Google Brings Ads To Games, Game Ads To YouTube

Reuters reports that YouTube will be partnering with Amazon and iTunes to provide the ability to purchase games and songs that are in or related to YouTube's hosted videos. For example, watching footage from Spore will bring up a link to purchase the actual game through Amazon. The sales revenue will be shared. In related news, Google has launched a public beta for their in-game advertising software based on Adsense. "Google is initially targeting the sweet spot for its technology: games based in Adobe's Flash platform and which run in a web browser with no download. ... [Christian Oestlien, senior product manager at Google] said that Google's advertisers can use the software to insert ads into games or videos for YouTube, making the ads more versatile. Developers of games can use Flash software development kits to designate the points in a game that make an 'ad request.'"

Comments

Ads in Games

[MosesJones]

Back in 1999 myself and some friends actually looked at creating a networked gaming infrastructure company, not creating games but focusing on the bit that (back then) games companies really sucked at, the actual software infrastructure required for distributed games. One of the things we proposed in there was the ability to serve targeted advertisements into games.

Trouble was in 1999 that everyone wanted to fund .coms and advertising revenue was just about eyeballs so targeting wasn't required apparently.

Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.

Re:Ads in Games

[eldavojohn]

Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.

Why does it have to connect to the internet?

Isn't Burger King releasing games funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)

When I was tiny and we had our first x86 machine, I recall receiving a free 7-up game from the local supermarket that was a 3.5 diskette. You played spot, the 7-up mascot in an Othello rip off against another person next to you or the computer. Is this any different?

Would I be shocked to see ad funded games hitting the shelves? Nope. I wouldn't be surprised to see free discs & downloads of games where a car company makes a racing game or a soda company makes a mario party-ish game ...

I'm not too hip on this idea though, the last thing I want is more advertisement in my life. They seem like a distraction & waste of time. But since they fund a lot of what I do for entertainment, they're here to stay!

Re:Ads in Games

[megamerican]

Isn't Burger King releasing games funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)

Behold, McKids!

Re:Ads in Games

[MosesJones]

Its not about add funded games its about using games to sell targeted advertisements. All of those billboards in sports games and the "realistic" FPS games, perfect for slapping on an ad targeted just at YOU. Others in the game will see different adverts on exactly the same space.

Advertiser funded is old hat, this is about turning games into virtual billboard environments

Re:Ads in Games

[Anonymous Coward]

And if so, expect it to be removed by cracks so pirates can enjoy an ad-free version. Do they really want to add another way that paying customers get screwed?

Re:Ads in Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.

I think you might be a little overly pessimistic here. Flash games are free content. Most other internet games aren't. Jumping that barrier would be akin to commercials going from broadcast TV over to HBO -- possible but less likely and with a much greater backlash.

Re:Ads in Games

[lysergic.acid]

another great way to target advertising at kids. get 'em young as they say.

it's rather sad that most American school children are more familiar with corporate brands than they are with academic concepts like arithmetic or geography.

advertising is not something we need more of in our society.

Re:Ads in Games

[aslvrstn]

Tobias: It's a wonderful restaurant! Narrator: It sure is...

Re:Ads in Games

[mrops]

Don't you wish you had patented the idea.

Well if you don't, I still wish I had.

Re:Ads in Games

[hvm2hvm]

"When I was tiny and we had our first x86 machine, I recall receiving a free 7-up game from the local supermarket that was a 3.5 diskette. You played spot, the 7-up mascot in an Othello rip off against another person next to you or the computer. Is this any different?"

Hey, I had that game when I was a kid. I never got it to work because of driver problems but I kept wondering what the hell it was about. The config screen seemed cool at that age.

Re:Ads in Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Expect? Its already here...
Anarchy Online (run by Funcom) has already put ads into their game to subsidize free accounts. Any new free player is unable to turn off these ads (without some workarounds) and existing playing customers can opt-in to see ads.

Re:Ads in Games

[bakawolf]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't someone already done this? The targeting was done by recording which ads were focused on longer than others, and those types were shown more often, or maybe that was a concept..

Re:Ads in Games

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chex_Quest

Got this out of a cereal box several years back.
Basically a shooter running off the Doom engine with a anthropomorphized cereal piece as the main character.

It was/is actually a good game (maybe because they used an already-successful Doom base.

