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Gamers Don't Care About In-Game Ads
Next Generation reports on a study indicating that, on the whole, gamers are fine with in-game ads. From the article: "According to the study, 15 percent of heavy gamers are 'unlikely' to play a game that utilizes in-game ads, but one-third said they are 'likely' to play games with ads, while 52 percent said it makes no difference. Also among heavy gamers, 17 percent said ads would actually make them consider buying the advertised products, but only 9 percent of light/medium gamers would do the same."
It's a pure numbers play. If a game company estaimates that 15% of gamers will not buy a game because of ads, will the ad revenue make up for the 15% loss in sales?
In other words, will putting ads in a game make more money? I assume it does, becasue we see more and more ads in games.
Arguably, even the 15% or gamers who wouldn't play a game with ads wouldn't find out that there were ads in the game, or that the ads bothered them until after they bought the game. You think Best Buy's going to give a refund because someone doesn't like the graphics?
Besides, if a gamer wants a game as realistic as possbile, there should be MORE advertising in games, just like in the real world.
I hate the way that these advertising arseholes have found an untapped niche, where people relax away from the fucking stressful world and realised they can rape it of it's innocence and beauty in exchange for a quick buck. It isn't ok and it isn't right.
The marketing dickshits are currently at step 2 of their plan. The stage where they tell us all we are ok with what they want to do - to soften us up for when they fuck over our games. I would bet a large amount of money these are rigged surveys. Or at least the ones that give you options like:
If games contained advertising then would you:
a) stop buying games altogether
b) Buy more games than ever before.
If you saw a product advertised in a game then would you:
a) Buy it
b)Kill yourself
And don't just think you can just play nice fantasy and sci-fi games that avoid this advertising. You won't. Those games will dramaticcally fall in production when the industry realises that without the advertising revune these projects ar emuch less rewarding.
Oh and I know how games with no loading screens are really important to you. But your fucked. They will have no incentive to decrease load times when they use them as billboards. If anything they will increase.
Give me the game or free and I haven't a problem with ads. But if I buy the fucking thing with my own fucking money then I bought the right to have a few beautiful hours of my life sans adverts for fucking once. (like how slashdot works). There is no in between. If your business can't support those revenue models there is something fundamentally wrong with what you are doin and no amount of advertising will save you.
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I've done a writeup on this very story topic on my site which you can read here at The Halting Point and you can read the original Slashdot post that I made that sparked my writing of that piece.
While I'd very much so appreciate the clicks, (even though I've made all of .07 through adsense!), to sum it up for those who don't want to make the jump....there are several levels of in-game advertising in terms of invasiveness. And you can view it as a spectrum. On the far left you have extremely uninvasive and even welcome additions such as sponsorship logos in Gran Turismo. It fits with the game world since the game world is simulating reality and they are expected in that type of game.
Then you have things like billboards in MMOs like Anarchy Online and City of Heroes that, while appropriate for the setting (a city with billboards), still annoy you a bit because its trying to transplant culture from one world (reality) into a made up world where those companies do not exist.
Then you have your extremely invasive product placement with crap like what Sprite pulled in the Matrix game, or what McDonalds pulled in The Sims Online. That is the stuff that pisses off gamers because it is a blatent slap in the face. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the game and in fact detracts from it...all that for $60.
The interesting thing is how advertisers are trying to work their way into some of the more dominant games where the majority of titles are fantasy based like WoW. In my story I wrote a bit about possible ideas for working product placement into those worlds, but it requires advertisers to be able to have the balls to poke some fun at themselves, which I doubt they'd ever do.
Honestly...in-game advertising is only going to get more abundant. Whether it becomes worse or not (ala the intraweb) depends on the so-called "gate-keepers" of the games who will have the final say over how much of a sell out they want their game to be.
I'd expect more corporate sponsored guilds and guild events, more added material (like the CS map Subway made), and other new things we haven't considered.
If it gets to the point though where the games are starting to majorly sacrifice playability and content for ad revenue though, customers will complain and run for the nearest competitor.
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Is there some resource to find out *WHICH* DVDs have advertisements before you buy them? I seem to find out afterwords. I am *INCREDIBLY* pissed about the Season 2 Dead Like Me box set having a two minute unskippable anti-piracy advert, *ON EVERY DISC*. You just paid 50$ for a box set and they're reminding you not to pirate it. From now on I pirate anything with an advert.
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