In-Game Ads Necessary?

GameDailyBiz is reporting on the increasing frequency with which real-world ads are being included in online game worlds and single-player titles. They discuss the possibility that, with the increasing costs of developing hit games, such measures may be a requirement. There also some callous examination of developer motives. From the article: "Right now, the fact that publishers are putting so much emphasis on multiplayer online play and replay ability is in some ways actually hurting their bottom line. While it's true that an excellent online portion of a title will move some additional copies, who knows how many potential future sales are lost. Whether gamers spent 100 hours with Halo 2 thanks to Xbox Live or 15 hours with Ninja Gaiden, both publishers sold their products for the same $50 MSRP.

Comments

What's Next? Ads in Magazines?

[rewinn]

Won't advertizements in magazines turn off subscribers?

Let's hope the Science Fiction Book Club is never so tacky as to stick0 inserts in their books.

Re:What's Next? Ads in Magazines?

[Beatbyte]

Won't advertizements in magazines turn off subscribers?

They sure as hell did for me.

For a science experiment: pick up a GQ magazine when you're in line at the grocery market and go through removing all pages with double sided ads. followed by putting a blob of black spray paint on the rest of the ads that are single paged. followed by cutting out any ads that are half or quarter page. take the remains of what you have and count the pages of content. i guarantee you no more than 30 pages.

Re:What's Next? Ads in Magazines?

[CommiePuddin]

And you still may be overstating it when you consider the fact that some ads are quite sneaky (the faint gray "special advertising section" type on the bottom of the page), and even "legitimate" ads that are merely shills for particular products.

Cutting those, I'd imagine a Maxim or Cosmo dips down into the single digits.

Re:What's Next? Ads in Magazines?

[Alpha27]

Don't forget to pay for said magazine that you have destoryed in the process of the experiment, or you will be going to jail for science.

Re:What's Next? Ads in Magazines?

[rewinn]

>you will be going to jail for science

Somehow the idea lacks the grandeur of Galileo's 'Eppur si muove' ("It is still a men's magazine")

Re:What's Next? Ads in Magazines?

[Meagermanx]

Try reading a copy of Shonen Jump.

"You know what else you can read? SHONEN JUMP GRAPHIC NOVELS!!"

WTF?

[hal2814]

"replay ability is in some ways actually hurting their bottom line"

No, replay ability helps a specific company's bottom line. I will buy games from company X because company X makes good enough games that I will play them often. How often can a company realisticly release top-shelf games? Probably not as long as it takes me to get through a reasonably lengthy game.

Re:WTF?

[Red Flayer]

"How often can a company realisticly release top-shelf games? Probably not as long as it takes me to get through a reasonably lengthy game."

Sure, but they can release crap sequels and expansions galore, which you won't buy if the original gameplay is good enough.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamefly for games I play once.

Purchase for the games I play multiple times.

Which one makes more for the developer?

TFA = Company PR Advertisement

[torchdragon]

I believe this term was used in the Silicon Laser article I read earlier today.
"A solution looking for a problem."
The biggest problem I have with this article and in game advertising is the word publisher. The people making the game aren't seeing a dime of this money. Publishers look at games simply as money factories and are being shocked at the fact that recreation caters to the needs of those looking for recreation. It certainly does not cater to X Publisher's bottom line. That's great that Halo was a hit, good job on hitting a new market (xbox users) with a new product (an FPS that is accessible by the unwashed masses) and not having any competition while doing it. You are not going to be able to press the same dough out of the machine for release after release after release AND see an increase in profits each time.

Or maybe you will and the gamer population wants cookie cutter titles brought to you by BrandX(tm) and the people looking for innovation should just go throw themselves into a ditch and await the bulldozer.

Re:TFA = Company PR Advertisement

[Delphiki]

Or maybe you will and the gamer population wants cookie cutter titles brought to you by BrandX(tm) and the people looking for innovation should just go throw themselves into a ditch and await the bulldozer.

For the amount of moaning and groaning they do about how bad games are, yeah, I wish they would go ahead and throw themselves in a ditch. It's amazing they find any time to play games.

Business models

[bernywork]

Why should the business model include income from online games?

I know it should be taken into consideration, all well and good, but at the same time, the people crunching the numbers in the first place should see how much money they can get (Best and worst case) and make their decision from there...

I don't think it's the publisher's fault to do this, pushing the studios in that direction is where MS is pushing, that's where they think they are going to get a lot of money from on the 360. On top of this, a lot of people are wanting to see multiplayer. Think about the target market here... Most of these people have a quite reasonable disposable income will have broadband....

If the studios don't make multiplayer games then so be it, for the amount of money, I am sure that someone along the lines has done the business models and figured it out.

I don't think this is one of those things that we really have to worry about. If someone is a moron and fails, then that's supply and demand really.

Re:Business models

[Red Flayer]

" Why should the business model include income from online games?"

Because it's available. At this point, for a game publishing venture, the question is more like "Why doesn't your business model account for income from online games?"

"the people crunching the numbers in the first place should see how much money they can get (Best and worst case) and make their decision from there..."

Not really. If they're planning products based on revenue potential in the market, they need to know the market. The planning, and decisions, should be about how to tap the market -- which means running analyses on different scenarios and then picking the strategy that best matches their goals.

Looking at it from a min/max perspective isn't going to help them make sound business decisions.

You've got to be kidding me.

