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EA expects us to pay to watch ads
- Thread starter FlyinJ
- Start date
Cauliflower of Love
Banned
Lindsay said:
Cost of the game, yes?
So in actuality, what may end up happening is that we may end up paying $70 for games littered with ads.
Why do I say $70? If companies follow this microtransaction business, you're going to have to pay for features that should've been included in the original game, but have been removed in order to charge you extra money for it later.
I don't mind a few ads if tastefully placed in the game world. However, what if this goes further? What if developers started placing commercials in the game? Say some company such as McDonalds decides to pay EA. Upon starting up Madden, you'll be forced to watch a McDonalds commercial, sort of like the trailers in movies at the theaters. Or, every few games or so, some commercials start playing before you can move on to the next game. If this online thing really hits big, EA may be able to make the game autoupdate and download new commercials from the latest sponsors. Does it sound far-fetched? Sure. But if the money is there, I certainly don't see it beyond companies to attempt this.
Where this is also disturbing is that it may restrict the type of games being made. Instead of more creative games, we may see more games that are ad-friendly. It's harder to put Burger King ads in a fantasy rpg as opposed to some gritty FPS.
Why do I say $70? If companies follow this microtransaction business, you're going to have to pay for features that should've been included in the original game, but have been removed in order to charge you extra money for it later.
I don't mind a few ads if tastefully placed in the game world. However, what if this goes further? What if developers started placing commercials in the game? Say some company such as McDonalds decides to pay EA. Upon starting up Madden, you'll be forced to watch a McDonalds commercial, sort of like the trailers in movies at the theaters. Or, every few games or so, some commercials start playing before you can move on to the next game. If this online thing really hits big, EA may be able to make the game autoupdate and download new commercials from the latest sponsors. Does it sound far-fetched? Sure. But if the money is there, I certainly don't see it beyond companies to attempt this.
Where this is also disturbing is that it may restrict the type of games being made. Instead of more creative games, we may see more games that are ad-friendly. It's harder to put Burger King ads in a fantasy rpg as opposed to some gritty FPS.
platypotamus
Member
flarkminator said:
Probably the same part of the revenue that got passed on to the actual developers...
FlyinJ said:
Er, where were you last gen? There were a large number of publisher and developer casualties in the last generation. Many large publishers only just scrapped through also. It wasn't rosey for everyone.
Game development/publishing is an expensive and volatile business. Ingame advertising (and microtransactions for that matter) provides another revenue stream to offset the risks. While Fight Night Round 3 probably didn't need ingame advertising revenues to turn a profit, it very well might make the difference between some games losing money and having them break even or better.
element said:
Well, you are a developer.
I think ads could be used in a good way in games, and could help increase immersion (seeing the same ads as the ones you see around in real life could be cool.)
That said, it just feels like developers/publishers are just taking, and taking, and not giving anything back to the community. I'd be cool if they actually gave free stuff in the form of online content, as opposed to continue penny pinching customers. Obviously, they are taking business oriented approach, and I can't certainly blame them for that. But it still feels like the price for game content has grown quite a bit (moreso than the obviously apparent $10 increase in price) with these kind of things, and the content keeps getting reduced in the name of microtransactions.
element
Member
game could have always put ads in the background, they wouldn't have been dynamic.Lindsay said:
If that income goes into a general royalties pool I am all for it. I'll make a Subway sandwich game where the guns shoot meat and mayo.Well, you are a developer.
The place where it gets scary is if EA can build a system to do targeted ads. Say they read your player info and see you like FPS, so all the ads will be centered around FPS. Or if they have you do a survey for something, and use that info to give you more targeted ads. They would make BANK from companies.
GDJustin said:
All I'm saying is that with the release of new hardware, the most marketed features are the graphics. Developers and publishers have to try and keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, by continuously making higher and higher quality graphics. That's the reason new consoles have been developed (excluding the wii).
