Slashdot Mirror
Massive Inc. Advertising Takes Off
Bluecobra writes "PlanetSide, a FPS-based MMO game published by Sony Entertainment of
America (SOE) is now using advertising in-game. PlanetSide already charges a fee of $12.99 a month to play and now users are also treated to Fanta, Coca-Cola, and Deuce Bigalow advertisements." Additionally, Martey writes "A recent patch to SWAT 4 introduces dynamic in-game advertising in the form of randomly generated posters on walls in the game. Provided by Massive, Inc., the game downloads new ads each time the game is loaded. Even more onerously, the game contacts Massive's servers to provide data about the length of time and viewing angles that the player looked at the posters."
If game companies are now allowing ads into their games and claiming that it's a new revenue for them to help improve the quality of games, would it be possible for the game companies to actually LOWER the prices of the games because of the new source of revenue? ...Just a thought...
How can you fit Deuce Bigalow ads into a game about dominating a planet?
As for advertising in other games, I have mixed feelings. For example, I would have no problem at all with a big Coke billboard showing up while I'm tooling around town in a GTA game. It's supposed to be based in a reality similar to our own, so if a company doing this kind of game can make a few bucks by selling ad space, more power to them. Using GTA as the example again, though, real commercials (that couldn't be turned off) on the in-game radio stations would stop me from buying the game. That kind of ad would be overly distracting for me.
As long as ads are unobtrusive (background) and organic to the game setting (no "The monks of Qeynos drinks Coke, why don't you?"), I think they're fine. It certainly doesn't bother me when I play a golf game and I choose the Ping golf clubs, nor does it put me out of sorts to drive a Chevy in a racing game. But if I'm exploring space, there'd better be a damn good continuity reason to be flying between stars and see a giant, flashing Nike logo...
So they show posters of real products, whoop-de-fuck. Either the game's worth paying the monthly fee or it's not, Coca Cola posters aren't going to make or break the game. I just hope they're not stupid enough to actually cause inconviences in the game with the ads.
"Derp de derp."
How long will it take before users will react with ad-free game patches and tricks to stop the ads from being downloaded/displayed or statistics recorded? A simple trick might be to block a certain port from the game, if they use a seperate server for the ad system..
Death by snoo-snoo!
Google is a free service paid for by well defined ads. Something that you already buy should not contain ads.
Magazine ads pissed me off so much that I now buy no magazine that contains ads. I don't buy many magazines.
If you remember, cable tv (around 1978) was originally completely ad-free. The reasoning was that the content was paid for by your subscription.
Sure, the remote controls had wires and an unfriendly slide switch, but hey -- we got cheesey pron.
And... then came along the concept of cable networks thanks to Ted Turner et. al.
Now, we PAY to get commercials on content that we already PAY for.
This is no new rant, however, it seemed appropriate to bring it up again in this context.
just so I could cancel my account of disgust
That's a pretty disturbing thought. If the ads are germane to the setting of the game--I support that idea, at least, since I don't want my lv. 97 Superlative Love Ninja to heal up by drinking Sprite--then that'll prompt game creators (or maybe I should say publishers and developers) to set more games in modern/semi-future times in order to make more money.
We'll see more Madden NFL games and fewer Fallouts. More GTA knockoffs (and not Vice City, either) and fewer Final Fantasy knockoffs. More Counterstrikes and fewer HL2s.
Mein Thirsten!
Man, that's still funny. Thirsten.
This was _three years ago._ Are we through fighting this spectre, or are we in for the second round? Why didn't EA keep up with this sort of thing? _EA_ of all people/companies.
KY sex jelly ads featuring dwarfs. Watch yer beck!
You are walking downtown. The year is 2150, and you see a billboard with Jen. Lopez, advertising the release of Gili (I think that was Jen Lopez, who cares) on 1337-DVD format (she did suspended animation-freezing-monkey-hokey stuff to stay alive).. Except there is a giant phallic-shaped object crudely drawn on her forehead, now.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
The players should act now and massively cancel their accounts. The signal would be very clear.
Well, we also had MC Kids for the NES (which wasn't half bad), and some game about Cheetos for the SNES... Chester Cheetah?
