Hellgate Beta's In-Game Ads Raise Eyebrows

ari wins writes "IGN.com has up a post discussing the new EA/Flagship game Hellgate: London, and the in-game advertisements it includes to facilitate targeted marketing. Though ads in games aren't exactly new, some Beta testers are objecting to their apparently off-putting presence. Users have also noted that accepting the game's EULA means you submit to the collection of 'technical and related information that identifies your computer, including without limitation your Internet Protocol address, operating system, application software and peripheral hardware'."

Comments

Re:This CAN be stopped

[Anonymous Coward]

Not very easily.

Marketing Has Succeeded

[nurb432]

If it has gotten to the point that ads are expected and feel 'right' in a video game, then the marketeers have won.

ADs are not 'right' in any context, especially when you are paying for the product.

Re:Marketing Has Succeeded

[derfy]

Wait a minute. Games are trying to imitate reality. In reality, subway stations have ads in them. So, shouldn't games have ads in them* to "feel right"?

* = WHERE APPROPRIATE. Games like WoW do not need billboards in them.

But I agree on the paying aspect. If you pay, you don't see ads(unless you want to).

And, make the game cost less due to the ad revenue.

Re:Marketing Has Succeeded

[Draek]

get the ads out of real-life stations, and then they won't feel 'right' on a video-game one anymore.

sorry, but the battle against 'marketeers' was lost decades ago.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[suv4x4]

Buy it, wait a week or so, and return it. Then buy it somewhere else, wait a week or so, and return it. If just 5000 people were to do this 5 times each, it could destroy the percieved marketability, and it would be attributed to targeting issue. Enough people wasting enough time of enough computer stores, and computer stores would be best off not carrying it.

Two things:

1. Astroturf does not feel like real grass. Hell, it doesn't look like real grass. Don't Astroturf.

2. You forgot something: denial. Hell, it can't be the ads, right? It must be the game is bad, despite all those gamers craving to see the targeted ads.

Re:wtf

[DeepHurtn!]

...because the avarice of corporations knows no bounds?

Re:This CAN be stopped

[CrazyJim1]

Return a video game? Where is the dream world you're writing from?

It's still our world, he's just thinking its the late 80's or early 90's when the stores did this. I once even bought a game at Electronic's Boutique then when they wouldn't take it back, I took it back to Babbages and they were cool with it.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[Cheapy]

...or you could just not buy it and send an e-mail explaining why.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[pla]

Return a video game? Where is the dream world you're writing from?

The law generally trumps "store policy"... Though you may need to sue to get your $50 back (most companies won't even show up in small claims court, practically a slam-dunk).

Also, many states have a VERY useful law relating to this, usually called something like "Buyer's remorse". They don't always apply to such low-priced items, though, so do your homework before you waste your money.

Finally, never forget the power of "making a scene". If you loudly (but not threateningly!) make a fuss over them refusing to take something back (best to wait for the busiest, most crowded part of the day), they'll usually do what you want just to get rid of you.

Spying

[ChaoticCoyote]

I don't mind in-game ads, as long as they're inobtrusive.

I do mind giving EA and Flagship blanket permission to examine everything on my computer. READ what their "agreement" says -- they can mine your computer for whatever data they want, and give/sell it to whomever pays for it.

I keep sensitive business data, covered by NDAs, on my computer; I don't want anonymous strangers mining through my music, documents, source code, and data. Quite simply, the Hellgate: London agreement is completely unreasonable and dangerous.

Anyone who supports Free Software should understand the principles involved here, and refuse to accept Hellgate London on their computer.

Re:Just give in.. Sooner or later you will anyway.

[Daimanta]

It's a game, not the apocalypse or big brother or anything. If you use this scaremongering long enough it will lose all meaning and when the day comes that it gets nasty, nobody will believe you.

Don't cry wolf if there's no wolf around.

Ads in a game you pay for=Stealing

[WCMI92]

I expect ads in something I get for free, as in over the air radio or TV. But I don't in a video game I'd have to pay for.

A $50 game that I have to accept ads and spyware to play? No thanks. Sell it for $10 or give it away for free, and you might justify it.

