TV-Style ads coming to console gaming before the end of 2021

[Avocado Diaboli]

43 minutes ago, poochyena said:

yes because that is literally what they are being asked. They are CHOOSING to view ads. Its a choice, thats the entire point of this entire point, is some people will actually chose to see ads because they tolerate them.

Just because you don't quote the part that actually elaborates upon why your reasoning is flawed doesn't make it go away. People don't seek out advertisements because they like ads.

 

43 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Yes, you even admit it yourself by saying

 

Unless you want to pretend that inflation doesn't exist, then keeping a game at $60 is an effective price cut. If they release madden 2022 at $60 and madden 2015 at $60, the 2022 version is cheaper and they will make up the money some how, and they are choosing ads, as, through my sources, roughly half of people find that acceptable.

Funny how you tout the merits of capitalism but use inflation, an inherent factor of capitalism, to prop up your argument. See, the standard AAA price of $60 per game is stable across the entirety of the medium, not just within a single series. So if a majority of $60 games can work just fine without ads in them (and they have for the past 30 years of inflation), you can't then turn around and argue that if a few of them start displaying TV ads in them that this suddenly constitutes a price reduction because of the inclusion of ads. That's putting the cart before the horse. 

 

43 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Why are you asking me that? Have you literally never in your life had to make a compromise? And you are trying to accuse ME of bad faith arguments?

If you hate a game enough to not want to play it, then you don't buy it. How privileged is your life that you are demanding legislation action because one version of a generic football game might have ads in it, FORCING you to have to even consider not buying it and do something else with your life?

I don't hate the game enough that I don't want to play it (what even is this line of reasoning?). I hate ads in games I already paid for. And I'm using Madden as an example here because it's listed among the games targeted to adopt this practice. I personally don't care about Madden NFL or most sports games in general. But whenever the next game I actually care about comes out with ad breaks between levels or missions, maybe one in a franchise or by a developer I like, I don't really have a way to seek a direct alternative to that. If Deus Ex got a new entry tomorrow with baked in ads between missions, I can't just go and play a different version of Deus Ex that doesn't have ads from a different company.

 

And sorry, if most things capitalism touches eventually end up being terrible, telling me to "do something else with my life" is not a valid excuse. Unless of course you want to end up living as a hermit. Because that's basically your stance; don't like the system, don't partake in the system. Also, I'm not demanding legislation because of one game. You're just trying to downplay the problem here by ignoring that if this catches on, many more games will follow. That's how it's been with carved out DLC to be later sold back to you, it has been the case with loot boxes and it will be the case with ads. It always starts with just one game or a few games. And the pattern is very easy to spot these days, unless you choose to not notice it, like whenever you have to argue for a flawed economic philosophy in order to not run into cognitive dissonance. 

[pythonmegapixel]

16 minutes ago, SADS said:

I realise that the deep pockets of mum and dad are probably what is driving the desire from these companies.

You advertise new skins to the kid... mum/dad fork out to shut up the begging/pleading/crying.

Precisely. Part of me thinks that parents just need to do their job and not buy their kids random crap just because "<incessant sobbing> IWANTIT!!!!!" but in reality it's hard not to blame the advertising companies and the developers. They know exactly what they're doing, and they're proud of it. If they weren't they would stop.

 

[Sauron]

6 hours ago, poochyena said:

Ads introduce products to people. Without ads, small companies would struggle as large companies would be able to just pay their way onto the shelves of large chain stores, leaving the small online retailers to go unnoticed.

Instead, large companies just flood the ad space...

6 hours ago, rodion.zissou said:

TBH when I see ads for products/services invading my personal space I actively avoid said product. I'm not sure what my subconscious thinks about it, but I am a true ad hater.

I'm like you on this, but consider: you might see an ad for a <brand> power supply today and barely even register it (or "actively avoid it" for a bit), then a year from now you might need a power supply and if you don't know much about them the first name that would pop into your mind would be the one you saw an ad for.

 

That's not to say all ads are effective, there is actually some data indicating that continuous ad spam does not really do much more than a few ads here and there.