I think it's a widely known fact that graphics and audio are the most expensive parts of games. Why is that? Because developers and publishers always get pressured by the console manufacturers to increase the graphics.
What has been emphasized by MS and Sony? Sure, we've heard about the Sony Connect, and Velocity Girl, and stuff like that, but the MAIN thing they keep on touting is HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHICS!!!
It puts pressure on developers and publishers alike to make HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHICS that stand up to what the console manufacturers are touting as the reasons to buy their systems. Even when a dev may not want to spend that much money on graphics, some other studio releases a video like the Killzone CGI or the FFVII tech demo and they feel like they have no choice but to try and keep up with them, and for this, they have to spend several times the money they currently are.
Look at the last year or so of the PS2's games. While the GC and Xbox have been dead for the last year, the PS2 has gotten really incredible and unique games like SotC and Okami. I think that has to do with developers finally getting really comfortable with the hardware they have, so they are able to work on graphics, audio, and gameplay at a relatively equal pacing, whereas when you have new hardware, the newer, higher quality graphics seem to add on to the development cycle even after the rest of the game is completed (I think I recall hearing about stuff like this from the Kameo, PDZ, and PGR3 developers in the months leading up to the Xbox 360's launch, where they were spending the last few months of development working on solely the graphics of these games. Everything else was completed.) It seemed like the PS2, Xbox, and GC were coming into their own just when the plugs were pulled on them and the transition began towards next-gen. Conker, Ninja Gaiden Black, Okami, FFXII, and RE4 are all examples of this.
I know graphics are an important part of games; They're probably the second-most important aspect to most people in their games, and I love seeing stuff that wows me in games, but I think maybe it would be beneficial to the entire gaming industry if developers and publishers put a little bit of pressure on console manufacturers to slow down a bit on the hardware progression. It allows devs the time to reach a graphical mastery point of hardware and also provides them the time to develop a radical new game.
I'm not sure if what I'm trying to say is coming out right, but I think consoles hit their sweet spot around the 4 or 5 year mark, graphically. When devs reach that sweet spot, where they feel they've gotten as good as they can get graphically on current hardware, they can start pooling more of their assets and development time towards new gameplay ideas, and maybe their developmenet costs will come down as they'll be used to the APIs and architectures of each of the consoles and, thus, be able to complete games more quickly. This will save publishers money, too, and with system hardware reaching sweet-spot pricings of $99, $130, and/or $150, they'll have plenty of potential buyers for their games.
To sum it all up, extending the lifespans of systems is a good thing because:
#1: It slows down the rate of hardware prorgression in the video game industry, thus almost certainly slowing down the rate of growth for development costs that are mostly used on graphics and audio of games.
#2: It allows developers time to make games even after reaching the peak of a system's graphical capabilities.
#3: With developers all reaching graphical plateaus on systems, they can focus on one-upping each other through their games' gameplay. In other words, they can shift their efforts towards the development of new and creative gameplay elements
#4: Developers can pump out higher-quality games at faster rates than they could have earlier in the generation.
#5: Faster development cycles result in lowered development costs for publishers.
#6: Lower hardware prices result in mass-market penetration and large userbases, and, subsequently, more potential customers for a game, and, thus, more potential revenue for publishers and developers.
#7: Lower hardware production prices allow console manufacturers to further profit off of subsequent hardware purchases. The large userbases of their systems should, theoretically, result in more total software sales over a certain period of time (say, one year) than earlier in the hardware's life cycle, thus providing console manufacturers higher revenues and profits off of royalties.
element said:
The player info thing I wouldnt mind. If you show me ad's to games that I like based on the games I played, I don't mind. In fact, I wouldnt be surprised if MS doesnt start doing that, since they do keep records of what games you played on your 360. However, the part about doing surveys, or even more so, taking sensitive information, is the part that has my stomach turning.
I just can't help to think that one day were going to have a game where a little video pops up similar to GRAW, but instead of a map or player view, its a coca-cola commercial.