It's only in subways

[krunk7]

It's not that big a deal. Subways with bare walls would be very odd. Extremly odd and not even close to realistic. So you have a game whose environment includes add ridden subways (just like in real life). Now the developer has to ask a question: Which adds do we display in the subways? You can choose at random or you can do what the subways do: whoever pays.

If, for the sake of realism, you have to put adds in the subway stations, why not make money off of it? The game experience is the same, the only difference is instead of seeing "Moca Mola" and "Nickers" adds you see the same ones your used to in real subways (Coca Cola and Snickers).

Now if we started seeing the "Legendary Snicker Hammer of Pwnage" and the "Coca Cola Champion's Sword" I'd be put off....but this isn't the case at all.

Re:It's only in subways

[ChaoticCoyote]

The issue isn't the ads themselves -- it's the blanket data mining clause included in the EULA.

I don't care about ads -- I do care about people snooping around on my computer.

Re:It's only in subways

[Volatar]

That however, is not the topic of this news story. The ads are.

Re:Unobtrusive

[hedwards]

That was what I was wondering. People do have differing standards, but it would be nice to see a few screen shots. It does make a huge difference if the ads look appropriate to the environment.

I wouldn't mind necessarily playing a race car simulation which included advertisements pretty much everywhere, for the reason that real races will have tons of advertisements everywhere. Just don't take the intrusive information that isn't related and do lower the price on the game by using the advertising revenue to subsidize it.

Perhaps use some of the revenue to release extra content for the game.

But overall, I do have to say that in game ads are tacky in most situations. When I play games, I play them to leave reality, not to be more available to the advertisers I'm trying to ignore.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[bepe86]

Well, if we do that, and it results in bad sales, the distributor is just going to blame piracy, as always...

Re:This CAN be stopped

[Shritish]

Why though? You do realize they're offering a free service as well, free accounts for people to sign into and use? Go read the pricing model they have outlined. Don't lynch them because they have a few ads within, mostly.. I've only ever noticed an nVidia ad and haven't noticed any others. This hardly detracts from the gameplay. I doubt there's a need to be puritanical because these guys have a lot of ground to cover on the likes of World of Warcraft. I honestly wouldn't mind them making some extra money to help further the games progress and improve the development cycle. Stop fearing the ads in games, fear the ones that actually detract from gameplay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellgate:_London#Pricing

Re:This CAN be stopped

[semicolon_underscore]

...or you could just not buy it.

IP

[sh3l1]

From the EULA:

Massive may collect your Internet protocol address and other basic anonymous information...

How is an IP address even close to anonymous?

EA wants it both ways

[Elyscape]

Normally, I wouldn't have much of a problem with this. In-game ads are, IMO, fine so long as they don't detract from the atmosphere or invade your computer in any significant way. In other words, the ads should at least be plausibly valid in the context of the game (so no advertisements for, say, computer parts in a medieval game, but feel free in a modern game).

My problems are as follows.

1. The ads, at least those in the demo, don't fit at all. I saw a faded ad for some movie to be released in 2032, which was fine. What wasn't was the nVidia ad right next to it. It was very obviously anachronistic and, frankly, utter bullshit.
2. This software is a bit too invasive. Read your software and hardware configuration? Fuck you. If you're only monitoring what I do in-game and how long I look at each, that's fine. But the instant you start looking at things outside the nice sandbox of your game, you have crossed the line. Fuck off and leave me alone.
3. They're already making extra money! If you want the extra features and content, you need to pay a monthly fee! And now they're trying to turn our eyeballs into checks? Choose one or the other, not both! If you're going to charge a monthly fee for parts of your game, don't force advertising on your customers! And if you're going to force advertising on your customers, you damn well better give them all the content you have for free.

This is such bullshit. While in-game advertising doesn't have to suck, EA seems intent on ensuring that it does.

Darwinian response to exploitation by customers

[Dogtanian]

I once even bought a game at Electronic's Boutique then when they wouldn't take it back, I took it back to Babbages and they were cool with it. So you're saying you bought a game from a company whose returns policy sucked, and rather than let them deal with it you let them keep the money and instead exploited the goodwill of a company with a more reasonable returns policy? (*)

As far as I'm concerned, this nullifies any right you have to bitch about draconian returns policies or lousy customer service. It's this sort of behaviour that probably led to the killing off of more reasonable store return policies (if not the stores themselves) and encouraged- and justified- the proliferation of those that treat their customers like assholes.

