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Are Optional Ads Worth The Trouble?
azuredrake writes "NCSoft's City of Heroes has just announced that in-game ads are being added to the game, provided by an advertising firm Double Fusion. However, unlike in many games, the ads being brought to CoH have been defined as 'always optional'. The publishers see the ads as a purely additional revenue stream, not as something that will ever allow advertisers to affect game content. Commentary is available at Gamasutra. Is making advertisement volunteer-based a viable way to get around cynicism? The tone of these ads seems to be 'check them out to help the game'. Are there any sites or services in which you'd voluntarily look at ads to lend a hand? "
If the ads are low-key, then they don't really bother me. So why shouldn't I help a company I like make a little extra money?
Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.
Is if any advertisers end up being specific to hero-side or villain-side.
Microsoft as a loyal supporter of Lord Recluse, perhaps?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Magazines? When you read a magazine and you find an Ad page, you Choose if you will read that page or skip it. Also on TV, since you can change the channel if you don't want to see an Ad.
A game that has modern day cities in it can appropriately have advertisements on it, just like most racing games now a days. In someways it helps because it makes it feel like a real city. Now if I started seeing signs for Vitamin Water on World of Warcraft, that is when I get offended.
When advertisments on Wikipedia were first suggested (to help take the pressure off the funds crisis they were seen as in at the time) voluntary enrollment was suggested. It never got enough support, however. It was a reasonable idea since it is, in some respects, insulting to ask for donations when you could be tapping in to such a large revenue source (even with voluntary enrollment the money generated would be huge).
MinuteElectron
After all, in many games there are places where ads would be appropriate. For example if you have a TV, rather than just having the TV displaying some image loop, it could display ads. Wouldn't be that different from a real TV.
To work though they have to be unobtrusive. They have to be something that is just a part of the environment, and in a natural way. If they get in the way, then it is not good. That's the real problem is that advertisers seem to think that ads need to be more in your face, stop you from what you are doing to work. Well that isn't acceptable. I will not play a game where I have to sit through an ad to log in.
I think this is pretty easy to predict. Basically, a significant percentage of people will "opt-out". Enough so that they will eventually remove the opt-out choice. At which point, a critical mass of people will be miffed enough that they will just cancel membership. And their net revenue will be a significant percentage less than it is right now before they introduced this ridiculous scheme.
I mean seriously. If they even have to consider alternate revenue streams that are so obviously risky, it pretty much is the writing on the wall for the game, is it not?
But then again, I know people in marketing that are under the complete and utter idiotic delusion that people LIKE and WANT advertising. Self delusion never fails to amaze me.
Shadowbane (http://chronicle.ubi.com/), a fantasy based MMORPG, is completely ad-revenue driven. Plagued by poor performance and crash bugs for many years, they've had an uphill battle to win back players (a real shame, as I often refer to SB as "the best piece of crap I've ever played"). Just this month they went through a series of fixes, including a complete refresh of the worlds and players (easier to do when you can play free). It should be an interesting experiment to see if they can maintain revenue based solely on third party financing, but in this (US) economy, it is hard to beat maintaining your gaming fix without grabbing your wallet! Still, one has to wonder how much of a voice the player base has now that they can no longer "vote with their wallet."
I've white listed a number of sites on adblock for a while that I felt like supporting. However it meant white listing well known ad servers, so that meant I was seeing them on other sites as well. I've tried surfing without any ad blocking for a while, but that's not a workable solution. I'd be reading some article on a site with a BLINK BLINK FLASH MOVE MOVE ad besides it. It doesn't make for an easy read.
Never mind the sites that *shouts* SUDDENLY ADD SOUND to a page while you're quietly trying to read an article at work.
In the end, I've gone back to just adblocking the hell out of everything, I've tried, and some sites are good with it, but the majority of other sites ruin it for those that try to play nice.
We need, Google to start a competitor to Paypal, so I can donate some small amounts of money to the sites I like. (I don't use Paypal, because they're a bunch of crooks)
Someone else responded to this in a rather clear and efficient way:
YOU ALREADY HAVE TO PAY A FUCKING MONTHLY FEE!
One of the things that some people have noted, that in a modern city setting having 'real advertisements' will actually improve immersion. As the developers have stated, it is an additional and optional revenue stream that will go to development.
They actually had a recent costume/emote pack for Valentine's Day with wedding themed costumes. I bought it for me and a friend... and found out that all of those purchases later that it advanced the addition of the new Villain Epic Archetype by three or four months.
So I'll be leaving this on and probably actually checking out the advertisements occasionally to help out NCSoft. I like my game being improved even faster.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
The idea of putting advertising in games, regardless of whether it's optional or not is an interesting one. It comes back to the question of motivation. If a studio designs a game, we assume they (programmers, artists, texturers etc.) are doing it because a) they enjoy it and b) they believe they're creating a cultural icon made up of lots of different artistic elements like sound, visuals and animation.
