1. Does it break immersion? No? OK. Yes? Not OK.
2. Does it advertise stuff that I actually find offensive. No? Ok. Yes? Not Ok.
For example. If it's a modern day/futuristic sandbox based in a city environment I pretty much EXPECT ads, the absence of them is slightly jarring for a child of the late 20th century. And I honestly don't care if they're fake ads or real ads. In fact I might even find it cool if it's a tastefully done ad for a real company.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
so my first thread is a train failure.
Should I just rename it "How do you feel about ads?" and ask the mods to move it to the right forum, or start reporting posts that don't touch the original topic, and are instead about the posters feeling towards ads in general?
Or is this some sort of hazing ritual?
Expecting a thread on practically any forum, excepting heavily curated mod run threads, to not veer at least slightly off topic at some points is a bit much. I don't know why you think it's extreme that people are talking about what they like/dislike about ads in general to better explain their experiences with ads in games. That'd be kind of like getting mad at people talking about the Harry Potter books in a thread about the movies.
1. Does it break immersion? No? OK. Yes? Not OK.
2. Does it advertise stuff that I actually find offensive. No? Ok. Yes? Not Ok.
For example. If it's a modern day/futuristic sandbox based in a city environment I pretty much EXPECT ads, the absence of them is slightly jarring for a child of the late 20th century. And I honestly don't care if they're fake ads or real ads. In fact I might even find it cool if it's a tastefully done ad for a real company.
I would genuinely love it for someone to do an up to date version of the Dystopia Half Life 2 mod funded by advertisements custom tailored for the setting.
It'd be the greatest damn thing. Have to wonder how receptive marketing agencies would be to that as a concept 'you can absolutely have this billboard on this map, but can you just ham up the mega-corp angle a bit?'
A couple hardware generations ago, I did most of my gaming on a PS2 and a Gamecube. Sony and Nintendo both somehow managed to pull in a profit without selling an ad spot that would display each time you turned on the console.
Then I bought an Xbox 360. Nostalgia time:
The X360 boots into the "dashboard", rather than directly to the game in the disc tray. Now, yes, you could do this on the PS2 by changing the settings, and you could set the 360 to boot straight to the game, but the defining feature of this console generation was that there was stuff to do with the console such that booting straight to the disc was not the best way to set up your system.
Look at the Blade dashboard again. See any ads? I mean, okay, there's a spot where they plug Xbox Live, I guess, but it's an Xbox; that's the service for the console. That's what the dashboard looked like for several months, maybe even a year.
Then a "system update" happened and we turned on our consoles to see this:
Huh. I guess somebody found some revenue-generating use case for that negative space. Now, you turn on your console and need to click past an advertisement before you get to your game. I mean, usually an ad for a video game, at least. It's a still image. There's no sound. It's topical.
After a while, the blades gave way to "NXE":
Now you get a cascade of advertisements every time you start up the console. Some of them are animated, and some have sound when the cursor is over them. Most may be related to games for sale on Xbox Live Marketplace, but some may well be selling you deodorant or hamburgers. Is there any way to get the damned machine to start on the "My Xbox" page, rather than the "Spotlight" page? No, not without disconnecting the thing from the Internet entirely. Would any user, ever, prefer to start on the "Spotlight" page rather than the page that actually gets you to the game you want to play?
At least when you got to the correct page, the game in the tray was front and center. What's this? NXE Dashboard is evolving!
Look at that. The game in the tray is a tiny icon in the corner. The biggest thing on the screen is an ad. Underneath it you have ads, and to the right of it you have more ads. In this random screenshot that was literally the first GIS result for "xbox live dashboard", I'm seeing an ad for a video game, an ad for a band, an ad for a movie, and an ad for ESPN. And, of course, should you accidentally hit "left" on the joystick, you'll have an ad for the latest iteration of Microsoft's failed search engine, just in case you want to type in a search with your friggin' gamepad.
So, now you bought the new console and they're throwing on political ads on the front page? This is my surprised face.
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Only thing I can really contribute is remembering when I played through Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 around launch and during a section taking place on Freemont street and not being minded by all the current ads because it was pretty true to the location.
But then I popped it back in a few months (maybe a year or two) later and get back to that section and some of the ads were advertisements for "Shoot'em Up". I found that both weird and kinda interesting at the time. And also hearing about Need for Speed and/or Burnout doing something similar.
