Publishers Detail Specific In-Game Ad Plans For Future Games

MTV's Multiplayer Blog recaps a recent event held by Massive Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft, during which game publishers put forth specific ideas on what types of in-game advertising players will and won't be seeing in the near future. The examples varied in how interactive and intrusive they were, from name-brand bottled water power-ups to destructible virtual billboards to taking advantage of sports game locker rooms for product placement. They did claim they would restrain themselves from blatant advertisements that would ruin immersion in fantasy games. Blizzard partnered with Massive to bring ads to Battle.net, but don't expect to see ads in the associated games.

Comments

So long, game publishers.

[JonTurner]

>>...what types of in-game advertising players will and won't be seeing in the near future

Hey, game publishers, let me tell you what types of in-game advertising I'll be seeing in the near future: NONE! Know how I know? because I WON'T BE BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS! Seriously. It's the reason I quit watching television several years ago: it was bad enough that the quality of the shows was weak, but the encroachment of pervasive, obvious product placement and obnoxious on-screen banners thoroughly ruined the experience.

I play games to escape from this garbage, not to endorse it. I'm not interested in your advertising, and as of late I'm barely interested in your cookie-cutter games that are big on cost & hardware requirements and poor for overall entertainment value. You're walking a fine line, already.

What I'm saying is, you need to focus on the basics -- creating games that are fun and deliver good value -- rather than considering my eyeballs some sort of resource that you get to exploit.

Pissing off your customer base is not the road to financial success. But what do I know? I'm only the person who used to buy your products. And I suspect there are many, many more people who share my sentiments.

Re:So long, game publishers.

[autobutton]

Interesting that you mention Fallout in this regard. I would probably agree if it was a random FPS, but it's all those little things that make the Fallout universe what it is. And I think everyone who ever suffered from advertising knows it's not going to be just that Coca-cola. After all, there's profit to be made. If my character carries an IPhone instead of a PipBoy, wears a Levi's leather jacket without the torn-off sleeve and drives a BMW convertible with the super cool new gadget car key that can remotely convert it, then Fallout will lose one of its main attractions for me: its atmosphere. It'd become another soulless commercial product without most of the witty humor and its ambiguities, because all the new stakeholders want a clean and politically correct product.

Re:So long, game publishers.

[grahamd0]

Meanwhile Grand Theft Auto IV has 'Comets' instead of 'Porsches'. I'm not sure if the reason is that EA has soem sort of exclusivity, so the manufacturers can't license them, or whether the manufacturers are turning them down due to the level of criminal/violent content, or whether GTA isn't simply isn't asking because it doesn't want to pay?

I would guess that it's because GTA is, and always has been, satire. The entire world is a parody of ours- real products would ruin the effect.

Re:A reasonable idea

[AuMatar]

No, it's not fair. I'm paying for the game. My time is valuable, and it is not for sale to advertisers. When they give me the games for free, they can put in ads. Until then, I don't want advertisements of any kind, and I will not buy any games from any company which sells them.

Re:A reasonable idea

[Mr_eX9]

I want to tell you to get off the soap box, but you're partially right. The in-game ads in Guitar Hero III were completely immersion-breaking for me. It's a small part of why I've stopped supporting that series.

Advertisements don't always break immersion though--series like Madden and Tony Hawk would be really cheesy if they lacked ads for real products/companies like what you would see in a real football/skateboarding arena. I don't have a problem with publishers capitalizing on this, and it would be insane to expect them not to.

Also, the banner ads in the Battle.net lobbies never bothered me very much--I'd get into a game and forgot about them.

Re:A reasonable idea

[AuMatar]

I don't care about immersion. I hate ads. These companies have no right to waste my time dealing with them. I do not and will not support any company which sells ad space on paid products. If I'm paying for it you have no right to do so.

Further the gap

[kvezach]

Go ahead, make pirated versions even Better Than Original. If you can flip a JNE to JE and bypass protection, it should be no problem to just jump over the "render ads to screen" or "download ads from server and save to file" function.