(Sorry, forgot my password, not gonna dig it up right now, I'm KingAlanI)

Re:Ads in Games

[insllvn]

Isn't Burger King releasing games [slashdot.org] funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)

It's a fine establishment! Plus, did you know that you can get a refill on any drink? For free!?!

Re:Ads in Games

[theeddie55]

I can date in game advertising back further than that, we were playing Action Biker on the commodore 64 in 1985. The main character was Clumsy Colin, the mascot for KP Skips.

Re:Ads in Games

[AmberBlackCat]

It has to connect to the internet so they can keep giving you newer ads on top of the ones you already got. I think it's only a matter of time before Google ads are on Blu-Ray. Maybe they'll make an Android Blu-Ray player with which you have to set up a gMail account to watch a movie.

Re:Ads in Games

[Sopor42]

You've obviously never played Need For Speed: Underground 2. Chock full of adds, but in that kind of game you would expect to see Billboards in the game world, so it actually adds to the realism if they are advertising real products! It was not, IMO, obtrusive, and I think it was pretty neat. Of course I'm not brain-washable enough to go out and buy everything they advertised so it shouldn't bug me! Having a sudden urge for a Whopper...

Re:Ads in Games

[Anonymous Coward]

everything commercial, any space can be monetized l@@k at tech expert :-)

Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[sexconker]

Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[maclizard]

Where would you have us put our ads? In your music?

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[internerdj]

I clicked on your post rating to see how you had been modded and due to some "error" all the information was covered by a misplaced banner.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet again pirates will deliver Better Than Original... this time by patching out the ad retrieval subroutines.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[sexconker]

Or by replacing the ads with their ASCII logos and scene videos/music.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[morgan_greywolf]

Where would you have us put our ads?

This post brought to you by: H3rb4l V1@gr@!!! Click here to Win a FREE I-Pod!!!

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Spatial]

Nowhere. Just die, or charge more.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[maclizard]

Nowhere. Just die, or charge more.

I don't know, I personally would rather see an ad or two than pay more for something, but that's just me.

If a game was released for $20 with ads or say $40 without ads, which would you buy? And don't be stubborn just to prove your point, I will know if you are lying. :P

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

It depends. If the game is a freebie released over the internet that the author has no other possible revenue stream for, then I have no problem with an ad-supported version like the current trend of MochiAds flash games. If it's a game that I have to pay money for, then yes, Keep Your Fucking Ads Out Of My Games.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Anonymous Coward]

but it won't be.
  The game will still be $40 or $50 or $75 AND it'll suck half your bandwidth to constantly update it's gigantic, animate in game ads.

It's not so much ads coming to HBO, it's ads coming to cable and satellite tv.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[BigJClark]

I actually take the strategy of not buying products that are advertised, or alternatively buying products that are advertised the least. I hope this catches on, because we are constantly being inundated with this crap.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Ron_Fitzgerald]

I agree. The trade-off of cash/ad-based games has been lost. Now, we give them $40-$60, then pay for content that should have been added to the launched title like extra maps or weapons etc. and then get advertised on top of it.

I understand that a business' only objective is to profit, but there seems to be no end to the greed.

I have been purchasing and playing video games since the 70's straight through until as recent as last week. You know as well as I do that this will really get out of hand and fast. But on a positive note for me, this will keep my games purchases low and away from those that participate in 'in-game' ads, the dynamic kind anyway.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[sexconker]

This is what I do as well.
But I'm not precise about it, nor do I try to take into account what parent company a product belongs to or whatever.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[kvezach]

Look, could I have music, movies, ads, and games without the ads?

Uuuggghh!

What do you mean, uuughh? I don't like ads!

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Spatial]

And don't be stubborn just to prove your point, I will know if you are lying.

Honestly, I would buy the more expensive one if it had no adverts, if those were the prices. I really don't like them, and I've avoided games with in-game adverts before and quit playing games I'd bought when they had advertising added (Counterstrike on Steam).

Realistically though, if they did that there'd be a full-price version with adverts and overpriced version without, rather than an actual saving by going with the ads. In that case, I'd probably just pass up the game.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Bullet-Dodger]

You could get the ads, ads, music, movies, ads and games. That doesn't have many ads in it.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[maclizard]

I really cannot wrap my head around the concept that someone would stop playing a game that they purchased, and enjoyed, just because of in-game ads.

Ok, I'll admit that ads in Mario or Megaman would be, well, out of place. However a game like Counterstrike where realism is sort of the point, ads can be placed in a realistic fashion, only adding to the realism.