Oh and then there was Battlefield 2014 that gave you targeted ads based on browser history. I'm sure someone will post the realavent comic shortly...
The thing that super annoyed me about the Burnout adverts.
They're on Billboards, one of the collectibles in the game is to go around smashing billboards with the Burnout logo on.
The ad boards were completely immortal.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
To be fair, they were apparently never happy with how the ads ended up on the 360, and have scaled back their presence a lot on the XBO.
Will it change and become more n our face later? Maybe. But they are moving very much in he right direction of balance at the moment (no unwanted audio on hover, no ads in the main block on the first screen (just a 3-ad block skyscraper on the far right that is mostly catered to your habits, and not animated/audible).
And we pay for shit filled with ads all the damn time.
Newspapers, Magazines, Videogames (hey, we may not put a manual in there any more, but there will be an ad for 2-3 other games from the developer in the box), paying for cable does not forgive you from ads, and neither does Hulu plus. HBO mostly gets away with the ad free experience (not counting the promotion of their own brand incessantly between and in front of shows), but they do so by convincing people its worth it to pay upwards of 10-15 dollars a month for what amounts to 2-3 new nice shows running at any given moment.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Expecting a thread on practically any forum, excepting heavily curated mod run threads, to not veer at least slightly off topic at some points is a bit much. I don't know why you think it's extreme that people are talking about what they like/dislike about ads in general to better explain their experiences with ads in games. That'd be kind of like getting mad at people talking about the Harry Potter books in a thread about the movies.
No.
It's not that people veer slightly off topic. It's that so few (5?) even touch on the topic.
And instead post about other topics. Oh, well… I guess the topic isn't as interesting as I thought.
[edit] I think a better comparison would be people talking about 'books in general' in a thread about a Harry Potter movie.
Talking about ads in general just makes this thread out-of-place (and lock-worthy) in the Games & Technology forum.
Commodore75 on
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
The thing that super annoyed me about the Burnout adverts.
They're on Billboards, one of the collectibles in the game is to go around smashing billboards with the Burnout logo on.
The ad boards were completely immortal.
That was actually something I found interesting about R6V2 was that the advertising was somewhat destructible.
Mostly it just dimmed the light behind/around the ad, but there were A LOT of them (granted it is Vegas and having walked down the street, pretty true to the source material). Except that not every marquee/stand will be advertising the same one/two thing(s).
Edit: Wasn't there another FPS that had a patch that added in the ability for devs to track how much/long a player was looking at a billboard/ad? I remember hearing something about that a while back on these boards.
Only thing I can really contribute is remembering when I played through Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 around launch and during a section taking place on Freemont street and not being minded by all the current ads because it was pretty true to the location.
But then I popped it back in a few months (maybe a year or two) later and get back to that section and some of the ads were advertisements for "Shoot'em Up". I found that both weird and kinda interesting at the time. And also hearing about Need for Speed and/or Burnout doing something similar.
Oh and then there was Battlefield 2014 that gave you targeted ads based on browser history. I'm sure someone will post the realavent comic shortly...
The "this is my surprised face" at the end of your post combined with Viridian in your sig made the post for me.
Really, ads on gaming systems were only a matter of time, but I definitely prefer the way that Sony is handling them (usually confined to the store area). The 360 is so inundated with ads now it's something like 7 parts advertisements to 2 parts functionality, which is unacceptable to me. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to tell them I don't like it other than writing letters and posting on their forum, which would be promptly ignored by Microsoft, since I've already purchased their system years ago and have another 6 months of their online services to go.
The thing that super annoyed me about the Burnout adverts.
They're on Billboards, one of the collectibles in the game is to go around smashing billboards with the Burnout logo on.
The ad boards were completely immortal.
That was actually something I found interesting about R6V2 was that the advertising was somewhat destructible.
Mostly it just dimmed the light behind/around the ad, but there were A LOT of them (granted it is Vegas and having walked down the street, pretty true to the source material). Except that not every marquee/stand will be advertising the same one/two thing(s).
Edit: Wasn't there another FPS that had a patch that added in the ability for devs to track how much/long a player was looking at a billboard/ad? I remember hearing something about that a while back on these boards.