[Irish_Samurai]

putting so much emphasis on multiplayer online play and replay ability is in some ways actually hurting their bottom line.

This is a joke right? When games first took a turn to online play, they sold boatloads. No one buys SOCOM for the single player missions.

The truth is, some jerkoff gaming exec has decided that they should be charging more for games that are played longer (due to online or replayability) and his manner of spinning it to the higher ups is by saying it's affecting the bottom line.

Behavior like that will kill the gaming industry quicker than "sequel only" business plans.

Re:You've got to be kidding me.

[KrisW]

"Well, they use the product more - they should pay more for it, right?"

I can imagine lots of executive types not even pausing to think for a second before accepting that as an entirely reasonable idea.

Of course it isn't necessary

[SoCalChris]

There haven't been ads in games up until recently. So why after 20+ years of ad free games do they all of a sudden "need" them? If they're that desperate for money, they need to change some of their business practices.

It's just another money grab.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

What's changed is that games aren't as easy to make as they used to be. Content is harder to create. Instead of having 2-10 person teams working on a game, a single game can take literally a hundred people several years to make.

In some cases, you're probably right that the team sizes could be a little smaller. However, things like photorealistic environments, physics, writing, and design are all complicated to produce. The more detailed the environments get, the more work artists have to do to make the game look up to snuff. The amount of time it takes has not scaled linearly with technology. Newer graphics engines are fairly big projects, and reasonable physics simulations aren't the sort of thing that you can crack off in a day.

On top of that you've got giant marketing budgets so that games can try and outsell each other before a copy is even pressed, and the realities of dealing with a global market.

There are lots of good games still made by small teams. However, most of the games that people want are definitely not small games with small budgets. Maybe that's something that's wrong with the industry. I don't know.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[hal2814]

Q-Bert had the Mellow Yellow version of the game. Half the Atari 2600 lineup was a movie/TV show/etc. name pasted onto a game that had nothing to do with it. MASH as a helicopter shooting game? I'd consider that an ad more than a tie-in. There was an entire NES game devoted to the Noid from Dominos. Sports titles have had ads in them going back at least 8 or 9 years, probably further than that for some racing titles. Ads in games aren't exactly new.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[ivan256]

Oh, sure, they're not as easy to make as they used to be, but they're not *that* much harder to make. Sure, textures and environments are *slightly* more work to create, but the fact of the matter is that increased resolutions and polygon counts don't actually increase the workload that much because the processing power of the machines they're created on has increased too. You'd be hard pressed to say that content costs are more than double what they were on the first generation 3D titles; especially since there's a workforce of creators with experience now, where there used to be none.

Complex, enterprise class software products that consist of millions of lines of code are created in 1-2 years *from scratch* by teams of 20 or so engineers for less than $5 million all the time. It's not like graphics engines are harder to write than many other types of cutting edge software products. And that's for a product built from scratch, at a company that's built from scratch. Most games run on a licensed engine, or second generation engine; plus they're built by companies that have existing infrastructure (desks, offices, health plans, lab equipment, etc...).

The fact of the matter is that the majority of the money on these big-budget titles goes to publishing, licensing, voice talent, and "rock-star" game designers. Small games, with smaller budgets can also succeed, and turn very nice profits. If the "blockbuster" high budget titles feel they need to jack their prices up, there's plenty of low profile games out there, and they'll just have to wonder why more and more big titles flop as players go for a more diverse range of lower budget projects. In the meantime, most of the games that people want may not have small budgets, but you can bet they have development budgets that are as small as possible. Take any EA game and chop the marketing, voice, licensing, and top two salaries off the payroll and I'd bet you'd be surprised how little it costs to do 99.9% of the work that goes into a "blockbuster" game.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto; mega-hit Jet Moto for the PS1 was crammed full of advertising, that was almost ten years ago! Gran Turismo has always been that way too.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond the obvious questions of why a game has to be photo-realistic to be fun, and why games need to be everything to everyone (ie. single player, local multiplayer [with dozens of styles of play], online multiplayer [with dozens of styles of play], etc.) there are some important questions that need to be asked.

Are videogames expensive to create because developers are not reusing content?

I have had my theories as to why Nintendo uses the Mario licence so much; the most likely candidates are that by using the Mario licence they have tons of 3D models, Textures, Sounds and Music which can be used in games at a fraction of the cost of recreating the AND that the licence brings people in to buy the new game.

Are game developers sharing enough content?

95% of 3D models, textures, animations, sounds and what not that are created for games are there to create a setting and contain absolutely no game specific content. (These are things like chairs, wall papers, rugs, computers, etc.). Now being that content development accounts for about 80%-90% of the cost of Game Development, and that 95% of this is not game specific, why haven't companies created a library where people can place generic content to be used by everyone? If one existed (and people used it) you could save well over half of the development cost immediately.

=>Remember always follow the Nash Equilibrium (basically looking out for your best interests as well as the groups best interests)

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

Considering where I work, I think you'd be wrong. I do agree that a lot of money goes into marketing, voice, licensing and CEO salaries. However, it's simply untrue to claim that the time it takes to generate content hasn't greatly increased. People want to see accurate facial animation now, with deforming skin and expressive eyes. Someone has to do all the work to put in visual effects, decide where they go, and what it takes to make an environment properly immersive. In-game characters can't look all the same either, or people complain. Compare that to the original Doom where all the enemies of the same type had exactly the same model. That just doesn't fly as easily anymore.