If you have the money to pay extra for such a trivial preference, you really don't need to be complaining.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[Spatial]

I really cannot wrap my head around the concept that someone would stop playing a game that they purchased, and enjoyed, just because of in-game ads.

Purchased and enjoyed, past tense. I bought the game when it didn't have adverts; when they were added, I enjoyed the game less so I stopped playing it. Imagine a game element you find annoying and lame. It's been added to a game you already bought: do you enjoy it just as much as before? No. It's a simple thing to relate to.

However a game like Counterstrike where realism is sort of the point, ads can be placed in a realistic fashion, only adding to the realism.

It could be in some of the levels, but it wasn't done that way. Adverts were large and ugly, prominently tacked onto the environment and score overlay without so much as a border. Just imagine: large white and blue adverts for Intel CPUs, complete with some idiotic slogan. In temple ruins. Realism indeed.

If you have the money to pay extra for such a trivial preference, you really don't need to be complaining.

I can afford a hypothetical construct I would prefer, therefore I don't need to complain about the real circumstance in which the option is nonexistent. Not really the best line of argument.

Re:Keep Your Fucking Ads Out of My Games

[maclizard]

Having never played Counterstrike I cannot argue for in-game ads. I agree that The Temple is a poor location choice for an Intel, or any other, ad.

I also agree that once a game has been purchased, ad-injection is ethically sketchy. However, do you not watch Van Wilder on Comedy Central because of commercials? No, you watch it and enjoy it enough to justify not renting the DVD. I'm just saying that I am personally surprised that games have been largely ad-free for as long as they have been.

Now I know that the obvious difference here is that Comedy Central uses ads to circumvent charging the viewer, so perhaps that is the compromise; free games have ads, purchased games do not.

Don't ruin the immersion

[Coopjust]

Ads actually fit pretty well in some games. I saw ads for the movie Ocean's 13 in the game Crackdown. Cities have billboards, and they weren't an unrealistic amount.

However, I have a breaking point. When Sony Online Entertainment put Jeep ads in Planetside (an alternate galaxy futuristic MMO FPS), it was my breaking point and I quit my subscription. I didn't buy Battlefield 2142 for the same reason: the ads ruined the gameplay immersion.

Ads are OK if they fit into the environment. Otherwise, leave them out. I would rather pay $10 additional to not have gameplay tarnished by ads that stick out like a sore thumb.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Utini420]

I've been wondering how hard the film industry has been/will be hit with the same, and what affect this will have on genre pictures. You can fit a Burger King add into Iron Man and play it off as a quirky character moment, but you can't really shill for, well, anything in something like The Hobbit.

On the one hand, I want to embrace embedded adds as better than commercial breaks. But only within reason, and I wonder if that will be yet another factor pulling entertainment back towards the main stream.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[MBCook]

They almost never work well for me.

Some just stand out. The Honda Element in SSX 3 was just sad. It stuck out like a sore thumb, and shouldn't have been there.

The objects in Pikmin 2 fit in pretty well, but I think I would have been happier if they were greeked instead of having the real brand names on them. Finding the Duracell and seeing Olimar's little comment was cute, but any battery that looked like a Duracell would have worked, we didn't need the real brand name.

People can debate over ads in sports games (like on the sidelines). I don't play them generally, so it doesn't effect me much, but I'd prefer to not see them. Real TV is bad enough. A few months ago I saw footage of a soccer match where the sides of the field were LED billboards flashing ads and it was obnoxious. I don't need that in my game.

Some product placement isn't that bad. I don't mind the guitar brands in Guitar Hero 2, for example.

I guess it depend on the company as to whether it's tolerable or obnoxious. Having the Duracell there or a guitar identified as a Fender is fine. Having text about how the Duracell is better than Energizer batteries or six different little symbols after the Fender (a TM, C, R, and whatever else) would be quite annoying. Ads on the load screens are the worst.

The area is so thorny, and so hard to put anything in I'd say it's best to stay away from it.

How would you put ads in Mario Kart? Psychonauts? Assassin's Creed? Metal Gear Solid? Price of Persia? Castlevania? Team Fortress 2? There are so many games it would be next to impossible to put ads in without ruining the experience and breaking the illusion.

TV still can't get it right (see Eureka and Degree for a very recent example), and they've been trying for quite a while to find ways. Why should we expect something even more interactive to do it?

