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Refreshing Taste of Sprite Invades Anarchy Online

Posted by Zonk on from the i'm-quenched-already! dept.

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.

3 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Ach, Mein Thirsten! by Japong · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Speaking of subscription fees by toddhunter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks like the answer may be https://members.warnerbros.com/registration/us/fee .html Looks pretty standard, $14.99 per month. Or in other words, way too much

  3. Re:Whineplay. by Black+Pete · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    I personally couldn't care less whether a game runs an ad or not... except for this one point the article brought up:
    G4 TV, however, is the gaming press and this in-game advertising, new revenues for games, and marketing through them, is news... So, I'm sure we can expect some news coverage of this. Will they actually endorse the game, or publicize this? Would that be a conflict of interest for G4?
    I found this to be a valid and worrisome point. Remember DRIV3R? Atari basically bought reviews from the gaming press to give the game an inflated review score so it'd sell more copies.

    When review scores are "bought", this hurts me, the consumer. In such incentives became commonplace, how am I supposed to trust reviews to tell me which games are good and which aren't, so I know how to spend my hard earned cash?