MMOG in-game advertising?

Looks like the effects may be felt with upcoming Age Of Conan.

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/3715/advertisementks3.jpg

What is everyones thoughts on this matter?

 

To tell you the truth, I just ignore the advertising. It doesn't bother me.

And BTW, I don't think I've played a game with in game advertising

 

NO NO NO NO NO! that just wont do!

it collects your information and stores it. and i wonder if it monitor your internet surfing habit also, this is problematic for me in many ways, including; breach of privacy, loss of computing resources (performance), internet bandwith/allowance, etc..

the most they can do about ingame ad is just show the ad randomly, and do not impact the game performance/design. if there is a game with ingame advertising i will avoid it. i really hate when a component of a game is actually running even though i am not running the game.

 

AoC forum threads on this topic:

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=63987

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=64138

Looks like things are still vague at this point. I'm gonna wait for some kind of Solid announcement before making a decision on whether or not to buy this game. "may" or "may not" don't fly with me.

 

In game ads have nothing to do with monitoring your surfing habits. The image he links states that the advertising only collects information from the game itself. None of the information comes from anything you do outside Conan.

I don't care about in-game advertising as long as it isn't placed in a way that violates immersion. For instance, if I see a coke machine in FEAR...I don't care if a giant "COKE" is plastered all over the front rather than some generic imaginary soda. That makes sense. On a similar note, if I am running around a bunch of office levels, again FEAR, where the computers are Alienware brand or Sony brand or whatever, again, who cares. These sorts of placements do not really break immersion, in fact they add to it.

What could bother some players is that coke ad plastered onto the front of my next shield or tunic.

To be honest, MMO games have terrible immersion (in my opinion) by nature of their social aspect. I wouldn't care if they plastered freakishly overdone ads everywhere because I don't consider the game worlds at all engrossing anyway.

Where the real issue lies is in advertising in a game where you are already (presumably) paying a monthly fee. If it somehow lowers the fee, then by all means give me a McDonalds potion and a mount with a giant BMW logo tatooed to it. Otherwise, ads should be subtle (placed tastefully and without violating the validity of the game-world, for players that do feel immersed).

The real example of a completely validated game-ad scheme is Battlefield Heroes and the like, because they are completely free to play.

So in the case of Conan, if it starts to give me a seizure because I can't find a monster to kill without being strobed in the retinas with a Starbucks placement, then I'll be against it. Otherwise, if I just happen to see a sign saying "Newbie area, respawns provided by the National Science Foundations....an players like you" I'll be more than content.

*mind vomit end*

 

Ha, the one that comes to mind is CoD4, where every terrorist bought an overpriced Voodoo machine.

Screw going to war with them, just wait a few years and they'll have blown all their money on laptops.

 

I find it ridiculous mainly because they are putting this advertisement into a game that people will be buying for 50$ then paying 15$ a month for.

Will they be hurting for money that badly?

 

You have a good point, unless we get some benefit from the advertising (lower monthly fee, for instance), it is really hard to see why advertising is needed aside from pure profit.

 

Hellgate London had random ads in the train stations

 

Unfortunately it seems to be the way game companies are going, it's a gold mine for them.

 

Haha...that's way to cheap of the companies. Aren't they already making BIG bucks on monthly subscriptions? why the in game advertisement? It will simply kill the mood and the setting of the game. Putting some modern ads on a supposedly classical settinged game? Like putting ads for tracktors on WOW? that's simply insane!

 

I don't really mind sublte in-game advertising (like the Alienware comps in FEAR), but to think that I'm going to pay $15 a month to play a game only to then be barraged by advertising! Now I know barraged is a strong word and thats probably not gonna happen but in principle I don't want to pay to play a game and then be a victim of chessey advertising (cuz really what kind of advertising fits into a dark, violent, fantasy world). People pay extra money to watch pay-per-view or pay more for premium tv channels and essentially they are paying so that they can watch their show/event without commercials/advertising. I thought the extra money spent was to substitute the money normally made from said advertisments. Alright in some cases I guess but a terrible idea in Age of Conan.

 

Maybe I'm paranoid or a conspiracy nut but I'm gonna propose what I think would be a very scary scenario. Let's say a wholesome company like Coke decides the invest/finace a video game, like Age of Conan, and they sign a contract to provide the money and receive their in-game advertising. But after the game is released it hits Fox News that the game is uber-violent, offensive, and is making children violent. So Coke (family-oriented as they are) decides to legally/finacially put pressure to the developers to change the content of the game because it appears that they condone this "corruption of American values". This is again extreme and it may not even be legally possible but I don't like the idea of 3rd party companies being in video games.

 

I'm pretty sure that the marketing guys would know beforehand the content of the game, and make a decision beforehand.
There's always an exception to the rule however. I suppose it could happen, but I wouldn't count on it.