I'm with the parent post. You want to put ads in my game? Stop putting ads in my $60 games, sell me "Cheetos presents Halo 3". Chester Cheetah on the box, "presented by Cheetos delicious snacks" on the title screen, and a $0.50 coupon in the game and charge me $30 for it.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the billboards explode like anything else that gets hit with high explosives, I'll be fine with them.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Catil]

I would rather pay $10 additional to not have gameplay tarnished by ads that stick out like a sore thumb.

Either that or the ad-infested game could maybe cost 10$ less to begin with, which makes me wonder how much money they will be making with those ads anyway? More than 10$ per player? 20$ per player? More than the 50$ they won't get from me because I won't buy the game at all due to those ads?
Since they probably want to cover the losses they make to "pirates," I guess they made contracts on a per-play basis that will include pirated versions. So, hopefully for them the release groups play along because the pirated version might as well just strip the ads from the game along with the copy protection.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Reapy]

I agree with you 100%. Games are about immersion. I loved fight night games. Fight night 3 pissed me off. The bk guy as your corner man? This knockout brought to you by bk? Fuck you! It actually made me start hating BK. Now, under armor? Underarmor is a boxing brand, right? No problem. I can buy nike shoes and underarmor mouth guards that are actual products. Sort of immersing, isnt it?

Problem is advertising as you said only is immersing in present day games. They could prob do a future setting brand logo for themselves, that would be interesting. Or in like fallout having a destroyed billboard with current day advertisements on it would be pretty sweet.

Even with all of that, a part of me misses the fake brands you got in games that had advertising. Something funny and interesting about seeing all the parody brands to add to a world setting.

Immersion is really the problem with all advertising. It is jaring, in your face, and just totally out of place. LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!

Advertising, presenting to you in a way that fits with what you are looking at, is fine. Bring on your extra revenue, just do yourself a favor, and don't degrade your product by adding it inappropriately. If you ruin your product, you ruin the whole point of having an ad there in the first place.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[geobeck]

You can fit a Burger King add into Iron Man and play it off as a quirky character moment, but you can't really shill for, well, anything in something like The Hobbit.

"Bilbo! Don't sit on the verge like a lump; we must make haste!"
"I'm sorry, Gandalf, but my poor feet aren't meant for such a long journey outside the Shire."
"When my feet ache from a long day's journey, I find relief in Gold Bond medicated powder..."

Works for me. :D

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Fumus]

How about instead of "useful tips" on loading screens, an ad would be displayed?

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[thepotoo]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I will not buy a game that has ads in it. If the game is "free" then I may try it, but if I'm paying for it (even reduced price) there had better be no ads at all.

You're correct; product placement is somewhat more palatable in theory, but I've yet to see a game that had product placement where the placement didn't also suck (Splinter Cell's Sony Ericsson=ummm, what?).

Obviously, gamers' opinions will change when some major ad company (Google, maybe) gets behind an AAA title (read: not Flash based) that also features tasteful, well done ads, but I really hope we don't ever see that.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Talderas]

The Burger King blurb in Iron Man was done very well. It worked with the Tony Stark character they put out and I didn't find any problem believing that Mr. Stark wanted a couple juicy BK Whopper's after getting back from a diet of bad water and who knows what he ate.

That's the whole thing, the advert has to work within the context. They could have put ads on billboards in GTA4 and it wouldn't have bothered me.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Anonymous Coward]

So that the loading process is slowed down rather than sped up?
If I see "Loading..." flashing but don't hear the HDD (or see the network lights flashing), then I'm not going to play.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[sponga]

The BF2142 situation got blown out of proportion.
Remember the first Slashdot articles about it were basically that they collect your personal information and give it to the advertisers, it was not true and the developers came out to even discuss. Of course Slashdot never had the followup article and allow the team to answer some of those points, so they were backed into a corner and the fud had already tainted the game. It was more fear mongering with the privacy info that got everybody worked up and a lot decided that the ads would be annoying, even though they never played the game.