On the line of destructible ads. Isn't getting people to actually focus on ads a real issue for most advertisers? Wouldn't 'go blow up X brand' style achievements go a long way to getting major attention on your ads?
Dunno, I think the subject of adverts in games is an interesting one. I'm definitely not in the binary 'don't ever do it' camp.
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.
And are surprised that people talk about that rather than...actually I'm not sure which posts you view as on topic in the first place
Look at that. The game in the tray is a tiny icon in the corner. The biggest thing on the screen is an ad. Underneath it you have ads, and to the right of it you have more ads. In this random screenshot that was literally the first GIS result for "xbox live dashboard", I'm seeing an ad for a video game, an ad for a band, an ad for a movie, and an ad for ESPN. And, of course, should you accidentally hit "left" on the joystick, you'll have an ad for the latest iteration of Microsoft's failed search engine, just in case you want to type in a search with your friggin' gamepad.
So, now you bought the new console and they're throwing on political ads on the front page? This is my surprised face.
Most of that isn't ads, though, it's apps they're using. Where ESPN is for them, I have Xbox Fitness. Where Hunger Games is I have Peggle.
That's stuff based on what you've been using.
Edit: Didn't realize all those images would carry in my quote, did some chopping.
Microsoft assaulting me with ads while also having the worst customer service in the industry is why Ill never buy a ms console again
I take it you're unfamiliar with steam support. Put your ticket in and they'll get back to you in 2-3 weeks.
Can you even get a real person with MS any more? Didn't they fire all their Indian tech guys because of that TV show?
Every time I've needed to speak with tech support at MS, I've spoken to a human, and someone in the U.S. at that. I spoke to one of their U.S.-based tech support reps about two months ago when my wife had problems with her Live password and the wrong reset e-mail.
Whether MS Support will do anything for you is entirely a different matter (especially if it's money related), but that's hardly the topic of this thread!
I used to not mind advertising much. Like, even if I were presented with something like the TV space shown in that Idiocracy image, I'd be pretty fine with that, because at least those ads are passive. They just sit there looking pretty and hope you notice them. Fair enough.
Modern advertising on the web and in games can go fuck itself, because:
1) The space is crowded-out by scams, misrepresented products and the most egregiously regressive shit (see: ads for Evony Online, ads for Wartune).
2) Advertisers can & will disguise their ads to look like a function of a website or application just to bait clicks. Because God fucking knows that when I click through to your paywall portal after you've tricked me, I am so keen to pay for what I see, right? Goddamn fucking cargo cultists...
3) They put ads in front of what I am trying to read / do / whatever, and I have to jump through some fucking hoop to circumvent the Goddamn ad that is suddenly blocking-out content. This is worse on the web than it is in most applications right now, but the trend is shifting towards this kind of crap, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to see this 'technique' for aggressively baiting / forcing clicks migrate over to the game space if consumers are complacent.
4) Advertisers crank the volume way, way up on their Goddamn ads, so I can't keep a constant audio level when trying to watch Twitch or YouTube content.
So, because advertisers have demonstrated to me that they are reckless pieces of shit more often than not, I AdBlock everything and refuse to use services that don't allow for AdBlock, and I then support Twitch content providers directly through subbing (which does screw over smaller channels that don't have sub buttons, and I feel for those guys, but I'm sorry - I won't deal with a loop of blaring obnoxious Lexus ads or Boomer pandering bank ads for 3 minutes).
Put non-optional ads into your game? I won't buy it. Put non-optional ads into your console? Won't buy it. Yes, even if they're of the reasonable variety, because the unreasonable ones are going to be right on their heels, as has already been seen.
I can't recall any specific instances of ads I've seen in games. This either means the games I've played don't have ads, the ads were not good enough to get me to notice, or I don't care.
So I'm tempted to say that I don't mind ads at all. In a real world setting it could feel weird to see only fictional ads, but in basically any other context it seems that I'd rather have the ads be either for thing in the game already (Quafe in EVE for example) or for other products the publisher/developer is responsible for (Final Fantasy in DX:HR).
So to answer the OP, I don't know. I either haven't been exposed to ads annoying or memorable enough to be able to tell you about the time I was annoyed by advertising in my game.
Saying "there's ads in everything else" is extremely disingenuous because there's so many layers to most of those other examples that people don't realize.
