News Battlefield 2142 to have in game advertisements

[Garside]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/08...dvertisements/

[pman]

Bah, EA are at it again... Annoying customers with shoddy code and now ads. If it was free, then yea, I wouldn't mind. But no, you pay and then still get ads.

Imagine if the BBC did that!

Oh, and also, $730 by 2010? I'd buy it...

[mattthegamer463]

How will they have ads in a game set 130 years in the future? If they pull this off right I won't have a problem.

[Veles]

TBH I'm not bothered at all so long as it doesn't inturrupt my gaming at all (if I get BF2142 that is).

If you think about it the BF franchise costs quite a bit to run, with all the official EA ranked servers and having to pay dice to make a decent patch for once, but I imagine they make the money back + alot more already.

[r4tch3t]

In game advertising is set to become big business, with forecasters predicting the industry to be worth $730 by 2010.

Sure are getting up there with the big companies.
IGA is fine by me, should make a game in a modern day setting seem more realistic. Just aslong as its not to over the top.

[specofdust]

So we've gone from being the consumers to the commodity. Except we're still expected to pay. I understand how marketing and advertising people came up with this(being as they are) but what I don't understand is why people put up with it.

We pay, therefore we are the customers. That means being treated well and recieving a good experience. If Coca cola or Honda are paying that's fine, but I'm not going to also pay with money, since I'm paying merely by viewing the advertisments.

Just another reason never to pay EA money I suppose.

On the upside, BF1942 looks crap anyway. Roll on quakewars.

[Snaek]

EA is so greedy...

I would not pay for a game with advertisements in it. If a game's going to have ads, it should be free.

[EK-MDi]

Originally Posted by Bit-Tech

In game advertising is set to become big business, with forecasters predicting the industry to be worth $730 by 2010.

Wow, that's a lot of money. That's almost as much as I make in a year, as a sixteen year old, LOL.

[bloodcar]

Originally Posted by specofdust

So we've gone from being the consumers to the commodity. Except we're still expected to pay. I understand how marketing and advertising people came up with this(being as they are) but what I don't understand is why people put up with it.

We pay, therefore we are the customers. That means being treated well and recieving a good experience. If Coca cola or Honda are paying that's fine, but I'm not going to also pay with money, since I'm paying merely by viewing the advertisments.

Just another reason never to pay EA money I suppose.

On the upside, BF1942 looks crap anyway. Roll on quakewars.

Just to quickly point out to you mate, but any object you buy that has a brand name or logo on it is advertising for that company. So long as in game advertisements don't affect actual gameplay then there are no worries at all. It'd be the same as if that new shirt you bought had an itchy logo...you wouldn't wear it (and give the clothing manufacturer free advertising) so if an in game ad bothers you, you won't play it. You also pay for your cable tv (at least in the states) and you have to deal with watching ads. It's a fact of life, get over it.

[specofdust]

Well, for me, not really. I wear unbranded clothing, the largest logo I have on me this second is a small "CAT" logo, about 1cm/1.5cm, on the back of my boots. That's it. I pay(my share) of a TV lisence in the UK, that pays for the BBC and the BBC is advert free. I'd certainly never pay for Sky or a channel service that still expects me to watch ads in conjunction with paying. I stopped buying computer tech magazines because they expected me to pay £5 or £6 and then face 1/3 pages being adverts.

Advertising doesn't have to be put up with in conjunction with paying. I'm ok with advertising in games, so long as that game is free. I played Anarchy Online for about 4 months as a free player. I was subjected to adverts, but that's fair enough. They used me as the commodity, sold my viewing time to the advertisers, and in return I got to play the game and use their servers. However if I am the customer, I refuse also to be the commodity, at least at the prices they expect gamers to pay. EA et al just seem to expect to be able to start degrading our experience with adverts and not give us anything in return. That's bull****.

[NoahFuLing]

On a side note, in X2: The Threat, whenever you enter a dock, the female voice making announcements occasionally makes an advert, and every once in a while it says, "Egosoft thanks you for buying their product." Heh.

I have no problem with IGA in the proper place. Racing games need car/track adverts to seem real, otherwise they are too bland. Baseball/football/soccer/other field sports need adverst in the proper places to be photorealistic, tennis especially. Games such as Half-Life would do well to have adverts, such as a broken-down board along the side of a highway, or ripped adverts in a subway. However, adverts during loading times, or in the menus, or in completely inappropriate places (WOW, for example, not that it happens) are annoying and distracting. For example, say I'm playing a game in a post-nuclear holocaust setting. I want to be walking down a desolate street with half-destroyed burger joints, hardware stores, restaurants, etc. I want to see a McDonalds with zombies trapped in it. I want to see billboards broken down, the advertisements ripped or burning. I don't want a bland street which looks like someone put the same three stores every 5 feet.

[specofdust]

The problem with that is though, that no company will see their name on an advert that's broken and burning. They seem to think that'll cause negative impacts or something I guess, cos it just doesn't happen. Their adverts always have to be huge, prominent, bright, often noisey. They DO destroy immersiveness, and frankly I don't think the IGA business is compatable with an immersive experience. Sure, the odd advert could work, but publishers like EA want all sorts of companies advertising, so they're not going to ensure cohesion, they'll just go ahead anyway.

[bloodcar]

There were people bitching about the ads in Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter but tbh, I never saw a single one of them.

[Anakha]

Give me the game for free, I won't mind advertising at all (See also: Anarchy Online).
Make me pay for the game, and I'll play for a while with ethereal running in the background, then my hosts file will spawn a raft of new entries blocking the ads.

It's MY PC™!

[Agent_M]

so we are gonna have the vehicles with brand names on them like sponsors and soldiers with latex suits on with advertising, like in the olympics/sporting events.

well they do say war is big business :P

[Neogumbercules]

I want the Mechs to say "Built Ford Tough." That wouldn't bother me.

[Fibbles]

I want to see coupons offering discounts on select products in game. Then I can print out the screenshot and take the coupon somewhere and save a couple bucks.

That might be wierd

[BioSniper]

Interesting. Shame I can't really say much still being under the NDA :/

[Agent_M]

you can, people always do it

[AcidJiles]

I wish I could pay say £100 a year and I never have to see an advert atall ever. they dont affect me and are just annoying