I played BF2142 and still do sometimes, it is everything that BF2 should have had with the commander and squad system the way it was setup. The ads if you played the game well you wouldn't have even noticed them the boards were spread out so far on the huge maps. Not only that but the developers even said they made the images on the board to look a little worn and blend in with the environment. All in all none of the ads have changed in the game since BF2142 was released and it is an even better game with the following patches, I think the real gamers complained more about the lag in the Titan servers than than some of the outside trolls who were just coming back to get back at EA the company.
Others might have a different opinion of what 'sticks out like a sore thumb' but I think you really should view the in-game screenshots/videos of gameplay showing one of the billboards in the background, you really don't even notice it when you have a hovering tank and a Walker(think Star Wars) chasing you down on your speeder. Game was as close to Star Wars as you are gonna get with the full Battlefield feel of the game.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[HTH NE1]

You can fit a Burger King [ad] into Iron Man and play it off as a quirky character moment, but you can't really shill for, well, anything in something like The Hobbit.

Indeed, that's one of the things that ruined my enjoyment of sequels to The Neverending Story: fantasy characters talking about microwave ovens.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[kitsunewarlock]

Indeed. I think any billionaire thinking "good food" thinks "Burger king". You can tell by how ritzy the restaurant is.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Ender77]

No they don't. I can't speak for all gamers, but I go into games to GET AWAY FROM REALITY, not to have it thrown in my face. Ads will KILL innovation in games, instead of creating a few original (scifi/fantasy) gems, we will get nothing but grand theft auto generic clones where EVERYTHING happens in modern city/environment so game companies (like fraktard EA) can get ad revenue.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[euri.ca]

If this becomes popular, will it limit the worlds that games appear in?

I'm a little worried all games be locked into near-present day urban environments where billboards make sense rather than lose the precious in-game billboards (or destroy the realism by having inter-dimensional Space-orcs considering Geico).

It'd be as bad as if all first person shooters had the same dirty grey-brown environments :)

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Schadrach]

Not too argue too hard, but it's not terribly hard to believe that even as a billionaire, after living on the diet he was on, he wanted something substantial and something familiar, something "American". Which makes a burger not terribly out of place. Would it have been better if he had himself, a servant, or a robot or something home cook him a burger? I think the Burger King or McDonald's actually would fit the scene well. Burger King paid more.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[kitsunewarlock]

I would have preferred him crashing one of those really ritzy restaurants that serve burgers (there's plenty of them in metropolitan areas; at least in Los Angeles; I forget where that particular scene took place) and quickly grabbing someone else's dinner and throwing them money to shut up, yes. I would have preferred that over a restaurant that I myself (as a person who, while not wealthy, loves to shop smart and eat well prepared meals) get sick to my stomach thinking about devouring that much grease.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[rtb61]

The really strange thing about all of this. There is absolutely no real way of validating that the adds were of any value or that they had opposite effect and actually put people off. The big thing is not to sell products but to convince sellers that the adds work and that they buy the space.

So you can imagine the sales demo, where the people selling add space demonstrate the screens where the adds appear and waffles on how the gamer must focus and see the add, of course the naive person buying the add space is not actually playing the game so they don't get a real impression of how a gamer is likely to react to that add.

So a gamer plays a game and is pretty solidly focused on the game play, tends to ignore and block out anything that doesn't affect game play and, you really think a billboard appearing in one small section of the screen that doesn't provide any required game information, will have any real impact at all. Bullshit does often sell, it just really depends who the B$ advertising is targeted at, the people selling product and buying add space or customer who might have been looking for that product in the past.

Re:Don't ruin the immersion

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with all of that, a part of me misses the fake brands you got in games that had advertising. Something funny and interesting about seeing all the parody brands to add to a world setting.

Ah, you're of course, refering to the Bitchin' Dog Foods ad campaign :D

Could be ok

[I.M.O.G.]

I would like to see it done right. Seeing as how google really took advertising away from the banner ad approach with the dominance of their contextual text ads, perhaps they will get this in-game advertising right.

What is right?

1) Don't interrupt me. Really. Figure out how to work it in, but not weigh it down or intrude.
2) Make it useful. I don't care for how it looks cheesy when you go to a vending machine in a game and all it has is fake product garbage. Normal advertising you encounter daily, like vending machines, is unobtrusive but also raises brand awareness while it provides some realism to the game.
3) Again, don't interrupt me. Stay out of the way, and a whole industry won't crop up around you trying to remove your ad content. (popup blockers)

Bottom line, I don't think ads coming into games is that bad of a thing, but they have to be done tastefully and not detract from the title your playing.

Re:Could be ok

[blahplusplus]

"Bottom line, I don't think ads coming into games is that bad of a thing, but they have to be done tastefully and not detract from the title your playing."