You know who makes roughly zero dollars from the ads on television? Your cable provider.
NBC, however, is making a ton because it's their network.
When cable companies are giving you access to channels, that's all they're doing - providing you a way to see that television network. They have no control over anything that actually is appearing on the network, like ads. They are literally the middleman getting you a way to see The Food Network. And they make their money off you, by charging you a subscription fee. And maybe a few bucks on the preview channel or whatever they have to tell you whats on now. That's the entire reason every year we see disputes between cable providers and channels.
So no, Time Warner, Cox, Comcast and the like aren't charging you and then showing you ads. They're charging you because you would like access to see the ads your favorite network is showing.
Now if every time you booted up your cable box you were met with a grid of boxes that had random ads in it for McDonalds and State Farm and other stuff before you could get to the channel you wanted? That would be wrong.
And stuff like newspapers and magazines have ads just because its a deeply entrenched business model from way before anyone had television to show ads on. You opened a store, you bought an ad in the paper. Newspapers and magazines cost such little money that there's no way you could EVER charge enough to sustain yourself without a second revenue stream.
But again, if there was a newspaper that had no ads whatsoever, and was doing fine, and supporting itself just fine based on people buying newspapers alone, then that's the one I'd go with because if it was similarly priced to the newspaper full of ads, I would pick the experience that didn't inconvenience me, no matter how slightly.
mxmarks on
PSN: mxmarks - WiiU: mxmarks - twitter: @ MikesPS4 - twitch.tv/mxmarks - "Yes, mxmarks is the King of Queens" - Unbreakable Vow
I don't know why people are so aghast at political ads. From a certain standpoint you could see them as being less offensive than regular commercial advertising. At least a political ad is about something important, like who's going to run our country, compared to, say, trying to get you to buy Cheetos.
Ads trying to get me to buy Cheetos tend to be more honest rather than cherry picking "facts" about other snacks that I might buy instead of Cheetos, all while blatantly lying about the Cheetos themselves.
This comment brought to you by the people for Cheetos
This is why I was bothered by it. It's different than putting a tab up about the Presidential election, their go to event to start this is a convention funded by Super PACS.
And we all greatly dislike those.
But this is still no different than any of their other advertising.
I think there's a pretty big difference between an ad suggesting that I should go get some McDonalds, and potentially seeing a political attack ad.
So you view personal health and diet as somehow inferior to organized human interaction?
I don't mean this in a derogatory way but rather as a demonstration of the fact that people tend to dismiss the gross influence advertising has on our lives.
In a perfect world, political ads would be preferable, as they in theory serve a more important purpose.
Given the general state of political ads though, as well as how divisive and heated political rhetoric can get in some places (especially in the US), yes, ads for unhealthy food are much more innocuous than most political ads. Maybe it would be okay if they stipulated that they would only run positive ads, but that seems like it would be pretty iffy to regulate.
I honestly don't see either worse than the other. Advertising by various industries has resulted in various negative consequences too. That this one can result in heated arguments isn't especially irksome to me.
With advertising in most media advertisers have decades of experience to fall back on; TV has figured out how many ads can go into a block before people start turning away, for example. Companies have figured out what kind of advertising they will and won't run (either by regulation or to keep up appearances.) And so on. With web or device-based ads, we're still figuring all this stuff out. PA is an example of a website that's pretty discriminating about what they'll put up in a banner ad, but lots of sites still aren't.
The kind of political advertising you'd see on an xbox or whatever is almost certainly the benign, celebratory kind (especially if it's a splash-page-esque model like we saw on the 360.)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I don't know how common a problem this was, but Youtube/Twitch ads would try to load in front of a video and then just.. load forever and never reach the video, nor present an option to skip. That was the point where I installed Adblock.
I have no problem with ingame billboards and the like if it makes sense in the setting, but may the day never come that a game pauses itself for a commercial break.
jeffinvaKooglercoming this summerRegistered Userregular
edited March 2014
Real world establishments and products appearing within a game wouldn't bother me. It would essentially be product placement and may even add to the authenticity of the world.
I don't care for sponsored content, like the DLC EA published for SimCity. It just comes off as odd to me and takes me out of the game.
