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What ads are you *not* OK with in games?
Commodore75
gothenburg.seRegistered User regular
gothenburg.seRegistered User regular
The [industry thread] brought up the topic of political ads on console dashborads.
Some people seem to not be fond of political ads (AFAIK the US doesn't even have any large political parties with nazi/fascist roots), while others dislike most/all ads.
Others asked if religious ads could be next, and if people would feel the same about those.
I have for a long time been wondering about where people draw the line, when it comes to ads in games.
I’m sure there are ’some puritans’ who wouldn't feel great about seeing alcohol advertised in driving games.
Personally I got a bit uneasy when I found military recruitment ads in a game marked ‘7 years and above’. (Not ‘propaganda’ that was part of the world/story/theme. Contemporary recruitment ads, that were part of a larger campaign, with ads spanning various types media/entertainment.)
I know ‘all is fair in love and profit maximizing’, but I would still like to ask
Is there anything that is simply just not OK, in your opinion?
Or is it just a matter of ”cool, but I won’t be buying that game now”?
[edit] 7 != 3
Some people seem to not be fond of political ads (AFAIK the US doesn't even have any large political parties with nazi/fascist roots), while others dislike most/all ads.
Others asked if religious ads could be next, and if people would feel the same about those.
I have for a long time been wondering about where people draw the line, when it comes to ads in games.
I’m sure there are ’some puritans’ who wouldn't feel great about seeing alcohol advertised in driving games.
Personally I got a bit uneasy when I found military recruitment ads in a game marked ‘7 years and above’. (Not ‘propaganda’ that was part of the world/story/theme. Contemporary recruitment ads, that were part of a larger campaign, with ads spanning various types media/entertainment.)
I know ‘all is fair in love and profit maximizing’, but I would still like to ask
Is there anything that is simply just not OK, in your opinion?
Or is it just a matter of ”cool, but I won’t be buying that game now”?
[edit] 7 != 3
Commodore75 on
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Semi anecdotal but my professor for advertising has/is doing/done papers on advertising in the interactive space and in games and I remember him saying that advertisement in games traditionally is a poor choice and advergames as in games that are literally advertisements are regarded poorly.
Personally, advertising on the dashboard of a console should really limited to offers and services provided on the console, religious and political advertising seems to be a step over the line.
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
An extra row in your database extolling the virtues of Happy Meals, is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Anything free I will happily endure ads to support it, and I don't touch things like ad-block.
But if it's a paid product, there shouldn't be ads at all. Period.
1) I don't use AdBlock.
2) If I pay for something and there are ads, I am not happy. I will vocalize my opinion to the developers/publishers, and will be very weary of future purchases.
3) If it's free, I am totally ok with Ads, as long as they are at the least, decently placed.
I won't ever include ads in any of my games that aren't polite. Start of the game and when you're not actively playing - such as high score screens/game over stuff. And I ensure that the ads are as far away from buttons as possible so there is no mistake.
And as far as the CONTENT of the ads, Google/AdMob have pretty solid campaign settings, I can usually ensure the ad is going to be appropriate for my "products." I still watch them carefully and if I see something I think is not right I can immediately request it be removed from my cycle.
On the topic of AdBlock, I run a few sites with pretty solid traffic, and I lose nearly 70% of my potential revenue because of that tool. I understand why people use it, but it really hurts small-time developers like myself.
it seems weird to draw the line at ads on game consoles; when you pay for cable you still get ads, when you buy a newspaper or magazine there are ads, if you buy a movie ticket there are ads before the movie (and then product placements in the movie), if you subscribe to Hulu Plus you see ads, if you pop in a Bluray you own there are ads, etc etc... If I got mad every time I paid for something and then saw an ad I would be angry all fucking day. I just don't have the energy to waste even thinking about the ad, I ignore it by default. I look at my phone during commercials, and hardly glance at the 3 small .jpegs on the far right of my screen. just like I ignore the banner ads on these forums and everywhere else in modern society.
Go fuck yourself.