This is really key, I really hope they don't screw it up but knowing the asshats that run game publishers...

They have to be in good taste and fit the context, although I really wonder about the context of having ads in say like WoW or other fantasy games when technically it's a 'pre-technological' world.

Re:Could be ok

[kabocox]

Get ready for the Themed ads. Are you in a fantasy setting? Get ready for ye old Coke Ale. O.k. really only "true" old style beer and their ads should show up there. I have no idea what that would be. Anything from the early 1920s up could have all sorts of old style coke ads. Heck, Coke could make a massive list of their entire ad history and the various times each has run. Then they'd re-run those same ads in each of the games set in each era. If you have a 1960s game, you get 1960s coke ads. If the game is set in 1980s, you get that style of coke ads. They could be tricky and try posting next years ad campaign any game that they can find set next year. Or do one better and come up with future themed ads now sell 'em to the game companies and when that time frame comes up use them in real life. ;)

Ad companies should have a love/hate thing with this. Basically once create any physical ad for any company, you also create an online one for games and you some how arrange for the game company to report back how many players have passed by/viewed the ad or you get the ad to do it by itself within the game. Ideally, they could be years into the future off one really good ad today. They'd hate it though because every ad idea that they've ever sold to anyone could be out there competing for eyeballs.

Basically if the ad folks can get you stop looking at the strippers in Duke Nuke 'em Forever and actually look at their porn ads on the walls or outside the stripper joint, then they'd have a success. ;)

Re:Could be ok

[Schadrach]

Look at City of Heroes.

It's a game set in a modern city (be it a comic book-type one), they're advertising is opt-out (there's an option in game to turn it on/off, effective next time you zone -- it defaults to on, so it's technically opt-out), and the advertisements are only applied to things that were fake-brand advertisements beforehand (the original city design has billboards in all the main parts of the city, and posters at ground level, at about the right kind of mix and frequency to be realistic. The most recently released zone (as in, introduced after advertising was) has no ads, because it is an island under Roman control, accessed via time travel.

They are unobtrusive enough that I literally didn't notice they were on after my recent reinstall, until I turned on autorun to fly across a zone, and was stopped by flying face first into one while AFK. It was a billboard for a cell phone or something in place of a billboard for Crey Technologies (an ingame company that is basically powered by evil mad scientists).

Re:Could be ok

[I'm not really here]

Well, in WoW, you could have gear from firebloodarms as a company and have a "magic mirror" that lets you send one to the "other realm". Since you would only see this as an option, it is something you could ignore and continue enjoying the game. Simple "Purchase for use in the other realm" as an option for any item that is available in the real world would be unobtrusive... you just have to think outside the box.

Fear the larsen...

[Rulian]

Isn't there any kind of "advertising larsen effect" threat ? I mean... a video game full of ads for Youtube, wich shows us game footage with ads for youtube...

games to ads?

[gEvil (beta)]

I was hoping they'd bring games to ads. And then for some reason I felt like punching a monkey.

Re:games to ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping they'd bring games to ads. And then for some reason I felt like punching a monkey.

Don't you mean slapping a monkey? That's what most ads I see makes me want to do anyways..

Videos

[dontPanik]

ads into games or videos for YouTube

Does this imply I'll have to watch video adverts on youtube?? I RTFA and didn't find anything to that effect.

DRM 1 Star Mob

[Wellington Grey]

For example, watching footage from Spore will bring up a link to purchase the actual game through Amazon

Ouch. Amazon might not be the best place to try and sell spore...

-Grey

Re:DRM 1 Star Mob

[earls]

Actually I watched an ad for DRM and got exactly the product I wanted.

What's the point?

[kamikazearun]

In-game advertising is useless. Nobody's going to notice ads and the brands they're publicizing when they're busy shooting bad guys or racing down crowded city streets. The best option would be to restrict ads to load screens and such. Much more effective.

Re:What's the point?

[seventh_griffin]

Advertisers pay for billboards in rural stretches of highway, or flashes of a trademark in TV and movies. I don't see how fast-moving games are any different.

Re:What's the point?

[Dekker3D]

but they will be noticed when you've stopped for some reason... be it sneaking around a corner in shooters, or crashing/finishing in racing games..

Re:What's the point?

