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In-Game Advertising Makes Games Better?
Pretty much every time we hear about a game launching in-game advertising it sounds like a horrible idea that will only serve to detract from the experience. However JJ Richards of Massive wants you to give it a chance, claiming that if done correctly it can not only work, but actually enhance the overall experience. "In fact, according to Massive's research, gamers like ads. Here's the caveat: they have to add to the gaming experience. He describes a game that takes place in Times Square. With no ads, it's not real at all. With generic ads, it's a little better. 'Now imagine Times Square with ads you just saw on television or read in a newspaper—the latest movie release or television show or a new car model,' he said. 'Imagine further that it is up-to-the-minute, whether you played your game today or six months from now. That is much more realistic.' His argument is that gamers consume the experience of ads, not just the ads themselves. 'The ads add to and enhance that experience, and our research shows that it is highly effective for both game play as well as advertisers.'"
Sure, but you culs always do like it's done in some other games (Formula One racing Simulator, for example) where real life Marlboro, Camel. Michelin, etc ads are replaced by fake products (Colten soda, Frantic tires, etc). The result? A very realistic environment without the real life ads poisoning.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
He is right in that aspect that real-world products, trademarks or ads in real-world game can go towards players experience.
I rather see real Coca-Cola cans coming from the vending machine than some made up or close so "Joca Jola" name. It breaks the illusion.
Even if the gameworld doesn't take place in real world, but lets say future, it can still count for the user experience. It improves the scifi experience more when player can think "oh McDonalds is still around" and game designers can put more detail in to the game by coming up with some funky stuff for them.
But this also has the problem that trademark owners usually dont like showing their products in bad light and going even so far that the game is not allowed to break their cars and so on.
It's not a bad idea - but it can be really bad if done incorrectly.
Right, "consuming the experience of ads".
Please, do humanity a favor and kill yourself.
No, seriously.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
How about I come park outside your house and enhance your sleeping pleasure by blaring Swedish death metal at all hours of the night? I bet with the right combination of Mayhem and Burzum you'd find that not only was the intrusion on your sleepytime making the overall sleep experience better but also that your dreams were brighter and more colorful.
STOP ADVERTISING TO ME WHEN I'VE ALREADY PAID FOR YOUR PRODUCT, ASSHOLE.
While never released, I worked on a video game that was set in the future, and we planned to have fake ads on billboards to make the game more realistic. If we put ads for future products that might exist, i.e. the Sony PS9, it would have been even better.
However, a popup that distracts from the game would have been right out.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I agree with this. While it sounds like mere rationalization to sell more ads, the reality is that ads are everywhere, and if you want realism, you need to replicate everything in the environment, including those pesky advertisements. I notice the fake ads in some games all the time, and it is a little jarring and detracts from the immersive experience.
I enjoy seeing each games fake take on real world companies/products. It's funny a lot of times, other times it's very clever. Also I hate, in game ads that have no place being there. Think it was BF2142 where I kept seeing ads for Ghost Rider, which was just terrible.
My problem with advertising in games isn't that I am fundamentally opposed to it - in fact, if it can make producing games more lucrative or cheaper for me, I'm all for it. The problem is when you get two or three companies sponsoring an entire in-game world, and every other billboard is displaying the exact same advertisement. That breaks my immersion much faster than a made up product. But, it costs time and money to negotiate these deals, so it is much easier to get two big advertisers than the twenty or thirty that would make for added realism. If advertisers and game producers didn't have to deal with negotiating a new deal each time, I imagine the diversity of in-game ads would go way up. Perhaps there is a business opportunity to be found here.
Real Times Square is commercialized, flashy, and annoying.
So if we make the game commercialized, flashy, and annoying, it'll be all the more realistic!
So long as the advert spots are equivalent to the ones in real life, I agree. I've never minded the occasional racing game that includes billboards with real adverts. But who wants to bet EA types will go overboard with it? Better not to even start down that slippery slope -- if you want to make games more realistic with ads, make them fake ads like GTA does.
I look forward to having up to the minute information on my sports scores from ESPN.com while playing Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 5. Even scientists have time to stop and whip out their trusty iPod touch, right?
No, we really, really, don't. I hate ads with a passion, and I can't imagine a situation where I would rather have any space in-game taken up by an ad display than a blank space or a simple generic texture.
This goes double for ads that require an internet connection to update and waste my bandwidth for something I have no interest in.
And lastly, I can not imagine finding anything relevant in an in-game ad: Wow, the new Ferrari is out! I must buy one immediately! Hey, the cinemas in Left4Dead 2: The Bloodening advertise the newest RomCom, surely a must-see!
I play games to fucking escape my ordinary life, not to have the worst aspects transplanted into it, especially since most games don't have realistic (as in "real-world") characters in them, anyway ("90% of all genetically enhanced super-soldiers agree: Clearasil is the choice of space marines!").
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Posting Story Headlines As Questions Makes Them Look Less Retarded?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I can see some utility in this. Imagine if you are toting around your grenade launcher and you see an ad that particularly annoys you. So long as you can frag it, I am all for having it in the game.
Especially effective if you have political advertisements so that you can launch your grenades at a poster with the face of your favorite political demon.
I understand that advertisers pay big bucks. However, I'm absolutely sick and overwhelmed by the amount of advertisement I encounter everyday. It's information overload at a conscious and subconscious level for most. Considering the relevance of the information to one's life, it's nothing but spam. It makes it harder for kids and adults alike to focus and pay attention to worthwhile information. Does advertisement make the gaming experience better? It has no relevance, no matter how well you hide it. Advertisers' ultimate goal is to implant a self-serving everlasting memory into your brain. I understand the size of the economics behind this sector, but it's too inflated in every aspect.
Come on, everybody knows what kind of ads gamers really want.
Anyone in advertising that I've ever spoken with always insists people love advertising. However, I've never spoken to anyone outside of advertising that says they like ads. I would think the emergence of things like DVRs, browser adblockers, etc would be a big clue to the advertising industry.
Research done by a company selling in game ads says that people like in game ads?
