Google Readying In-Game Ad Initiative

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According to a guy that knew some other guy that is friends with a janitor at Google, the company is supposedly developing an in-game advertising program to show ads in video games. We have talked about in-game ads at length and we believe they can be done right but are Google in-game video ads going too far?

"Sources close to the matter said the company has developed an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games," Takahashi wrote. "In demos of the technology, a game character can introduce a video ad, saying something like, 'And now, a word from our sponsor,' before showing a short video at the end of a sequence in a game."
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Steve said:
According to a guy that knew some other guy that is friends with a janitor at Google, the company is supposedly developing an in-game advertising program to show ads in video games. We have talked about in-game ads at length and we believe they can be done right but are Google in-game video ads going too far?
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Will it make games cheaper for the consumer? I hope so.
 
So long as the information google collects about my gameplay style is not used for evil, I'm OK with it ;)
 
i would boycott games with advertisements.
think about it honestly, do you think they would reduce the price of the games more than $5 off the MSRP just cause of the ads?
i doubt it.
Subtle advertisements like Coca Cola billboards in racing games, etc is fine... but to view an advertisement video before a game cinematic sequence is beyond retarded.
 
They wouldn't reduce prices of games.

Maybe this is good for homebrew games so they can make a bit o cash off their free software, but for games that I bought why should I have to pay twice for said game? What's next? In-video ads that disrupt your movie watching in the theater?

This has bad written all over it.
 
Just like when watchng TV, the show gets to the climax and then, `now, a word from our sponsers`, or, `After the break`. It makes me hate watching tv. I believe it would really piss off the avid-gamer group that actaully get INTO their game world. If it interupts the gameplay in anyway, I dont care how awesome the game is, I will refuse to play it.I get enough advertising just by walking around town, and browsing the internet. I dont think we need another step of it.

Just my thoughts;)
 
Remember: This would NOT lower the price of games. Only increase profits for the game developers. Consumers loose, CEO's win.
 
I think it depends upon where the ads are placed in the game.

If, per se, the game environment location is downtown New York (where there are tons of video billboards) then it would be appropriate to put ads in places where the billboards are.

But, if the game environment is out in bum-f*** Egypt then it wouldn't make any sense to put a video ad there because it doesn't "fit".
 
shinryuu said:
i would boycott games with advertisements.
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I would too. I don't care how good the game was either.
I don't mind Pepsi machines and Ford autos because it ads realism but to have an actual commercial would set me off.
 
It appears Google has lost the ability to differentiate between a commercial break on TV and a save state in a video game.

All this has done is make me actually consider looking at game reviews to see if they point out these annoying ass ads. Then I will know what games I shouldn't buy.
 
Hmmmm. If the game costs $60 then no effin way. If the game is free, then I'll tolerate it if the integration is subtle and within context of the title.

If however I pwn some boss and instead of getting the girl I get an add for pany shields, or XTREME UNDERAM PROTECTION, then EPIC FAIL.

God, I hate google.
 
imagining seeing google in HL2 epsiode 3 urgh id be soooo pissed they cant do that when we pay so much for games
 
everyone got all riled up and threatened to boycott older games too and nobody did. What game was it that put ads in it? AO was one of them.. there was also a FPS army game with ads in it. I can't remember which.

I think some of you guys are overreacting. Ads in games aren't a new concept.
 
Boozer said:
Will it make games cheaper for the consumer? I hope so.
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not likely... just more profitable for developers.... you think big business is going to pass the savings onto you?? look at paytv.. in some cases MORE ads than free to air, poor programming and expensive....

i finally have a reason to hate google... mess with my games thats unforgivable...
 
i bet every time you get shot or whatever, you'll be forced to walk past another ad cutscene...

well im sure there will be groups out there offering NO-AD patches just like the NO-CD ones we have now....
 
i see it leading to more piracy as people opt for the pirated ad-free version over the retail version as the product will be better and i dont think cutting out ads will be the same as copy protection... a small downloadable file to add to your retail bought copy wont be available instead an ISO with the whole game with ads patched out will become the flavour of the day...
 
morals aside.. i'll get the BETTER version... and they deserve anything they get


sorry for the quad-post.. but there is no edit.. and my brain kept ticking after the click... :/

need and "edit" button...
 
This is just stupid. Why would we want an in-game advertisement video, would only break up the game experience and annoy the heck out of us.
Lower price of games you say? Forget that, will never happen. The game publishers think the price is too low as it is so why would they lower it.

