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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.
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
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
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.
*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).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's 14.99 + the ads for WB movies you get to see on billboards across the city. Ridiculous! That would be like paying for cable TV and having commercials... oh wait.
No sig for you!!
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.
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?
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