Sounds like those Microsoft studies finding that Linux has a higher TCO then Windows, or big oil studies showing that climate change is a sham.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
> 'Imagine further that it is up-to-the-minute, whether you played your game today or six months from now
Yes! *That* is what's been missing from my gaming experiences recently. I knew someone would figure it out. All those classic games I enjoyed in the decades past... little did I know how much better they'd have been if they only had up to the minute advertising! They didn't have advertising *at all*, so now I realize that I wasn't actually enjoying Baldur's Gate or Elite 2. It was a hollow experience, compared to today's FPSs. Who cares how dumbed down the gameplay gets; what we *really* want is up to the minute advertising. Give us that, and we'll be happy little consumers and buy ever more of your shiny products.
Thank you, Mr Advertising Man, for making it all so clear now. I hadn't even realized!
The only games I can think of that try to be as close to RL as they can get are the Sims & GTA. OK, for these games the times square example has some validity, but even there, we are not really there for the ads, but to play the damned game. As soon as they start modifying the gameplay to make the ads more visible than they are in RL they will have gone too far.
I don't want a driving game where the ads are so in your face that you cannot see the track. I don't want a soccer game where the ads are 5 times the size they are in RL. I do not want to be pestered by ads for softdrinks in WoW. Unfortunately I'm sure that once advertising gets a foothold in gaming these & other abuses will outweigh any increase in "realism".
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
A real world, with real chains and real ads, all of which are made up is the best way to do it. You have all the liberties of not infringing anyones shit, and a nice in-world level of coherency and realism. Using real-world advertisements would be detrimental.
In racing or sports games on the other hand, you're simulating the real world - so of course you want real world ads to go with, and can probably swipe some money from the guys.
It all depends on what you want to achieve. For gritty real-world shit, you want to get actual advertisements - for ironic, fun and fantasy "world"-games (of which I notice a bit of a lack of well thought out ones), you go with alternatives. Non-world games (which are getting rarer...) should of course not feature any ads at all, thankyouverymuch.
I could go for some limited product placement. . .
Like, say, in a car game like a GTA, having actual brands of cars, and having their physics more or less be accurate for the car model (so that the BMWs and Ferraris accelerate much more quickly than, say, the Smart Car, and being able to 'Test Drive' the car in-game by jacking it from a car lot. (Note, I've not yet played any of the Recent GTAs, so they may have even done this, by now, for all I know - the last GTA I played was Vice City, though I'm slowly catching up with the rest of the world).
There might be other things. . . like maybe having some virtual mannequins in store windows dressed up in styles some department store or designer is trying to promote in real life, or maybe having some of the npc 'citizens' which are walking around the streets wearing such fashions. It would get very annoying, though, if those same npc citizen's are spamming the local chat with exclamations like, "I *love* these new $designerName slacks I got at $vendorName". Maybe if I was actually interested in what he/she was wearing, I could go talk to them individually and find out more info in a private 'conversation'. I think I could tolerate that.
The virtual billboards/signs thing, though, I'm less inclined to want. I've always found it much more entertaining to have funny *parodies* of real ads in a game, than actual ads. For example, in the game City of Heroes/City of Villains, they had some very funny and clever fake ads, like a defense lawyer who had a billboard about getting villains back on the streets of Paragon City.
CoH even had some quests/storylines which were based around some of the fake products you would see advertised in the city (like a Cola which was, I dunno, poisoning the population, or mutating them, or something, by the local MegaCorp). How can you have things like that if you are using real advertisers? I doubt Coke Zero will appreciate it very much if you have a plot based around their beverage doing bad things to kids (although, maybe Coke would pay to have Pepsi be the culprit *grin*).
"In fact, according to Massive's research, gamers like ads."
Emphatically, absolutely, unequivocally
WRONG.
something that people hate, like ads, will somehow become likeable if it conforms to a time-based nature? so fallout 3 would have "double pits to chesty" axe ads and that would make them likeable? or perhaps Wolfenstein will have ads for family guy and armor all?
plus i dont think the technology in some cases has been well thought out. example: the same flash gamestop ad, between every clip of The Venture Brothers on Adult Swim, means i see the same rabbit sell me the same shit 5 times for one show. thats a commercial EVERY 6 MINUTES until i have memorized every line in it after 8 videos (40 viewings of the same damned commercial) and hanged myself in the bathroom.
anyone thought out how angry im going to be when i pay $65 for the latest xbox game only to enjoy commercials and advertisement in it at every opportunity? A comcept that works: Streets of Sim City made commercials laughable for fake products, which actually made the game more fun because a trailer full of marketing execs and legal teams weren't scared about market penetration or viewer reaction.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"enhance the overall experience."
Are we talking in game Viagra ads here?
I don't mind in game ads, as long as they help to reduce the final MSRP price of the game. If in game ad reduced the cost of console games by half. Then I think that's a good idea. It will make gaming more affordable for all.
Make players wait in line to buy items in an MMORPG. Make those leveling up characters only capable of talking to one person at a time, and they get breaks, too. Require bathroom breaks or experience loss of social status as characters crap their pants. Require quarterly paperwork to file video game taxes.
This guy is an idiot.
Yes, advertising in-game if it's done right can add "flavour" to a scene, like mentioned in the article.
However, far too often advertising in-game tends to be placed in ways that are an eyesore. I know there's a couple of games that actually use their multiplayer scoreboard as adspace, which is a significant eyesore. High visibility isn't always a good thing when it comes to in-game ads.
I don't know. I think ads in games aren't going to disappear anytime soon, but I can say with certainty that a game that uses in-game advertising won't live long if those ads are overly distracting or take away from the gameplay.
With no ads, it's not real at all.
I always thought gamers played to escape reality.
Most people dont realize how important advertising actually is in our day to day lives. Without advertising most people would have no idea what is going on in the world around them. You usually dont conciously see and ad think ohh Im going to go buy that right now. But 3 months down the line when you need a new pair of shoed you subconsiously think back to that nike ad you saw on TV and go look at those first. Granted there are some advertisers that take it WAY overboard! Mass mailers in your snail mail box, spam in you email box, cold calls on your cell phone using up your minutes, giant moving billboard on the freeway! Most of that stuff is just annoying. but in a free market economy you must have advertising, without it nobody would be able to have a successful business in this US and we would be a third world country.
