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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...
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."
just so I could cancel my account of disgust
how long till intrepid game hackers start putting ad-blocker mods out for these games?
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.