(Pandora did this. Not the paid part, but the Android updated added audio ads that weren't there before, with no mention of this in the patch. I was going to upgrade before the update, now I won't)
'advergames' are regarded poorly because the actual game component is usually shit
I will say that I remember one NCAA football game that had an 'Old Spice Red Zone' thing that would pop up when you were in an appropriate place on the field. I found this interesting because 1) since it was mimicking an actual sports broadcast it seemed fairly unobtrusive and 2) I probably saw that 'Old Spice Red Zone' banner about a million goddamn times, since we played that copy of the game for a few years. I have no idea what their deal with EA to put that in there was, but they certainly got their money's worth in my house.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I just rarely watch movies or shows anymore so there's no need for me to pay for cable. If I want to watch something, I'll either buy it on DVD or watch it on Netflix. As for ads on webpages, I'll turn Adblock off for webpages I like and don't mind giving the views to the page's owner. Otherwise, nope.
The only time I don't mind ads at all is in free games, because the fucking game is free so I can't really complain. (well, I could but that would make me a huge cunt) However, if it's a free game that I played often I would gladly pay a sum to permanently remove ads from it.
I recently went indie-dev "full time" and of course I want to make money. I don't need to be RICH, but being able to keep the gas on and food in my tummy is kind of important. These are the choices we make in life.
That being said, I just don't understand some business decisions. I totally get the desire for money but I live off my principals and I just can't see why people don't think that those kind of things are terrible. Ethics are subjects I suppose but.. damn. Hulu has a paid for service and they have TONS of ads. It makes no sense to me. I guess some places are just desperate to squeeze every penny out of anyone they can for any reason.
If I had to choose between being rich with making questionable decisions from monetizing my creations and being dirt poor, working for WalMart as a broken and old Veteran the rest of my life, the only thing I could say to that is "Welcome to WalMart."
I agree with the above opinions about gladly accepting ads in favor of free services such as pandora, network sites while I'm streaming TV shows, Hulu (not Hulu plus, and fuck them for double dipping), etc., but I also use Ad block for most sites (I remove it for some that I trust) because too many sites just run whatever ads their ad company sends them which results in them regularly getting ads with viruses in them. Rather than blaming those that use ad block for not supporting the creators whose content they are enjoying (not to say that this is what you did), more pressure need to be put on the companies running the ad servers to keep their ads clean. If that is done, suddenly the need for ad block is diminished greatly. Most people I know that use ad block don't do so because of any great hatred of ads themselves, it's because of a hatred of getting viruses and getting tracking cookies from ads.
And on the topic of acceptable content in ads (specifically those on the dashboard of my gaming console); I would prefer them to actually be relevant to what I am doing, such as ads for games, or even music or movies that I could purchase on the console. That being said, I've never really been too bothered by the ads on my 360 for the most part, however political ads might be taking it a step to far simply due to them having a much higher annoyance factor than an ad for Mt. dew or Cheetos IMO.
That's sort of what I wanted to know ... is it just a question of time before we are OK with Cosmetic Surgery advertising in Hello Kitty games?
And for how long would there be a fuzz about that Vodka ad in the new Need for Speed?
And if the kid is too young, they either don't know what pr0n is, or shouldn't be browsing the internet unsupervised anyway (so they won't make it to [$pornsite]) ... ?
[edit] removed the off-topic stuff.
AdBlock Plus is kind of... beyond that though. It kills ads from any of your mobile apps. I understand AdBlock with Android Chrome and such, but for the games? I think that enters into a whole different ballpark.
Climbing on a giant neon AXE BODYSPRAY sign, or having the camera zoom in on a product name, or something as disgusting as Alan Wake's godawful product placement just gives me a negative connection with the brand they're trying to push.
Crazy Taxi is a pretty good example of how a company presence can be handled realistically in a game. You might pick up a fare, and they'll say "Take me to the Pizza Hut", and you'll do so. I don't mind that, to me it's no different from a fare saying "Take me to the pizza parlor".
But if I picked up a fare and they said "Boy am I hungry, take me to the Pizza Hut™ so I can get a delicious new pepperoni P'Zone™, loaded with delicious pepperoni and real cheese, now only $6.99" than we'd have a problem.
I don't like modern advertising because it assumes that I am an idiot, and that I will instantly crave anything it thrusts into my face. I have this crazy notion that I do not want to be a product, a data point in a database that is collated and cross-referenced and targeted for Ad X instead of Ad Y based on my media habits or my IP address or whatever new marketing blitz is being introduced to my geographical region. Modern advertising is an insult to the consumer's intelligence.
The problem with advertising is acclimatization, which means that as the public grows used to current advertising methods they no longer stand out, and just become part of the background, meaning that advertising has to become more prominent or in-your-face to stand out from the din of background ads that your brain filters out on a day to day basis. The more successful advertising is, the more successful it has to be. Ad companies are constantly trying to find new ways to serve the end user with ads, and videogames are going to be the next major platform for "consumer engagement".