Advertising is a cancer, and I will drop gaming like a bag of cat sick if it takes off and intrudes on my experience. Ads are not necessary to ensure profit. They are not necessary to keep costs manageable. If games didn't profit without ads, there would be no big budget games as we currently know them. People make games for profit, profit caps the budget; and I don't need slightly more awesomeness in a game if it will be offset by advertising. Big budget games will not disappear or becoming noticeably inferior without advertising - there is too much money in them.
Those who prefer games with slightly higher budgets facilitated by advertising, I can see your point. But it's not for me - I'm gone if that happens. At least I can still read books without three pages of ads in between each chapter.
I moved to North America a couple of years ago, and I can't watch TV anymore. The ten minutes of advertising every eight minutes (and immediately after a show's starting credits!) totally kills the experience. I could deal with one three minute break in the middle of a 30 minute show, as used to be the case in England. That was okay. And then I had the BBC channels, with no advertisements at all. But here in Canada, it is infuriating. I tape everything I want to watch to fast-forward through the commercials. I'm thinking of dropping TV altogether and using the money to rent - particularly since some shows are edited not just for sex, not just for violence, not just for bad language...but for time - in order to force more ****ing ads down my throat. I'm noticing old episodes of Seinfeld losing jokes purely because of this trend. One more reason to pick up the DVDs and cancel my cable subscription.
Don't **** with my entertainment, or I will stop buying your content.
Those who prefer games with slightly higher budgets facilitated by advertising, I can see your point. But it's not for me - I'm gone if that happens. At least I can still read books without three pages of ads in between each chapter.
I moved to North America a couple of years ago, and I can't watch TV anymore. The ten minutes of advertising every eight minutes (and immediately after a show's starting credits!) totally kills the experience. I could deal with one three minute break in the middle of a 30 minute show, as used to be the case in England. That was okay. And then I had the BBC channels, with no advertisements at all. But here in Canada, it is infuriating. I tape everything I want to watch to fast-forward through the commercials. I'm thinking of dropping TV altogether and using the money to rent - particularly since some shows are edited not just for sex, not just for violence, not just for bad language...but for time - in order to force more ****ing ads down my throat. I'm noticing old episodes of Seinfeld losing jokes purely because of this trend. One more reason to pick up the DVDs and cancel my cable subscription.
Don't **** with my entertainment, or I will stop buying your content.
TheJesusFactor
Member
This is completely untrue and money hungry corportation wants you to believe that. It doesn't cost more to put high definition textures on a model. All texture artist create their textures at ultra high resolution. After those textures are create, they have to shrink them down and compress it to fit on the disk.
In fact, game models, such as characters, are create at 1 to 2 million polygons. Then they extract the normal maps and put it on a reduce polygon version of the same model.
This means that HD assets has always been ready, it just the new system are now powerful enough to take advantage of them. They are not creating special HD assests just for the new system. A example is Grand Tourismo HD. They probably just replaced all the low res textures with high res textures from the original photoshop file. Since low polygon in game model are extracted from the high resolution model, they probably only need to put in the original high poly car models. If they wanted to make some more money will less work, just keep the PS2 model on the PS3 GTHD and use the high resolution models for GT5.
Of course we do have higher production values in games, but those are definitely offset by the large number of people buying them. Yes, some companies complain because their bad games don't sell. That doesn't mean prices of games should go up, it just means they need to make better games.
If anything the movie industry has shown us that DVD prices do not need to go up with high budget movies like LOTR, Matric, or Star Wars.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
Lindsay said:Then they should release SD versions of their games for me. I'm most assuredly sticking with my ancient 13" sdtv until either my or its life ends anyway!
Technically that would just be pointless considering these games downscale/support SD tv anyway. The system maybe next gen, but that doesn't mean your tv has to playing games.