Those aside, I can't remember any other glaring examples offhand. I like to think that sort of thing died with the early 90's. Maybe you can count some sports games and that sort of thing in there since they're basically _made_ so that you're simulating playing football with actual players, driving real cars, etc. The people who buy those games, though, don't need to see NFL or McLaren (or whatever) ads--they're suffused with the former, and can't afford the latter. You could only succeed with this sort of ad cum game by pitching it to people who can afford it--sell popular junk food and junk TV to teens who're too brain-dead to realize they're not actually playing one big ad, but are doing so in essence. Throw it on top of the piles of ads in the uninspired TV they watch, the vapid magazines they read, the movies they watch at the theater; all the nonsense that people who don't buy crap because they saw it in between Big Brother and the nightly news put up with on an increasing basis.
I'm off-subject. Unless they come to dominate the genre, I'm not afraid of entire games devoted to promoting a product in this day and age. I'm afraid of the subtle infiltration of ads into other games, that I'll have to sit through three minutes of commercials while FFMCMXLI loads, or click through Sony ads whenever I die in Counter-Strike: Substance, or dine in GTA4 at Taco Bell. I don't want to see real-life ads in my video games, because I don't play video games to emulate real life. I don't want to play as cheeky pop-culture caricature Bingo Protagonist, siding with McDonald's or Burger King in between missions. I'd love to see more clever spoofs of real-world ads and corporations as much as I'd hate for the industry to be infiltrated by actual corporate advertising.
An Eldrich Gun-Fu Shotgun Dancer healing with a can of Sprunk could even be funny, under the right conditions.
how long till intrepid game hackers start putting ad-blocker mods out for these games?
Interesting that some argue, that ads in games are acceptable, when that reflects reality, like billboards in GTA. While I understand this argument on a "suspension of disbelieve" basis - it also means, that where we're annoyed in the real world, it's also okay to annoy us in it's virtual counterpart. More energy should go to fighting ads in the real world like billboards (where the audience doesn't profit), than those in computer games.
They let me shoot any billboard I don't like with my grenade launcher, and blow it to tiny pieces.
Track that!
Apparently their's a way to filter the adds from your system but editing your systems hosts file to redirect all the ad provider servers URL to 127.0.0.1.
Now, I've never done this before but it seems simple enough, the problem is, what are the server names? Their was a post on the SoE forums about this but SoE removed it (I knew I should have copied it as soon as I saw it!) But in general, I guess I could wait till it goes live and then snoop my own machine.. But I know someone has this info somewhere. Anyone? Sentack
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
I know I feel cheated when I buy a product and don't get any free advertising with it. Like the other day I bought a gallon of milk - no ads on it! I get them with the cable TV and my magazines. I'm being cheated when I pay a large monthly fee and don't get advertising to look at.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Don't like the ads? There are two things you can do to protest. You could drop your subscription, never play anything with ads, and grumble about it on forums while the majority of people ignore them and play. You lose out on some fun, everyone else keeps doing their thing. Advertising finds it's home in games, people get used to it, and 10 years from now it looks like movie theaters today with all the advertising that happens there.
The other is my preferred method. Use the advertising model to protest. Make it cost more than it's worth to the advertiser. Create a bot that constantly goes from one ad to another, racking up seconds of view. Get everyone in your clan to spend 10 minutes doing nothing but watching ads every session so the cost of the ads will go up greatly. A few people creating protester scripts and unleashing them to the masses so that you can set it to watch ads all day while at work/school means many, many hours of ads being charged back to the advertising company. The method of advertising becomes very expensive yet the marketing departement does not show that it provides increased revenue. Upper management cans the advertising method as it is now nothing more than a money-hole.
The advertisements are showing up due to the "almighty dollar", why not use the dollar to send them away? I can't afford to buy the adspace and leave it blank, and I still want to play games. If I can do something to get rid of the ads I will - but I won't drop all video games and spend hours on a forum complaining that there's advertising in all the games I used to play.
As long as I can shoot, blow out, and destroy these ads in game they are fine with me. I hope that gets reported to their server. "User lupinster viewed ad for 2 seconds then shot at it for 12 seconds then destroyed it with a grenade."
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Coming from a person who happens to work at a movie theater, I can say, that without the advertising, the overpriced snacks and the trailers, you wouldn't have a theater to watch movies at.
At my theater, the cost of two adult tickets would be $18, coupled with the #2 combo (2 medium drinks and a medium popcorn) for $11.75, just over $20 sounds like a bargain! Movie theaters are expensive to run, and unless they have snacks, at high prices, and advertising to get people to buy said snacks, they would go out of buisness.
Here is an article that explains it fairly well. When you go to a movie, you are going to a candy store, that just happens to be showing movies.