Anyhow my point is; I dont think its a bad thing to include advertising in games. In fact I think its a great idea for advertising to gamers without as long as its done with restraint so as to not distract from the game itself. If I ever saw some kind of popup ad in the game or some kind of in game survey or some crap I would turn the game off immeditely and uninstall it, but I certainly dont mind seeing realistic stuff in the game like a McDonalds, Coke Machines, a real Toyota Yaris that I can drive into a wall! Basically if you FORCE me to look at it, or force me to accept some agreement, or interrupt my game play in anyway otherwise you lose a customer. Its a fine line for sure, but if done right I have no problem with it.
Ever watch the Cannes Lions winners? http://www.canneslions.com/ It is pretty fantastic actually. People actually pay money to go sit in a theatre and watch an hour and a half of pure ads. Lots of ads are really well done (see the Cannes Lions). The majority, however, are crap-tastic (see TV).
If ads do get into games, would this help to lower the costs? If we have advertising companies playing the developers to put ads in the game, then we might see a drop in the price because of increased revenue elsewhere (or any intelligent game manufacturing company would do this to not piss off the players).
As a possible downside though, if we have live, up-to-date adds, what's to stop this being a back door into PC's? It doesn't seem unreasonable that one could send in fake adds or use this as a door for gaining access to other parts of a system.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
If I'm playing a GTA game, I'd probably be jarred by real life advertisements because one of the things I've come to expect from the series is parody. I get a chuckle out of all the fake ads, the obligatory talk radio parody, etc.
If I'm playing a NASCAR racing game, or an EA sports game(which I never do, but just saying), I would expect real advertisements, as the games are based on real life. I'm not in love with the idea of AT&T and others lining the walls of the stadium, but if I want realism in a game, I'd rather have AT&T than AR&R or a blank wall.
I would likely accept real ads in a game like RB:Beatles if the ads were vintage, or modern ads any other GH/RB game.
But there's a time and a place for everything. It's silly to be completely anti-advertisement -- you have to accept that they're a part of modern culture. No one with any sense would put real ads in a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game, just like you won't ever see McDonalds ads along the trails of Yosemite in real life.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Hey if they want to have the ad's on the boards in NHL2015 match the real life arena, that's cool. Driving around some racing sim with ad's for Nike on a billboard doesn't bother me. I really don't care. Sports games are the easiest to think up on how this would work out ok.
Now if I'm playing some dungeon hack n slash and I see an add for Vigra on the walls, they can go to hell. Or if it's like clippy and come up and tell me that if I want I can click the right trigger and buy the same Nike shoes as action hero Bill on the screen. Some games, like Fallout with Nuka Cola or GTA's mock brands I think are better then the real thing too.
Some will abuse this and some won't. Some commercials on TV are well done, some aren't. I don't think getting excited about something just because it's Advertising is the right approach, we should be looking at how it's being done.
The key is "if done right", the problem is, marketing and sales people rarely think about how to do it right, they just think about how to sell their product. Commercials no longer describe product features or even the products their advertising, they just come up with something likely to get stuck in the consumers head. For instance, I myself am waiting for the game Pogo the Monkey. Yes we do listen to commercials in games, pay attention to the advertising, but the game type also dictates what could be acceptable. A small level of intelligence would be necessary to derive which adds would be good for what games. Sports drink ad's might be acceptable in sporting games but maybe not a racing game. We just have to hope the guy pushing the ad's doesn't have his own agenda or receive kickbacks for cross marketing attempts. If you keep it in good taste, I probably won't argue. If your product sucks, I probably won't buy it. Advertise away, but when I feel their intrusive (i.e. spam/pop-under(see x10)) I will loose faith in the product/company. A good product can sell itself. A great product doesn't need to be sold (www.ubuntu.com).
Or maybe it's reality that's broken. Imagine a Times Square that doesn't have all the ads, but instead has art, or beautiful architecture. Wouldn't that be -much- better?
Starting from the assumption that ads are good can only lead to the conclusion that ads are good.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Maybe Times Square would be improved by removing the inundation of advertising. Been there, seen it, pretty lame actually once you look just a bit past the initial "Ooh! Shiny!" reflex.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Times Square without ads? Sounds like a much much better place to visit than the real Times Square.
How SAD it is that our culture has gotten to the point where we need ads and overt commercialism to validate an experience as 'real.'
This is the same problem that plagues the movie industry now, where entire plotlines revolve around using famous TV anchors, Larry King et al, or pretend news reels, and copious doses of ads and famous logos to make something unbelievable seem more real.
Oh gee, if they're interviewing that space alien on Oprah and he's feeling depressed and she's helping give him a sense of self worth then it MUST be real and we laugh along knowingly because it fits in with our mental schema of the real world. WTF.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Can I opt out of the ads in the beginning? Like, I start up a game, and a screen pops up and I affirm that "Yes, I'm aware that Coca Cola exists." And the ads go away!
I know you guys exist. I PROMISE! You all do a great job getting inside our heads. Seriously! Can I play my game in peace now?
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Love or hate it, once it starts it will never stop. In ten years, we will look at games like doom and quake, and marvel not at their primitive graphics, but their lack of ads.
I just hope that devs aren't fucking idiots, and forget that the ad servers that they are querying for the latest ads might someday not be there..
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The FPTS (First Person Times Square) genre comes into it's own!
People have labled me a geek and a dork for exclusively playing times square games.
"They are just so much deeper than other genres.", i've said.
"Oh yeah? There're no ads.", they've replied, "How is that fun?"
Well, IN YOUR FACE naysayers. Times square games are bustin' at the seams with ads now! let the fun begin!
Then again, you can do it right. GTA not only has ads and commercials for fake companies, it has the businesses behind them. You can get a Whiz Wireless cell phone in-game. You can go to Burger Shot. That's doing it right.