Now I think it's fairly accepted that anything that "Sells out" (ie. uses the artistic medium purely for profit) isn't really regarded as art. These days that may seem less the case and I bet you're all waiting to cite examples of particular genres of music and film which contain product placement, but in my opinion and I think the opinion of many of those who both create and appreciate true art (Whether it be film, music, paintings, whatever) those particular examples fail to be art and end up being advertisements in themselves.
I think that placing ads in the artistic medium of videogames negates the inherent artistic nature of them, as concern grows over whether the creators of the game were making it because of the above reason or purely to make money.
Then again maybe I'm just sick of seeing the same bunch of #%@&head corporations ripping off their workers, consumers and the environment and infiltrating every aspect of our lives. Gaming should be a form of escapism. It's hard to escape our intense, competitive, profit driven world when there's Coca Cola and Microsoft billboards in my supposedly "alternate" universe.
But that's just me, I loathe advertising in any form. I'm never a good target for it.
Optional advertising is a great idea; it filters out the people that will be offended by it (and who will attribute that offence both to the advertising venue and the advertiser). Everyone wins, the venue doesn't offend it's patrons, the advertiser only gets it's message out to receptive listeners, and people aren't offended.
Unless the process of inserting the ad capability into the game threatens to cost more than the ads will pay, I see it as something of a no-loss proposition for the games maker. If a player doesn't mind, then you've got an extra revenue stream ... and if they do then they can just turn it off. It's something kinda hard to knock from my (somewhat cynical) point of view.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
If the ads are low key, that means they won't grab eyeballs, and thus won't generate click-thrus.
Years ago I used to specifically un-adblock specific sites I wanted to support, but at this point I'm so sick of advertising that I go out of my way AVOID buying shit from companies whose ads I inadvertantly see.
So now they'll give in-game advertising a try. It's optional, you know - for now. If this proves to be something that brings in additional revenue the game developers will make it mandatory without a second thought.
It's just a small step past selling their customer lists to marketing firms. You didn't think that registration was so they could send you a birthday card, did you?
In general, if ads are useful, targeted, and reasonably unobtrusive, I welcome them as a source of information.
For instance, if a site wants to advertise (based on a search for robotics-related documents) that they have a good deal on stepper motors, great. I might well click through and find something I'd like. Amazon does a great job with this as far as books go -- their recommendations of what else I'd like often come up with some really cool suggestions.
What I don't want to see are ads for the general public (or even the general gamer public). Even if such a beast as a typical gamer exists, it ain't me. My taste in ads is somewhat like my taste in music -- I don't expect anyone else to like the exact mix I do (and most people's tastes will be pretty different. I admit I'm weird.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
New and unproven business models often start out as "free" or "optional". Then when the users get somewhat used to it, the "optional" aspect seems to disappear. This is a slippery slope folks.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Games are supposed to be set in an alternative reality and real-world ads damage the illusion badly. If the game is free, I can always stop playing if ads bother me too much. But if I already shelled out $50, I consider that the publisher already made a reasonable profit and have no desire to increase it further by an indeterminate amount at the expense of my user experience.
Why would I want to 'help out' if the company is making money without extra 'help'?
This would be an understandable addition to the game if it were a necessary revenue stream, but it isn't. I do not at all feel compelled to look at them if they detract from my game playing experience in even the slightest way.
That said, if:
- They are not an eyesore and blend in as though they were a part of the game world itself.
- They do not add 'bloat' to the game in the form of lag while adverts load or cause extra overhead that impacts performance.
- They do not incorporate any 'tracking' of my habits or behaviours.
- They do not advert stuff I don't want my kid exposed too.
Then: I'm ok with it. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I've never seen anyone succeed at all of the above requirements.I've never minded subtle in-game advertising. A few of my favorite PS2 games have product placement all over them, or ads on the billboards in the city streets.
They add to the realism of my surroundings, and I always love fake ads when they are plastered all over games like GTA. I usually litter my own 3d art with fake ads. If the Sprunk machines suddenly became Sprite machines, I wouldn't mind.
Just don't start showing me 30 seconds spots, and use common sense that doesn't stray too far from the context of the game.
If you want to advertise in a fantasy RPG, don't put your out of place products in there, sponsor some kind of cool event that takes place in the game. Then maybe your ad will get a positive vibe, instead of a bad stigma.
Coke and Pepsi usually run promotions in the summer where you collect points to exchange for prizes. They could sponsor a new event inside WOW where participation would earn you some points, and maybe some unique gear that will only spawn for a limited time that players could earn for bragging rights.
Sure. I "opt" out of purchasing games that include advertising all the time. Oh, wait...
