Slashdot Mirror
Online Gaming Ad Network Launches
Wynken de Word writes "'In a move that could open a new vista of possibilities for advertisers, New York-based Massive Inc. today announces the launch of the first ad-serving network for video games. The company said it has so far signed game publishers UbiSoft, Atari, Universal and Konami as partners in its system, which enables marketing messages to be projected into the digital fabric of their online games.' AdAge.com has the article (reg req.)." If you don't feel like registering for AdAge, just read the press release or see the company website.
This is just short of driving to your house and holding you down while you read an ad. I wonder if this will effect usage of the games? I'm 46 so out of the demographic they are looking for, but, I am very ad-aversive so I know it would effect my usage. I'm not saying it's good or bad to have the ads, just saying it would effect how I use a web site.
http://www.busyweather.com/
So this means that instead of paying $50 to Valve so I can play play Counter Strike over Steam or $50 to Ubi (+15/mo) to play one of their MMORPGs, I'm going to get it for free - or at the worst, a significant discount, right?
Or does this just mean that in addition to spending $50 for the game and $20/mo for the service and $50/yr for expansion packs, you're also going to have the added bullshit of being bombarded with advertising in one of the few places you can go to escape those very things?
Why not just have my boss appear in the video game that I'm playing at 2am on a Saturday morning (during MY time) telling me that I need to join some conference meeting?
Isn't it bad enough that I have to put up with ads on my television, radio, public transportation, and web browser? Christ, give us five minutes of peace, you ad-serving bastards.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Great, the one place i go to get away from advertising and commercials is video games, now it seems it's going to be just as bad as sitting at home watching TV. I think ill just watch all the visions in my head. (thanks to the 70's i get 15 psychadellic stations in 34 blazing colors)
-DrMyke
"mmmmmmmmm, doughnuts" - H.J.Simpson; super genius
Just stand in front of one of the advertising panels and no one is going to risk taking a potshot at you in case they miss and get whisked off to buy some dumb widget... Worst of all, if the ads are proxied through the game server instead of being downloaded directly from the advertising company, it's going to be a little bit more tricky to block them. Particularly if doing so involves reverse engineering the game protocol as that potentially puts you on the wrong side of the DMCA and its equivalents...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
...has lost a sale.
If they think they are going to use my fucking bandwidth and processing power to display an advertisement, and that I will pay them for the privilege, they are deluded.
When someone insults me like this, I will gladly piss all over his intellectual property.
Yea, that's what it means.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Great, now our video card drivers will have to have ad blocking code in them to filter out the lame ads.
Alrighty, I'm not a big fan of online games as it is, and am heavily against the subscription-based ones. I can't say I'm fond of stuff like Evercrack where you shell out quite a bit of money for the game, the expansion pack, and then are expected to subscribe for online play.
;-)
If in some way they can forego a subscription fee and simply subject its players to advertising, I'm all for it. In a sense, I do think it's pretty cool seeing ads for stuff -- hell, you see it when you're watching sports (so if it's in the game, why not put it in THE game
As long as it's tolerable and affects my bank account positively, go for it. If it doesn't affect pricing significantly, then screw 'em.
What these game companies should do is sell ad-subsidized games. Full price: No ads. Super discount price: Ads galore. Much like Eudora or Opera.
I had better not see space blimps with tampon advertisements in Halo 2. It's bad enough on TV. The tampon ads, not space blimps. Space blimps are cool.
It's only a model.
The thing that occured to me most in relation to the topic is when movie theaters started putting commercials before movies.. I griped, I complained, I lamented.. but I still go to movies.
Chances are, if/when online games get a stream of marketing, I'll gripe, I'll complain, I'll lament.. but I'll still play the games.
This is probably why a company that markets this could be very successful.
-- Jinsaku
Are you ashamed of your sword? Does it embarass you when an opponent laughs at the size of it? There is a solution! In no time at all, you can be wielding a massive zweihander, slaying tons of opponents. You'll be the toast of the party.
Because sometimes you need a bigger hunk of....steel.