I won't tolerate third party advertisements appearing within the UI of a media device/gaming console. Ads for games, movies, and apps I can buy then and there, perhaps even related promotional tie-ins ("buy a ticket to Thor: The Dark World and save 50% on Thor in HD! or LEGO Marvel Heroes!"), I'm fine with - so long as they're off in their own section (either the store or a section one must purposefully navigate to to see updates and things of this nature). But not unrelated promotions, like "Slam a Dew/big a McRib and get a free hat in <Game_X>".
With advertising in most media advertisers have decades of experience to fall back on; TV has figured out how many ads can go into a block before people start turning away, for example. Companies have figured out what kind of advertising they will and won't run (either by regulation or to keep up appearances.) And so on. With web or device-based ads, we're still figuring all this stuff out. PA is an example of a website that's pretty discriminating about what they'll put up in a banner ad, but lots of sites still aren't.
The kind of political advertising you'd see on an xbox or whatever is almost certainly the benign, celebratory kind (especially if it's a splash-page-esque model like we saw on the 360.)
But the only political ads I like to watch are the fire & brimstone Republican ads, because they're hilarious.
'Candidate [X] is THE TAX MAN, and he LOVES ABORTION and believes in SCIENCE! Fuck that guy! If you want Jesus to love you, vote Republican!'
The milquetoast / upbeat political ads just make me gag.
I don't know how common a problem this was, but Youtube/Twitch ads would try to load in front of a video and then just.. load forever and never reach the video, nor present an option to skip. That was the point where I installed Adblock.
I have no problem with ingame billboards and the like if it makes sense in the setting, but may the day never come that a game pauses itself for a commercial break.
^ THIS ^
Holy shit that was the low point of YouTube's existence, right alongside the outright malicious ads that latched onto your browser like fucking cancer.
Now imagine that in your game. 'Targeted ads pulled RIGHT FROM THE CLOUD! To make your experience AUTHENTIC! It'll be GREAT!'
And then you get a busted Viagra ad that endlessly stutters and won't let you get to the final boss.
With advertising in most media advertisers have decades of experience to fall back on; TV has figured out how many ads can go into a block before people start turning away, for example. Companies have figured out what kind of advertising they will and won't run (either by regulation or to keep up appearances.) And so on. With web or device-based ads, we're still figuring all this stuff out. PA is an example of a website that's pretty discriminating about what they'll put up in a banner ad, but lots of sites still aren't.
The kind of political advertising you'd see on an xbox or whatever is almost certainly the benign, celebratory kind (especially if it's a splash-page-esque model like we saw on the 360.)
But the only political ads I like to watch are the fire & brimstone Republican ads, because they're hilarious.
'Candidate [X] is THE TAX MAN, and he LOVES ABORTION and believes in SCIENCE! Fuck that guy! If you want Jesus to love you, vote Republican!'
The milquetoast / upbeat political ads just make me gag.
Can we, you know, not derail the thread with specific political views and stick with the actual topic with political ads in general?
I waffle back and forth on the use of real world items in a game world. Done classy enough, it absolutely enhances the world, seeing real products versus silly named knockoffs.
Unfortunately, nobody wants to waste an enormous amount of time and money getting multiple endorsements. So you end up with very silly and hyper unrealistic scenarios like in Alan Wake, where I'm expected to believe that the only battery brand that exists in the town is Energizer.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
My favorite recent advertising experience was on the Paranorman Blu-Ray. There is, of course, the advertising pre-roll that many people have grown accustomed to and don't care about anymore. But then, there on the Blu-Ray menu, was a news-ticker of ADVERTISING. I am used to the menu being a safe spot for me, so it felt very invasive and terrifying, even though it is objectively not as in my face as the pre-roll, simply because it was new. And I think that is what people do not like: advertising in new spaces.
I am generally anti-ads, but understand and support them for services that rely on them, because I understand that all of this great stuff doesn't come for free. But there are also instances where many people actively seek being advertised to, like new movie trailers, so I think saying that ADVERTISING IS ALWAYS HORRIBLE is a bit too simplistic. I think a large part of it is being comfortable with the space being advertised within, as well as appropriateness of the ad.
Posts
1. Does it break immersion? No? OK. Yes? Not OK.
2. Does it advertise stuff that I actually find offensive. No? Ok. Yes? Not Ok.
For example. If it's a modern day/futuristic sandbox based in a city environment I pretty much EXPECT ads, the absence of them is slightly jarring for a child of the late 20th century. And I honestly don't care if they're fake ads or real ads. In fact I might even find it cool if it's a tastefully done ad for a real company.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I don't add a site to adblockers until they've annoyed me, though. If an ad starts making sounds, you're out forever.