People like you are the reason that we're not living in that "dream world" any more. (**)

God spoke to me. If I was God, I'd have called you an asshole.

(*) Yeah, I'm waiting for a self-justifying whine along the lines of "they could re-sell it". Like it should be their problem to re-sell your secondhand crap in exchange for "returning" your money that they never received in the first place.
(**) Pre-empt #2; Yes, everyone else was doing it too, and it wouldn't have made any difference what you did as an individual. Whatever.

Re:Darwinian response to exploitation by customers

[Dogtanian]

Your logic is completely off. He returned the product elsewhere because the point of sale had already denied him. They were ALREADY treating him like an asshole, Uh.... *yes*. That was the first half of my argument!

Let me restate it for you. He bought the game from the company with the asshole return policy who wouldn't give him his money back. (They get to keep the money). He then exploited the goodwill of another company with a more lenient returns policy (costing them time and/or money even though they never sold him the game nor made any money off it in the first place).

The "asshole" company learns that their policy pays and prospers, the "good" company loses out. Repeat often enough and over time Darwinian forces ensure that the asshole companies are more likely to survive, and that either the good companies go under- or they change their returns policy to something less favourable.

therefore, due to the unidirectional movement of time, his elsewhere-return can't be the cause. In fact, if you REVERSE your cause and effect, you have a much more accurate relationship. Stop trying so hard to appear clever. Even if your assertion about my logic had been correct, you could just have said I was confusing cause and effect..... no need to waffle about the movement of time, elsewhere-returns and so on.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[PopeRatzo]

Buy it, wait a week or so, and return it. Then buy it somewhere else, wait a week or so, and return it. If just 5000 people were to do this 5 times each, it could destroy the percieved marketability

You probably will only get a store credit, but if you're going to buy a game anyway, just do this before you get the game you really want.

At least dynamo is trying to give some thought to showing a little Resistance to the companies that are misusing us.

It's time for a little pushback.

To all of those saying "It adds to the realism"...

[hsoft]

If EA was actually putting those ads "because it adds to realism", there would be an OPTION to disable the ads in-game. This is like everything corporate. Give them your hand, they will take your arm. This is only the beginning...

Advertisers should host servers

[__aawdrj2992]

I never understood why advertisers and publishers want to slow down the servers with ads when they could instead host low ping servers (relatively low cost/ month). Many games let clans put up an image in the loading screen, so why not have the advertiser pay for the price of hosting the server and just put a banner ad in the loading screen? Instead of being an ingame nuisance, they could turn it into a positive.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[Anonymous Coward]

The merchant has sold you something which, without a clear warning about the contents of the EULA, is not fit for its designated purpose. The merchant can sort it out with the publisher. If the customer can't use the product due to a hidden limitation, the store will have to give a refund.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[basscomm]

Don't open the box dummy. Then it is easy to return.

Yeah, good luck with that. Every Gamestop I've ever been to has the boxes on the shelves and the games in the drawer behind the register. I'm not sure how I can return it to them unopened when I can't even buy it unopened.

That's not how it works

[tkrotchko]

"Perhaps use some of the revenue to release extra content for the game."

More revenue means more profit, not more "stuff" for the buyer. Your transaction is done.

Put yourself in EA's shoes. Anyway they can make more profit they'll do it. They'll kill kittens, throw your mother in jail, do whatever it takes to make more money.

Most games are mediocre. They're not horrible, they'll kill an afternoon or 3 with some fun. But they're pretty unmemorable. So you can go to Eletronic Gaming Stop and buy the latest mediocre game for $60. By the same token, hardly any gamers have played more than a handful of titles. For most gamers on a system, there are probably dozens of really good games that are a little older. I'm always curious why people won't just buy a used copy of a 1-2 year old game for 1/3 to 1/2 the price of new and actually have fun.

Now the game stores try to convince you that you should trade in your "good" old game for $5-10 which dries up supply, but it seems to me that there's always a way to get good 18 month old games for about $15-20, which is a way better deal than buying the latest bunch of junk from EA (for example). If you know an avid gamer, let him know you'll give $15 for any game he/she wants to get rid of and you'll build a library of good games for a fraction of what it costs new.