And the worst part is that people are letting them. Gamers will pay $500 for a piece of hardware, then pay an additional $60 a year, and will still sit through advertising without putting up a stink. Gamers have shown time and again that they are not smart enough to vote with their wallets, so I would not be surprised if five years from now I fire up a new RPG and get an achievement for performing a fetch quest to bring the starting town's parched blacksmith a bottle of delicious, refreshing Coca-Cola™.
the point of advertising is not to make you crave something and make you run out and buy it. That has never been the point of advertising.
EDIT: I should clarify - it CAN sometimes be the case, with consumable items like takeaway food being advertised at 6pm on a weeknight, for example. But for the most part, advertising is about building brand awareness, and to do that, it just has to be there, it doesn't have to convince you of anything.
I have adblock in my browser, but I disable it for a large number of smaller sites because I don't feel it's appropriate in that context, and it's the means by which they pay for what is otherwise a free service. I actively aim to do this for those I want to support.
On the other wide (WIDE) end of the spectrum, I think that Quebec/Sweden/Norway have the right idea where they outright ban advertisements targeting children under the age of 12.
I don't mind advertisements when they're unobtrusive, generally - banner ads on webpages. Clearly marked "special" results on searches which push to the top. Ads during TV and radio. Banners on the outside of a sports field/rink. That sort of stuff.
But it's not stopping there. "Branding" the names of buildings/events just because there's money to be made. Billboards goddamn everywhere. Hair salons putting ads on their ceilings above the sinks. People selling ad space on their cars because there's a buck to be made. Auto-starting video/audio ads on websites. This complete inundation of advertising has made me start to knee-jerk loathe advertising to the point where I fucking hate it in all its forms, effectively. In the case of dashboards, if the account is a paid account to the online service? Get rid of them entirely. They're paying into your system, you don't need the ads to support it. As for in games? Fuck. That.
We take ads for granted and don't fight back against them nearly enough. When the 7th largest city in the world banned advertising, there was a lot of dire "THIS WILL CAUSE ECONOMIC RUIN" commentary, none of which proved true, and over 70% of the population thinks it's a positive thing and prefer it that way. I know I sure as hell would. So basically what I'm saying is that if you're in Marketing, I hate you.
As to the original question, everything is fair game if they have the money and it fits whatever guidelines are in place, same as TV. (Little as I like it). Don't like it? Get rid of the fucking advertising altogether.
I'm only ok with ads for games when I'm on the digital marketplace. There they're actually important for discoverability. I use the Steam "Now available" scroll bar a lot, because those ads actually help me to find stuff.
Also using AdBlock, NoScript and Ghostery. Not blocking Internet ads is just asking for malware.
They almost ruined Ken Levine's greatest game with this bullshit. Good thing SWAT 4 was pretty bug-free even without the latest patches.
Ditto, I don't have a TV aerial, nor a satellite dish/cable subscription. Adverts annoy me too much.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
On the idea of ads in games I actually like them when done well. Depending on the theme they can add immersion to the game and be pretty in-offensive. To a degree I actually wish more free to play or small developers would look at what ads could do for their game if implemented. It seems like a pretty good revenue stream that doesn't have to impact gameplay at all for a large number of titles.
If League ran a thirty second ad while loading it wouldn't effect anything and would bring in a pile of cash for the developers. The same can be said for pretty much any game, paid for or not.
This is essentially what happened in the industry thread. Which is perfectly okay. But people kept trying to justify their dislike for it as if it were something that was never done which doesn't really work. It's cool to hate the pervasiveness of advertisement in our lives. One doesn't need to make up reasons to dislike it more when it manages to pop up somewhere new.
Second, advertisements look *cheap.* League doesn't want to look like a typical freemium game. Ads during loading screens scream "This is how the game makes money" and "We're willing to decrease your enjoyment of the game to scrap together cash." League has tons of games played, so they'd certainly get lots of "views" for their ads, but they'd also generate a ton of ill-will towards their product, which isn't worth it.