If in game ads make the game cheaper or same price with better quality then be it.
I hate to pay for my cable, then see ads interrupting the program I am watching (especially because I spend less than 20 minutes a day in front of the TV - also because of that) - so I really-really do not want to wade through ads between menus and splash screens.
However I agree completely, that in-game ads should be either real, or funny or adding to the content. In a racing game I better see real ads then made-up stupid stuff, in a SCI-FI game I welcome a redesigned Coke bottle or existing car brands. BTW car brands: I have LFS or Rfactor because of all the made-up fantasy cars.
This just tells us that ads have become expected. Times square is one place. A NASCAR game would be another. A busy New York street or a NASCAR race would actually look wrong without ads because we've grown accustomed to seeing them plastered everywhere. In those cases, gamers might actually find the dissonance between reality and the game to be a distraction.
Now imagine a game called "Grand Canyon Whitewater Rafting Adventure", where you try to paddle through the canyon while being shot at (and shooting back at) some enemy. Ads on the canyon walls might be every bit as distracting as a Times Square without ads. We expect ads in one canyon, but not in the other.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What about ad's for fake things, if the game gets enough following/sales could be made into a real merchandise item. Like fallout's Nuka Cola, or Nuka Cola Quantum. Those ads were great in game and I wouldn't mind drinking down a Nuka Cola.
I think I speak for gamers everywhere when I say "Get knotted you marketing scumbag"
I paid good money for the game, I don't want ads.
The solution to this is the solution that would solve a lot of problems with games, but will probably never happen - proper reviews.
Ads in some games are alright. In some games, they're annoying. In some games, they really detract from the experience - maybe not the *gameplay*, but the *experience*. Reviewers should be incorporating all aspects of a game into their reviews *and their scores*, including this one.
All it will take is a game or two that gets its score dropped by half a point or a full point with a comment in the scoring section that says "The ads are intrusive and detract from the experience, and lowered the overall score" to get developers rethinking this strategy. Developers, especially big developers, don't hear user complaints, they hear voting with dollars. They *do*, however, hear reviewer complaints and don't like the bad press, and lower reviews may also result in fewer units sold.
You could use real ads, but fixed in time. When is the game set? 1995? Then the ads should be from 1995, not updated to today. That's not realistic. Is the game set in 2009 (today as of this writing)? Then it should have those ads, you know, in Times Square. But probably not in some evil villian's fortress, or wherever the game actually takes place.
Some games, novels, and movies are supposed to be set "today" or "a year from now", though obviously these things all look very dated after twenty years. In these cases only could he defend his case.
Since all he's *really* doing is trying to justify a massive cash flow- after all, most games aren't set in times square, or any other heavily-dominated-by-advertising area- it doesn't even matter what he's saying. But even if we take him at face value, he's hip deep in BS.
I won't buy games with ads. I avoid TV because I hate ads. Keep them the hell out games, thanks.
TMNT for the NES has Pizza Hut ads everywhere. Looks absurd. Looked absurd back then too.
I don't care it if it helps lower the cost of the game because it's not going to be significant enough to make me buy a game that I wouldn't buy otherwise because of the price. In reality, if there's a game I really want to play, I'd be willing to pay heavily for it if the cost is justified.
Just slapping some ads into the game, regardless of how cleverly they are slapped in, does not change my decision to not play a game. In fact, it changes the game that I wanted to wanted to play in the first place so that I no longer wish to play it, and this actually nullifies the purpose of the ads: to get me to buy stuff they think I'd like because I'm playing this game. So, if I found out that a game featured real-world ads, I simply wouldn't buy it because it's no the game I want to play. Circular marketing reasoning, go figure.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
It isn't talking about "stop playing game and be forced to watch ad" type of ads.
This is talking about seeing an a billboard for Gatorade in a sports game on the walls of the arena, or walking into a "real" McDonald's while going on a murder spree in something like GTA. I agree with TFA that those add to realism, and so what if they make some more cash for the game devs?
It is important to note that IMHO, this does NOT include things like how Snickers "branded" about 100 terms in the latest Madden game, or any of the examples you mentioned. Yes, those are stupid and need to never be used.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Do you think the GTA series would be improved by having the adds be for Dunkin Doughnuts instead of Rusty Brown's Ring Donuts?
Test your net with Netalyzr
One of the best parts of the GTA series are the hilarious fake radio commercials & stupid billboards. I swear they have a 12 year old heading the creative department at Rockstar with all the toilet humor. But all the fake media MAKES the game. You end up playing more to find all those silly things. Still want one of those degenatrons(it takes quarters!).
You can almost tell the graphic artists get bored so they put some real inappropriate content in there. I remember in one of the Carmageddon games there was a billboard showing a pic of a woman holding what looks like lemonade. Then you see the label URINE underneath it.
In their own minds, they are helping deliver valuable products that people enjoy, and informing them about their choices. Cognitive dissonance keeps them from thinking about what they are really doing. It keeps them from putting two and and two together. They went to school to learn mind control. In their own discussions they can be very frank about the fact that they want to control people and get them to do things that may be against their best interest, but they can not see that in moral terms they are doing something very, very wrong. They are planting false ideas in people's heads, making them believe that a company loves them, that a beer will make them sexy, that a pill will make their dicks bigger or their bellies smaller, that choosing the right products will make them popular and happy. They are preying on people's insecurities. And it works. If marketing were not capable of controlling people's actions, it would be useless.
You know, there is another class of goods that gets accused of controlling people's actions and making them do harmful things against their will: drugs. We can't even prove that drugs do this, while advertising would not be salable if it didn't. Why are drugs illegal but advertising is legal?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can put up with a little bit of ads. I have played racing games and it does ad to the experience. I know a while back I played the "real GTA3" mod and it ahd the actual name for the cars and they had ads and stuff.
But I do feel like after paying $60 for a video game I shouldn't have to subside it even more with ads.I mean unless they want to reduce the cost of a video game with ads to something like $45 or so dollars.
