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Full-Motion Ads Come to Videogames
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'Advertising in videogames, dominated in the past by static ads such as billboards and signposts, is beginning to look more like TV commercials,' according to the Wall Street Journal. Massive, the company that brought still ads to videogames last year, is now introducing full-motion ads to PC-based games (not yet console titles). Massive CEO Mitchell Davis 'says Hollywood movie studios have shown particular interest in running 15-second movie trailers in online games.' Also of note: 'One problem with the full-motion ads is that gamers can easily avoid watching them. The full-motion ads start playing when a player moves near the ad spot on the screen -- and stop playing when the player moves away. As a result, gamers may see only a few seconds of the 15-second ads. Massive says it won't charge advertisers unless the full ad has been viewed.'"
Whatever happened to suspension of disbelief? Games are generally supposed to happen in their own world - especiall online games... how can viewing a movie trailer for a real-life movie possibly fit in with the game world?
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
Instead of placing ads IN the game's content, why not play them while levels are loading? It seems modern games like Doom3 and Half-life 2 take well over 15 seconds to load a level anyway. Instead of just a bland progress-bar you could be watching an AD.
In-game ads would be easier to avoid (don't go near the creek unless you want to watch an ad for the dawson's creek DVD), but would IMHO be much more disruptive to the imersion of the game. Loading screens already hurt (KILL) imersion, so you might as well throw an ad up to take my attention away from watching the progress bar slowly move.
man is machine
I think they've got it all wrong... No one is going to stop and watch an ad whilest someone is shooting at them or chasing them with a chainsaw or something like that...
No, I think the characters need to be dressed in outfits like those worn by nascar drivers, full of ads. You can pick your character as the marlboro man, Mrs. exxon mobile, and the Amazon queen.
Next, to do the movie ads correctly, they need to be displayed on the torso of your opponent, especially if it's a game where you have to work on a big opponent for a while. Then, everyone is stuck watching them.
See, that wasn't hard.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
My first thought was the people who would get bored, run towards the add, wait 15 seconds, run away from the add, repeat.... That ought to drive up the cost/benefit ratio far enough to make it worthless...
- AMW
I feel the same way about movies. I actually like seeing a few trailers before a movie, and even the slides before the lights went down weren't too bad, but 30 minutes of ads for TV shows, candy and sodas after the lights go down just pisses me off.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Their server, their rules. I personally always assume that when I'm playing on someone's game server they know everything I do in that game universe. For MMORPGs, that's pretty literally true. They have a rather massive database of what happens so they can track down bugs and exploits.
You have no right to privacy on other people's property. If you come to my house and find microphones and cameras setup everywhere you are welcome to leave, but you cannot pretend like you have some right to stop me from monitoring you.
If it bothers you, don't play games that use this service, there are plenty that don't. For that matter, there are plenty of games that are offline, they never even try to contact anything on the Internet.
This will be an interesting puzzle for level designers - advertisements are best placed in high-traffic areas to maximize exposure, but the players will then tend to avoid those areas to minimize exposure (read: annoyance and distraction). And the advertisements will be competing with game elements that are also trying to draw the player's attention- powerups, other players, stationary objects like teleporters. Advertisements will also have interesting effects on perception and types of engagement- sniping right now is just a matter of looking for moving targets, but what if they're running around in front of a giant flashing movie trailer?
A good bit of the wrongheadedness of this idea comes from the fact that in professional sports, the ads are not aimed at the players; they're supposed to be seen by the audience who is watching them. Video games have no equivalent to this, except in the "pro gaming" world, which is still too small to be an influential market
What a good way to alienate your gamers.
I mean, what if you were playing World of Warcraft, and there was a big sign for Coca Cola in the middle of Orgrimmar, that captured your screen and furthur reduced FPS as you approached it. You'd probably avoid Orgrimmar. Also, since that's a vital city to play as the Horde, you'd probably end up quitting. gg.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I believe this game has dropped thier monthly fee... now I know why. Is it worth having advertisements to not pay 15 bucks a month??? hmm, not for me. They should give a gamer the choice.
That's perfect!
Have the advertisers pay for some UT2k4 servers, then set the respawn to 15 seconds, and play adverts after you're gibbed!