There is simply too much glass..
It depends on the publisher, I suppose, but in-game ads aren't all greedy. To make a high quality MMORPG (like CoH) these days, a developer will need to spend millions of dollars over a period of 3-4 years. That's a hard sell to investors. And these game companies aren't out to make just one game.
NCSoft publishes a lot of good, unique games, and if in-game ads will help them publish more good games, I don't have a problem with it.
If i'm on a website that i like, i'll often click on ads to increase the chances that the site will survive .
Southparkstudios is a recent example of this. trey and matt have put the entire volume of their south park work online (and some fun games.... there is a mario kart like racing game) in an ad supported way. They went out on a limb and i think they should get some back.
What i would really like to see though is some paypal micropayment system where i could pay them to play the shows ad free. I wonder how much they actually make from a single episode?
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Well, it depends.
COH happens in a modern day metropolis. Ads and billboards aren't out of place. You kinda expect them there.
In fact, the game already _had_ billboards and posters from day 1, except they were mildly funny parodies instead of actual ads. For example stuff like ads for lawyers getting the villains out of jail after your superhero toon arrests them, or for some fictional in-game companies like Crey Industries, etc.
Replacing an ad for Crey with an ad for Microsoft, wouldn't seem out of place at all. (And doubly so for a lot of us nerds, since the Crey are a major supervillain group in the game;)
Or I wouldn't be even give it a second thought if there was a McDonald's in Galaxy City. I mean they already have fictional restaurants there, with funny names like "El Super Mexicano."
The same can't be said for a lot of other settings and genres, though. E.g., it would feel awfully weird to have billboards for IBM and Coca Cola along the road to Darnassus in WOW.
And that's really what I'm fearing. That it might re-sort genres and settings according to how fit they are for ads.
Remember that we already _had_ such an effect. Adventure games were still popular games, and that market was actually _growing_ when everyone dropped them like a hot potato in the 90's. Why? Because making a simplistic FPS was _much_ cheaper. Even if you sold less copies than an adventure, you'd still make more profit.
I can see "games fit for ads" vs "games where ads look out of place" repeating that history.
Adventures eventually made a comeback, because, basically, people eventually came to expect the same level of scripting and animations in a FPS as in an adventure. So the price difference vanished.
The same might never happen in the case of "games fit for ads" vs "games where ads look out of place." Already all else is equal. Only one of them can get more money. Short of advertisers pulling out, it stays that way.
So I fear that we _might_ slide towards every game happening in a city, or a race-track, or along of big billboard-overdosed highway. And that doesn't sound too great.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I have never in my life clicked on an ad I have found on a website to purchase an item. And the 'ad bubble' will fall, which is why I find it funny that people seem to cling to it.
It's an empty revenue stream. Do you think advertisements on a website really sell a product more? Honestly not. I know of nobody that pays attention to them. Even moreso when the ad is in your face like "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE ONE THIS!" or "HERE HAVE A SEIZURE WHILE TRYING TO HIT THIS MONKEY!"
Where the real revenue stream will come from is having solid content that people are willing to pay for. People don't buy from newegg because they see newegg adverts smeered all over the place. In fact, newegg doesn't even advertise on TV (though they might have a few times but it's not generally known to the public) yet they make so much money.
Back to the topic at hand, though. Simple fact:
1. I will never buy a product I see in a video game.
2. I don't want a video game wasting my bandwidth and gaming cycles to load an advertisement dynamically while I'm trying to frag someone because I'm never going to buy the stupid item in the first place.
3. I'd rather my games and fantasy worlds use "joke" versions of popular brands because it makes them funnier, laughing at some of the ways they label brands (Youtoob in South Park vs. Youtube).
I'm also that guy that walks into Best Buy that knows what he wants and is in and out. I don't buy their replacement plans, I don't buy their 5000 accessories. I want an item and I want just what I want.
and their blatant sales pitch about Loom.
:)
It was funny
I really think that television-style advertising maps well to the computer. Every several minutes, the entire computer should pause while full-screen commercials play for several minutes. The ratio should be something like 4 minutes of computing, 5 minutes of commercials. There should also be some sort of mechanism in place to make sure that the user is actually watching the commercials, not just taking a coffee break. It could be something as simple as flashing a random number at several random points during the commercials, and then requiring the user to enter the last number shown prior to regaining control of the computer. If the user cannot enter the number, or makes a mistake, all of the commercials repeat, with ten additional minutes of commercials added in as a penalty.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Perhaps they could divide up advertising revenue or a portion of the revenue amongst all of the players viewing advertisements to reduce the monthly subscription fee. So in the end players are "paying" the same amount. The more people viewing the ads, the greater the overall revenue, and perhaps more people would subscribe to playing
Many of you think that no one wants advertising. Good advertising will get a sizable number of players to keep the feature turned on.
This can be done with
1)Humor (Look at the number of people who go to YouTube and watch the from the super bowl). If there is a really good ad up and people are laughing and talking about it then other players may well activate the add feature.
2) General Interest Ads that provide information that COH players by in large want (Ohhhh look, the new Batman Movie is coming out with special trailers at...)
3) A diversion from the same 3 Year Old in game fake adds (Yea Ive seen that Crey Industries Billboard for the 15,345 time now for the love of god give me something new to look at.)
4) Non advertising information on events that is available out of game, but this makes it more likely that I will remember to get the time off work for DOUBLE XP WEEKEND.
Further more if the players see evidence that they receive benefits (More game features added faster) they will have even more incentive to keep them on.
Keep in mind The Ads are Optional. Contrary to what some here are saying there is NO reason to assume they will become mandatory. As it is if the Adds dont work NC soft looses NOTHING. Why does anyone think a profitable company would risk loosing 20, 40 or even 60% of their player base so they can make a few extra bucks with MANDATORY ads?
Random
This point is so true. Livejournal is a good example. For years their management said there would never be ads on the site, period. Then came optional ad-supported accounts, with slightly more features than fully free accounts. Now recently the site has been sold and the new management has done away with non-ad supported free accounts for new registrations, so even paying users have to see ads when they look at these users' entries.
Ads were once intentionally absent, then crept their way in under the guise of "user choice", and now they're mandatory. It wouldn't surprise me to see it happen again.
No. Not a single one. In fact, I would (and do) take time, effort and money to configure my computer to specifically exclude such wastes of my paid-for bandwidth.
I have at least three spam filters (ISP, home mail server, POP client) on my email.
I have ISP and personal spam filters on my Usenet feed.
I have multiple regex blocks applicable to my browsers, 99% targetted at in-page advertising.
And hey, my bandwidth use has dropped into a cheaper bracket. So not only am I unperturbed by advertisements for crap on the other side of the world, I save money.
To advertisers: I already follow fifty-seven news feeds, including multiple ones about new products in areas of personal interest. If I'm not buying your product, it's because either I don't want it, or I don't consider the product list of your particular industry niche to be worth my time. If I ever want to buy something in that niche, I will go do research on it at that time.
And guess what - if there's an entire product niche that I don't know about, and have never even heard a whisper or hint about from family, friends or blogs, there's a fairly good chance that I don't freakin' need any product in that niche.
If and when I get or build a PVR-alike, it will be set to delete or block ads. I already don't watch live TV any more. I prefer DVD players which can skip the pre-main-menu crap and any trailers/ads, too. I don't buy newspapers, and if there was a way to get the free local ones on paper with the ads removed, I'd be looking into it.
"Pull" advertising I don't mind. If I go specifically looking for a product, then by all means try and sell it to me. But any form of "push" advertising irritates the hell out of me.
- They are not an eyesore and blend in as though they were a part of the game world itself.
- They do not add 'bloat' to the game in the form of lag while adverts load or cause extra overhead that impacts performance.
- They do not incorporate any 'tracking' of my habits or behaviours.
- They do not advert stuff I don't want my kid exposed too.
Then: I'm ok with it. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I've never seen anyone succeed at all of the above requirements.I most certainly would opt into the advertising for free games. That's how I support the websites that I read, why not games? Of course, I'd expect to see the ads _after_ the game, not during. Just like I click on website ads _after_ I finish what I came to do on the site.
Thank for reading to the sig. You may stop reading now. It is safe. There is no more content. Why are you still reading?
No retail, published game as yet has had its fate decided by advertising revenue. The amount of cash that comes in from this source will not make the difference between sinking or swimming. For an indie game, maybe, but not a game that is commercially supported. All told, it boils down to whether you want to use your eyes to make the publisher richer.
Of course, it's good that NC is giving you the choice. But don't assume for a second that opting in will somehow provide the funding needed to make CoH a better game than it already is. Charity is good, but it has to produce results. Otherwise you're just being fleeced by people sustaining themselves on goodwill money intended for another purpose. So "we're gonna give you the option to see ads" should not be interpreted as "we're going to give you a chance to help your favorite game/company". That's not it at all. Try "we want more money, and since there are indications that forced advertising will cause us to lose some customers, we'll play it both ways to maximize our profit".
Are there any sites or services in which you'd voluntarily look at ads to lend a hand?
Absolutely. After paying a gigantic broadband bill of "more than the cost of a BMW", Tom Green momentarily had to take down his videos to come up with an advertising strategy.
He now has popup ads that come up during the playback of the copious amounts of video he provides on his website (for free) and I know that many of his constituency (including myself) are happy to try to subsidise the amount of good will he has show us by clicking on the ads at every occasion.
People who give, give, give for free deserve to be rewarded and I can think of few who have given on their website as Tom has over the last year or so.
I record my sleeptalking
In Anarchy Online even though I've been a paying subscriber since 2001. The ads aren't disturbing in any way really and they're only located in certain areas of the game. If more money gets into the hands of the developers of the game I play, then I am all for it.
Instead of designing the games to have more ad space work the product into the game. Companies are used to remarketing their products for different demographics (US v England). In a medieval setting hitting the local apocathary for some Jolt (TM) would not be out of place provided the packaging and logo were consistent with medieval printing technology. +Charisma Vitalis (TM) anyone? What products might Drizzt Do'Urden (TM) reasonably use? Celebrity endorsements are valuable. What interesting products might one find in a temple of Dibella (TM)?
My copy of Firefox has Adblock installed. I think it came with the default installation (I don't remember adding it on). I never bothered to configure it because I thought looking at the ads was providing the revenue for the website I visited. But I had a friend come over, and he set it up and turned it on. I have very mixed feelings about this.
So now I am one of the leeches. And I expect someday this will be criminal.
I (finally) stopped playing counterstrike after Valve put in adds - it was just for their own games, but it pissed me off that after the money they made with the game they decided to forced a (potential) revenue stream down my throat. (No you can't opt out, servers are forced to run newest version - so are you - and NO! I shouldn't be glad they still support the game since they haven't fixed a bug for years, only added adds)
The second I see an add inside a game I play I stop playing, I can't stand adds.
Unless we see small design/PR firms emerging, whose proposed service is to make custom ads that fit the game's world atmosphere.
Say that McDonalds want to put an add into COH. Instead of copy pasting some (dull) real life add that won't work in the general atmosphere of the game, they hire such a design company which will create a humorous and twisted variation, that will make the player laugh. Thus fitting better in the global game atmosphere AND attracting more eyeballs to the add (because they are genuinely fun to watch).
Same reflection could be done for fantasy oriented games. A copy-pasted Coke add will just suck. A redesigned message on a scroll, touting the virtue of "ye olde Coke's potion of +1 awakeness. (As of today with even less "-1 charisma" calories)" together with a painting of some troll posing in a similar way as the pretty models on the real-life ads, will sound funny.
In fact during the era when sharewares where big in the 90s, there were a lot of companies pulling similar parodies of modern product into out-of place environment (fantasy, etc.), just for the fun of it. Now just imagine the money they could have earned if, instead of changing the name to avoid trademark infringements, they actually used the real names with the blessing of the companies parodied ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
http://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/
rather annoyingly firefox beta5 isn't compatible with the mainstream release of adblock however the development build here works fine.
All i need now is a method to remove the gray tramlines running down the page on slashdot. the nesting soon reduces me to 20% width comment 20% side bar 60% tram line. god knows what mobile users get.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I think it would make a fun daily quest to have one of them be to just fly around Shattrath carrying an ad banner behind you.
That would be the best of both worlds. Don't look up if you don't like in-game ads and if you don't care, do the daily.
I suppose for this to really work, it would have to be possible for both Alliance and Horde to shoot you down while you're advertising. That sounds like fun, actually.
This is already present in the free game 'Trackmania Nations' as an optional feature.
If they are advertising a product people actually want to hear about. I thoroughly enjoyed the last GTA IV video. If there was a half decent American car still made (like my 1964 Dodge Dart, but electric), I would happily watch ads for that (like I do for the Tesla, and from 1964 of my actual Dart on YouTube). The problem isn't Optional Ads. The problem is Optional Ads for BULLSHIT like penis enlargement, singles online, and Spicy Ranch Doritos. Fuck those ads. Can you say fuck on /.? Mod me down! Satan said the F word! Seriously though, I just want my solar powered house and car for a reasonable price so I can drive to work without being bankrupt. Show me some fucking ads for that. And stop lending billions of dollars to people who can't afford houses. I mean, there's gotta be a cheaper house they can buy or something. Seriously. Fuck Obama and Hillary. They can suck my fed up American dick. Or was that Monica? And (this one's for the SlashDot crowd), "WHERE IS MY ALWAYS ON ALWAYS CONNECTED OPEN SOURCE PHONE THAT DOES VIDEO CHAT FROM ANYWHERE OVER THE INTERNET, AND YES IT CAN CALL REGULAR PHONES JUST AS EASY?!?"
rhY
PS I don't in any way want to appear to be endorsing McCain whom I see as a bigger sell out than Hillary, which is saying something, is it not? I think the media distorts the numbers and more people like Kucinich than Fox news tells us. Or is that so hard to believe? Things have been SHIT in this country since they whacked Kennedy, and I for one am tired of it. I want my solar powered car, house, video cell phone, (Or better yet, just put all that in a luxury RV Zeppelin that drives itself via GPS)and I want it all for free from the Sun, and for cheap because every other kid on my block has 3 of each. And I want to go to the moon, and let people grow food without patents, and I want healthy organic free range birds of all type, and I want it cheap and fast, like Starbucks which basically has me on a 2 coffee a day habit now like the evil pushers they are. I want to punch Joanie Mitchell, I swear to god. Who let this happen? WHERE IS THE MEDIA?!?!?!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
There is no way around that fact that ads break the immersion of games.
Even when optional, ads are still bad. The absence of an ad breaks immersion. If I see a big sign that is blank or has place-holder art, I will think "oh ho, that's for an ad". Boom, the flow is broken.
And in an online game, I want to play with other people who are immersed in the game. I don't want them cackling over voice chat about the cameltoe on that sports drink model in an ad that I can't see.
Ads in online games are just a bad idea. We are inundated with ads in almost every aspect of our lives, from TV to radio, to the billboards in front of us when we take a piss. The whole point of online games is fantasy. Can't we have that fantasy without Coke and McDonald's intruding?
Just add a daily quest from some shady merchant NPC to go pick up his new catalogue - of real life ads.
If you never want to do the quest, no problem, but there's a motivation of being paid in game money to do it.
Just make sure they're things that actually belong in the game world. "Ye Olde Spice" would probably be pushing it, but it would at least be better than seeing a giant microsoft banner next to the battle standards in thrall's throne room.
Some people (including myself) think that having some "real world" ads wouldn't just be a revenue stream, it would add to the immersion. City of Heroes is supposed to be located in a modern city - Paragon City - a "metropolis" in Rhode Island. I like some of the fake ads, but I'd personally like to see a mix. This is a win/win situation to me. Making it optional means even if you don't share that view, your experience is unchanged.
Meanwhile, while the game is actually improved by ads (potentially), NCSoft makes more money which they can use to better the game. (NCSoft recently bought out Cryptic Studios and has been hiring devs like mad for City of, and they have a bunch more jobs open. So the investment in the game is real. I'm expecting boxes will likely hit shelves too to subsidize it.)
Except that City of Heroes/Villains rarely costs more than $30 for most of the boxes I can think of. They almost always come with a free month, which is $15 off. Oh, and there are no paid expansions, so once someone buys the original box, that's all they're going to really have to buy. After that, revenue is either: A. Optional packs of small costume items or temp powers they sell (usually around $10). B. Codes for stuff from special boxed versions. While these tend to cost $20, they come with a free month once again, so they effectively cost $5. Oh, and you can just buy access to City of Heroes/Villains online and download the client. It's $20. I should also mention that when I bought my copy way back when, it came with several free things like maps and toys. It's pretty obvious that they're not making a huge amount from box sales (in fact, I think one of the developers has actually stated this on the forum).
How much are they going to pay me?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The money generated from the in game ads will go directly to the development of more free content. CoH does free expansions, so enabling them will get me, the player, bigger and more frequent updates. And if i decide I don't like them, I'll turn them off, but I'm already looking at a lot of fake ads in game, so i don't see what difference it will make. And even if the devs stab us in the back and make them manditory and obnoxious, it's no worse than a lot of other games - yes EA, we're talking about you.
If the ads are customized toward the game's audience I wholeheartedly approve of any billboard/building/bus-stop advertising in an urban game. It's painfully simple to put a Superhero leaping to save a little girl's burger in front of a McD's.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
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I wonder if this is some way to mitigate the "losses" to pirated software... because a cracked copy will probably still display the ads, thus count as a pair of sellable eyeballs even though the game disc itself was not paid for.
Naturally, I'd rather see the impact of ad-supported software on the sticker price. We have many resources that are purely ad-supported such as web sites and many television programs, so why not some nice free ad-supported games ? The important thing is to have relevant ads - don't try to sell me a goddamned Lexus in World of Warcraft!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Again, it depends.
Some games are parodies and not to be taken seriously in the first place. Sure, go ahead and spam them with "for a few ducats your member could be as big as the Spanish Armada" ads, for all I care.
Some games were not parodies in the first place, and it would trip suspension of disbelief majorly. A lot of MMOs and generally RPGs went through a lot of effort to write a convincing backstory for their world, with lore quests, and everything.
E.g., much as I thoroughly disliked that game anyway, "ye olde Coke" ads would look thoroughly out of place in EQ2. They'd look equally out of place in Oblivion, or Neverwinter Nights, or Lord Of The Rings Online. There are mountains of lore about those games' universes, and Coca Cola or McDonalds ads, or for that matter _any_ ads, just don't fit there.
Again, I see basically a split between games where ads could work, and games where ads wouldn't work.
And honestly, I don't see it as any better if suddenly all games become Knights Of Xentar, Superhero League Of Hoboken, and other such fine parodies.
There's nothing wrong with them as such, but I quite like some variety anyway. I don't see anything particularly thrilling about a future where whole settings and genres go the way of the dodo, or are turned into caricatures of their former self.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
More roadsigns on the way to the beginning of the end. After reading several posted comments a lot of people seem to think that advertising like this would be 'ok' if it were innocuous enough, but does anyone really believe that this form of advertising will be any less idiotic than advertising that appears on tv? (As I'm typing this a television commercial is playing on a tv behind me, a Nissan Versa one in fact. Using this as an example, what in hell does a car bouncing around a city block like a superball gone beserk have do with a subcompact car? They don't even show the car driving!) Is it just me or has advertising/commercials in general gone waaaay over the edge of idiocy since cheap (I'm guessing) CG effects reached affordability for advertising agencies? I shudder at the thought of how these ads will eventually get integrated into a game. But supposing that the ads are well-placed and appropriate (no Coca-cola ads in 2000-year old tombs in Tomb Raider) who benefits from it all? I have to guess that the game companies/publishers (I won't even begin to pretend I know anything about the whole video game development/publishing process) view this as additional income. Great! How much cheaper will this make the game on the shelf? Zero? No thanks then. Will it improve the 'immersive experience' of the game? Well since I ordinarily don't run around in post-apocalyptic wastelands armed with a super-snazzy rocket launcher/flak cannon/etc... I don't see how billboards flaunting 'Coca-cola' will impact me any more than a billboard flaunting 'RedWithWhiteStripe' cola and serve to further 'draw me in' to the game. But I may be in the minority there. I'd like to know how all the additional intrusion of advertising will benefit me. The opt-out model is interesting, but I see it more as an exception to what's inevitably coming than as a rule. Before I 'embrace' advertising infecting my video gaming recreation, I want to know what my cut will be. Make the games cheaper, make all of the streamed advertising fit into the game context, and maybe advertising has a place in gaming. But if its anything like television, I'm cringing in wait for the equivalents of bargain-basement-handicam-special commercials to hit virtual billboards soon.
Something is written here in garish colors. You read: "Ea| at Jce's".
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I wouldn't choose to see ads in a game, ever - I pay for games in other means (initial purchase and/or subscription). But there are some web sites I wouldn't mind supporting. I still don't want to see the ads, though, so what would be nice is a firefox extension that by default refuses to download ads but, for particular sites, you could change the behaviour so that it downloads the ads, possibly even follows the advert links - but just bins them to /dev/null or whatever. And no, I don't care that this messes up the advertisers. Not one little bit!
Well, I wouldn't mind if it wasn't like Anarchy Online where the same ad plays a bajillion times.
Damn it Keith David! Your voice is the awesome shit, but I ain't joining the NAVY!
Internet ads have been optional for a while, thanks to adblock, and before that Privoxy/Junkbuster.
Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.
If you want to advertise to me, you can pay me for my time. In gaming, this means that I might play games with advertising if they're free. If you charge me for the game, then forget it--I am not paying you to advertise to me.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
hahaha.....
play 1 episode in an hour for 3 loading phases
hahahahha
Umm, no, Livejournal is not a good example. Comparing this to Livejournal is invalid, because unlike the game where everyone pays to begin to play, people dont already pay for LJ. Therefore those who own free, non-ad accounts do so at the expense of those who pay.
Plus, all existing free users can stay that way. So the promise that management made to current users still stands. And if you think that promise should have been made to all potential future users of LJ, that seems a little extreme...
simply ignore 'em if you don't like 'em. My wife is impacted by ads... I've seen it happen repeatedly. I simply remain the voice of reason and steer her away from decisions influenced by marketing. It works fine... actually providing me entertainment for both of us on a regular basis! :-D
;-P
You pay taxes for the roads... but there are still billboards displaying advertising to them. You pay for your food at a restaurant... but there's advertising on the packaging and typically all around you. Go to a store to buy their clothing... and it has a name on it... more advertising. An amazingly huge number of individuals actually pay extra to have that branding on the product even, particularly with clothing!!! If you don't learn to automatically filter branding/advertising out you're gonna go nuts anyways. *shrug*
Continue to play the game, let the ads roll on... until they actually impact play. At that point cancel your account and find another game to play... or a hobby that gets you away from your screen a bit. CoH/CoV is one of the few MMOs I've stuck with over the years and I fully intend to give them the benefit of their "extra" income stream... until it impacts service and quality of the game I already give them a revenue stream from. It's an easy thing to stop giving someone your money and find something else fun to do with that same time/$$$ investment. Much easier to do that than bitch and moan about it at least.