I could only put up with ads in video games in just a few genres and in very limited cases like an urban setting and such.
Maybe. But generic ads can be humorous, too. Real ads have to take themselves seriously.
FAIL. Using the CUSTOMER'S bandwidth pulling down up-to-the-minute ads, so you can get paid for advertising in a game the CUSTOMER already bought? Advertising that will always change, thereby distracting from the game itself? And pitching that as an improvement? FAIL, sir.
Besides which, realism is only good when it makes a game more fun. Realistic explosions? Good. Realistic insurance claims afterwards? Bad. Some aspects of reality suck, and people play games to escape them.
You're way too nice. If anybody in advertising tried to talk to me and convince me that people love advertising, I'm not sure they'd walk away unharmed.
Sure, ads are fine if they are non-intrusive, something you'd see while passing it on the street perhaps. But most designers do not make them non-intrusive, with a great example being the MMORPG Anarchy Online.
Usually, all the billboards in town show the same ad. These ads contain sound. They are often short, and repeat immediately without delay. So if you are playing the free version of the game, every 10 seconds you hear a noise, followed by "unmanning the front lines", rinse repeat. It was so bad that if you were in a public area, you had to mute the sound on your computer to make it go away. That type of intrusive advertising does not sell anything, but instead fosters ire towards the product or service being sold.
I am all for advertisement subsidising the cost of my games (so that perhaps, they cost less than $50 in the future ) if they are done well, tastefully, and non-intrusive.
I hate when companies lose their focus like this and worry about marketing initiatives instead of their core focus, making the game. Once they are putting ads in the game, then instead of trying to make the game better it will creep that they need to get you to look at the ads. And all the while the game is not any cheaper and now they are starting to degraded the game as well. I could see ads in some games if they made the game cheaper and better, but for the most part it makes the gaming company lose their focus and produce a poor product.
Anyone in advertising that I've ever spoken with always insists people love advertising. However, I've never spoken to anyone outside of advertising that says they like ads
Governments say "You want us to keep you safe from yourself"
Rapists also say things such as "She actually wanted it"
Of course advertisers are going to say everyone loves ads. They would have to admit to themselves how much misery and frustration they cause everyone if they didn't.
Most[1] people have a tendency to feel guilty and bad when they cause other people grief and strife. So to keep that from happening, it is a lot easier to convince yourself you are doing the world a favor instead of changing your actions or beliefs.
[1] "Most" might not be the best word here, and I am probably being overly optimistic.. But whatever the ratio, while I can easily believe 'most' people are selfish and self serving, I have to also believe 'most' people aren't purposely evil.
Well, an in-game ad is also kind of an insane way to deal with people who play your game.
Instead of saying "This game is great", an in-game ad says "Go do something else that is more fun".
It is similar to a porn site that tries to make money off links to competing porn sites.
I can see that ads have their place in free games which would otherwise not be possible, and that it could make sense if your game melds in with real life non-gaming ads.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Advertising DRIVES that sport. The experience seems more realistic when you're putting the chrome horn to Jr.'s Budweiser Chevy, instead of a generic Jack's Poultry Shack. But in other genres, who cares?
I am having difficulty imagining what an enjoyable advertisement in a game would be. Sure, a realistic video game Times Square would have ads. You wouldn't recognize Times Square without ads.
However, how many games really take place in a realistic environment where ads would be natural? After all, Times Square is really in a class of few in its placing of ads at the heart of the place.
The only ad I've ever seen in a video game is billboards advertising Intel Core2 processors in the Highway Tampa map for Battlefield2.
Seriously, what kind of sense does it make to have a billboard advertising computer processors in the middle of a contested desert occupied by two villages, two air bases, a refinery, a gas station, two security check points, and some oil derricks? Ads just aren't going to be able to enhance these kinds of environments...
The real problem with advertising is that it brings into question just exactly who is the customer of the game - the player, or the advertiser. When game publishers don't have advertising, there's no conflict of interest, they're making the games for the player. When they sell games with advertising, then there is a conflict, and you can imagine how that conflict will be resolved in general...
How many games set in Times Square do you want to play?
I think the basic premise put forth here is sound. We just need to adjust the viewpoint a bit. Rather than making games more like real life, with ads permeating every moment of our existence, let's flip it around. Make real life more like the in game experience and get rid of the ads completely in both worlds.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Persona 3. And the strange thing? Not a very fun game.
If the ad were playing side-by-side or within the TV show itself, then no, I wouldn't watch that TV at all.
Professional ball sports have ads on the walls of the field. Stock car racing even has ads on the cars. Is it so different?
Yes, people like advertising.
Lots of people get the sunday paper strictly for the coupons. Hell, sunday circulars are posted on engadget and joystiq all the time. "According to this best buy ad, there's a sale... blah blah".
I'd say just as many people watch the Super Bowl for the commercials as the game.
Youtube is filled with "Top 10 funniest commercials" videos.
However JJ Richards of Massive wants you to give it a chance, claiming that if done correctly it can not only work, but actually enhance the overall experience.
I could have told you that. I've been craving some ice-cold Quantum Nuka Cola ever since roaming the capital wastes. And I know for a fact that if the Chinese ever invade my red, white, and blue sister state of Alaska that my government will run the Commie bastards out of the frozen wastes before they know what hit them! Now please excuse me while I go pray to my loard and savior John Henry Eden and attend to some....errr...personal business....
Must....find...more....blue...preciousness....
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Anyone in advertising that I've ever spoken with always insists people love advertising. However, I've never spoken to anyone outside of advertising that says they like ads. I would think the emergence of things like DVRs, browser adblockers, etc would be a big clue to the advertising industry.
Really? I know a number of people who congregate annually for the Super Bowl not because they love football, but because they "just want to see the ads". Over time, the advertising there has become nearly as important to the entertainment value as the event itself.
If the game designer try to create a realistic city, why not the ads can be realistic too?
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Professional ball sports have ads on the walls of the field. Stock car racing even has ads on the cars. Is it so different?
