Slashdot Mirror
Refreshing Taste of Sprite Invades Anarchy Online
When in-game advertising was announced as a backbone of the new free of charge Anarchy Online, it seemed like this far off concept that we'd see 'someday'. That day is now. Grimwell has a look at Rubi-Ka after the invasion of the marketeers. From the article: "The advertisements were blinking on various billboards, both in cities and in instanced missions. They randomly displayed ads for the upcoming tournament, the "Rubi-Ka rumble", or the above product placements. Obviously, one or the other of them could be existing through time, human cataclysms, and space travel to the future planet of Rubi-ka, but seeing Motley Crue ads did cause me to wonder when I'd see them touring Omni Entertainment." Totally worth it if only for the screenshots.
I see the developers were reading up on their Penny Arcade.
Seriously though, as long as they're able to avoid television commercial-like breaks in the gameplay, I have no problem with this. My biggest gripe with MMO gaming is having to a pay a monthly fee - so much so that I even gave Project Entropia a try (helpful hint: do not play Project Entropia). Since AO got some pretty good reviews, and since it's being offered for the low, low price of free, I'm certainly going to give this one a try.
Does anyone actually know what the subscription fee for The Matrix Online is going to be? Feels kind of strange to spend $50 on an MxO box and not actually know how much a month I'm gunna get hit with when they start billing.
As for advertisements in-game, sure, go for it, I don't care.. it just looks like more uban sprawl. In fact, I'd have trouble beleiving The Matrix world without advertisement.
How we know is more important than what we know.
People play games like this because they like to feel immersed in the world in which they're playing. Putting modern advertisements like this into games breaks the immersion (as the article pointed out) and in the end result would (1) cause people to stop wanting to play the game and (2) not make people buy these products. People that feel pissed of at Sprite, for example, because they're interfering in their game are not going to want to buy that product.
- dshaw
Who gives a fuck about advertising in online games? Particularly when the game is free for you to play. MMOGs, in case you hadn't read the giant writing on the wall, are expensive to run. They need to make up for that cost. That's called advertising. It's easy, generates steady income, and can be targeted. Good for them, bring on more ads. If you can't deal with ads, just don't play the fucking game. You'll be saving companies bandwidth costs anyway. The above paragraph is the longest anyone should be discussing ads in free games.
schild
editor, f13.net
Let us hope that they don't get greedy, and that they have enough sales to atleast break even.
-- Dan
love a good ad (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08, @12:32AM (#12172966) as much as I love a good first post!
-YOU FAIL IT.
love,
Anonymous
It seems like it'd be ok in this setting, as long as the ads stay on the billboards. In any game with a modern or near-future urban setting, ads can enhance the realism.
If items are sponsored by advertisers, say a Sprite's Water Gun of Death is created, then I'll get concerned.
If there are ads like SpikeTV's ads during Star Trek (animated on the side of the screen, and sometimes with sound), then that's the last straw. A break in the action like a cutscene to show an ad would be horrible too.
It's kind of hard to write this without turning it into some kind of senseless rant :(... oh well.
This is just the first step in a really fine line the developers and advertisements are trying to find. In my opinion, advertisements have gotten way out of control. For example, in my old High School there's a subtle form of advertisement where Coca-Cola gave our school a certain percentage of profit from a bunch of soda machines located around campus. I didn't realize the impact of this when I found out that our school actually had a quota to meet every month before the school could receive their cut. Yep, fat kids just so the school can pay their bills.
OK, so it's not like AO is suffering for cash with their subscribers. It's fairly explicit the advertisements are displayed to non-paying, "customers." But wait! What's this?
There are two key points in that sentence. The first is the author admits the ads break the atmosphere of the game. Honestly, imagine running around Diablo II and seeing Pepsi soda machines out in the middle of nowhere? Or playing a game that takes place 500 years into the future and flying a, "Doritos Battlecruiser," into a fight? Free or not, I'll go somewhere else, thank you.
The other point he brings up is how players might not complain if the costs are reduced or even removed. If some random company starts putting advertisements into their MMOG, they might not actually lower fees or even make it free for everybody. Subscribe to Cable TV and you'll see what I mean. For example, Cable TV is always loaded with advertisements. I pay $45/month and I still get the same number of advertisements as I would if I didn't pay any money at all. Only difference would be fewer channels to watch. Hell, I'd have to be paying $100/month or more to even hope of getting any channels advert free.
AO might keep this current model. Who knows? But I have serious doubts that other MMOG's or future ones will follow suit. Freebie accounts might have these ugly advertisements. Paid accounts might have more subtle ones, or ones you can control. The point is, the idea of paying cash to get rid of advertisements isn't going to last very long once you have that captive audience and some bean counter figures out how much more profit the company will earn.
If I'm in a game, I'd rather live without the ads. I don't want to be kicking some alien ass in Duke Nukem Forever in a sea of redundant Coca-Cola and McDonalds ads 20 years from now. I get enough of those adverts in real life.
~SavannahLion
But do Sprite, et al, want to be associated with the word "anarchy"? Wait till the reactionary right-wing moralists hear about this - there will be trouble. "Sprite supports evil liberal agenda of societal anarchy! Save the children! Donate to us!"