[X-System]

Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't need other ads in-game because this game already has full ads all time /s

[pythonmegapixel]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm like you on this, but consider: you might see an ad for a <brand> power supply today and barely even register it (or "actively avoid it" for a bit), then a year from now you might need a power supply and if you don't know much about them the first name that would pop into your mind would be the one you saw an ad for.

Indeed. When I want a product, I want to consider all the options, not just the one that I saw in an ad.

 

It's for this reason that I would really value a site that simply lists who competes with any particular company in any given industry. Say I was advertised a Cooler Master power supply - I'd just go to this website, type "Cooler Master" and select something like "Computer components -> Power supplies" and see a list including EVGA, Corsair and so on. So much that I'd actually set out to build something like that if I believed there was appetite for it and I could make it useful, but I doubt enough people care for it to be worth my while and given the accuracy of sites like AlternativeTo.net I'm not sure it'd be any use anyway.

[Stahlmann]

3 hours ago, GreatnessRD said:

Just shows how trash the gaming industry has become. But this isn't shocking based off what has been accepted by the gaming community this day and age. It's just... sad.

As soon as an industry grows like the gaming industry has, greed takes over.

 

The reason why developers didn't do stuff like that 10 years ago is because back then gaming was still a much smaller industry. You just had to publicly mention that you play games on your PC as a hobby and people gave you a disgusted look.

 

Nowadays gaming is completely normal and as the industry has so much money flowing through it, more and more greedy moves are made to milk more money out of the consumers.

[Arika]

8 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

A new platform known as "playerWON" is launching TV-style ads inside console games, directly targeting younger audiences who have avoided these ads in other media sources

Damn millennials ruining the ad industry!!!

 

Also TV ads general exist because free-to-air TV is..."free" (unless you're in the UK). so why the hell is 

8 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

Battlefield and Madden NFL

on there?

 

8 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

Electronic Arts

oh, right...

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Also TV ads general exist because free-to-air TV is..."free" (unless you're in the UK). so why the hell is 

8 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

Battlefield and Madden NFL

on there?

If you read the original article it doesn't say that Battlefield or Madden NFL will be included in this - just that it includes publisher Electronic Arts who are known for Battlefield and Madden.

 

From the article:

Quote

[...] have a deal with Simulmedia as does Electronic Arts, the publisher of many games like the Battlefield and Madden NFL series.

 

The list of games including this haven't been announced, only Smite which has already trialled these ads apparently.

[maartendc]

I could see this for a free to play game.

 

But for a game you paid $60 or $70 for? Unacceptable. I also don't get ads in my Netflix or HBO shows, because I paid for watching.

 

I don't think this will be accepted, and I think it will end up being canned. As usual EA is at the forefront of trying to make more money / insert annoying / harmful / predatory practices into their games.

 

[NeuesTestament]

If it is a shit free to play game whatever, don't care. If it is a paid game I will avoid it like the plague.

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, Spotty said:

I guess not enough people are watching free to air TV these days. I blame all those reality dating and cooking shows. If they actually made TV that was worth watching people would watch it and the ads,

OTA DVRs are getting popular I’d guess. I use Plex and I skip the ads. Of course I don’t watch TV live. I let the program record and watch it later. 

[Fasterthannothing]

 

I'll just wait for my AdBlock list to get updated in my pfsense system and I'll never have to deal with it. Unless they actually embedded the ad files in the game.

[TVwazhere]

Quote

TV-Style ads

How dare they use my likeness for financial gain!

[Kisai]

11 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

 

 

Simulmedia's (owner of PlayerWON) testing shows 22% of people are more likely to play a game and 11% more likely to spend money within that game if they were shown in-game ads which provide "perks" or "other in game incentives"

 

These idiots in charge of these companies haven't realized what happens. Or don't care. We all went through this just before the real estate crash of 2008. My Netflix subscription was one of these "offers"

 

1) People "game" the ads. Try playing a mobile game that has ads. The ads range from showing between every "level" to only showing if you want "in game currency", (and then everything that isn't garbage is expensive) and the amount of credit you get is an absolute pittance unless you "sign up" for some other shovelware kickback.