People expect more out of their games than they used to. Gameplay, writing and design are all expensive to prototype and develop for triple-A titles. Games go through several iterations where they may only have gone through one or two 10 or 12 years ago.

All I'm saying is that comparing development costs for games of today to games of decades past is silly and unreasonable. It used to cost very little to film movies, too, and now blockbuster movies have budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[pyrote]

Ads in games aren't exactly new.

Am I the only one who noticed Bawls in the fallout series?

To be honest I think it added a sense of "oh ya I guess that could be our future" to the game.

If done tastefully and correctly placement distracts less than having a can of 'cooko-cola' on the table rather than 'Coca-cola'.

Heck my first GTA hack was to put back in Real products into the game rather than fake ones for Ads and Billboards.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[ivan256]

I see your e-mail address. What do you do there? Pay the bills by chance? Working in the industry doesn't magically give you more insight that every other person. There are plenty of us out here who have both the contacts and the ability, but choose a different career. Game development just plain doesn't pay that well.

Lots of companies spend too much money to do what other companies manage for a lot less. That's not unique to the game business.

I'm not talking about games from before 3D became the norm. I'm talking about games from the last 8-10 years. Hell, even from 4 years ago. The costs just haven't changed that much for the actual work, but the publishers weren't complaining about this stuff then (It is the publishers that are complaining, not the developers. Unless you've got a proven track record, and you're not writing a game on spec, you're probably getting a fixed fee for your development work anyway...). It's all in the same order of magnitude. Sure, you *can* spend a lot more, but you certainly don't have to. Spending lots of money certainly doesn't guarantee success, nor does having a reasonable budget guarantee failure.

It used to cost very little to film movies, too, and now blockbuster movies have budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions.

That's exactly my point. There's a big difference between tens and hundreds. Some movies cost a little, and some cost a lot. The cost of making the movie is usually not an indication of the quality, and the production costs certainly aren't the majority of the budget. The same goes for games. It's not the development that takes up the biggest pile of the cash these days.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[ivan256]

it's simply untrue to claim that the time it takes to generate content hasn't greatly increased.

Also, I agree with you that's increased. I even said that the effort requirements have, for some genres, doubled. But doubling what is no longer a majority portion of your expenses just isn't as big a deal as they seem to be making it out to be.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[ClamIAm]

It's not this cut and dry. Sure, teams are larger and games are taking longer to make, but there are other factors at work. Game media costs less to produce (CDs vs. ROM chips). Dev tools are better. The list goes on.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[2008]

"Compare that to the original Doom where all the enemies of the same type had exactly the same model. That just doesn't fly as easily anymore."

Ha ha ha. All the Doom 3 enemy types have identical models. It's still the norm. In fact I doubt you could find a single-player-style FPS where every character is unique.

Just nitpicking, not arguing with your overall point.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Chosen Reject]

Since you bring it up, let's look at Doom. Doom 3 even. Maybe it's just the exception, but Doom 3 was made up by less than 30 people. It's one of the most advanced engines around as well. Valve Software only has 58 employees according to their website. They seemed to do fine making a very well received game; again with a very advanced engine. Raven, has less than 50 people as well, and they are constantly selling very high quality games.

So here are three companies that are doing really well, making very environmentally immersive, life-like games. I don't know what they're operating costs are but they aren't seeming to have any problems financially. Maybe it is because they make good games that sell well. I see that you work at Bioware. I'm not into a lot of your games but I understand they sell well also. So what seems to be the issue? Yes, games cost a lot of money. But it seems that the ones making the biggest hoopla are the ones that aren't selling well. Not that a good game is guaranteed to be a big seller, nor vice versa, but it is a good indicator. So if a company wants more money from the game, perhaps they should look into making it a better game.

I have to agree with the GP. If a few companies with a relatively few employees can make blockbuster games, then there is a high chance that a lot of companies are either 1) wasting too much production costs on silly things, or 2) they need to make better games. But even 2) can be explained usually by 1). That is, if your game is not that great, don't spend a lot of money thinking that great voice acting, marketing, IP licenses, are a certain CEO will make it such. In fact, if you're game bombs, a lot of the times you can look at the CEO and say he didn't do his job as he should be directing the company to where they will make money. But that is a whole banana to peel on its own.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[fwitness]

There are such things a simple models for chairs,trees and other simplistic "props" that can be bought or licensed(money). However, the technology for consoles isn't really stable enough to simply plug them in, generally speaking. Many will sell you models in 3D Studio/lightwave/maya/whateverstrendy format, but your game, in order to push the machine to process more polys must have it's own format for storing/streaming these models. Well now you've got to write something that translates the models(money wasted). If you're lucky, there's some scriptable export plugin you can use. If not, you roll your own, which takes time(even more money wasted).

Ok, so now you can use the models in your games, but things don't look *quite* right anymore, due to your fancy new engine. Maybe your new engine has these incredibly nifty light glares, but the models you bought already compensated for the "poor man's" engine, which didn't have such. Now you have an overly-bright chair. No problem, I'll just tweak each model. It'll just take some guys(money) a little time(money multiplier) to 'tweak' them.