Billboards is fine as it adds to the gaming world, better immersion, makes it feel alive. Video ads is intrusive.
 
They know us geeks watch less and less TV and it's driving them fucking crazy. They literaly can't stand it.

So they hatch some half ass idea and try to invade our game world, a world we visit to get away from all that shit. The invasion is wholy unwelcome and I won't purchase a game with advertising.

Like someone said, a bill board in times square or a banner on a racetrack is no offense. But there always seems to be some cock sucker that wants to take it too far. I hope they burn in hell for being self motivated pricks.
 
Lith1um said:
They know us geeks watch less and less TV and it's driving them fucking crazy. They literaly can't stand it.

So they hatch some half ass idea and try to invade our game world, a world we visit to get away from all that shit. The invasion is wholy unwelcome and I won't purchase a game with advertising.

Like someone said, a bill board in times square or a banner on a racetrack is no offense. But there always seems to be some cock sucker that wants to take it too far. I hope they burn in hell for being self motivated pricks.
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I don't consider myself a typical geek, and frankly, I watch very little TV anyways. Reasons include shit quality shows pandering to morons (lowest common denominator), "reality TV", incessant ads, half-seasons that are shown 6 months apart (and they wonder WHY people actually go out and get a life between halves, and gee why don't they come back later?).

It's getting to the point where you won't be able to walk down the street without being forced to watch ads on your govt-mandated ocular implant (for your own good), or see an ad for the manufacturer of your automobile on the display before the car will start up.
 
It's been said before and hashed again and again.

Do the ads in games currently, make them cheaper.....no.
We already pay a premium for the games on the PC or the XBox or whatever your platform of choice........being subjected to idiotic advertisement while waiting for the next level to load up would be just too much.

I agree with what Bill Clo said. I watch very little TV simply because of the moronic choices and pure lack of quality.
I'll just read more. No ads in books, yet.
 
if the game was free then i have no problem with it. if im paying 59.99 for a game and still have to watch ads nfw.
 
Am I the only one who wouldn't buy games that had this "technology" regardless of how little they cost?
 
I think it's funny when people complain about paying $50 for a game. Relative to other forms of entertainment a video game is very cheap. You pay $8 when you go to a movie and only get 1.5 hours of entertainment. You pay $50 for a game and get on average 20-30 hours of entertainment. If it's an online multiplayer game, you could get hundreds of hours of gameplay. Hell you could pay $1 for a 3 minute song. Imagine paying $1 for every minutes you game. :p
 
Dont worry guys, they cant screw us too bad. Upstarts in TV do not work well, but in the video game world an upstart can make a good game and add competition. If the main players are ad rich corpulent shit bags (think TV stations) then people will just not buy their crap. They can try the EA tactic of buying everyone instead of innovating but eventually they will fall.
 
bonsai said:
I think it's funny when people complain about paying $50 for a game. Relative to other forms of entertainment a video game is very cheap. You pay $8 when you go to a movie and only get 1.5 hours of entertainment. You pay $50 for a game and get on average 20-30 hours of entertainment. If it's an online multiplayer game, you could get hundreds of hours of gameplay. Hell you could pay $1 for a 3 minute song. Imagine paying $1 for every minutes you game. :p
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Well then let every game become subscription based. We pay for what we play. See how long they last then. I'm pretty sure I wouldnt still be $10/month to play counter strike 6 years later. We arent paying for entertainment, we're paying for content. If developers want to continue adding new content, or if it costs them anything to support the game world, then maybe ill keep paying. But just b/c I choose to continue to play does not mean I would choose to continue to pay if it came down to it. It's sort of like the ole music piracy debate. Just because I download a copyrighted song for free does not mean I would have otherwise purchased it if it were impossible to download. Developers know they cant sell Final Fantasy for $200 no matter how many hours you spend beating it, or replaying it. Should my box set of LOTR movie cost me $500 if I watch it 20 times over the span of a lifetime?

