What I find most surprising about this thread is the fact that there aren’t any obnoxious “deal with it n00b, advertising is here to stay you whiney baby” posts.
Oh wait, that’s because the guy who started this thread was the same one who would come come out of the woodwork to troll any thread about in-game advertising on Qt3, calling anyone who was against it an idiot and a child.
And now he suddenly wants to have an intelligent conversation over the values that in-game advertising can bring to the industry?
I just make a habit of answering each post on it’s own merit. Everyone here has posted something incredibly stupid at least once, QT3 will become insufferable if it becomes one huge set of pointless grudges and arguments.
I’m not sure if this was meant to be sarcastic but just incase, have you never seen a book that has a little extract (often the first chapter) of another book after it’s finished. Not to mention the little rundown of books written by the same author or from the same publisher/series. Some of the books I have even have cut out order forms in them.
I’m interested to know what everybody’s thoughts are on those “made for nvidia” style ads that most games (PC ones at least) have during their opening credit sequences. This is one of the more established forms of advertising in gaming but nobody ever seems comment on it in discussions like this. Personally I couldn’t care less as long as it’s skipable.
Yeah, I guess for me, certain ads at least make a kind of sense in my addled brain. Sure, Friends, Heroes, etc. modern shows having products that I see everyday, anyways, makes sense. I mean, right now in the Game Of Life I am playing, I see ads for Nerf, Creative, Apple, Samsung, and on and on.
I, Robot with Lexus (?) cars made sense as it at least didn’t look like that car was from 2000.
A far-future or deep-past game with any kind of current ads would cause my brain to vapour-lock.
The first time is fine, but when your forced to watch it every single time you load a game, it starts to get a bit much (ex:Bioshock).
I don’t think we can really talk about the merits of in game advertising, until we see a retail game where the consumer recieves the most benefits not the publisher. All the EA games with advertising, when we see the newest EA sports game retail for $10 or $20 less then everyone else then I think we can start talking about it.
I don’t mind advertising if it lends to immersion, like drinking a brand soda instead of a made up one in a realistic world setting., but if I’m playing a game that takes place in a fantasy setting, I better not see any car ads or television promos on cottages.
Google are glad you weren’t one of the early investors they spoke too. You are lucky to get anything from them for less that 10 cents per click and if any single ad was running at a 1% click through rate it probably wouldn’t be around long, factor in that they have anything up to about 8 ads on a page and it’s safe to say they are making a lot more than $1 for every 1000 visits.
I think that’s my biggest problem with in game and in movie advertising/product placement - if done poorly (and it usually is) it breaks the immersion. For example, I have no particular objection to the detectives in The Wire drinking a particular brand of beer - it almost seems like a class commentary, and they drink brands of beer that make sense for who these guys are in terms of class and occupation. Similarly the product placements in Blade Runner and 2001 worked within their environment and weren’t at all disruptive.
What’s tough is that in a multimillion dollar movie or game, where the people behind it have designed everything to create a particular experience, noticing that bottles are arranged exactly so that you can read the labels breaks the illusion of reality that they have worked so hard to establish. Not to mention the garish, out of place, billboards that seem to be our collective FPS destiny.
I think that holding out for advertising lowering the cost of mainstream games is just a pipe dream - I can’t imagine that the revenue from the ads is enough to offset the costs of making the game. Even if it does by a dollar or two, why would the producers walk away from that extra margin? Maybe Jim’s game for EA will be the exception that proves the rule.
“bioshock.exe -nointro” is what you’re craving. I wish I could get a DVD player that would do the same thing for the mandatory trailers that are in place on some DVDs. I wonder what the total elapsed time I’ve spent just looking at that FBI warning. Makes me actually just the slightest bit nostalgic for VHS.
I was thinking specifically of in-text advertising, since I assumed we were talking about in-game advertising here. I hope to someday read the main character drinking Sports Drink and driving their Chevy Whatever in descriptive and elaborate prose. We’ll get there someday, I’m sure.
I hate the nVidia ads that open most games these days. I buy ATI cards because of them. For serious.
I make games. I would motherfuckin’ LOVE to advertise my game on a billboard in Halo 3. Hell, I’d take that over two spots on Spike TV, which seems to be where the majority of game ads end up.
I’d be shocked if no other game developers want the same thing.
trust me, I spend a lot on adwords, I am NOT paying more than 10 cents a click. sometimes its 5 cents. and some CTR are very low. it depends on the keyword.
Which games? Just want to know so I can avoid them like the plague - 'cause if you would L-O-V-E to put advertising in another developer’s game, then you probably would L-O-V-E to get some extra money by putting ads in your games.
Unfortunately, the genre of game I’ve worked on hasn’t lent itself easily to ads (and for the anti-ad crowd, this is your saving grace - you can’t put many ads that make sense in historical or fantasy games, which comprise a huge percentage of titles every year).
Believe me, if I have the opportunity to swap out a “Gleep Cola” billboard texture map for one that says “Pepsi Cola,” and put a few extra dollars in the ol’ bank account, I’m sure as shit doin’ it. Sorry in advance (not really).
So you have no artistic integrity whatsoever. What is the point of this thread again? To figure out how people like you who want to shove ads in the face of gamers to make a buck on the side can trick gamers into liking it?
