Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Shock! In-game ads do NOT work…

cliffski

Check this out:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30886/Report_Microsofts_InGame_Ad_Unit_Massive_Shutting_Down_This_Month.php

It looks like Microsoft paid over $200 million for an ad business that doesn’t make any money. I am SO amazed to hear that. Hold on…no I’m not.

Advertising is EVERWHERE. I’ve seen it on the back of bus tickets, on steps, and even on peoples clothes. You know the ONLY major potential location for ads we don’t actually get any? To my mind, it’s in the pages of books. Imagine turning the page of a novel and getting an ad for pepsi. It’s laughable. Novels are about being immersed in a new world. The objective is to forget about pepsi, car insurance and washing powder for the duration of the story. The same is true of most games.

Ads in the middle of games suck, and always have. There are so many problems associated with them, I haven’t sufficient time to list them. And yes, there are ads in TV shows and TV movies, and this is why DVD box sets are so popular. People HATE the ads.

Surely I am not the only one who saw this coming a light year away? All those constant shill news-stories about how ‘gamers LOVE in-game ads’ made it 100% obvious it was a business case disaster :D

I’m back from holiday :D

12 thoughts on Shock! In-game ads do NOT work…

  2. It seems MS isn’t giving up on the idea of ads within games as much as this particular implementation.

    As for whether they work – well, I guess it depends. The audience are probably less annoyed when ad placement does not interfere with game’s pacing (or when the pacing is adjusted so that there is a natural spot for a commercial break, as is the case with TV shows). If there was a sudden Pepsi advertisement in the middle of a gratuitious space battle, it would be annoying. But if all (hypothetical) characters just happened to drink Pepsi during pre-rendered mission briefings…

    I still remember which brand of chewing gum was advertised in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Thankfully, I don’t chew gum, so it had no chance to work. But — the fact that there was product placement whithin the game is something I’m holding against the game, and not the product being advertised. It’s a kind of vicious circle, because every time someone decides not to buy a game because of ads, its developer becomes that much more reliant on ad revenue. Ironically, built-in ads work on both legit customers and pirates.

    There’s also a question of whether ads in general work. They certainly do to some extent, but they’re also something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I heard it from a fairly reliable source (an EA project manager) that EA gives its projects budgets for “internal marketing”. That is – marketing aimed at EA staff, specifically so that you can build up internal hype about your project, so that people who make relevant decisions are more inclined to give you more money for real marketing that builds real hype. This works largely because all the people involved believe in marketing. It’s kind of scary in a snake-eating-its-own-tail kind of way. It also encourages the said project manager to insist that the dev team produce a flashy non-interactive demo rather than a working but visually rough gameplay prototype.

    I think most people would be fairly resistant to ads in general if they had some basic defensive skills and habits. Sadly, they don’t. For instance, a major news service my friend works for has an internal policy saying that the staff need to produce a certain number of news stories each day. On top of that, staff members, who are generally not guaranteed to be in touch with each other, tend to compete against each other for news topics. Long story short – if you want to work on a good story, you have to hurry. You can only give the story an hour, maybe two, if you’re lucky. So what do you do? You take your information from the most convenient source available, i.e. either an advertisement or an official press release. Bam! there goes your journalist impartiality, and you’re not even getting a lousy T-shirt for it.

  3. Maybe if the ads actually knocked something off the price of the game, then at least we would be getting something back for allowing ads annoy us.

    Does anyone else remember when “cable TV” held the promise of no advertisements because it was pay-for-service? That didn’t last; now we pay AND there are ads. grrr

  4. dont be surprised to see ads in books soon… ebooks, anyway. theres been rumbilings of trying ad-supported ebooks, where the book is discounted or free, but full of advertising.

    personally, id NEVER buy an ebook with ads, and i would rather pay for one than get a free one with ads… and i think most avid readers feel the same way… so its probably doomed to failure. but of course, someone will have to try it to prove that. then someone ELSE will have to try it before marketers BELIEVE its a failure.