Anyway, I love how the developers would refer to this as a message from their "sponsors". Um, i thought I was their sponsor. Im the one giving them money, Im the one paying their salaries to develop this game. So who's the third wheel? What, Pepsi donates an extra million bucks to the 50 million theyre already going to make, and suddenly im chopped liver and Pepsi is god? If they love their sponsors so much as to bow to their every whim for game advertisement, how bout realize Im the real sponsor, bow to my whim, and give me a damn game with no interruptions.
 
uviuar2 said:
Well then let every game become subscription based. We pay for what we play. See how long they last then.
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MMO's have shown that subscription based games do very well. So well in fact that tons of games studios are hoping on the MMO bandwagon. Some MMO players log in hundreds of hours every month for only $15, that's very, very cheap. Would that model work as well in the fps genre? Perhaps. We're already seeing a transition towards that with games like Battlefield Heros and micro-transactions.
 
bonsai said:
MMO's have shown that subscription based games do very well. So well in fact that tons of games studios are hoping on the MMO bandwagon. Some MMO players log in hundreds of hours every month for only $15, that's very, very cheap. Would that model work as well in the fps genre? Perhaps. We're already seeing a transition towards that with games like Battlefield Heros and micro-transactions.
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But MMOs only get away with it because they are constantly adding content and have to support the game world. Sure FPS games may add maps with the occasional patch, but I see that more as incentive to get everyone on the same version. The servers however are almost always player owned and/or operated.

This is just an extension of the marketing worlds paradigm that no ad space should go unused. I mean, we live in a world where you can get companies to pay you to have your car slathered in vinyl stickers advertising their product.

As stated, in urban settings or maybe a racetrack where adverts would be everywhere anyways actually can benefit from RL adverts through increased immersion. On the other hand if I just finished laying siege to a castle, the last thing I want is to cut away to hear about the latest toothbrush technology from the local warlord.
 
Dreknaught said:
But MMOs only get away with it because they are constantly adding content and have to support the game world. Sure FPS games may add maps with the occasional patch, but I see that more as incentive to get everyone on the same version. The servers however are almost always player owned and/or operated.
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Then you have to ask the question, would it be worth a monthly subscription if FPS servers were officially run and content and patch updates were larger, more frequent, and on par with MMOs?
 
bonsai said:
MMO's have shown that subscription based games do very well. So well in fact that tons of games studios are hoping on the MMO bandwagon. Some MMO players log in hundreds of hours every month for only $15, that's very, very cheap. Would that model work as well in the fps genre? Perhaps. We're already seeing a transition towards that with games like Battlefield Heros and micro-transactions.
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There are very few examples of big dollar MMOs, WOW being the example. Even then, I expect Blizzards monthly investment is substantial.
You have forgotten to add in your monthly bill for on-line access. What 30 bucks or so???
If you didn't have that access, plus the computer, plus electricity......that MMO wouldnt be possible.

I do not play MMOs for lots of reasons, but a strong one is subscription costs. Still I see my purchase of any game as mine, I do not cherish the thought of seeing moronic advertisement in a medium I use for pleasure and to avoid that very same circumstance. I get plenty of in your face advertisement during college and NFL broadcasts.
 
If they can plaster billboards around a town or something, thats awesome I would support it. If something that I don't even notice can make the dev more money, hopefully he can produce another game for me to enjoy. Think about in GTA, the radio commericals and everything, how theyre fake (Or atleast in GTA3 the last one I played), if they were real it wouldn't make a difference to you.

But, the video is a bad idea! I hate games that go through a splash screen you cant skip, and have even installed cracks to get around that 3second wait.
 
magoo said:
There are very few examples of big dollar MMOs, WOW being the example. Even then, I expect Blizzards monthly investment is substantial.
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There are plenty of long running MMO's that are still successful and profitable to this day. I think that is the draw for studio to produce them. Where a normal game will see the majority of it's revenue within the first of release an MMO is a consant stream of revenue for 5, 7 or more years. The original MMOs are closing in on 10 years now. While they may not be as big as WoW, they are successful in their own right.

You have forgotten to add in your monthly bill for on-line access. What 30 bucks or so??? If you didn't have that access, plus the computer, plus electricity......that MMO wouldnt be possible.
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That's ridiculous considering you use your computer and the internet connection for much more than just gaming. Do you figure in the cost of gas and your car when you go to a movie? $15,000 car still makes gaming much cheaper. :p
 
i would be concerned about the added bandwidth necessary to load the ads. Sure it is minute but for people trying to squeeze every bit out to ensure a low ping.....if ads raise ping then people will be pissed.
 
magoo said:
There are very few examples of big dollar MMOs, WOW being the example. Even then, I expect Blizzards monthly investment is substantial.
You have forgotten to add in your monthly bill for on-line access. What 30 bucks or so???
If you didn't have that access, plus the computer, plus electricity......that MMO wouldnt be possible.