No, it's no different at all. I don't watch those programs that fill the program itself with ads, I don't play games that put ads in the game.
The enemies of Democracy are
Marketers live in their own bizarre fantasy world. They think "Advertising is good! Everybody loves us!" and then they produce godawful eye-gouging cringefests like the WIndows 7 home launch party infomercial (check it out if you haven't seen it already) and are completely unaware that normal people are digusted, appalled, nauseated, or just laugh derisively. Here we go again, with another marketing mouth-breather blathering on about how they've fooled themselves with their own research into thinking that "advertising enhances the overall experience" in a game... surrrre it does dude, provided that you're going for the demographic that enjoys getting peed on. The rest of us think you're an idiot.
Now when I see "Massive" on something, I'll need to put it back on the shelf and google it to make sure it won't hurl advertising at me in game before I'll buy it.
They better make the game so that if I see the big blaring '7 hours in the sack with our pill' ads, they allow you to destroy the video feed through mayhem.
They want to show me that ad on a TV in a duke nukem? Fine. Allow me to use the minigun to take out the TV (and store) playing that add.
How's that for adding realism?
Hell, they allow you to destroy every ad feature in the game, and I might just buy the damn game just for that alone.
I've always hated how the character you're playing never needs to eat, drink, sleep or do something fun once in a while. He always just adventures and fights the bad guys till the campaign is over.
There have been games that have done it. Ultima 7 stands out as an obvious one. Your characters would get hungry and thirsty, and you'd have to feed them.
Guess what? It was annoying and added nothing to the game. Other than you had to have a character who was your designated Meat Mule. Or you could waste reagents that could be used to cast something awesome or useful like Fireball or Telekinesis to instead cast Create Food constantly. It just distracted from the game. You're in a dungeon chasing down a villain, and suddenly you need to hand out snacks to your party?
I'm really confused by the way you phrase that "eat, drink, sleep or do something fun once in a while". Is "something fun" supposed to describe eating, drinking or sleeping? Sleeping is fun? Maybe in real life if you have a cool dream or the pleasant feeling of waking up rested, but watching a character sleep? How is that fun? In most games where sleep is a way to restore hit points, the time you spend watching your character sleep is basically punishment for having to use the 'free' hit point restorer.
Yeah The Sims is there, but its not exactly an RPG and haven't been fun since Sims 1 came out (and that stopped being fun after a few expansion packs too).
And why would that be? Insufficient biological function modeling? Or perhaps because it has too much and too little game?
Combine normal "every day in life" things like these with a good, self-thinking AI and it makes a great sandbox game and brings some pause to the constant fighting, massive storytelling and questing in RPG's.
Yeah. I want my pauses in questing to be by choice and to involve going on other quests or doing other fun and useful things. Not serving the needs of my (imaginary) body. "You eat the cheese" is not fun.
Going back to Ultima 7 -- you could do all kinds of things that weren't related to the main quest or any quest at all but that were fun. You could make clothes, weapons, and armor. You could chat up the waitress at the tavern who had nothing to do with the plot. You could cook meals. They wanted to make the world realistic and interactive. Mandatory eating was just another part of that, but a misstep. Because none of those other things were mandatory. You never had to stop mid-dungeon and weave a shirt. That would be annoying and pointless.
I dunno... I can't tell you that you don't want to play an RPG where you have to periodically dig a whole to shit in. But I have a suspicion that you might not be as enamored with the idea once actually confronted with it. I thought "Oh you have to actually eat, that's neat!" when I started playing U7, and I changed my mind pretty quickly.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm saying advertising is immoral, and that people should not support advertising or marketing because it is an attempt to get them to do things based on emotional manipulation. I'm saying that moral individuals should not consider it an acceptable career. I'm saying we should point out to those who do it exactly what they are doing, and why it is wrong. I'm saying we should viciously mock anyone in the industry and that they should be accorded the respect we give all other con artists and frauds.
I'm NOT saying the government should restrict advertising. I'm saying, when these sick fucks attempt to justify their immoral actions, we should spit in their faces and tell them where they can shove it. They want to play at manipulation and mind control, fine. but they don't get to have my respect, or the respect of any decent people. Advertising or marketing, as a career, is a waste of a human life and creativity.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Perhaps because it's a choice. You get ads and free content, or no ads and paid content. NOW how sure are you that everyone will pick the paid content choice?
I also think ad-blocking is not really helping keep the sites you visit free. I generally only block ones with loud noises or seizure-inducing images.
'Now imagine Shattrath City with ads you just saw on television or read in a newspaper—the latest movie release or television show or a new car model,' he said. 'Imagine further that it is up-to-the-minute, whether you played your game today or six months from now. That is much more realistic.'
Appropriately modified, Marketing Fuckwit #2's statement is entirely realistic.
What about 6 years? If your game is good, I'm still going to want to play it in 6 years. Are the ad servers even going to be up in 6 years? What's going to happen to the realism when all the ads are blank spaces?
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Not a bad idea at all if you give me the game for free. Kinda like every other thing I have with advertisements. I refuse to buy something and have to pay for it after I've paid for it. I don't buy shirts with advertisements on them. I don't buy TV shows with advertisements on them (that's right, no cable and somehow by some great miracle I'm still alive). And, I won't buy games with advertisements on them. (Now, if only movies didn't have ads, I might purchase those rather than waiting a couple months and going to the library.) But, if it makes the game free (as it sometimes does my clothes and TV shows) then I might get the game (if I'm interested enough).
there's a difference between real and realistic, and the only distinction for Massive is whether or not the ads earn them money.
I would have read and participated in this discussion but I was too busy enjoying that NetApp ad in the upper right corner.
It has a "replica" of what looks like a famous NY street pattern and looks just like it (well like the hollywood versions I have seen anyway) and not a real ad in the entire game.
Sorry, but the story ain't about realistic billboards in the game, advertising don't work that way. The Coca Cola company doesn't want that crushed rusty can that just rolled away to bear its logo, it wants you to sit watching their latest ad for 30 seconds while you want to play the game.