True, modern DRM is a bit more difficult than flipping JNE to JE, but that just goes in the favor of the pirates; the ad-download function can't be more difficult than the DRM, and they're already quite able to remove the DRM... So, yeah, publishers, go ahead and compete yourself out of the market.

Re:Further the gap

[hairyfeet]

That was the first thing I thought of too. I mean it is bad enough that companies like EA are making the DRM so damned nasty that you would have to be nuts to install it, but now they are going to pile on the ads(and if you think they won't just wait until the bean counters see how much more they can "monetize the IP") which of course will be stripped out of TPB version.

Oh, and let us not forget that they will probably add "video billboards" or constantly updating ad content which means they will be sucking up you bandwidth as well. I swear it is like these game companies have all been bought out by the PHB from Dilbert. I am just glad there are still plenty of older games I haven't bought and played yet because the PC game situation is getting so nasty I'm seriously thinking of just washing my hands of it for a few years and hoping some of these Dilbert companies just die already. I've already stopped buying anything from EA thanks to their "grab your ankles" insanely evil DRM, and this is from a guy that ALWAYS bought the latest C&C and MoH.

You would think that with the economy in the toilet they would do everything they could to keep customers but instead seem determined to drive them away. The only way I would even THINK about accepting this in game ad crap is if the price of the game was at LEAST 25% cheaper. Does anybody else think the odds that prices will go down on these "ad games" is less than zero? Me too.

Re:A reasonable idea

[Haeleth]

the fact that the ads are not intrusive

"Fact"? What "fact" is this? The publishers may have claimed that the ads will not be intrusive, but just saying something doesn't make it true. Marketers are lying scum, and like all liars, the things they say tend not to be true.

The fact is that advertisements and product placement are nearly always intrusive.

So long??...Just MOD out the advertisements...

[VinylRecords]

The reason the GTA series was unable to obtain a license to model the games cars and name them after real world cars was because none of the car manufacturers wanted to see their car associated with not just violence....but they refused to allow an in game model of their be susceptible to any sort of damage. This has been documented in the past before not mostly with the GTA franchise, but with every racing franchise in history.

It's the reason why in the Gran Turismo (racing series on SONY platforms) they have a complete licenses to use exact replicas of hundreds of real life cars from dozens of competing auto companies. It's because the GT producers and developers SIGNED a contract stating that no cars could be damaged in the game by the player. That's why in GT you can ram cars into walls, drive 130 MPH head on into another car, and nothing happens to the car or the player. This is all intentional in order to obtain the license to use the car brand names.

This goes even further with sports games. Nothing controversial can ever be allowed in sports game that use the official Major League Baseball, NFL, NBA, etc. license. No players can get kicked off the team for shooting themselves in the leg (Plaxico) or hosting an illegal dog fighting ring (Vick) or beating their wives (B. Myers) or using steroids (half of MLB).

Metal Gear Solid 4 had an item called 'Playboy' that you could use to distract enemy soldiers with who would read the magazine instead of fighting you. In game advertisement? Sure. Distracting? Not really. Because it's a natural element to the game, magazines have been in MGS before.

Would seeing COCA COLA and PEPSI banners inside the sports stadiums of sporting games really put people off this badly that they would stop playing games? I wouldn't think so. Most people who play sports games watch sports, and sports have the most advertisements per minute of show than any other television genre.

But...would I want to see giant banners for PEPSI or DORITOS in GTA4, or Fallout 3? No. Because they would seem so out of place and would detract very much from the game.

But those advertisements could be REMOVED on the PC versions. Don't like that PEPSI ad? Replace it with a picture of your girlfriend by substituting some texture or .img files in the director the game is in. Or create an advertisement free mod of the game. I'm sure it would be the most popular mod. Consoles gamers (I am one, and a PC gamer) will get stuck with commercials but PC gamers hopefully can just MOD advertisements right out of most games.