So the shifting target of performance isn't that cut and dry, and you may be better off just recreating the damn chair yourself.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

Yes, I agree, but Doom 3 was the first one where people noticed and COMPLAINED. :)

It's getting harder to do it and get away with it. Even individual aliens have to be different. One of the big complaints about KotOR, if I recall correctly, was that there weren't enough different looking heads on the NPCs.

As games start to look better, people will nitpick the games about details like that a lot more.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

A great deal has to do with the genre of game that you're making of course. I'd wager that at BioWare we have more designers and writers than they have at either Id or Valve. Conversely, they're much more likely to have programmers that are concerned with graphics or game engine work. Our games may not look as graphically spectacular (Valve and Id being cutting edge shops that also make games as a sort of advertisement so people will license their engine), but our gameplay is generally considered deeper and more involved.

To an extent, I can also agree with the parent posters. Games MAY take more money to make than they should. However, even pointing out that Doom 3 took 30 people (or thereabouts) proves my point. How many people wrote Doom? It was a LOT LESS THAN 30. It was basically a two person job, which means that even for a game like Doom 3, the team size has gone up an entire order of magnitude.

We're probably not even counting office staff into this - the people that answer the phones, handle payroll and handle legal matters and whatnot. Even if they're not directly involved in the production of the game, they have to be paid, too.

I don't know if in-game ads are necessary. All I'm trying to say is that making a game today isn't as cheap as it used to be, which is the point that the GP was trying to make. "If we didn't need them before, why would we need them now," is a very naive view of the industry. Things change and get more expensive. Programmers are worth more now, if nothing else.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

In that case, our argument is merely a disagreement in scale. The parent post to mine was trying to say (in my mind) that production costs haven't gone up over time, so there's OBVIOUSLY no reason to ever need to find additional income streams when making a game. Our games don't have ads in them, but that doesn't mean that they don't cost more to make than ever before. To say that just because nobody needed ads in games in times past means that nobody should need them at all now is a very short view of the industry.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[iainl]

It's possibly nit-picking only a part of your overall argument (much of which I agree with, even though some of my favorite recent games were written by single-digit teams at Treasure) but how do marketing costs going up affect the price of the game?

Surely if extra marketing spend doesn't pay for itself in the increased sales it generates then you shouldn't be spending it?

But then, marketing is like the vast, vast majority of all costs in developing and releasing a game; they are per title, not per disc. So that first disc effectively costs millions, and then its a race to ship as many as possible to make back the fortune you spent on getting there.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

People want to see accurate facial animation now, with deforming skin and expressive eyes.

And this is why developers are finding themselves in so much trouble. They spend millions of dollars giving in game polygons eyelashes, increased polygon counts, blinking eyes and freckles. None of it is really worth a danm though.

Case in point. Characters in Half Life 2. Expressive? To be sure. But lets take another example. Characters in Crash Bandicoot. More of less expressive than those in Half Life 2? Careful now! I said expressive! The answer is of course that Crash and his pals quite simply had way more life and vitality.

But how can this be?! Half Life 2 had a higher polygon count!! Well welcome to the real world where what really counts is art design, not polygon count. You can make a dull object in a game world, quadruple its polygon count and texture resolution and it will still be a dull object. You can take an interesting object in a game world, half its polygons, give it little or no textures and still have an interesting object.

Developers are obsessed with upping the polygon and texture counts, but this is really a no brainer. You can accomplish far, far more with better art design than you will ever be able to muster with just higher resolutions and lighting effects. Art design is more than just pretty enviornments too. It's about giving the game life in the form of vibrant, interesting characters.

How many times have I seen a high resolution, high poly count, low interaction landscape inhabited by sterile, generic and boring characters? You need to entertain people, not bore them to death. Consider the Grunts in Halo, or the Elites? The grunts were riotously funny to face thanks solely to their hilarious dialouge, and when contrasted with them, the elites were far more perturbing. Bungie could have chucked that dialouge for some meaningless squeaks and grunts, and used the extra CPU time to make more lights or dust particles or whatever. But the game would have suffered. Badly.

Developers should learn to be less like car salesmen, who buf up their overpriced wares to con the consumer with superfluous chrome and cruft. They should learn to be more like travelling troups of actors, putting on performances, who relied on a splash of cheap makeup, cleverly positioned props and above all, exuberant acting to entertain their audience with a great show. It might not have been the most expensive, most bedecked or most exclusive show, but danm it, it was immersive.

Give gamers some credit. If they can get immersed in 8bit Super Mario and text based MUDs, then you don't need nth degree lighting effects and orchestral soundtracks to immerse them.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[2008]

Hey, I guess you could solve both problems by putting a different advert on each enemy. :)

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[hal2814]

The almighty Jet Moto was exactly the game I was thinking of when I threw out the 7 to 8 years figure.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[ivan256]

I'd wager that at BioWare we have more designers and writers than they have at either Id or Valve.