Of course, it would probably just piss me off having to wait 15 seconds to respawn. Sometimes 7 is an eternity.
Karnal
Yet, for every one of you, there are 50 that will just not care enough to speak with their wallets. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of advertising in games at all, but like it or not the industry has gone mainstream. And as a mainstream entertainment industry it will be subjected to invasive marketing (exhibit a: movies, where we get more ads than trailers now, not to mention gratuitous product placements).
:)
I won't let it affect my decision to play a game, because ultimately that decision is based on how good the game is and/or whether I enjoy it. There were ads for Constantine in The Matrix Online, and other than looking at it once or twice I never gave it another thought. And now that we know Massive will only charge for full views (I'd like to know how they plan on figuring that out, but...), I'll just show my back to the billboards around the 13 second mark.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I have to wonder is any Microsoft published games will include tracking software to send the gamer's general PC activity back to further customize the ads beyond the demographic for the game.
::shudder::
That would be scary, games inharmoniously welded to adware.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
I just read an article about slave gamers somewhere. Why wouldn't whomever stands to gain financially from additional ad views create bots or macros to just repeatedly do what you mention and drive up their revenue artificially?
They need to put the ads in popular camping areas in maps. It will do to things: Cut down camping via annoyance and punish lame players for camping.
* Your civilization has built a Mountain Dew factory, your villagers speed has increased by 2 points. * Your civilization has built a Winston Tobacco Plant, your tax income has tripled!
>Support gaming through sponsorship = goodwill generated
>Exploit captive audience = irritating
I agree. I have no problem playing Crazy Taxi and having the passenger say, "Take me to Tower Records" instead of "Take me to the music store," or "Take me to KFC" instead of "Take me to the chicken place." I would like to think that the makers of Crazy Taxi were able to charge less for the game because of such internal sponsorship, though that is probably wishful thinking.
The thing is, how effective is that form of advertising? I mean, I remember those advertisers even though I haven't played the game in a couple of years, and I'm sure that delights them, but that hasn't necessarily generated them any dollars. I'd say it did generate goodwill from me, yet it didn't make me pick KFC when I wanted some other food.
I mean, I know that it says "Sloan Royal Valve" on the top of most urinals because I've seen it so many times, but that hasn't generated them any revenue...
Some of you already have those cute little shirts on that say disco sucks, right? That's not all that sucks.-Frank Zappa
First come the ads, then comes a combination with online shopping. Your credit card is already stored, right? Picture this:
After dispatching another terrorist with your awesome aim and a Colt M4 Carbine, you take cover behind an aisle in de_walmart. It's the gun equipment aisle. A text message appears,
"Would you like to purchase a Remington High-Powered Rifle, on sale now for $1999.95!
1) Yes
2) No"
You notice your magazine is almost empty, so you think "sure" and hit "1". You expect a new gun to appear in your hand, but instead you see a message:
"Thank you for your purchase! Your credit card has been charged $1999.95!"
In your moment of confusion, a 12-yr-old girl named D/\rK_F^|rY kills you, and gloats "HAHAHAHahaha N000B!!!!111!1"
Your shame is complete.
you are my hero. I too despise ads in agmes, and that includes ads from EA to 'challenege everything' every time I play one of their bug ridden monstrosities. I even took out all the logo screens from my own games (im a part time indie developer) because they bug me.
Tragically in my day job I am the coder told to put these ad billboards in a triple A game. I told them the say they signed the contract that they now had the board of megacorp inc effectively helping design the game. And its true, features we would like to drop now cant be changed because they have already farmed out the space to advertising billboards.
Needless to say, that doesnt make for a better game.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Actually, I don't have cable or satellite. Me and my family don't watch TV.
We surf the internet and read. We used to watch a ton of TV, but when we moved to our new house we didn't feel like paying through the nose to Comcast and there are too many Trees in the way for a Satellite. This was 2 years ago and we haven't missed it. We don't even have an antenna hooked up.
We still have a TV for watching movies we rent and playing Xbox/Playstation/Gamecube...but it's mainly my son that plays those. But he doesn't even play them that much.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith