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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? "
I don't know about that. I mean, you're right in that a significant percentage will opt-out. I'm probably going to opt-in, at least at first, and if the advertising doesn't significantly degrade my playing experience (i.e. cause tons of lag), then I'll probably leave it on, if for no other reason that it would be nice to see something other then the same couple dozen or so current billboards in CoH/CoV. But I can't see them changing the ads to always being on, if for no other reason then the range of graphics settings you can play the game in, where the lowest settings would probably make the ads all but unreadable unless right on top of them. (Which is, alas, the setting I have to run on whenever there's a Rikti raid...)
And apparently, NCSoft is making enough money on the current monthly fees and game sales where they are not considering consolidating servers that are generally low population or slowing the release of regular updates of new material. (Issue 12 is probably going to be about in a couple of months or less, for example.)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
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.
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.
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