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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.
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?
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