Gaming Industry wants to put adds in online games

Looks like we can take a break from our war games for the advertisement breaks soon! "Quote " Afterdawn Newsletter In game ads are the future of games industry? It looks like the Gaming Industry is finally started to realise that more young peopleare spending their time playing games than watching TV.

The gaming market just keeps growing and growing and now corporations are looking for more ways to cash in off this addiction that has a global reach to people of all ages.

Massive Incorporated thinks that the future of the games industry will be in-game advertisements and has managed to attract attention from companies like Coca Cola, Intel, Honda, Nestle, T-Mobile, Universal, Verizon, Dunkin’ Donuts and others.

While games do already have advertisements, maybe these new ads may be a little bit more intrusive, making sure they catch our eye, just coming along while we are playing our game. Here's a quote from Massive: "By delivering ads seamlessly to fit the context of the game environment, Massive has created the most effective model for reaching young men. Gamers are completely engaged in their play—they are not multi-tasking or fast forwarding ads. Unlike their consumption of television and other media, gamers are 100% focused on the game." While they do have a point that not many people actually focus on the advertisements on TV, no gamers want to see stupid ads appearing on all their games and still have to pay full price for the game.

It also now looks like fast-forwarding past advertisements you have recorded from TV with PVR devices and similar will not be tolerated much longer. If a game were to be separated into different levels or missions, let’s hope the future games will not have 2 minutes of video advertisements between them. Massive plans to have their in-game ads incorporated into at least 40 titles from over 10 different publishers by the end of the year. Sources: Joystiq Massive Incorporated

nice subject

I might be easy with in game billboards where the textures change now and then, but not anything that deducts from my gaming time, and if they put ads in games, they sure as f*** better offset the cost of the product.

Nah, i'd say they'd put them on ingame billboards, tvs, graffiti on walls etc. And gamers would still look at them too, since it'd be part of the environment to explore...

Actually you could do some funny things with advertising in mmorpgs, buying a coke or some brand of food instead of health pots, stuff like that. Actually, anyone here play gunbound? Softnyx recently started a promotion thing with LG where you play on specific servers, and if you are living in Malaysia or Singapore (2 of the main population sources for GB) you can use points you earn while playing to enter competitions to win mobile phones and stuff. Which was annoying coz they took the two high level avatar off servers offline and replaced them with competition ones. :/

But yeah I can see this kind of thing happening a lot more in future.

Edit: Scuzzy, it'd probably be used for online games/gameplay to support servers and new content, at least thats where I see it being useful to start with

last edited by icewyrm at 09:00:29 18/Oct/05

Gaming Industry wants to put adds in online games

ADS. ADS, ADS!!. Not ADDS. It's not addvertising!

Anyway: /cue adblock for games. If someone else doesn't write one, I will.

"And the people did wail and moan and gnash their teeth and pulling out of the hair commenced".

Welcome to last year, Population: you






P.S. Thank you parabol, that annoys the s*** out of me too

last edited by WetWired at 09:17:49 18/Oct/05

counting down to eminent thread deletion

i f***ed up on no subject ...

A few in game adds might not be so bad ?



last edited by DeCoY at 09:34:37 18/Oct/05

i just wouldn't buy a game with advertising in it. unsolicitied advertising is my pet hate.

if you click the edit button you should be able to bung in a topic

burnout has advertising of other EA games already

3 cheers for Parabol the Spelling Nazi

Yeah a few games have a little bit of advertising atm but what will it be like when you have to sit through 2 minutes of ads everytime you load the game, switch levels or die and load from a save point?

Sadly I can see it becomming this annoying and pervasive :/.

P.S I know some of that would apply to single player games but i don't think they would stop at only online games if they get their foot in the door.

last edited by Xy at 09:44:45 18/Oct/05

but what will it be like when you have to sit through 2 minutes of ads everytime you load the game

Click the BF2 icon and find out.

I cracked photoshop and thought id see what it would look like..

http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~decoy/images/gameadds.jpg

last edited by DeCoY at 10:11:16 18/Oct/05

nice work...Coca Cola nades ftw :)

ADS. ADS, ADS!!. Not ADDS. It's not addvertising!

It isn't adsvertising either, if you were spelling it properly then it should be ad's, right?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v140/treestump/azu_add01.jpg

last edited by icewyrm at 10:33:18 18/Oct/05

I can understand ads on the internet and TV (although I use AdBlock and don't watch TV) because they're free otherwise. However ads in games is ridiculous and extremely exploitive, we pay for the damn game, so there's absolutely no f***ing reason why we should get ads as well. Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry and if I paid for the game I sure as hell want a percentage cut of the revenue they get from that advertising or they can go shove the games up their f***ing asses.

I can understand ads where they are already, billboards in Max Payne and on the edge of the pitch border in FIFA 06, but those ads are usually kept relevant and unobtrusive. I don't want no 'LG. Life's Good.' or Coke ads. It would be a reason for me to head back to piracy, because I would be watching ads that pay for the game. We finally get some good games coming out after years of s*** and then this comes into the works. Greedy cockfags.

It isn't adsvertising either, if you were spelling it properly then it should be ad's, right?

No, why would you put an apostrophe in a plural?

Do you say dog's when there is more than one dog? No.

Because it's a shortened word? Like isn't, couldn't, shouldn't, etc? Been a long time since I've had to write an essay though, so I can't say I remember my grammar all that well.

The apostrophe has three uses:

1) to form possessives of nouns
2) to show the omission of letters
3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.

thought so

last edited by icewyrm at 10:47:01 18/Oct/05

It's all about product placement. Instead of putting up massive and intrusive ads in the game, they just use brand names on props. I'm surprised they are yet to do more of this, because it's subtle and a more acceptable form of advertising.

