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In-Game Advertising Coming to Anarchy Online
Swedish company Funcom has signed a deal with Massive, Inc to stream advertising into public areas of Rubi-Ka, the online world within Anarchy Online. Gamespot has the story. The ads are likely a direct result of the recent subscription free business model that the company has adopted for new players. From the article: "As consumers spends less time watching television and more time playing games (as indicated by numerous studies, including one from Nielsen), the game industry is turning its attention to understanding the potential to drive additional revenue from in-game advertising." Are all massive games going to be moving in this direction, or the direction that Guild Wars will take?
If they added anything annoying to any of my MMORPGs I'd probably leave. I imagine this is the same for most other players. A LOT of MMORPGs have many fans who are borderline ready to leave and just need the proper push out the door. However billboards, posters, and suttle refferences wouldn't be bad. Lets say a WoW quest called Bigger King if done in an appropriate method it would be ok. Basically the same as what they have but Paramount paying for the references to their movies and Nintendo paying for the references to their games. For DAoC, EQ, and Planetside, I see no way to do it effectively without ruining the atmosphere. WoW could do it by references only. SWG could probably do billboards.
In eve, in many space stations, they are advertising a website, that you can get a subscription to using in-game money. I won't go into details, but it is a long-standing joke in the game.
While I don't necessarily *want* to see McDonald adds in City of Heroes, they also would not stick out at all. It's actually big enough that you could sell billboards in different areas (and to compititors in other areas.)
This may be something that other companies need to look at.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Personally, I think they made it free first. Remember, it was originally only going to be free for a few weeks to draw people in. I think they extended the free period for a year when the advertisement offer came up.
In the original annoucnements for the free offer, the one caveat they added was that the offer cost them money. If too many people took advantage of it to the point that the drag on the servers made the game less enjoyable for paying players, they'd cut it short. That's something they stressed, although if it came to that I'll bet you a year's subscription cost that 90% of the free players didn't read that far down the page. Now at least the free offer won't be a big hole in their bandwidth, they're at least getting something out of it.
Also, I think that product placement has a much bigger future in MMORPGs than just billboard style ads. You WoW players will know what I mean when I say "I want DEANS Ice Cold Milk", etc. All in all, if it helps cut subscription fees then I'd be all for it as long as it is integrated with the game and not, say, ads placed trailer stye before it launches, etc.
Rob
As I posted in a link above, they are non-intrusive. The game's already full of in-character advertisement for things like the Bronto Burger and varions expensive weapons and some strange billboards with the words PWNZ ME in big red letters and pictures of low level mobs called Leets dancing on them. Free players will just start seeing paid advertisements instead, and they'll also be made to fit the game's atmosphere (as much as a McDonalds commercial can fit into a 300th century warzone, I suppose).