I don't know about you, but if I play a game which allows for immersion into a variant of nowadays or soon future world, and an in-game location is a natural one for a commercial billboard, I see no reason why the billboard can't be an actual ad. If I shuffle through a desk drawer of a virtual office at night, why besides the hint can't I find a leaflet for an actual pizza place? Why a TV at a bar can't display real commercials?
I don't even see any reason why you should be able to switch these off. They are an essential part of the game immersion, and removing them will decrease the immersive factor.
If a blatant ad cuts in between scene loads, it's not really worse than a splash screen with "loading" but only if the ad corresponds to the local atmosphere of the game. Please, no washing powder in a fantasy game. If the ads happen to actually disrupt the gameplay, say, you need to watch an advertising cutscene to proceed, then these should be strictly optional... but not necessarily as 'off switch for everyone'. If they are a source of revenue for the game publisher, just share a part of their profit with the player: 'game version contains non-skippable ads. Special discount -5% on the game price."
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You're fine with paying them a fixed monthly fee and opting in to ads? You could help them out even more by just not playing as much, or perhaps you could organise a bake sale.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's been my experience (as a web developer) that most advertisers really don't care about people clicking on the ads. What they want is "conversions". A conversion is the process of seeing an advert, clicking on it, and then buying the product. Some advertisers have got quite sophisticated tracking systems that can recall several sites on which you clicked a specific ad before you ultimately purchased the product, or even in some cases if you later return to the site of your own accord and buy the product without following the ad again.
In some circles, having lots of "click-throughs" is actually bad because it lowers the conversion rate. You then find that the advertiser withdraws your ads because they assume that the audience of that site is not interested in the product and would rather try advertising somewhere else.
In my early days on the job I tried arguing with them about increasing brand recognition and such, but these days I just accept that most web advertising companies are a waste of space and do what they ask because they help pay the bills.
I will never opt in to look at ads, no matter what the cause. Advertisements are one thing and one thing only - media engineered to convince a consumer to part with his money. Ad-based purchasing just isn't and never will be part of my habits. If I do not intend to spend, I waste time by looking at the ad. If I do intend to spend, I've already searched for and bought what I want, so again, ads are useless.
One thing I noticed is that - while there are undoubtedly still a lot of lame ads out there - more companies these days seem to try clicking on the humour button to make their ads more palatable (others are still in a time-warp trying cutesy animals or mascots... yes I'm look at you Bell and Telus).
There have actually been a number of times where people have made a point of showing me one of the humourous ads, either by pointing it out when it's on TV, or even sending them by email, on Youtube, etc. I've actually managed to build up quite a collection.
I could definitely see a market for these in games. See, for example, the placement of ads or ad-parodies in the second Shrek movie. One of my favorite scenes actually involves when the giant gingerbread monster (Mondo?) is attacking a Starbucks, and everyone escapes across the street to... another Starbucks.
Ads can suck, but if they're done right they can actually enhance the entertainment value of many products.
Rather than selling it as cans of Coca-Cola, or vitamin water, advertise it as an elixir of some sort. Maybe change the name a bit, but keep it similar enough (or with enough image-branding) that it fits in the game, but still relates to the product.
Well, since it's optional, them perhaps a way to encourage opt-ins would be to have contests available to those that do so.
End-result, the company makes more money on the ads, and players have the potential to get something back as well. A lot of non-virtual companies use contests/draws to encourage sign-ups already, so it's not really a new concept (but perhaps I should patent it just-in-case before some troll does first).
rateyourmusic.com has ads that can be turned off in user preferences. I've chosen to keep them turned on to show my support for their (IMO) useful services.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
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Next upcoming Comic Book to Big Screen Movie... for instance.
Enlightenment is the elimination of that which is unnecessary.
Then why wasn't that cost included in the game cost?
In other words, why would I encourage them to explore a revenue model that has the potential to negatively impact my gaming experience?
As I said, if they can meet the above criteria, I'll look the other way. However, there is no good reason for me to want to 'support' them this way. I'd rather they asked for donations if that that's what they need.
There are times when I voluntarily turn off AdBlock for particular sites, so that the people producing the content there will get deserved money. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale comes to mind, particularly. It's unlikely I'd do that for (non-browser-based) games, though, as they're generally designed to be more immersive than, say, a blog.
It is simple, either someone can pay a higher monthly fee or you can see ads in the game. Sometimes this is done because costs go up (including development of other product lines,) and sometimes it is done to increase the profit margin. Honestly, if you love a game and you've spent a large amount of time playing it.. It is highly unlikely you will just leave for another game, especially if the ads are fairly unobtrusive... If you do end up leaving to another game, then that company will eventually realize why users are leaving and will resolve the issue.
Honestly, I'd rather see a few unobtrusive ads then have a rate hike.
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Twisted