Should I just rename it "How do you feel about ads?" and ask the mods to move it to the right forum, or start reporting posts that don't touch the original topic, and are instead about the posters feeling towards ads in general?
Or is this some sort of hazing ritual?
I would genuinely love it for someone to do an up to date version of the Dystopia Half Life 2 mod funded by advertisements custom tailored for the setting.
It'd be the greatest damn thing. Have to wonder how receptive marketing agencies would be to that as a concept 'you can absolutely have this billboard on this map, but can you just ham up the mega-corp angle a bit?'
A couple hardware generations ago, I did most of my gaming on a PS2 and a Gamecube. Sony and Nintendo both somehow managed to pull in a profit without selling an ad spot that would display each time you turned on the console.
Then I bought an Xbox 360. Nostalgia time:
The X360 boots into the "dashboard", rather than directly to the game in the disc tray. Now, yes, you could do this on the PS2 by changing the settings, and you could set the 360 to boot straight to the game, but the defining feature of this console generation was that there was stuff to do with the console such that booting straight to the disc was not the best way to set up your system.
Look at the Blade dashboard again. See any ads? I mean, okay, there's a spot where they plug Xbox Live, I guess, but it's an Xbox; that's the service for the console. That's what the dashboard looked like for several months, maybe even a year.
Then a "system update" happened and we turned on our consoles to see this:
Huh. I guess somebody found some revenue-generating use case for that negative space. Now, you turn on your console and need to click past an advertisement before you get to your game. I mean, usually an ad for a video game, at least. It's a still image. There's no sound. It's topical.
After a while, the blades gave way to "NXE":
Now you get a cascade of advertisements every time you start up the console. Some of them are animated, and some have sound when the cursor is over them. Most may be related to games for sale on Xbox Live Marketplace, but some may well be selling you deodorant or hamburgers. Is there any way to get the damned machine to start on the "My Xbox" page, rather than the "Spotlight" page? No, not without disconnecting the thing from the Internet entirely. Would any user, ever, prefer to start on the "Spotlight" page rather than the page that actually gets you to the game you want to play?
At least when you got to the correct page, the game in the tray was front and center. What's this? NXE Dashboard is evolving!
Look at that. The game in the tray is a tiny icon in the corner. The biggest thing on the screen is an ad. Underneath it you have ads, and to the right of it you have more ads. In this random screenshot that was literally the first GIS result for "xbox live dashboard", I'm seeing an ad for a video game, an ad for a band, an ad for a movie, and an ad for ESPN. And, of course, should you accidentally hit "left" on the joystick, you'll have an ad for the latest iteration of Microsoft's failed search engine, just in case you want to type in a search with your friggin' gamepad.
So, now you bought the new console and they're throwing on political ads on the front page? This is my surprised face.
But then I popped it back in a few months (maybe a year or two) later and get back to that section and some of the ads were advertisements for "Shoot'em Up". I found that both weird and kinda interesting at the time. And also hearing about Need for Speed and/or Burnout doing something similar.
Oh and then there was Battlefield 2014 that gave you targeted ads based on browser history. I'm sure someone will post the realavent comic shortly...
"Oh you know, Subway. Eat fresh..."
They're on Billboards, one of the collectibles in the game is to go around smashing billboards with the Burnout logo on.
The ad boards were completely immortal.
Will it change and become more n our face later? Maybe. But they are moving very much in he right direction of balance at the moment (no unwanted audio on hover, no ads in the main block on the first screen (just a 3-ad block skyscraper on the far right that is mostly catered to your habits, and not animated/audible).
And we pay for shit filled with ads all the damn time.
Newspapers, Magazines, Videogames (hey, we may not put a manual in there any more, but there will be an ad for 2-3 other games from the developer in the box), paying for cable does not forgive you from ads, and neither does Hulu plus. HBO mostly gets away with the ad free experience (not counting the promotion of their own brand incessantly between and in front of shows), but they do so by convincing people its worth it to pay upwards of 10-15 dollars a month for what amounts to 2-3 new nice shows running at any given moment.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
No.