I'm willing to bet that in the next few years EA will put in full 15- or 30-second spots in between quarters of Madden. Why wouldn't they? Companies would line up to buy them because it would mean a chance to get back in touch with the 18-35 male demographic that has all but left network TV behind; and the commercials won't be skippable, which will delight advertisers fed up with DVR users. And the fact that they can be guaranteed to be in over 3 million American homes won't hurt either.
So the advertisers get a fairly large, rapt audience with disposable income, EA gets to sell the spots for huge money, and all the gamers who don't like it can just go buy one of those other football games available... oh wait.
So the advertisers get a fairly large, rapt audience with disposable income, EA gets to sell the spots for huge money, and all the gamers who don't like it can just go buy one of those other football games available... oh wait.
Well, personally if the ad fits into the game world and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, then I don't mind it. Splinter Cell has done some of this and it never bothered me since it wasn't shoving the ads in your face.
If stuff starts happening where they just toss ads in like this:
then I'll be pissed off.
If stuff starts happening where they just toss ads in like this:
then I'll be pissed off.
big_z said:
How about a Coke billboard attached to a banner above a medieval castle. Or a "subtle" Axe-branded hot air balloon floating over your favorite Final Fantasy XIII town. Once this floodgate is opened, and once gamers become complacent to the crap that's being shoved down their throats, anything is possible.
Or, maybe Square can't get Johnson and Johnson to agree to having swords hitting people in front of their advertisments for Q-Tips. Who wants to associate Q-Tips with getting hit with a sword? No problem, we'll cut swords out of our games and replace them with nifty nerf coated sticks.
Is that OK Johnson and Johnson? Can we make our game now?
ichigo kurosaki
Member
Kabouter said:
Yeah, I think the same. If they managed to integrate it seamlessly in the game it'd be acceptable. But a game that takes place in the future with the Paris Hilton album advertised everywhere? Not cool. At all. At least they should keep the coherence.
ichigo kurosaki said:
Coherence with what? Planetside takes place how many years in the future? 100? 1000? What brands could possibly or realistically be relevant in that timeframe?
This is the very definition of the slippery slope. This is the big picture: Once the consumers shun unrealistic ads in games, every large developer is going to seek out "ad friendly" environments to base their games in.
"Hold on a second there, Chad. Did you say 'distant unknown planet' when describing your level plan? Sorry, but as fun as your whole idea sounds, 'distant unknown planet' doesn't scream advertising space. Let's move 'distant unknown planet' into 'earthlike present day'. Let's do that, and throw some crates in there... oh and be sure to put some Burger King and Taco Bell logos them. Great. Thanks."
ichigo kurosaki
Member
FlyinJ said:
Something like Coca-cola, Pepsi, McDonald's, Adidas or Nike. Any of those would be better IMO, they seem more timeless brands to me (even though any of them may not even be 50 years old but meh).
It's not the fact that the brands may not exist in the future, maybe I didn't explain myself correctly. It's more that I wouldn't want to see the new Celine Dion album advertised in, say, Resident Evil 5, even though it could fit in other games like The Sims or something like that.
ichigo kurosaki said:
So you're perfectly fine with seeing a McDonald's billboard in a third person action game that takes place 1000 years in the future?
How about 200 years ago, in an RTS? Or 90 years ago in a period piece game that takes place in the events leading to WWI? Where do you draw the line?
ichigo kurosaki
Member
FlyinJ said:
No. But I'd pick that over other things (only if I had to choose... it's not that I like McD or anything, I'd rather not see any real advertising at all) as it'd seem more likely. After all, if mankind still exists in 1000 years (at this rate...) I'm sure McDonald's will still be there. Sadly.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
In Element's defense I must say that FEAR's ingame advertisement was rather well done, although some times those Alienware computers were way too much.
And how can't I blow them up with my gun?!
hydragonwarrior
Member
Just place all the ads during loading time. The true next-gen begins when we have videogames with COMMERCIALS!