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.

Comments

Stupid

[dshaw858]

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

Re:Stupid

[schild]

Yes, people play games to be immersed. AO is a futurepunk (well, more future, less punk) style game. It would have advertisements. Now, if there were a giant ad for TI-82 calculators in Everquest, I may be inclined to agree with you. /pizza doesn't count simply because it's not visibly noticeable. It interferes in no way whatsoever with your EQ2 catassing. Oh, and the people who stop playing the game or refuse to buy the drink/food/condoms because of the ad. Yea, they weren't going to buy the merchandise anyway - and they're certainly the same people who wouldn't play the game if it weren't free. That type of person doesn't deserve fun.

Interesting

[mESSDan]

It is worth noting that the advertisements only appear to the free players of the game, not the players paying the monthly fee. With that in mind, I'm ok with it. Heck, I'm happy about it. Finally, one less thing for people to gripe about; The monthly fee for MMORPGs!

Let us hope that they don't get greedy, and that they have enough sales to atleast break even.

Re:Ach, Mein Thirsten!

[secolactico]

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.

Go ahead and give it a try. It will only cost you the download time. But if you were to ask for my opinion, I'd advise against it.

I tried it the first time they offered free play (a month free) and couldn't stand it. Buggy, laggy and gameplay sucked.

I tried it against last week. At least it's not laggy. And the char animation is slightly above south park quality.

There's a fine line here....

[SavannahLion]

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?

Even with atmosphere breaking marketing, would any players actually complain about ads if they resulted in lowered or free subscription costs?

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

Re:Speaking of subscription fees

[gl4ss]

*until Warner Bros think they are missing out on too much market share and lower their prices.*

sadly though, the standard practice is just to axe it at that point.

I'd gladly welcome a different billing to mmorpg's. billing which allowed you to play 1/3th of the days in the month(and be cheaper).