RPGs are kindof the exception to the rule here. They've always required more content than every other genre. When I say "more" there, I don't just mean a little more either. The thing is that even though RPGs may count for a disproportionaly large amount of play time, they're a very *very* tiny slice of the overall number of online titles that are produced every year. These guys are talking about putting ads in first person shooters, tactical strategy games, and sports titles (don't those already have ads?). This is a problem most online RPGs don't need to worry about because they can just charge a fee for online play (Yes, Bioware doesn't do this, but you guys seem to be doing just fine with selling expansion content. Plus you could, and should start charging before you ever consider putting ads in a fantasy RPG.). You really need to think about games other than RPGs when you think about this argument, because RPGs require a disproportionatly large amount of effort, and really skiew the overall picture; They don't represent the whole industry.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

In theory, all development costs including marketing should be generating increased sales. If spending extra money on a physics system doesn't generate increased sales, you probably shouldn't be spending it, right? :)

However, because these companies are out to make money, they're trying to reduce their risk when producing a game, so in-game advertising would certainly reduce any risks associated, while still allowing them to go balls-out on features and marketing.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

I don't disagree with a single thing that you said. At the moment though, it seems that companies may be caught up in their own hype, trying to push the most polys and biggest textures. I would suggest that the XBox 360 and PS3 are a direct result.

I'm a Nintendo fan, myself. Great gameplay and story always trump cutting edge graphics in my book. It's why I'm glad I work where I do.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Prophet of Nixon]

Soldier of Fortune 2 tried to do a bit of this by using several generic models for any given enemy force and then attaching smaller models to them: coats, hats, ammo belts, etc. It made for a bit of variety, though if you got close enough to see said enemies you were probably getting shot pretty badly. Unfortunately this bolt-on model system didn't extend to multiplayer, where it would have been sort of neat.

Morrowind used very bad looking generic models for each race, albeit with several faces, and then customized them with a fairly large amount of better looking clothing and armor, which mostly hid the base models. There were still characters that looked like clones from time to time (orcish legionnaires were almost always clones, and if several of them spoke the same line simultaneously it was pretty creepy), but it was fairly diverse.

As for Doom 3, I haven't seen a game yet that has unique or even customized models for non-human monsters. Elite Force 2 had some unique/customized alien models for many of its NPC aliens, but not for the actual 'monster' sort of aliens that were usually being shot at.

I'd imagine that part of the difficulty in creating unique monsters is identifying the monsters well enough to figure out what sorts of individual differences they would have. Assuming that a monster doesn't carry equipment or wear clothing, what sort of genetic/other construction traits would the monsters have that would make them individuals? Would the player, not being familiar with monster genetic traits/etc, actually notice the individuality, notice it and think its a graphics glitch, or just not see it at all? Would the player care? I dunno, but if some game company wants to make a game where every NPC and monster is unique, I'll at least check it out to see if its cool.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Chosen Reject]

It was a LOT LESS THAN 30. It was basically a two person job, which means that even for a game like Doom 3, the team size has gone up an entire order of magnitude.

I wouldn't say 9 people is a lot less than 30. And I certainly wouldn't say that the difference between 9 and 30 people is an order of magnitude. Here is my reference. Granted, the people that make up id Software are some of the brightest and most talented in the industry.

Re:Of course it isn't necessary

[Dixie_Flatline]

Okay, I easily stand corrected on the team size - I didn't bother to check.

Still, the team size has tripled for a cutting edge FPS since Doom's time. Is there any reason to believe that it hasn't increased similarily for other game types?

I hear that EA has teams in the 200-300 person range these days.

replay = less game sharing

[spooky_nerd]

If I have a game that's fun to play, but that I don't want to replay, I'm much more likely to give it to a friend. In some cases I won't buy a game like that because I know I can just wait a couple weeks, and get for free from a friend. On the other hand, if a game is still playable for a long time I'm going to hang on to it. Thus my friends will have to buy their own copies, which increases sales.

Monkey punching

[Shad_the_protector]

Wahey!!! I'll be able not only to punch Flash Monkeys on my web browser to win 10000$ but in my own single player mode on my offline console. whoooooooo!.

*going to punch a monkey*

What's the real problem?

[steveo777]

I've been dealing with ads in my favorite video games since the first. Gran Turismo. Tires, cars, mod shops. The ads are plastered all over the track. Do I care? Not at all. Because it's in context.

Now, let's say I'm playing Jade Empire and some guy holds a sign that tries to sell me some toothpaste.. okay, I suppose that might be feasable. As long as I can ignore it. Now, if it's some sort of pop-up ad? That would turn me off instantly. I would never buy a game that forced me to read an add. Unless... take Jade Empire again. I'm running around. Random guy X wants to talk to me and forces me to listen to some shpeel about some toilet paper that's triple ply and has fourteen more squares per roll than the leading brand. I'd be pissed.... unless I can kill him and never worry about it again. And, idealy, I'd get good guy points for doing so.

Re:What's the real problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the best way for ads to be in games, and in actuality I LIKE those ads. Say you're playing a modern day FPS, do you care if that building looks like a wal-mart? No... you'd see a wal-mart in real life in suburbia. Billboard advertising a car? Fine by me! Billboards are part of real life. If I walk past a building in an inner-city area and see ads in the windows of buildings for Nike or Gap. GOOD! That's the way stores look in the inner city shopping district.

But ads for Nvidia, AMD, or Tampax in the middle of the desert in a small town in iraq? That's just wrong.

More Disturbing

[AlltheCoolNamesGone]

Is seeing ads on games you're paying a subscription on. Take a look at Planet Side, Anarchy Online, and The Matrix Online. With the exception of AO, ads don't affect the subscription users are paying. I know that there are plenty of things people currently pay a subscription for plus get ads: Cable TV, Magazines etc... That doesn't mean I have to accept it blindly...

