Of course nobody wants to pay more, but would the people who dont like the idea of ingame ads pay slightly more for a version without them? or would they live with the ads?
You do realize websites are made by real people who feed real families with the money the sites make from advertising?
You don't get it. I don't' mind if my games has ads, if they were 1-10$. But they are NOT. They are expensive, and most of the games that comes out are crap, no money is invested form the ads in making a better product.
I don't say I understand where GoodBytes, BenKxK and the others opposing in game ads are coming from. It seems to me as if the ads you are seeing are pop ups or something! I agree with everyone else in how, it makes things more real, they give the developers more money (which is bloody needed as there is barely any for developers and soon they will be going out of business so you wont be able to complain about ads). The ads themselves aren't intrusive and as in OP, there is the option to turn them off. Like I said, I don't udnerstand why you hate them so, you haven't explained your side of the argument either so I can't understand.
I am going to (dis)agree with everyone on this... Goodbytes and co, I agree that if you pay say £30 amount for a game, you do expect not to have ads slipped in everywhere. But then If I am in a city, and there are no ads, I know there is something missing and it can ruin the hard work of the level designers if certain easy to do things are missed out. And a couple of fake ads is just as "intrusive" but without making any extra cash for (hopefully) developers who have worked pretty damn hard on the game. A good mid point would be to make a game say £15 and have realistic amounts of ads in them, if the ads start getting over the top the reviewers will slate the game in a review before or right after the release and no one will buy it. So really lower prices and a few well placed ads and its win win. In splinter cell double agent there is a lot of nivea product placement, I say product placement not advertising because apart from 1 or 2 ridiculous billboards, the rest is just some nivea skincare products in a bathroom, which I thought was a very nice touch, a shameless money grabbing touch, but a bloody nice one.
+1 on Matticus If you watch I Am Legend there is an abandoned Macdonald's right at the start, and I'm sure there are a couple of Coca Cola ads put throughout the film for good measure For something like Bet On Soldier it's even better, because there it makes sense to have ads in a game that's based on a TV show (in the future)
personally i think it'd be better to add more subtle advertising into the game. no massive billboards saying buy the brand new tony hawks, but rather a vending machine that sells coke, or mobile phones that are from sony, or ingame libraries might stock real life books. small things that add to the overall impact of the game, not one big hulking hyge ass billboard! at the end of the day, whilst we the gamer would LOVE games to be cheaper as a result of advertising that simply won't happen. it's a business to get as much money as possible. If we please the gamer along the way then great, but for most devs & publishers thats not the priority (but it sure does help!) if you look at the magazine industry, sales of magazines make little contribution to the net profit when compared to the sales of advertising space. magazines are only really struggling because readership goes down, therefore adspace demands drop. as a result cover price might* drop to encourage more people to pick it up. this may one day apply to games, ie, when the demand for a game drops the demand to advertise within that game might drop. the price of the game then drops to encourage more people to pick it up so that more people see the ads so that the ads reach more people. did i make sense there?
Even a game based in a real life city that is trying to be as close to real life as possible. The Spiderman Games for example, set in NY, there are a few ads there which add to the feel of a real life New York.
Speaking of advertising, The first post reminds me why i hate imageshack. I am dreading the day when the innocent "loading" screen is replaced with a few tv style adverts. It is coming, i can feel it....
I love the advert for Loom in Monkey Island, i don't know why other developers try to advertise their other products so discretely
Okay - before I say something which will likely make people want to Lynch me... I'd like to explain I do not work for any advertising / marketing agency, I'm not taking any psychotropic drugs, and my brain has not been taken over by extra-terrestrials. This being said... I don't mind adverts... in fact, in some cases, I quite like them. Before people pelt me with bricks, etc, let me explain. I have an iPhone. The reason I bought it? I fell in love with it the second I saw the first advert for it. I went to see "The Dark Knight" recently. The reason I saw it? The adverts and trailers for it were awesome. I could go on... Frankly, it's phenomenally naive to claim that advertising is there to annoy people, and should be "banned" or "taken out of anything you buy". It serves a purpose, and serves it well - to improve knowledge and visibility of upcoming or newly released products in the marketplace. Advertising should be better targeted, not banned or removed from certain types of media. Lets not forget that some of the iconic imagery of civilisation and religion is just advertising. Look at Santa Claus as an example. Saint Nick was never originally known as wearing a "Red and white furry coat", until the Coca Cola company placed him in garb the same colour as their company's corporate identity. Now, you'd be mad to suggest he wears anything other than red with a white trim.
I agree with some parts of your post, but Coke didn't turn Santa red and white! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7152054.stm