It's not that people veer slightly off topic. It's that so few (5?) even touch on the topic.
And instead post about other topics. Oh, well… I guess the topic isn't as interesting as I thought.
[edit] I think a better comparison would be people talking about 'books in general' in a thread about a Harry Potter movie.
Talking about ads in general just makes this thread out-of-place (and lock-worthy) in the Games & Technology forum.
That was actually something I found interesting about R6V2 was that the advertising was somewhat destructible.
Mostly it just dimmed the light behind/around the ad, but there were A LOT of them (granted it is Vegas and having walked down the street, pretty true to the source material). Except that not every marquee/stand will be advertising the same one/two thing(s).
Edit: Wasn't there another FPS that had a patch that added in the ability for devs to track how much/long a player was looking at a billboard/ad? I remember hearing something about that a while back on these boards.
The "this is my surprised face" at the end of your post combined with Viridian in your sig made the post for me.
Really, ads on gaming systems were only a matter of time, but I definitely prefer the way that Sony is handling them (usually confined to the store area). The 360 is so inundated with ads now it's something like 7 parts advertisements to 2 parts functionality, which is unacceptable to me. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to tell them I don't like it other than writing letters and posting on their forum, which would be promptly ignored by Microsoft, since I've already purchased their system years ago and have another 6 months of their online services to go.
On the line of destructible ads. Isn't getting people to actually focus on ads a real issue for most advertisers? Wouldn't 'go blow up X brand' style achievements go a long way to getting major attention on your ads?
Dunno, I think the subject of adverts in games is an interesting one. I'm definitely not in the binary 'don't ever do it' camp.
Most of that isn't ads, though, it's apps they're using. Where ESPN is for them, I have Xbox Fitness. Where Hunger Games is I have Peggle.
That's stuff based on what you've been using.
Edit: Didn't realize all those images would carry in my quote, did some chopping.
I take it you're unfamiliar with steam support. Put your ticket in and they'll get back to you in 2-3 weeks.
Oh, since you're done.
Geth, kick @Local H Jay from the thread.
Every time I've needed to speak with tech support at MS, I've spoken to a human, and someone in the U.S. at that. I spoke to one of their U.S.-based tech support reps about two months ago when my wife had problems with her Live password and the wrong reset e-mail.
Modern advertising on the web and in games can go fuck itself, because:
1) The space is crowded-out by scams, misrepresented products and the most egregiously regressive shit (see: ads for Evony Online, ads for Wartune).
2) Advertisers can & will disguise their ads to look like a function of a website or application just to bait clicks. Because God fucking knows that when I click through to your paywall portal after you've tricked me, I am so keen to pay for what I see, right? Goddamn fucking cargo cultists...
3) They put ads in front of what I am trying to read / do / whatever, and I have to jump through some fucking hoop to circumvent the Goddamn ad that is suddenly blocking-out content. This is worse on the web than it is in most applications right now, but the trend is shifting towards this kind of crap, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to see this 'technique' for aggressively baiting / forcing clicks migrate over to the game space if consumers are complacent.
4) Advertisers crank the volume way, way up on their Goddamn ads, so I can't keep a constant audio level when trying to watch Twitch or YouTube content.
So, because advertisers have demonstrated to me that they are reckless pieces of shit more often than not, I AdBlock everything and refuse to use services that don't allow for AdBlock, and I then support Twitch content providers directly through subbing (which does screw over smaller channels that don't have sub buttons, and I feel for those guys, but I'm sorry - I won't deal with a loop of blaring obnoxious Lexus ads or Boomer pandering bank ads for 3 minutes).
Put non-optional ads into your game? I won't buy it. Put non-optional ads into your console? Won't buy it. Yes, even if they're of the reasonable variety, because the unreasonable ones are going to be right on their heels, as has already been seen.
So I'm tempted to say that I don't mind ads at all. In a real world setting it could feel weird to see only fictional ads, but in basically any other context it seems that I'd rather have the ads be either for thing in the game already (Quafe in EVE for example) or for other products the publisher/developer is responsible for (Final Fantasy in DX:HR).
So to answer the OP, I don't know. I either haven't been exposed to ads annoying or memorable enough to be able to tell you about the time I was annoyed by advertising in my game.
You know who makes roughly zero dollars from the ads on television? Your cable provider.