It sounds like annoying crap on paper, but ads have been in many games for a long long time, they've just been static and moronicly fake. A race track with 15,000 Sobe beverage ads?
If this leads to basically a more dynamic and realistic version of that for games where it is appropriate (sports/racing games in particular) the market might actually respond to it as a cool feature.
Other ads could be much more borderline. Playing Splinter Cell 3 and you turn on a TV and it just happens to have an ad for the next episode of survivor.. You play a week later and it's an ad for the simpsons. A crumpled magazine on the floor changes from a picture of a coke can to gum. Such subtlety that crosses over into immersion without being abrasively intrusive is going to be an interesting gray area.
If they are a moron about it though, and have a full screen pop up ad for the Star Wars trilogy DVD between rounds of counterstrike, they'll self destruct their new ad delivery vehicle.
Since most computer games take place in fantasy settings where real-world advertisements would be inappropriate, I have to wonder just how popular this is going to be. It also assumes certain display models--a FPS could display billboards while there's no good place in RTS games but the load screen. It's an interesting idea that's a bit ahead of its time, but I don't see it being used in any of the games that are on my christmas list.
I like it.....
as long as you can blow them up with missiles.
AD FRAG!
Just like cable TV - you pay to get commercials.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
COUNTER-TERRORISTS WIN!
and now a word from our sponsor...
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Bring the games down to a reasonable price, and help ensure it's going to be "good" and I'll buy more games. I pretty much stopped buying the new stuff once they hit $50-$60 per title only to buy it and find it to be hyped-up junk.
This is just an extension of us being viewed as consumers. We're no more than sheep to be fleeced as often as possible. And this is done by bombarding us with advertising as often as possible in whatever environments possible. What ever happened to the vendor supplying "value added" and counting that (the inprovement in there reputation) as advertising? I guess some clown in a corporate boardroom can't pocket that or claim it on the quarterly statement to get the mutual funds to buy more of their stock.
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
saw this in a different article about Massive, Inc. and how this works. I hope the following is true:
Targeting features must be agreed upon with game developers, and usually require players to provide opt-in registration.
Oh that much is true, hidden in the EULA somewhere...
The secret to getting modded up is to allways say i've got karma to burn in your sig..
I want to do my part to keep America Strong and I think by playing games with ad's in it, I will be helping. I fully expect Coke AND Pepsi will debate the better cola in front of me as I am entertaining myself in front of some FPS. Lets face it, you play too many games as do I. We don't have time to really be informed about whats important to us, our things. We have been making bad consumer choices for awhile since we've been into Everquest and not paying attention to the ad's that shape our lives really. Without these ad's, everywhere and all the time, we are simply lost consumers pretending to enjoy things of which we know so little about and perhaps nothing of the competition.
I say to you Coke, why are you better? And to you Pepsi, differentiate yourself from your rival, mean Mr. Coke. I say duel! To the victor goes my spending dollar! Hurrah!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Now you don't have to feel bad about pirating games. You'll know that the designers are making money just by you playing it. You could almost imagine that you're doing them a favor by it.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Having a Replay TV for a few years, using a proxy filter to filter ads, and disabling Shockwave except when needed, I hardly see advertisements.. Yet, I still don't have a problem spending my money!! Yup, I still have things I would like to buy that I can't even afford yet. It's crazy, but even without seeing those all-important ads, I still seem to know about new products!
In video games, I wouldn't mind seeing a 30-second advertisement say.. in between maps.. if the advertisement made me laugh. If the ads have any sort of entertainment value, then people don't hate them as much. Sometimes video games just seem too serious and I think a funny advertisement every once in a while could lighten the mood and make us realize that the other team isn't necessarily enemies - just fellow gamers.
Plus, ads work negatively if they piss off the viewer. Anything that wastes my time pisses me off. But, if I laugh, then I don't feel I've wasted that time. There could be a big market for creating something for groups of people on teamspeak/ventrillo to laugh and talk about..
Something tells me that these ads are all gonna be boring, can't close, gotta watch, piss-me-off-type ads..