  5. Ads in Books isn’t that bad an idea and neither a new one.
    Those are of course not pictured. But a little money to the author from coca cola and the protagonist is drinking a refreshing bottle of coke before he solved the problem, killed the king, saved the world or any other achievment which paints the drink in a positive light.

    Imagine Harry Potter (in the book) would play your game before leaving his not magic family to go to school, don’t you think that would definitely spike your game purchases?
    Or even better plays it and just after that thinks of the strategy to defeat what evil he has to defeat.

  6. I’m planning to ad in-game adds in my game.
    But that’s a game about a (fantasy) cyber-network and adds will be a way to make it credible. It might be a perfect context for that.

    It always depends on the context and exploitation of the context.

  7. Actually, I have two or three books with ads (rather old BattleTech books). Thank god that didn’t prevail, it was really awkward to read a sci-fi novel, turn the page and then read about maggi noodle soup!

    Also glad to hear it’s not prevailing in video games either.

  8. I avoid all games with advertising, with sports games being perhaps the one exception. (I’m so used to being badgered by ads at sporting events it would seem odd NOT having them present.)

    I’d much rather pay to play a game than to get an ad-supported one for cheap or free. I don’t play Flash games online — even though I’ve heard some are really quite good — because I can’t take the jittering, spinning, buzzing ads in my peripheral vision the entire time. The games themselves may be great, but the sites that host them make my eyes bleed.

    I’m playing games to relax and take a break from real life. I don’t need or want to be nagged about carpet cleaning or better shampoo or stylish sneakers. That shatters the feeling of immersion and the continuity of the story.

    It also compromises the artistic vision of the creator. The author has to serve two audiences: the players and the advertisers. Very few can manage that trick.

  10. To me; ingame ads held potential. When AO (the first game that I was invovled with that started them) annoucned their intention to bring them ingame, I was neutral-excited. Mostly because I expected a sign with a Leet on it proclaiming “put them in ur mouth” as Woody Hearn suggested quite unsubtly in GU Comics.

    The trouble is; ingame ads have always been as flashy, hamfisted and out of place (even moreso) than ads on webpages. They break immersion and, even so, go on and make no effort to soften the blow.

    Planetside had ads with an audio channel. I mean, really? Exteel, instead of putting their ads on their awesomely made billboards already loaded with well integrated, in-universe placeholder ads, they plastered them as replacement textures for ramps and building facades.

    The problem isn’t the idea of the ads themselves, it’s the execution. Well executed, and in the right game, these ads make sense. But, no one cares to do anything of the sort.

  11. Some people use a lot of qualifiers when talking about in game ads. I.E. “They don’t bother me if they are fit into the universe.” I am not one of those people, I really don’t like any ads of any type in any game setting. Publishers talk about how seamlessly the ads are integrated into the game and I laugh. If an ad is easy to ignore, it is not doing its job. I wonder what the per user payout is for a series of ads in a game because in my case they turn a day-1 game into a “wait for a sale” game and a “wait for a sale” game into a “maybe never” game. In a very competitive market, ads push a game to the back of the pack. My unsolicited advice for any publisher is this. Don’t mix profit models. I can accept paying $50 for a game and if you really need more money just raise the price. I wont like it, but I will get over it. I can also accept games that use Free-to-play+item shop models or free ad supported games. However, when I have to pay for a single game in more than one way I get annoyed. Part of this is because its disruptive to the atmosphere of the game and part is because I feel like I have been deceived. When I paid for the game I though I would get to play the whole thing withoutmore payouts (nobody mentions ads on the back of the box), but then I find that they want more from me. (Cash or my time viewing ads)

  12. The publishers tried it with in-book ads, and it was pretty much a disaster. Terry Pratchett e.g. dismissed his German publisher because of that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett#Writing_career

    I personally hate most advertisements. There’s nothing wrong with viral approaches, and I definitely want to hear about stuff I might be interested in, but I will not tolerate ads that disturb me. That’s one reason why I never watch TV.

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