I do not play MMOs for lots of reasons, but a strong one is subscription costs. Still I see my purchase of any game as mine, I do not cherish the thought of seeing moronic advertisement in a medium I use for pleasure and to avoid that very same circumstance. I get plenty of in your face advertisement during college and NFL broadcasts.
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Guild Wars - They have lots of updates, but nothing major... I sat watching it update one time and they were changing the amount of leaves on trees and tree positions, awesome! Have to buy expansion packs every like 6months if you want anything new.

WoW - We have gotten updates introducting a whole new island, a good hundred epics, a whole new 25man raid, new arena season with gear, changes to classes (Rogues are fucking waffles now without cheat death), etc. In the past what... 3months?! Also, that monthly subscription allows them to have up to date servers, and when one goes down(really rare), you can count on it being back up in the next 10minutes.

$15 a month for getting constant patches, updates is well worth it imho. I love getting more content out of $15/mo then I would in a whole Guild Wars expansion.
 
bonsai said:
I think it's funny when people complain about paying $50 for a game. Relative to other forms of entertainment a video game is very cheap. You pay $8 when you go to a movie and only get 1.5 hours of entertainment. You pay $50 for a game and get on average 20-30 hours of entertainment. If it's an online multiplayer game, you could get hundreds of hours of gameplay. Hell you could pay $1 for a 3 minute song. Imagine paying $1 for every minutes you game. :p
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A dollar for every minute I game would suck, but your analogy is kinda off-base seeing as you don't have to pay $1 for every minute you listen to a song, and, while they are much shorter, IMO songs have much greater replayability than most games. If you listen to a 3-minute song 18 times or played a 30 hour game once, you've spent $1 for every 36 minutes of entertainment.

bonsai said:
...That's ridiculous considering you use your computer and the internet connection for much more than just gaming. Do you figure in the cost of gas and your car when you go to a movie? $15,000 car still makes gaming much cheaper. :p
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In accounting, things you've already bought and are paying for anyway are called sunk costs. Your car, your computer, and to a lesser degree your internet connection are all sunk costs and shouldn't be included in any decision regarding cost, as you're paying for them anyways.

By contrast, the electricity or gas you use would be a variable cost, and should have an effect on your decision from an accounting standpoint:D

/END boring_lecture
 
Azhar said:
everyone got all riled up and threatened to boycott older games too and nobody did. What game was it that put ads in it? AO was one of them.. there was also a FPS army game with ads in it. I can't remember which.

I think some of you guys are overreacting. Ads in games aren't a new concept.
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there was supposedly a free version of FarCry that had ads in it, tho i never tried it to find out how they were emplemented.

Hellgate London has ads that are, imo, done perfectly. a large portion of the game happens in train stations, where there would be posters on the wall in reality, and a lot of those posters in the game are for hardware companies like nvidia or alienware, or other ads for upcoming flagship studios (r.i.p. :() productions.

as long as they're done right, in-game adds can be pretty cool and add to the experience. Inluding them as textures in the game where ad signs are in real life, or even ad sections in normal loading screens are pretty-much ok w/ me.

we'll have to wait and see what excactly google is proposing, but ad display methods that i would consider deal-breakers would include, permanent banners built into game huds, cut-scene style videos, or an inordinate amount of splash/loading screens added for the purpose of increasing ad display time.
 
"In demos of the technology, a game character can introduce a video ad, saying something like, 'And now, a word from our sponsor,' before showing a short video at the end of a sequence in a game."
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That's NOT in-game ads "done right". :eek: That would just be annoying as hell and ruin the immersion factor of the game. In a movie, the main character never stops after a firefight, smiles into the camera and sais "And now, a word from our sponsor". That would be ridiculous.

"Subtle" advertising, like Coca Cola billboards in the actual game levels works great (unless it's a medieval fantasy RPG). That would just increase the realism, because those kinds of ads are everywhere in the real world. If there's an in-game sequence that's meant to show e.g. a news broadcast, a "this program is sponsored by" ad would be acceptable.
 
shinryuu said:
i would boycott games with advertisements.
think about it honestly, do you think they would reduce the price of the games more than $5 off the MSRP just cause of the ads?
i doubt it.
Subtle advertisements like Coca Cola billboards in racing games, etc is fine... but to view an advertisement video before a game cinematic sequence is beyond retarded.
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If Gordon Freeman tries to sell me a volvo after we save alex, I'm gonna be super pissed.
 
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