For Matrix Online to start including ads. Take a look at this screenshot.
n s_6121636.html?page=7
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/matrixonline/scree
Its ad for the recent film The Jacket, which unsuprisingly was released by a company owned by Time Warner.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
You have a nice video (which u cannot skip) where Sam fisher jumps into an helico, speaks to his boss and then grabs a pack of AirWaves (Chewing Gums from Wrigley(tm) ) and starts chewing...
full zoom on the pack, etc...
I almost stopped playing at this time (say 5 minutes into the game...)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Isn't this a good example of advertising in games???
As a marketer and an avid game-player, I love the idea. It brings more realism to the game. While I appreciate the humor and creativity that Rockstar has gone through to create fake products, it does reduce the realism from the world. I also find it exciting that these ads aren't static; they will change over time, perhaps depending on your location or demographic.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
"Or playing a game that takes place 500 years into the future and flying a, "Doritos Battlecruiser," into a fight? "
If you remember your history from the film Demolition Man you would know that it would be a Taco Bell Battlecruiser in the future.
I just think it's cool that they use Bittorrent as the only way to download a copy.
They should take this a step further. The best gun in the game should be a Colt, or a Remington, or whatever other gun maker ponies up the dough. When you drink Sprite in the game, it should give you health back. OBEY YOUR THIRST! And hey, the bad guys could all be wearing logos of the competitors, you know, like "KILL THE EVIL SIERRA MIST CULTISTS!" Yeah. Rock on!
But yeah, if I wasn't having so much fun in World of Warcraft now I'd probably play AO for free with ads.
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
Er, A Tale in the Desert anyway. Read the captions for a good laugh.
As long as the ad contains beautiful, buxom women engaging in sexual activites for the namesake of the product, ala "Family Guy"
Pawtucket Ale
If you drink it, beautiful women will have sex in your backyard"
But to keep this on topic, I fully support the move for in-game advertising, especially if the article is true:
(Emphasis mine.) To this, I say: bring it on!
Something else to consider: will this perhaps eventually fund game development? A company has a concept for a game, whether MMO or not, and they get companies to sponsor the development in exchange for prominent placement? So maybe in the next MMO game we'll see the "eBay Auction House" or the "General Motors Inter-zone Transportation" place? It's a bit tasteless to just throw a company name up when it has nothing to do with the theme of the game, but if it's something like The Matrix Online, where the urban sprawl lends itself perfectly for company-sponsored locations -- just like real life -- then why the heck not?
Companies already spend boatloads of money and take a shotgun approach to marketing, spending millions on advertising for a single SuperBowl spot. Why not spend a fraction of that, fund some game development, and get thousands more impressions targeted at the exact kind of audience you want. ATI, nVidia, and Intel to name a few already use this concept when sponsoring game competitions. What better way to reach their exact target market?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
At least these ads are integrated into the game to seem lifelike and subtle. Can you imagine pop-up ads, or what Tivo is planning to do?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
"...as long as they're able to avoid television commercial-like breaks in the gameplay..."
It won't take long for that. As long as you keep buying/supporting games that have these advertisements, you will effectively be screwing us all over in the future.
You are among the majority, but unfortunately the majority lacks any and all foresight.
Just got the latest splinter cell. The outtake in the game are basically adverts for chewing gum and the load screen has an AMD advert.
I can see this only getting worse. I don't know how they justify the advertising, the game is still horribly expensive to buy.
Sounds like somebody doesn't like the refreshing taste of Sprunk. That, or you've been buying clothes at the Zip (or maybe at the Gash) for too long.
the parody of ads (and especially in GTA3, the parody of radio culture as well) is what made the game #1 in its genre. I hope they stay away from real advertising -- would Sprite legal let you drive a car through its billboard? Sprunk's legal forces didn't care a whit.
P.S. -- it might not be good idea to advertise that you're in marketing on slashdot.
If they combine these ads with a game with destructable environments, the advertisers not only get their names out there, but they get market research as well!
A couple months ago Trond Aas, the CEO at Funcom, said "we know that most gamers want in-game advertisement to heighten the sense of realism."
I understand if they need to use advertisement to support the free version of the game, but do not insult our intelligence by telling us that we want it.
Ads for Sprite and Motley Crue albums in a game set 30,000 years in the future do not highten the realism. The Alienware ads, however, weren't that bad. They fit right into the style of the game.
Technoli
Do you really think bringing in advertising will push publishers to make their games free? Maybe...if they game is stuggling anyway and people won't willingly pay for it. I will be happily proven wrong when Blizzard says, our revenue flow is now large enough from advertising that we've decided to not charge a fee. Premium games will always charge premium prices, because they can.
On a side note, I hope that advertising stays out of most games. It may work for some games, but what happens if Sprite marketing says we feel that this new feature negatively reflects upon our brand. If you implement this, we pull our funding. You really want to risk possibly giving content control over to advertising companies?
And can someone please explain (through sensible rhetoric) why there's so much whining about a monthly fee of ~$15 for hundreds of hours of amusement?
Break it down...$15 a month:
- 3 meals at a fast food place (or 1 pizza for you EQ2 players)
- 1.5-2 tickets to the movie
- A week of cable TV
- Small % of your phone bill
- 1 DVD
etc...
There seems to be an overwhelming and unjustified sense that everything over the internet should be free. If you want that, take your total monthly fee of $180 for a year, buy a PS2, a used game and play that online. ISP fees may be extra...
I wish they'd just make them fit in with the game.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
> so much so that I even gave Project Entropia a try (helpful hint: do not play Project Entropia)
Any one care to summarize/comment on the strengths and weaknesses of PE?