They don't want you to be a F1 driver, watching a yellow line that is your cars hood and maybe see the shell logo clearly in a flash in a replay. They want you to see their commercial, for 30 seconds and possibly more.
So yes, real world games CAN gain some immersion by having real world ads in it. But that is NOT what advertisers want, the opposite in fact. GTA did NOT have permission to use REAL car names for their cars. Why not? Free advertising right? Nope.
Not only does Coca Cola NOT want to pay for that crushed rusty can that ads to immersion, they do NOT want THEIR logo splattered with the brains of the hooker you just killed for a bit of cash.
Oh, and remember one thing please gamers, IF you sanatize your product and make it overrun with ads, you will have the same effect as TV. No, not free money. The gamer audience, that most lucrative market of young adult men leaving for something else. It already happened to TV. Why do you think we game? because there is nothing on tv.
The article mentions that the ads are "only" 4-5 minutes in an hour, hardly anything compared to tv. So what are all the complaints about? Because it won't stop there. Advertisers basically want to chain their customer to their ads, forbid them to leave at pain of pain. They WILL increase the amount watched, make it harder and harder to skip until people finally rebel.
Look at what happened to tv. Innocent commercial blocks have now become so invasive the ads are broadcast OVER the actual program.
If advertisers had their way you would be driving a cola can powered by cola, collecting cola buttons to spend on cola bottles and every single texture is the cola logo. Interrupt every 30 seconds by a 2 minute commercial.
Right now an advertiser is creaming his pants at this wonderful idea. You know it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Take a look at those /. ids, folks, of my post's parent and grandparent. Witness the differences in priorities, writing ability, and even coherency between the old guard slashdotters and the new guys. Watch the GP make a salient point; watch the parent blubber out the done-to-death "you're not forced into anything" saw.
I would agree that in-game advertising enhances the experience if done right as it adds a lil more realism to the game.
penny-arcade
Sorry, but I gotta say, my favorite video game ads are fake ones. Excite Truck (Nintendo) did a great job having ads that immitated real-life ones, but actually weren't, and they were interesting to look at because it sorta exposed just how insanely ad-heavy race track circuits are. Other games like Fallout and BioShock have taken ads and run wild, plastering landscapes with fake ads that mimick real ones, but sacrastically mock the whole industry. I know it might not be a great boon for ClearChannel, but it's fun as hell for the gamer!
Fact is, we play video games to escape from mundane reality. Sure, we (sometimes) want it to be realistic enough to really immerse ourselves in a similar world, but we also want to bypass all the tedious and boring aspects of normal everyday life, and advertising is one of them. Gamers want to jump 10 feet in the air, take 10 bullets to the chest, and pull off massive damage that would make Rambo look like a sissy. So, to me, this is hypocracy. There's no more fun in looking at "real" ads than having break every couple hours for your character to have to go urinate.
Here's my advice. Have FUN with the ads, and make them fun for the player. Virtual Times Square? GREAT! Create goofy ads that I can chuckle at if I choose to look at them. Real ads have the unfortunate side-effect of possibly cheapening the experience in the mind of the gamer. Some people are perfectly fine with in-movie or in-game advertising, but some of us are turned off by it. It's just one more thing that could eventually hurt a gamer's experience. Noone's going to be offended by fake ads, the most that could happen is that people don't find them interesting, but then they'll just not look at them, but at least you won't look to some people like you've sold out.
But that's not REALLY the reason why this guy is writing this article, now, is he? He's simply justifying the use of product placement in games because it'll probably make him money somehow. Excuses, excuses. There are better things to do in place of real ads. My take is that this guy is just a shill.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Everyone knows the master chief loves to drink "Soda"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I work in advertising.
People hate advertising. They're inundated with it. People in advertising hate advertising (at least on the creative side)... but they recognize that it's a necessary evil, and it's one of the most reliable ways for slacker artist types like myself to get gainful career employment. I have no illusions. I'm helping sell shit to people that they don't want or need.
Usually, I work in business to business stuff, so I don't have to do the soul-searching thing as often as folks who market for consumer brands/retail.
Occasionally people might enjoy a Superbowl spot, or the like, but those are generally narratives, and they account for the tiniest fraction of a percent of all advertising.
I appreciate the craft and thought process that goes into making effective marketing in the same way that I can appreciate move recaps of classic chess games. That doesn't mean I want to experience them in real-time. I want to experience them on my own terms... marketers' responses have been to simply scream louder and louder so that the advertising can't be avoided.
My $12 movie ticket buys me 20 minutes of advertorial (not including previews) if I want to get a decent seat. I get congratulated on my free nano or wii 200x a day if I forget to disable Flash. Same thing on a different scale.
TLDR: Don't think you know too many folks who create advertising... just ones who sell it. There's a difference.
No, those things are obviously just consumers playing hard to get. We want ads, but if we make it to obvious they might take them away, and leave us alone and uncared for.
You might actually hit the mark that way.
You shit out the following piece of verbal diarrhea:
It is completely, thoroughly, and utterly impossible for an advertisement to make someone buy something against their will. It has never happened even once. And you know it. You pretend otherwise because you want to relieve yourself of the responsibility for your bad purchasing decisions and pretend the nasty marketers made you do it.
Let's analyze that. I don't make bad purchasing decisions. In fact, I purchase very little, preferring to invest my money. When I do make major purchases, I research from unbiased sources.
I don't see ads, ever. I filter them on the Internet, skip them on my Tivo, flip the page in magazines, and look away from signs. I take the free things that advertising provides and I spit in the advertisers face. They are fucking evil, manipulative con men.
My question to you is, if you are right, why do people pay for advertising? Of what use is it? Why, if it is only to tell us what is available so that we may make rational choices, do advertisers employ techniques that appeal to emotions, and not to logic? I think you know why. In fact, you probably went to school to learn all about it, didn't you?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Seizure-inducing images, Flash (gotta love Flashblock) and everything that insists on loading external JavaScript. Plus all things that make the page load significantly slower (Google Analytics being an example). Apart from Google Analytics, I never blocked anything on /., for example, until the site offered me to turn off ads because my karma is so good.