Re:More Disturbing

[madaxe42]

True, although adverts in AO tend to be pretty unobtrusive - they appear on billboards which usually just have game-related advertising anyhow. And the adverts are pretty well tailored to the audience - Massive Inc seem to know their business pretty well.

Wait...what?

[zee-mich]

How would the ads work? Billboards in game? And what about World of Warcraft-type games? I can imagine it: A big billboard in World of Warcraft, with an ad on it stating: "CHEAP VIAGRA! http://really-uber-cheap-viagra-that-helps-old-men -get-laid.com/".

Re:Wait...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your link is broken.

Re:Wait...what?

[fwitness]

Damn ACs beating me to my obvious and cheap punchlines.

I remember actually wanting ads in a game once.

[N0decam]

Back in 1997, I bought NHL '97 to go with my shiny new computer. The boards were plastered with ads for Hagg sticks and other crap non-existent products. Primarily because they didn't have the licenses to put real brands in the game.

There was a modding community out there endeavouring to recreate the TV hockey experience as much as possible. I'll admit, I patched my NHL '97 to have actual ads instead of the standard fake ones. Updated equipment skins, on screen scoreboard graphics etc. It enhanced the gameplay, because it made it more like real life.

Now, if you go back and watch NHL hockey from the 70's, you'll be shocked to see that the boards were ad-free. Today, you can go to any small town rink and there are board ads, and ads painted into the ice, and ads on the scoreboard, and ads in the urinals. There has to be a happy medium out there somewhere.

Re:I remember actually wanting ads in a game once.

[argStyopa]

Actually, going off a little further on your final point - that's a bubble I'm waiting to see burst. Frankly, I wonder if this will cause a catastrophic wreck to our economy.

See, there are $bajillions$ spent on advertising, and as far as I can tell, it's almost entirely wasted. When's the last time that you were flipping through Time magazine, and were struck by a full page laundry soap ad, and decided to try that new laundry soap *because of the ad?* Yet that laundry soap company paid probably $100,000 or MORE for that single advertisement. Does Bud Light actually make $3 million MORE dollars than they would have if they hadn't had that 30 second TV spot during the Superbowl? Now that DVR/TiVo is spreading, doesn't this become even MORE irrelevant?

At some point, someone with a big pair of cajones is going to say "Wait a second! We already have a widely-recognized brand name, our products are popular, let's cut our ad budget by 85% and see what happens." ... and they are going to find out that they didn't lose anything.

Re:I remember actually wanting ads in a game once.

[N0decam]

Coke and Pepsi already cut back their advertising dollars significantly from their peak - hasn't seemed to slow the marketing machine from selling those spots to the car people or the beer people. I think you're right though, we're on the verge of an advertising backlash. Tivo will get the "blame" but ultimately it was coming anyway.

I don't mind ads as long as they're not tracked

[blincoln]

...or intrusive.

The original Jet Moto was a great example of this. A racing game which has billboards along the track and teams with real sponsors.

I won't play a game that's tracking which ads I look at and for how long. I don't play games that require online connectivity.

I also won't play a game where the advertising is in my face. I don't mind billboards, or other film-style product placement like a character drinking a Coke. Don't put banner ads on the menus or make me sit through a video before I play, though.

In other news...

[Godeke]

People who purchase sporting equipment pay the same amount whether it sits in a closet gathering dust or is used daily. "We are losing revenue on those who actually use our products," said Mr. Acme producer of many sporting good products. "Our new line of products includes small speakers that are powered by the movement of the product. As the product is used, we will be able to hawk other compatible products via the speakers".

In a test of a prototype product, a basketball fitted with the "AdSpeaker" hardware kept yelling "your game would be improved if you used Acme Basketball Pump to ensure proper inflation" every time we missed a shot.

I like _some_ of the in game ads

[shampster]

The ads I've seen in-game Anarchy Online are generally static and animated billboards and posters. For example billboards in large cities and posters on the wall in subways. Personally I think it adds realism to the environment. IMHO it's (at this point at least) minimal and tastefully done.

Don't think it would work in fantasy MMORPGS like Wow though.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Wild!

[meowsqueak]

This expansion to RCT3 apparently has in-game billboards that can show ads (from Massive IIRC). I am not a fan of in-game ads at all, even in concept, so I have refrained from purchasing this expansion. I hear you can block the ads with your firewall but I simply can't be bothered.

Effectiveness

[Gogo0]

Do ad execs really think that someone will be playing MGS4, see a Mountain Dew machine/popup/clever placement and think to themselves "wow that looks good, I could really go for a Mountain Dew right now. I'll go to the store and buy some as soon as I finish this game"?

If the person already drinks MD, then he probably already has some, or is already planning on buying more. This isnt going to spur sales.

On the other hand, most people buy products from ads when they are introduced to the product by the ad. Are they going to be selling a new kind of vaccuum cleaner in Resident Evil 4?

Re:Effectiveness

[Stormwatch]

On the other hand, most people buy products from ads when they are introduced to the product by the ad. Are they going to be selling a new kind of vaccuum cleaner in Resident Evil 4?

No, but I'd bet Sonic Adventure 2 introduced Soap Shoes to lots of people. And it made sense in the context of that game.

Re:Effectiveness

[v0077]

Actually, you're wrong. By your logic there would be no ad placement in movies either. Anyone that's watched a movie lately knows about the subtle products that show up in movies. The Cadillac Escalade was not introduced to people in the Matrix Reloaded, but they sure looked cool during the car chase scene!

