going to advertise during the game, there better be a substantial discount (I know there won't be but a guy can dream). I do not see the game experience benefit of the Master Chief powering up with a SoBe Liz Blizz, or enjoying Coke often.
It would be less distasteful to include advertising with the game documentation - although that fails with online downloads.
Strangley, now I WANT a Fanta...
Something like this?
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
You can use the god cheat by typing at the console:
"Iforgiveyouforcrystalpepsi"
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
Ads on TV I can mute, but I can't stand ads in the movies, when you've already paid high dollar for a ticket, then while you're a captive audience they blast Coke/Blockbuster/Body Fantasies ads at you.
Arrgh.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
I remember playing text adventure games on a Commodore Vic 20 where you'd find leaflets and reading them presented you with an ad for another game by the company. Granted, this wasn't an unrelated company looking for product placement, but it was still advertising within the game.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this margin is too small to contain.
Prices of games will never come down from this. If anyone thinks that they're an idiot. It only means that the corporate whores in the publishers companies will be making more money.
Get hit with the Ad Cannon and you'll be incapacitated for several seconds while your avatar stops and conspicuously consumes:
- a bag of Doritos
- a can of Red Bull
- a bottle of Tums
- a tube of Preperation-H
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
Will we be able to blow up the ads? That might make it acceptable.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
If there is a Diablo III, the potion vendors get replaced with vending machines, the smiths get replaced by Wallmart, the other NPCs will be wearing sandwich boards, and all of the armour will have logos on them...
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
I came here to kick ass and chew Watermelon Bubblicious... and i'm all out of Watermelon Bubblicious
Well Playboy magazine is already one step a head of you. Their next issue will be an interesting crossover of video game advertising and girlie photos. See here for more info.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Anarchy Online already has billboards advertising Alienware computers :)
(This is a tie-in to a marketing campaing related to the launch of AO expansion titled 'Alien Invasion')
I doubt any gamer would mind much for (paid) advertising in the form of (animated) billboards or 'holograms' in first person shooter levels, but the stuff should *fit the theme*. Futuristic shooter such as Unreal Tournament would be easy - just stick in some billboards to suitable levels, but if someone would start selling McDonalds stuff by planting ingame ads into something like Everquest, gamers would go berserk over it...
It all depends how it's done. I think Sims Online and The Sims 2 also have somekinda marketing/product placement deals already set up.
You seem to be confusing free speech (as in the fundamental democratic right) with free media (as in not having to pay to read something).
That is a very dangerous position to be in.
They want *me* to pay for games.. so that I can see advertisements??!
:-> )
I absolutely do not see how this benefits gamers in any way.. game prices will NOT go down (exclusive scoop.. you heard it here, folks!), and game quality will suffer (progammers will be forced to change their mindset from "what will make this a good game?" to "how can we maximize the ad space?")
I prefer the "fake" ads in many games s/a GTA.. they're funny (I want a Mibatsu Monstrosity
I am the maverick of Slashdot
The example they gave in the article was GTA, referring to the billboards on the streets. I can honestly say that it wouldn't bother me at all to see companies pay to put their real product ads in games in that manner. Same goes for sports games, which the ads in the arena, yadda yadda.
These are places where, in our every day lives, we are used to seeing ads. This is no change, as long as its done in a non-invasive sort of way...That is as long as you aren't forced to sit and absorb the ad.
Nothing. Nothing in the whole freaking world, makes me madder than being forced to sit through an advertisement. If I have paid for a freaking movie, and they make me watch some goddamn annoying commercial at the beginning, I find that completely intolerable. I doubt I'm alone.
So it all comes down to the same thing; how much advertising can be done without making people crazy? I think GTA would be a good testbed, because if the ads make the players crazy, you know someone is going to go to the ad company and kill everyone there. Its a given.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
D3 has lots of advertising/news for fictional companies.
A non-futuristic FPS occuring in current times could include Microsoft software boxes, Dell monitors on desks, maybe the occasional Coke machine, etc.
Stuff we're used to in our everyday lives that just appears natural there. (Similar to product placement in movies. I'm not speaking of the commercials beforehand, but within the movie, such as a person wearing Nike sneakers or driving a Lexus.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Do I want billboards all over my games, so while I'm eliminating the Zerg, they're running past a big ad for a Volvo? Not really.
...but y'all are probably right. What we're gonna get instead is a cut-scene in Fallout making sure we realize our Pip-Boy runs Microsoft Pocket PC 2025...
On the other hand, remember the original Castle Wolfenstein? To regain health, you'd eat a meal that someone left out. Does it hugely change gameplay if, in a more modern setting, to regain health the object you grab looks like a bag of Doritos and a can of Pepsi? Not really.
Done well, in-game advertising can actually yield a more realistic feel-- if I'm playing an FPS set in modern times, I should be walking past Coke machines and USA today newspaper boxes and have a UPS truck drive by. It's reality, and having them say "Cola!" "News!" and "Package Smashers!" detracts from the realistic feel of the game.
-JDF
Jennifer Government.
Read it. It will happen (or something like it). It IS happening. Futurama was NOT at all wrong when it depicted advertisers beaming their crap into people's brains while they dreamed. Every successful marketing/sales droid I know would have zero second thoughts about anything which can increase revenue. Among those people, there are no morals. I mean, Pepsi has already tried to pollute the night sky. Pizza Hut is slapping their logo on the side of spaceships. This has been going on for years. There's nowhere they won't try to go.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Am I the only person here old enough to have played Pole Position? Where all the billboards were for things like "Dig Dug" and Namco? It would seem this is hardly a recent phenomenon. What is recent is that nobody had any info on whether the kid with the two liter bottle of shasta was walking over to the Dig Dug game and inserting quarters. What Neilson is trying to do is figure that out.
I'm not sure why everyone assumes it _must_ be an intrusive in-your-face affair, or that tracking _must_ mean your data being sold to the advertiser.
There are lots of opportunities for advertising in online multiplayer games which won't necessarily break the game.
E.g., a MMO which happens in modern times is pretty much expected to have billboards. City of Heroes for example has them, but they're just funny in-game stuff (bail bonds for villains and such) instead of trying to sell a real world product.
Now think a little. Getting a couple of real world banners for those billboards would definitely not be annoying or break suspension of disbelief in any way. E.g., if I saw a big MacDonalds billboard in that city, I wouldn't stop and think "wtf is it doing there." It would fit right in with the rest of the urban landscape.
It also doesn't even need to be a big billboard, but can be something even more subtle or less intrusive.
E.g., in a town you _expect_ shops. In fact, you tend to be disappointed when you don't see them. I know I've stopped and wondered about how few the shops in City of Heroes are.
So I don't think it would look out of place if in a hypothetical modern day MMO you saw a MacDonalds or Pizza Hut on a street corner. It fits there and it makes sense. Those townfolks must be eating somewhere.
Or you can go even more subtle and have stuff like: if that town has a shoe store, sometimes it could sprout a sign in the window proclaiming a big sale on Nike sportswear. It's not like you don't see those IRL, you know.
Also, these are massively bandwidth intensive games anyway, _and_ are based on stuff downloaded on-the-fly from their servers anyway. Having to download an extra 16k worth of compressed texture for some billboard ad wouldn't really make any difference.
So, really, what's the problem?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
We had a pretty good money offer to put a sponsored add in the Quake 1 entry level. We decided not to just on the basis of it being tacky, which was for the best, considering the company (some random early internet company) dissapeared into obscurity.
I don't have any fundamental problem with product placement in games, but it isn't something we pursue. I would just as soon have real brands in realistic settings instead of made up ones.
John Carmack