NBC, however, is making a ton because it's their network.
When cable companies are giving you access to channels, that's all they're doing - providing you a way to see that television network. They have no control over anything that actually is appearing on the network, like ads. They are literally the middleman getting you a way to see The Food Network. And they make their money off you, by charging you a subscription fee. And maybe a few bucks on the preview channel or whatever they have to tell you whats on now. That's the entire reason every year we see disputes between cable providers and channels.
So no, Time Warner, Cox, Comcast and the like aren't charging you and then showing you ads. They're charging you because you would like access to see the ads your favorite network is showing.
Now if every time you booted up your cable box you were met with a grid of boxes that had random ads in it for McDonalds and State Farm and other stuff before you could get to the channel you wanted? That would be wrong.
And stuff like newspapers and magazines have ads just because its a deeply entrenched business model from way before anyone had television to show ads on. You opened a store, you bought an ad in the paper. Newspapers and magazines cost such little money that there's no way you could EVER charge enough to sustain yourself without a second revenue stream.
But again, if there was a newspaper that had no ads whatsoever, and was doing fine, and supporting itself just fine based on people buying newspapers alone, then that's the one I'd go with because if it was similarly priced to the newspaper full of ads, I would pick the experience that didn't inconvenience me, no matter how slightly.
@Quid
In a perfect world, political ads would be preferable, as they in theory serve a more important purpose.
Given the general state of political ads though, as well as how divisive and heated political rhetoric can get in some places (especially in the US), yes, ads for unhealthy food are much more innocuous than most political ads. Maybe it would be okay if they stipulated that they would only run positive ads, but that seems like it would be pretty iffy to regulate.
The kind of political advertising you'd see on an xbox or whatever is almost certainly the benign, celebratory kind (especially if it's a splash-page-esque model like we saw on the 360.)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I have no problem with ingame billboards and the like if it makes sense in the setting, but may the day never come that a game pauses itself for a commercial break.
Sometimes people advertise christian dating with pictures of 36 DDD clevage.
And sometimes, people google random names for their ads and their google-fu causes them to make very poor decisions.
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/bullied-dead-girls-image-used-dating-ad-facebook-4B11187466
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I don't care for sponsored content, like the DLC EA published for SimCity. It just comes off as odd to me and takes me out of the game.
I won't tolerate third party advertisements appearing within the UI of a media device/gaming console. Ads for games, movies, and apps I can buy then and there, perhaps even related promotional tie-ins ("buy a ticket to Thor: The Dark World and save 50% on Thor in HD! or LEGO Marvel Heroes!"), I'm fine with - so long as they're off in their own section (either the store or a section one must purposefully navigate to to see updates and things of this nature). But not unrelated promotions, like "Slam a Dew/big a McRib and get a free hat in <Game_X>".
But the only political ads I like to watch are the fire & brimstone Republican ads, because they're hilarious.
'Candidate [X] is THE TAX MAN, and he LOVES ABORTION and believes in SCIENCE! Fuck that guy! If you want Jesus to love you, vote Republican!'
The milquetoast / upbeat political ads just make me gag.
so it'll be like, three singles sites and then an ad for indsutrial gravel crushing
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
^ THIS ^
Holy shit that was the low point of YouTube's existence, right alongside the outright malicious ads that latched onto your browser like fucking cancer.
Now imagine that in your game. 'Targeted ads pulled RIGHT FROM THE CLOUD! To make your experience AUTHENTIC! It'll be GREAT!'
And then you get a busted Viagra ad that endlessly stutters and won't let you get to the final boss.
Can we, you know, not derail the thread with specific political views and stick with the actual topic with political ads in general?
Unfortunately, nobody wants to waste an enormous amount of time and money getting multiple endorsements. So you end up with very silly and hyper unrealistic scenarios like in Alan Wake, where I'm expected to believe that the only battery brand that exists in the town is Energizer.
I am generally anti-ads, but understand and support them for services that rely on them, because I understand that all of this great stuff doesn't come for free. But there are also instances where many people actively seek being advertised to, like new movie trailers, so I think saying that ADVERTISING IS ALWAYS HORRIBLE is a bit too simplistic. I think a large part of it is being comfortable with the space being advertised within, as well as appropriateness of the ad.
Let's Plays of Japanese Games