As for the above "too dumb to vote with their wallet" argument: Basically, people don't necessarily care about the same things as you. Ads can be annoying, yeah, but they aren't product killing annoying to most people. The majority of people who are willing to spend $60 on a luxury product are not going to be so put off by advertisements that they decide to buy a significantly inferior or older product, especially given the majority of people dropping $60 on a game at launch probably decided to do so because advertising made them aware of the product, directly or not. "Voting with your wallet" also does work, in terms of overall sales trends, but everyone who says it fails seems to think it only applies if a game is a catastrophic failure due to a mass campaign, which basically never happens, while constant remakes of Call of Duty do (eventually) start dipping in sales.
As for paying a service and then getting an ad... that's life, it isn't unique to videogames. Again, if it's relevant (game ads on my gaming service for example) then I'm completely down with it.
As for ads INSIDE games... I'm not sure I've ever seen this?
I'm actually very surprised that there aren't ads on loading screens already. It seems like an obvious thing to do.
Steam: adamjnet
For that reason I'm pretty much against ads altogether. Exceptions are made with "free" products and the like, even though I find most F2P games abhorrent, like some kind of hyper-capitalist circle of Dante's hell: I understand the concept. If you force me to watch ads after I've paid for your product? I'm probably done with your products then.
I don't understand how some people are so accepting of ads. The only purpose a company has to show you ads is to make the conscious decision to degrade your experience so they can make more money for themselves. Feels like the entire entertainment industry, and society in general could do with a bit of being more respectable...
Xbox One can die in a fire. Nothing cute or clever about how it handles ads.
The free part is very fucking important. If you want to charge me AND put in ads? Go fuck yourself. You get one model or the other, so you need to pick which one is going to fund your work and stick with it. Never do anything by half. Never. It shows a lack of respect for your work and your audience.
I'm utterly consistent on this, except with the internet. Unfortunately as internet-based ads are now malware vectors I have to be careful about whitelisting them. With that said, I make every effort to be judicious about this. The only ads that get a free pass are Google's because they've never been vectors. With that in mind, I'd place the effectiveness of ads on me at somewhere around 1%.
Charge me what you think the game (or other media) is worth. If I don't agree, I'll wait until it's on sale. I buy movies still but only because my little sister is a cinephile who did nearly ruin her finances over movies; I buy the film and my girlfriend and I watch it, then send it to her so she can watch them, and they stay at our parents' place. I get $10 per film from my sister to subsidize this practice. I don't subscribe to cable for television (and if cable companies continue to subsidize cable tv costs with cable internet subscriptions, I'll be the first in the pool for a class action suit). I do watch over-the-air television.
I mean, I can understand not liking ads, and I can even see specifically disliking advertisements because you feel entitled to the product you paid for without distraction. But the sheer amount of seething hatred for advertisements seems like it's generally directed specifically at a new(er) trend of advertisements in games, not just "there are ads in something I paid for."
...I don't know, I hope that sounded the same out loud as it does in my head. To try and dumb it down, I equate a game console on the same sort of personal level as I do other appliances and objects in my house.
The worst thing is ads for blu-ray ON blu-rays. Clearly I already bought in to your bullshit, so who exactly are you trying to reach?
Advertising takes thought. Xbox ads are a bombardment of thoughtlessness. They're just trying to get those ads in front of as many eyes as possible, never taking a moment to consider what a user interface is suppose to be. The Xbox 360 interface, with all its updates, once strived to improve and make it a better experience for the user. Somewhere along the line Microsoft became less concerned with making it useful for the user and more concerned with making it useful for Microsoft. That's when ads turn the corner from good to bad.
This makes more sense than other explanations, or at least it's the best explanation at saying why you'd dislike console ads in a way that doesn't imply you also thoroughly despise watching movies in theaters. I guess I'm probably one of the minority (in the types of places that discuss the ads at all, anyway) that just doesn't care about being stat-tracked or having personalized ads. If they're unobtrusive (and they look to be), then targeted ads at least may point towards things I might care about, and they were hardly a huge deal on the Xbox 360.
I think the political ads became a big deal for more specific reasons, though. With a targeted ad for a local politician, you *know* that in some way, your data was tracked so they know your location. Then, there's the problem where if the tracking wasn't good enough, they target you with a politician you disagree with (ads are really for brand awareness, meaning you want to advertise to your base and/or you-leaning neutrals), people are going to have the double-down of feeling like they're being tracked *and* that their Xbox is pushing an ideology they don't support. And then, despite that being a pretty logical reason to feel at least transient annoyance at your console, justifications or rationalizations to hate all console ads begin.