[DimmO]

Live for Speed has in-game advertising that works well. in the first few beta versions of the game, the billboards had ads for fake products and brands. Then they introduced intel, castrol oil and some brand of racing car fuel tanks. They were on track-side billboards, so were in-place and didn't look stupid. So, the ads aren't useless. I noticed them. I assume that many other players did too.

Re:What's the point?

[I'm not really here]

They'll be noticed subconsciously, and that is really the best kind of noticing for ad companies.

Ads and MMOs

[Wiarumas]

Hey, this reminds me of one of the conversations me and one of my old High School friends once had. The idea was to have people buy the game (MMO) flat out. Then, either pay a monthly fee that would be ad free or play for free with ads here and there. I'm sure there are people out there that would LOVE to play WoW for free by having to deal with ads during login and plastered all over the capital cities... and I'm sure there are some that won't. Either way, I'd say its a plausible market especially in the MMO universe.

Re:Ads and MMOs

[pjt33]

RuneScape?

Re:Ads and MMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Runescape already dose similar things. if you play the free version there are adds on your browser (its not a dowloaded game, ran through java) no ads in game but on the side. The payed version has no adds among other things. Seems like a nice way to do that.

However adds in the capital city would be terrible. I understand people would like to play for free. But I dont want the game envrement to be ruined by adds and if the game is given out for free the community might be ruined even more.

It wouldn't be necessarily a bad thing if that happened but it would change the games a bit. I'm all for free but ads in games might really mess with the theme of a game, you know the corporate big guys will forget tact and place dumb colorful ads in the middle of the jungle.

Re:Ads and MMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there are people out there that would LOVE to play WoW for free by having to deal with ads during login and plastered all over the capital cities.

Like every single goldfarmer for one.

Re:Ads and MMOs

[project-nova]

As long as the Ads fit into the game's atmosphere and style, that would be just fine with me.

So what Ads do you propose for WoW?
"Enl4rge your Sword"?

As Seen in World of Warcraft... SPIDER EGGS

[mfh]

EXT. Stonetalon Mountains (North West of Orgrimmar)

ENTER: Mackror the Mighty Orc Huntar

Mackror (yells): "I HAS CAPTURED 9/15 SPIDAR DEEPMOSS EGGS!!! FEW MORE TO GO!!!"

[ENTER: Homing Pigeon]

(makes pigeon crap on Mackror, sputters around... and lands on Macror's shoulder)

Mackror: "ARGH WAT! A NOTE!" (reads note)

"AIG Insurrance of Ogrimmar!!!! HAS GOLD. Invest to protect your new QUEST ITEM: DEEPMOSS SPIDER EGGS from decay and theft. Insure your home with the most ROCK SOLID insurance company in all Kalimdor!! We would never need to be bailed out like other institutions."

Mackror: "ARGH NO!!! LIARS!!!!!" (eats bird)

Re:first pos

[MikeDirnt69]

first post

It started being funny, than annoying, now it's boring.

Remember: In-game ads != during gameplay ads

[Legion_SB]

Nearly every discussion of in-game ads works under the assumption that in-game ads means ads plastered all over the game world.

This is true in some cases, but is a narrow view of the in-game ads concept as a whole.

There is a lot of real estate for ads to inhabit that is outside of the game world. Start-up screens (wedged between the ten different developer/publisher/middleware/etc splash screens). Menu areas (like the Samsung logo in the Perfect Dark Zero menus). Loading screens (like the Red Bull ones in Wipeout XL/2097). Downloadable content "brought to you by" on online marketplaces (that one's become common on Xbox Live). Community portals.

There's a lot of ways to introduce ads to games that don't involve splashing billboards all over a game world that shouldn't have them. Battlefield Heroes, for example, has ads all over, except in the game world itself.

Re:Remember: In-game ads != during gameplay ads

[ProzacPatient]

Ingame ads, while you're playing, seem to enrage gamers anyway, likw when Valve added ingame billboards to Counter-Strike.
Although I wouldn't expect much from MMO gamers since they'll usually grind on anything.

If my Pizza Hut and WoW accounts could be linked..

[greymond]

I would be an even more happy gamer.

Remember: I don't fucking care where they put them

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to see them. I wear clothes without logos, I remove stickers from computers, I block any ad I can block. I am not opposed to commercial information, but I want it to be informative, without fluff and available when I seek it. If they put ads into games, the game better be free so that I won't have to ask for my money back.