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Someone more qualified will probably pipe in, but I've always believed that advertisements are not designed to sell things right away. They're there to create brand recognition and awareness. So you might not want to buy a Coke right then and there, they hope that when the time comes to buy a Cola drink, you'll think of Coke first.
And it must work, because you did mention Coca-Cola in your post.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
Oh great, another area of entertainment slathered with advertising. Intrude on my games and destroy any immersion - what a great way to attract me as a customer.
First: Is ANYone surprised that Real is mentioned as being first in line?
Second: Did it occur to them that the 18-34 male demographic is so hard to reach with traditional adverts because they go out of their way to avoid it?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Besides things like Mountain Dew and Jet Moto 2 on the playstation, or Red Bull and Wipeout XL, there have been ads in Half-life before.
There were servers on WON which had maps which were loaded with ads...presumably these ads were run by the companies being advertised. I don't recall what the companies were, but it just seemed like it would have been.
There was rarely anyone on these servers, and the maps sucked.
Also, as to their claims of "micro-segmentation," internet advertisers have been promising that for years and have been almost completely unable to deliver. I'm still getting ads for internet gambling (on sites that should know my interests a little better than that), and I won't even go to a REAL casino.
Why? My guess is they lack a large enough pool of advertisements to have ads available to match up to individual viewers. The closest I've seen is Google, who seemingly have ads from such a broad array of advertisers that they occasionally come up with something I like. (And since I'm usually not logged in, and often not on my own computer, they presumably don't even have a pattern of behavior to associate with me)
And lets talk about intrusiveness for a moment. Putting an ad into the middle of say, 2fort, isn't so bad. It pretty much lacks atmosphere as it is. Putting an ad into say, most Halo or UT 2004 maps, or Doom 3...that would, for the most part, be unavoidably cheesy. Like obvious product placement in movies ("I Robot" anyone?)
This is going to fail. Maybe not fail BIG, but it will fail. BEST CASE it will stick arond like banner ads. Most of the promises they're making to advertisers though, are bullshit. But what do you expect? These are salesmen offering their services as salesmen.
But perhaps a choicily blocked port or some smart host files entries will be all thats requried (at least in the beginning) to thwart their ad plans. And perhaps, as with other forms of advertising, it will need some regulation to keep it under control. There seems to be a propensity on the internet that since its a new medium that the old rules need not apply.
Any game worth buying provides a demo.
:-(
Be cautious of some demo's. I bought Nerf Arena because I liked the demo. It ran wihout a CD in the drive, and could be loaded on several computers for LAN play. The full version lacks both of these features. (unless you look up no CD in Google.) For a long time the LAN parties simply stuck to using the demo. It was better than the full version and kept us from openly breaking the software license. It even worked with many of the free downloadable maps and textures.
Some LAN games permit spawning so you can LAN play with just one copy. (One of the truck racing games comes to mind that can spawn up to 8 clients) Others do not and require a copy for each player. Most either won't tell you on the box or it's buried in the fine print. Too bad more games don't spawn LAN players.
I have a LAN. The cost of a LAN game varies a lot depending if spawning players is permitted or not. I'm not spending over $100 on a game so the kids can race each other. Getting a game touted for LAN play and find it "broken" because nobody can join the game is not fun. (Spawning is making a client from the CD. The client will play over the LAN to the server. The client will not run as a stand alone game. The server then can support many players over a LAN without needing to buy extra copies of the game)
If I am not bored by the time I make it to the end of the demo (if I even make it to the end), then I consider buying it.
To buy it, the price has to be right. This is more important if several copies are needed for legal LAN play. Setting up a race on a LAN souldn't break the bank.
With Nerf, it's chaep enough to pick up the extra copies and stay within budget or the demo works fine for LAN parties. This is not the case with Need for Speed. Great LAN features, but nobody to race due to a single copy.
Needless to say, Need for Speed (got the boxed set) doesn't get dusted off much. Nerf gets a workout. Someday, I'll find more copies of Need for Speed in Goodwill so we can actualy race each other without violating copyright.
The truth shall set you free!