Re:Effectiveness

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are they going to be selling a new kind of vaccuum cleaner in Resident Evil 4?"

No, they are keeping it for Luigi's Mansion 2.

I won't play the games that use them.

[sc0ttyb]

If I learn of any real-world ads in any game I want to play, I won't play it. Period.

I don't like ads on TV, I don't like them on the sites I visit (though for some sites I have a paid subscription to get rid of them), and I sure as hell don't want them in the games I play. I find nothing fun or entertaining about ads.

These people should do a backflip into the lava.

Though I guess if you HAD to play a particular game that had the ads in it you could always just use yer firewall to block whatever site the ads are being hosted from so they always appear blank or with some other placeholder.

Re:I won't play the games that use them.

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Or you get a "Cannot connect to ad-server. Exiting."

"Right now, the fact that publishers are putting so much emphasis on multiplayer online play and replay ability is in some ways actually hurting their bottom line."

Honestily this guy should have gone into renting business.

Not entirely new...

[Sippan]

There have been some pretty old games made that pretty much were advertisements - and they were actually fun, too. Like Zool.
But if Master Chief drove a Ford in Halo 3, that would be the final straw that would make me break up with Bungie.

Re:Not entirely new...

[geminidomino]

Zool? Wasn't that the sonic-like game that was essentially a commercial for Chupa Chup lollipops?

Re:Not entirely new...

[Sippan]

Yes. And it was awesome! It wasn't nearly as Sonic-like as everyone seemed to think, though...

Musta been small boats

[MMaestro]

Last time I checked SOCOM 1 sold well primarily because it was the first PS2 to use the internet adaptor. SOCOM 2 was met with a 'meh, more of the same' and poor sales. SOCOM 3? Given the fact that Sony has more or less signed the PS2's death warrant at this point, sales would be lucky to break even.

Ads in games, IF they make sense.

[corrosive_nf]

For example, in GTA it would make sense to have something like a Nike ad or a Coke ad on a billboard. But it would be fucking retarded to have something like coke spelled out in trees in morrowind.

15 hours with Ninja Gaiden?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's safe to say that anybody who only spent 15 hours playing Ninja Gaiden gave up before finishing the game.

Sigh

[Lord_Dweomer]

As another posted already pointed out, the reason this is starting to become necessary (especially for MMORPGs) is because of the vicious cycle of games requiring higher budgets to compete on graphics/marketing. In addition, the MMORPGs in particular have a subscriber plateau they tend to reach where the number of new players (read: additional revenue streams) tapers off, at which point it starts getting more expensive to add and maintain new content. Now, this is dealt with in part with Expansion Packs, but then you have the shareholders to please as well, and they always demand more money.

What I think will eventually happen is that eventually it will cause the industry (or part of it) to implode. The smaller developers will eventually be on a more even playing field as development tools become more powerful and cheaper. Its scary how much this is becoming like Hollywood, it really is. Of course its comforting to know there will always be those in the Indie world (developers/directors) who blindside us with amazing work for cheap.

Re:Sigh

[tepples]

Of course its comforting to know there will always be those in the Indie world (developers/directors) who blindside us with amazing work for cheap.

If I want to play indie games on a handheld system or on a system designed to connect to an affordable monitor larger than 19", which platform should I choose?

Re:Sigh

[Chosen Reject]

I think a PC would suit you. You may have heard of them. I've hooked my computer up to my TV before (with an old Radeon 7200 no less) and played WarCraft III on the couch with wireless keyboard and mouse. 32" of undead goodness; that's fun. The resolution was crappy, but then if you're talking about an affordable monitor > 19" that's what you get. You could just as easily hook it up to an HDTV, but then you're out of the affordable range. Unless you consider those affordable. But then, if you did, then you might be interested in some projectors, where you can get even bigger than big screen TV's.

For your handheld fix, may I recommend a cracked PSP, or perhaps some PDA's. That few or none are written or that are to your suiting, was not your argument, and rightly so, as that is a different bird altogether.

Re:Sigh

[tepples]

For your handheld fix, may I recommend a cracked PSP

New PSPs have firmware 2.50 which is not cracked.

or perhaps some PDA's.

Which entry-level PDA do you recommend for use with independent games? And will all games be of the touch screen type, or are there any PDAs with a decent D-pad?

Re:Sigh

[Chosen Reject]

New PSPs have firmware 2.50 which is not cracked.

Google disagrees.

Re:Sigh

[tepples]

So far, all they've been able to do reliably on 2.50 is make the PSP crash. Based on the top 10 results from the Google query you gave me, the PSP 2.50 downgrader isn't finished yet. Talk to me again when homebrew displays "hello world" on a PSP 2.50.

Not everyone with the money can get broadband

[tepples]

Most of these people have a quite reasonable disposable income will have broadband....

Not everybody with disposable income has tens of thousands of dollars to sell their house in a non-broadband-serviced geographic area and move to a broadband-serviced geographic area.

Re:Not everyone with the money can get broadband

[Meagermanx]

Sounds like somebody's a little bitter.