 

oh heck I'll just get a screenshot. For reference, to buy the cheapest item in the game store, is about 700 coins. The good items are over 4000 coins.

 

Basically everything with a three digit or more requires you to purchase or use your credit card to sign up for a "free trial, cancel anytime" offer, which also needs to be mentioned can only be done once. So these are all pointless, as you'd have to waste the better part of a year to buy something in the game.

 

So obviously they push you towards the "premium currency" in the game. 3060 coins are $35.00, that gives you a point of reference for how much "coins" are worth, about 1 penny. Are you really going to click on over 1000 ads that consume 15 minutes of your time to fill out a survey, or 30 seconds of video ads to get an item for free? 

 

No, you won't unless you're under unemployed and don't value your time.

 

2) Most of the ads that end up inside games are scams. And I'm not talking about the complete mismatch between the survey time and the value like above, but rather the things like "free trials" that require credit cards. Credit agencies and third parties who use their data are notorious for not allowing you to cancel their credit monitoring.

 

3) At best, if the game developer curates the ads themselves, it doesn't devalue the game as much as it would if you just slap google ads in it. Product placement has always been a thing, going back to film and comics in the 40's, and reached a peak in the 80's before imploding on itself as shows were made entirely around a product. 

 

The consequence, every time, is that ads severely age a product (Believe it or not "Back to the Future" was intentionally produced for product placement, and one of the few cases where the brands served a purpose to illustrate changes to the timeline. But many other films of the time were just stuffed with product placement that didn't belong (eg "The Internship" which is nothing but an ad for Google Employment.) So there will be things that become part of the content (see the ads in LTT videos, when the sponsor no longer has the offer, or even exists at all) that disappear, and thus people get in the habit of skipping all product placements/ads in the video, knowing that nothing in the ad is available.

 

Games, at least can be retroactively changed to remove ads and product placements, and that actually happens already with game crossovers, where once the "crossover" event ends, you no longer have any way to get the limited time item if you didn't buy it at the time, or dump a truckload of money on the gacha/loot box.

 

However, again. People won't put up with it. I've seen it happen every single time. 

Either:

a) something goes subscription, and people become obsessed with stealing/not-paying for it. 

b) something goes ad-supported, and people become obsessed with stealing/blocking the ads.

 

The right middle point has to be where the thing "ad supported" is directly a benefit to the user, not to the company. If you view a video advertisement, it better be worth at least $10 worth of game credit to the user. Because if it's Google Adsense values, which is closer to 2 cents per view, people will just see it for what it is, as yet-another-cash-grab and a time waster.

 

And for every person they believe is going to play the game more because it offers "free" stuff, keep in mind the game developer can move that lever wherever they want to min-max the profit, and thus you will always be on the losing side. 10 ads per day, that waste up to 2 minutes of your time, is a LOT.

 

[vorticalbox]

12 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Can someone please ban ads, especially within paid services/products?

This has always been a  thing.

 

Remember DVDs?

 

I used to always think "Why am I watching an ad when i paid for the thing"

[Forbidden Wafer]

22 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

This has always been a  thing.

 

Remember DVDs?

 

I used to always think "Why am I watching an ad when i paid for the thing"

Technically, VHS/DVD/cable television in the past had a reason to show ads: to inform people of other content of the same channel/same studio.

 

Internet was not ubiquitous and TV didn't have the entire program available.

[GhostRoadieBL]

6 hours ago, poochyena said:

More than half (53 percent) of U.S. consumers would be open to watching ads (every other episode of their favorite show) if it meant lowering the cost of subscription streaming services.

40 percent of Americans would strongly (15%) or somewhat (25%) consider paying a lower monthly fee for a streaming service in exchange for seeing more advertisements.

Plenty of people have little issue with ads. You live in a bubble to believe otherwise.

If you don't like one product, you buy a different product, yes.