(note the proper use of ')

it's all about making the ad relevant to the audience. i actually wouldn't mind relevant ads being placed in the screen between maps for bf2 cause it f***ing boring at the moment.

if the ad interested me i could alt-tab out and look up the website all while the new map loads. consumerism ftw!

Oh, you want to get all technical now and start referencing ...

The apostrophe has three uses:

Note the part on the link you pasted that says

Apostrophes are NOT used for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals

Considering you can validly use the standalone short form "ad" without putting an apostrophe on the end to show the omission of "vertisement", it follows that pluralising "ad" does NOT require an apostrophe to show the omission of said "vertisement", hence it's "ads".

I'm done with this conversation. /out

Hmmm....in game Ads....picture it...WoW....
You and 30 others just kill Onyxia and the looter bends down to see what she dropped,only to discover.......a can of Coke~a~Cola sitting there...BoP!

If they were contextual then i can't really see it being a problem... Just means marketing types would have to do a helluva lot more analysis on the various demographics... But yeah contextual ads that actually look like they're supposed to be say part of the gaming environment wouldn't be that absurd aslong as its not some OMG TO KILL THE BOSS YOU HAVE TO GET THE SACRED HAPPY MEAL FROM THE MC DONALDS ON COKE HILL BUT WATCHOUT FOR THE BIC PEN TOTTING GUARDS etc..

the other thing i spose to come from actual ingame content reflecting advertised products eg actually buying coke cans or something from a shop would be tha the healthy living bunch of people would want a green produce version because they would be of the opinion that the inclusion of the various sugary products would be sending the wrong message to the already FATTY young gaming population

I already hate advertising in games. I bought Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and in 2 of the cut-scenes there are these totally superfluous shots of Sam Fischer reaching into his pocket and pulling out a packet of Airwave chewing gum. The gum even falls out of the packet into his hand, like in the TV commercials. It was a truly groan inducing, eye rolling moment and totally broke the 'suspension of disbelief' for that particular scene.

Throughout the rest of the game, i always tried to shoot a few holes in any Airwave billboards i saw, even if it meant alerting some nearby guards.

f***ing advertising fagging up my games.

last edited by korbs at 13:06:31 18/Oct/05

OMG TO KILL THE BOSS YOU HAVE TO GET THE SACRED HAPPY MEAL FROM THE MC DONALDS ON COKE HILL BUT WATCHOUT FOR THE BIC PEN TOTTING GUARDS etc.

hahahaha.

Real world advertising would have ruined san andreas ... walking into a clucking bell and hearing the cashier go "Cluckity f***" for the first time in greeting is always a chuckleworthy experience.

ok advertising = throwing around a coca-cola can in hl2

non ok advertising =

OMG TO KILL THE BOSS YOU HAVE TO GET THE SACRED HAPPY MEAL FROM THE MC DONALDS ON COKE HILL BUT WATCHOUT FOR THE BIC PEN TOTTING GUARDS

Interesting little tidbit that nobody has caught on - the fastforwarding through ad breaks with a PVR device..

They're already doing tricky s*** here in the US to counter that - they put in mid-break "you're watching such-n-such" spots, as well as promos for other station tv shows (which used to be reserved for "the last ad before your show is back on")...the point is to trick you into stopping the fastforward - the reaction time for both you and the PVR results in you landing halfway in the middle of an ad.

Of course, this probably affects no-one here because they download tv shows with the ad breaks chopped out.

Just have fun downloading more and more fake/broken torrents... ;)

Just an Idea

What would be cool in games like WOW after a long battle you kill Onyxia go back to town walk up to a vendor sell you s*** then place an order for 2 Family pizzas 2Lt Coke garlic bread and have it deliverd before you are ready to go into the next instance, without having to communicate to a real person.

without having to communicate to a real person

Lack social skills much?

Just have fun downloading more and more fake/broken torrents... ;)

Haven't seen many of those, you?

haha DeCoY

and on the topic of ad's, it's obviously wrong, but one of my lecturers was rambling on about it the other day and apparently that kind of apostrophe usage is starting to gain acceptance, but with rules!

banana's <== ok, word ends in a vowel
radish's <== not ok, word ends in a consonant

english is a changing language!

Decoy: Your prayers have been answered, 8 months in the past.

Lack social skills much?

His idea isn't that bad actually, i wish most takeaway places had an online form of ordering. Had a classic time ordering 2 pizzas from Luigi's, and spending 5mins with the person on the other side (an asian who you could tell struggles to speak english) who couldn't understand the name "ivan"... "raymond" "no i v a n" "r y m d?"...
And for Pizza Hut - Hermitech's wizz bang way of splurting out rubbish in order to get the teleoperator quicker, works like a treat.

last edited by step at 20:05:39 18/Oct/05

Welcome to last year, Population: you






P.S. Thank you parabol, that annoys the s*** out of me too

Yeah, /pizza command in EQ2 hooks you straight to the online ordering section for Pizza Hut. US only. Pretty cool idea. Probably does nothing more than minimise the game and go to the PH website tho, i haven't seen how it works.

domino's is currently testing online ordering.

The idea of a non-intrusive ad is ok. eg: A billboard in game or a character drinking a coke (as long as they don't go over the top with that). What worries me is that they were talking about "phoning home" to show tell the company what ads had been looked at and for how long. That was how the game company would be able to accurately bill for the ad. That is one thing I don't like. Especially if they start trying to push that sort of rubbish into a single player game. That shouldn't need to have a net connection to play - yet it looks like a fair chance of happening :(

I wonder if ninemsn would get in on that. They seem to be targetting gamers at the moment.