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

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: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

[Cheapy]

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

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.

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:This CAN be stopped

[semicolon_underscore]

...or you could just not buy it.

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: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.