 

Break down those statements, "open to" not requesting, and "every other episode" so once per 40min period and only if it directly reduces the amount they pay for a service, not gave them in game skins worth nothing

 

"would consider paying less" (paraphrasing) in exchange for ads. Nothing about paying the same or getting nothing of value from advertisements.

People have issues with ads, it's very strange for anyone to go on YouTube to watch the Pre-roll and then click over to something else, those people need counselling to get them back to reality.

[SteveGrabowski0]

6 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

"If the product is good, you probably aren't going to see ads for it."

Pretty much how I look at ads. E.g., If a restaurant has to advertise, it means it's probably not very good or it would be full just based on word of mouth.

[SteveGrabowski0]

56 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

This has always been a  thing.

 

Remember DVDs?

 

I used to always think "Why am I watching an ad when i paid for the thing"

That shit was annoying. Back when DVDs were big I used to play them from my PC and thankfully all the Linux DVD player software would let you skip through that normally unskippable crap.

[Murasaki]

Ah yes since kids dont watch TV anymore so put it in the games!

[DeScruff]

"TV like ads"

You mean that in the cutscene before a boss fight,  the game will fade to black, then show me of an old guy saying he has ED, and if I do too I should ask my doctor about ____ (insert all side effects)
... Return to the game.

 

 

[pythonmegapixel]

2 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

This has always been a  thing.

 

Remember DVDs?

 

I used to always think "Why am I watching an ad when i paid for the thing"

You've reminded me of something else. It really grinds my gears when companies put advertising on their automated phone lines. If I am literally phoning them in connection with giving them money, I don't expect to have to listen to a recorded voice persuading me to give them money.

 

I reckon an ad in a game would be similarly annoying to that - I've paid for this game already, why are you trying to make me spend even more money?

[Murasaki]

4 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

why are you trying to make me spend even more money?

because greed is greed and thats all I (the company) need

[pythonmegapixel]

14 minutes ago, Murasaki said:

because greed is greed and thats all I (the company) need

Is the correct answer, sadly... (though I will admit what I wrote in my post was more of a rhetorical question)

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

Break down those statements, "open to" not requesting, and "every other episode" so once per 40min period and only if it directly reduces the amount they pay for a service, not gave them in game skins worth nothing

 

"would consider paying less" (paraphrasing) in exchange for ads. Nothing about paying the same or getting nothing of value from advertisements.

People have issues with ads, it's very strange for anyone to go on YouTube to watch the Pre-roll and then click over to something else, those people need counselling to get them back to reality.

 

The key thing here is "reducing the amount they pay for a service" which no ad-supported games do. Most other "ad supported" content, interstitial ads just send people off the site. This includes Youtube and Twitch, as well as sites that show comics and news. 

 

How often have you seen this chunk of ads on a news site?

 

Left/Right "ad skin", middle "paid content"

 

Notice how over 90% of the page is advertisements, and you can't even read the article without scrolling past , but oh it gets worse:

 

Can you tell which ones are ads and which ones are stories on the site? Here's a hint, the ones with the red banner are on the site. So 14 of those ads are garbage, and 6 are news articles. And that is even before getting to "flyers" where local ads for products you might actually need are.

 

The thing is, I doubt most people even get to this part of the site. If your site has so much advertising that you can't tell the content from the ads, then your site is worthless.

 

And that's what happens with games. Most "gacha/lootbox" games are so obnoxious about wanting you to purchase premium currency and lootbox/gacha, that you have to get through a dozen ads for stuff "in the game" before you get to play.

 

5 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

You've reminded me of something else. It really grinds my gears when companies put advertising on their automated phone lines. If I am literally phoning them in connection with giving them money, I don't expect to have to listen to a recorded voice persuading me to give them money.

 

I reckon an ad in a game would be similarly annoying to that - I've paid for this game already, why are you trying to make me spend even more money?

But that's what they do already. I'd record a clip of it, but it's on the phone and it's obnoxiously difficult to record stuff on a mobile device in the context it happens. I can name "Angry Birds 2" as an example where you are assaulted with 5 ads when the game boots up, mostly for purchasing cash shop stuff.