Would discourage games that dont have a reason ads

[marcybots]

Ads can be done in games and actually help the game, if your Shinobi the ninja beating up thugs downtown you should expect to see billboards and having authentic billboards would make the game more authentic. If your a sports star having real ads would also help the game. However I think in game ads may discourage companies from creating games where it is unnatural to have ads, such as a historical game about cavemen or some sort of game where you are in the ancient roman empire, how would adds be placed in these games without ruining their atmosphere? Also how would ads be placed in totally phantasy games like Super Mario brothers, or final fantasy without ruining the cool little worlds these people are trying to create? So what would happen is that although ads can enhance certain games, they will discourage the creation of other games.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

[yoyhed]

It was okay with me in Project Gotham Racing when there were ads on the screens in Times Square, because that fit the setting. But when I was playing the second level of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory the other day, in-game advertising just pissed me off.

The level is a cargo ship controlled by terrorists in the middle of the ocean, and it's a dark and rainy night. Quite atmospheric. And right there at the beginning of the level, on the sides of the crates, are HUGE FUCKING INTEL GAMING ADVERTISEMENTS. They're seriously about 3 times as large as your character in the game, and there's two identical ads right next to each other.

That pulled me right out of the atmosphere of the game, because I couldn't stop thinking about how I wanted to punch the head of Ubisoft in the face. I immediately uninstalled the game, took the disc out of the drive, took a big dump on it, lit it on fire, drove my car to a nearby river, and threw the flaming, shitty DVD-ROM out the window into to the flowing water.

Besides, AMD processors are better for gaming anyway.

15 hours on Gaiden??

[RobK]

Who spent 15 hours on Ninja Gaiden?

You either spent 5 hours and got pissed off and quit or spent 100 hours STUCK.

Re:15 hours on Gaiden??

[Prophet of Nixon]

Huh? Ninja Gaiden was awesome. The only place I really got stuck for a bit was near the end when the ghost-fish swarms get really intense, at least before I figured out that if I just used the nunchucks to swing wildly as I ran they couldn't really get me. Hurricane pack 2 (downloadable challenge levels) was hard though. Granted, I only tried it once or twice, but that was really rough.

Tournments..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry haven't read all comments but in answer to the parent post question - Yes.

Competitive multiplayer games _really_ need support for configurable dynamic ads to support tournaments. I say configurable because this would benefit small local tournaments seeking financial help so game developers need to think carefully about implementation..

In fact, why hasn't been done already with some of the more popular tournament titles..??

Oh for fuck's sake...

[GrumblyStuff]

It's bad enough that 15 minutes on TV is ads, that newspapers get thicker over the week because more ads are jammed in, that magizines are chunked up with thick cardboard subscription cards and at least some 20-30% is ads, that sports stadiums, player jerseys, fields and rinks are all fucking plastered with ads (and nevermind all the other fucking ads during the game), that radio... internet... ads, ADS, ADS, AND MORE FUCKING ADS. YOUR FUCKING SHIT IS NOT SELLING BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING WORTHLESS. FUCKING STOP FOR THE MOTHER FUCKING LOVE OF FUCK.

ARAGARHGAHGAGFGH

(Yes, I am feeling stabby. Why do you ask?)

Re:Oh for fuck's sake...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Clearly then, we are not spending enough to advertise out product.

Preaching to the Choir

[MeanderingMind]

I would think that Mountain Dew ads in any video game these days would be targeting people who already are addicted. Pointless, eh?

As for the vaccuum cleaner, wasn't that the point of Luigi's Mansion?

This is the exact problem

[rAiNsT0rm]

What pisses me off is the relative indifference of this type of thing to young consumers. They are so used to advertising being thrown at them at every turn, they don't even care that one of the last forms of escapism to be semi-untouched by advertising is soon to be ruined.

No, it is not OK to fill my games with ads just because companies want to grow their bottom line, they are a multi-billion dollar industry NOW. Instead, let's bring the focus back to FUN, and GAMEPLAY, and GAME DESIGN... you know, like what games are supposed to be about. Not polygons, ads, and textures.

I was struck the other night when on TV they had an ad for the "new" Atari 2600 game console with 40 built in games. The games were fun, quick, and easy to get into... then even with all the graphic upgrades available we never revisit these favorites and just make them better. Like COMBAT for Atari 2600. Great fun, but imagine if it were still 2D but with lifelike graphics and smooth controls and maybe some new variations... it would be damn fun.

Who cares?

[readin]

Whether in game ads are necessary or not, the only question for me is whether I will play them. The answer is 'no'. Even for games like hockey or racing, I don't play the game to be immersed in advertisements regardless of whether ads occur are everywhere in real-life racing and hockey.

I don't play games to experience 'reality'. If I wanted that I would turn off the game and go experience it. I play games as a temporary escape. That's what I'm willing to pay for. I think its safe to assume that one reason games are becoming more popular and TV less popular is that one has fewer commercials than the other.

Ads where appropriate are OK

[Why's_This_Fish_So_B]

C'mon. Even some great films have glaring ads, and it doesn't affect the movie negatively. Take The Matrix. There's Mr. Anderson conspicuously listening to his Panasonic headphones, there he is on the window ledge dropping the phone which slowly rotates to show us the Nokia label before falling.

So, when I see a billboard in an appropriate place in MxO, I don't care if it's for a fake product or a real one. If I'm blasting down the streets in a race game, who cares if an ad at trackside is for Spoonzoil or Pennzoil.

On the other hand, if Aragorn had paused in the middle of Edoras to remark how a fresh coat of paint now on sale at Home Depot would cheer the place up, it would've been completely out of place.