Google's too big

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm finding another search engine. I know it sounds like an over reaction- but the way I figure it, the more funding google gets the more money it has to inject into tracking us and injecting ads into every possible place. I understand that whatever engine I use they're gonna spend money on trying to sell me something, or make something I will buy in the future- but I'd prefer to give my views to someone spending their money on something else. Naturally it's not gonna be microsoft- but its certainly not going to be google.
The question is: is it too late?
Anyone who uses mozilla uses google, google is now a VERB, they own youtube, and they serve ads on virtually every web page. On top of that, they're getting a base of users for their browser AND they have a suite of office applications.

People started saying when is too much a long time ago, well I think now.

What the?!

[NovaHorizon]

I can't click on the boss' weak spot!!

There's a freakin banner in the way that won't leave!!

Why did they have to name the boss Supreme Commander?!?!?

Why!!!!!

Will I be allowed to play drunk?

[Cur8or]

As long as they dont ask math trivia before I can log into the game.

Re:If my Pizza Hut and WoW accounts could be linke

[dragonxtc]

I think it was in Everquest you could type /pizza and it would bring up a web browser pointed to the pizzahut web ordering portal. Man those were the good ole days.

Re:Remember: I don't fucking care where they put t

[PitaBred]

And then there are people like my aunt who doesn't even remove the sticker from the lid of her laptops. There are all kinds of people... advertising inside games will be quite successful with many, many people. Especially the online flash browser games.

Ads in games != cheaper games

[pandrijeczko]

If you don't believe me, look at movies.

The (more recent) James Bond movies are classic examples of where there is a lot of product placement (= advertising), especially with sports cars and then take a movie where there can be no product placement, like say "300".

A lot more people watched the last James Bond movie than 300, yet I don't recall it costing any less to see it at the cinema or buy it on DVD than for less than 300.

So will it be the same for games - the ads will appear but they will not cost any less.

Revenue shared between WHO?

[cliffski]

"The revenue will be shared"

between amazon and google. GREAT!!!!
then what's left will be given to the publisher who will make some deductions then give a small chunk to the developer.

Enough of this crap.

If you like a game, ANY game, then do the games industry a favour, and CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN. Many of the games on sale through online stores are also sold direct from the developer. If they offer that as an option, please take it. The developer will get between 2 and five times as much money from the sale. And you KNOW they got paid.

Middlemen are making more money from gaming than the developers who create them. This kind of bullshit is getting worse and worse.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Marketing for Free

[diablovision]

To answer my own question,
yes, Slashdot is the marketing arm of Google now.

How much does Google pay you guys for this kind of coverage?

Re:Toyota has done this

[Psykechan]

I wouldn't be surprised to see free discs & downloads of games where a car company makes a racing game

You wouldn't be surprised to know that Toyota did this with their Yaris game. It is a free download on Xbox Live.

The problem is that if you got it for free you still paid too much. I'm not saying that this type of thing can't work, I'm just saying that this particular example was a bad game.

could be cool

[phaetonic]

I think it could add a new and lifelike element to video games... imagine playing halflife 4 and while you are walking around, posters showing the latest release of a movie update as you play the game throughout the weeks. All I ask is that video games become cheaper due to their added revenue stream.

Re:could be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, by all means let's add the crappy parts of real life to games. Next we'll take out all the sci-fi stuff and Gordon Freeman will get a desk-job.

A new market indeed...

[Lavene]

First there will be ads in games. Then we'll get adblocking software that will block the ads in the games. Then we'll get malware that presents it self as an ad blocking software for games but turns out to simply replace the ads with other ads. Then we'll need malware blockers... And then someone will probably recommend switching to Linux...

Re:A new market indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

And then someone will probably recommend switching to Linux...

So, essentially the same thing as uninstalling all your games...

No download!

[YourExperiment]

games based in Adobe's Flash platform and which run in a web browser with no download

Flash apps work without downloading Flash these days? That's pretty damn sweet.

Adpocalypse now

[draxredd]

I love the smell of an updated Hosts file in the morning. You know, one time we had a website ad-bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink ad. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole website. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...

Google beta?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google has launched a public beta."

Oh right, a beta by Google. I believe this means it'll be in beta for the next 10 years =P

No wait, they said betas aren't betas... or they have a different definition of beta. So is it a beta by our definitions or the crazy definitions of Google? I'm so confused!

Re:first pos

[Corwn of Amber]

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=960031&cid=24966315

TOLD YOU SO

MORONS