If the site offers an ad-free version to me it's obviously okay with them if I don't want to look at their ads.
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They had in-game advertisements in certain city areas of the game. I thought it was kinda cool that they were real ads which (good or bad) I could relate to as I saw them IRL.
The only problem was there was just one Axe commercial that repeated itself over and over again. They shoulda put in filler ads or something to breakup the monotony until they could get more advertisers.
Just because the adds make it feel more realist in the game world, doesn't mean we actually like the adds in the real world much less the game world. Besides scenarios in games that would land you in a location like Times square are far and few between. I see it ending up like past attempts that had a soda machine in every third room (Matrix) or other such foolery.
Then there is the last little detail, the developers are double even tripple dipping when they let adds into the game. First I buy the game at full retail, then pay a monthly fee or for "extra" content (seems less and less comes with the game and more and more becomes "extra") and then they pocket the add money.
Now if you were going to give the games to us for less than half price or for free, or say 24 hours of free game time (MMOs) for each add it watch then maybe we can start talking about adds in game, but until then please feel free to go fuck your mother.
I wouldn't mind seeing sponsorship on DLC addons...
If Coke Corporation wants to pay for, say, a Left4Dead mini-campaign and slap a few billboards in it, or McDonalds pays for an added zone in WoW and gets ads on the loading screens, cool.
Enough already.
No, Halo 3: ODST won't be a better game with a Coca-Cola ad in the superintendent weapon caches.
No, Fallout 3 won't be a better game with Nuclear Coke instead of Nuka Cola collected for the mission that rewards you with Nuka grenades.
No, Half-Life 2 won't be better if my crobar has a Craftsmen logo on it.
No, Gears of War 2 won't be better if the grubs are wearing Calvin Klein T-Shirts.
And no, Bioshock will not be better if you have to buy your ammo from a Walmart vending machine.
I bought the game to take a nice little break from the world and enjoy an alternate one for a while. I don't want to be reminded of some brand new widget from some company I couldn't care less about in the real world. I already paid $60 for the game. And then more for one of the add-ons that used to be free when I played PC games. You don't need to try and squeeze more money out of me just because you think you can. In-game ads suck! Stop deluding yourself.
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Just put on loading screens and in game when it fits in and not in game out of place. Like how tv it some shows do any ad's built in in a way that fits and ad brakes can be the loading screens.
Provided that a game take place in this Universe and is believably connected with the current human race I think Ads in games can work quite well. As stated in the summary (because who reads TFA anyway?) the ads must be placed intelligently. Placing an up-to-date ad for Pepsi in a Times Square setting if the game is supposed to be current really does make sense. Also generic billboard ads make sense in many more places. What I will do is state some things that bug the heck out of me
-Fake ads that aren't witty or noticeably related to the game; Ammunation Ads in GTA games are fine, Mishelen Tires in a racing game is bad.
-Out of setting ads; if I ever see an ad for Dell Computers in a WWII game then my head will explode. This also goes for pretty much any movie ads.
-Lack of ads in an urban environment; everyone who has ever been to NYC or another major city knows how commercialized the world is and its hard to accept a world that is ad free.
-Loading Screen advertisements; So far I've only experienced this during game installations but if a game ever places ads on loading screens I think I would definitely take issue with it.
-In PC Games ads that are so elaborate I think they may be sucking PC resources I would like to use for real stuff; an example would be a video playing billboard that causes my framerate to drop every time I pass by it, this would absolutely drive me away.
Ok so I think you get that what I am ok with is ads that fit, ads that when I see them don't stop me. What I am not ok with is ads that I notice and go "hey that's blatant advertising."
in Anarchy Online, Froobs get the billboards. Paying players have the option to turn them off.
I worked on a Kiosk that played clips of videos and recordings (push button, see 30 seconds of Mariah Carey music video).
One month they added a button to play the Energizer bunny commercial. Ofc they had statistics on it and it was quite a shock to me that it was the most popular button press.
The biggest complaint I see here (or anywhere else) is that you don't want to see ads in a product that you've already paid for.
Well, what if the ad revenue offset part of the production cost, translating into a lower retail price? Games cost around $60 now. Do you think you'd be more likely to buy it if it had some non-intrusive ads and cost $30?
Here's a nice example of a non-intrusive ad. Take a game like Half-Life, where at some points you're driving down a road. Do you think it'd be that bad if there were some billboards that fit into the landscape? Or take Call of Duty 5's "Nazi Zombies" mode, one level of which has power-up drinks. Say some big-name energy drink company (e.g. Monster) paid to have their product used. Do you think you'd be THAT offended?
You could also possibly put some slightly more intrusive ads, like the ones you may or may not see here on Slashdot, on loading screens or menus? For example, the Call of Duty series has a big blank space in the lower-left of the menus, and Half-Life has some pretty boring loading screens.
Of course, the price reduction wouldn't last... Companies would soon find they could just jack the price up like they already have.
Adding "real" ads to a fake Times Square doesn't make it better just because it is more realistic, just as the over preponderance of real ads in the real Times Square doesn't make it better. In my opinion, the real Times Square would be better with no ads whatsoever, as would a fake one, not that I feel any great desire to experience either. Adding pictures of rape or giving a real beating to a reader wouldn't make a book about prison life any better (I don't think, anyway) just because those things are present in the real thing. Bad in a real context = still bad in a simulated context.
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I liked how in Guitar Hero World Tour they had KFC buckets in the level where the band is at a huge party. It made it seem more realistic. I mean, what's a party without food?
The post is an analogy from advertising inside paid-for games to advertising inside paid-for TV.
Spotted some Pizza Hut in SOME versions of the game, while others had a generic ad. I preferred the real one.
Methinks if gamers need to see real ads to feel real when they 'game', then they are getting bombarded with waaaayyyy too many ads in the real, real world. (this ad is brought to you by the un-named company listed above, and discredits itself and submits that users will all eventually die after using this ad, due to a little-advertised but well known defect in advertising.) thanks for lis'nin' seekertom