hes right I hate! advertising anywhere. Videogames are art and art shouldnt be ruined by business, though its handled by big business so i guess this was bound to happen

@SolidOni_ds:
Also i looooove that pic of him

That picture never gets old. It's like his face is slowly imploding.

It is inevitable for advertising in videogames, but I believe if we have to have them, I would hope that they are not placed blatantly (like only place them in realistic titles or where they fit in appropriately) and subsidize the cost of videogames.

Frankly, I resent paying to be advertised to. I start to feel like I'm never actually getting anything but more advertising.

Thank you, Sony. In-game ads should really be limited to sports games imho, since they actually add to the realism. Everywhere else, no thanks.

Is Ashcraft seriously okaying in-game ads? Not cool Ashcraft. In-game ads are unacceptable under ANY circumstances.
Shame on you for selling out Ashcraft!

@SolidOni_ds:
Not all games are art.

@Dorcas:
The ones I play are, my most recent being No More Heros and Mass Effect

I wouldn't mind going down a road in WoW to see "Next right: McDonalds" signs =D!!Though, I'd rather have companies that make good games struggling to turn a profit using in-game ads rather than a game like WoW..

@ lstormy10: It's not inevitable if you're willing to stand up and fight it. Way to go Howard Stringer!
Boo-urns to A$hcraft!

yes, in-game ads are fucking annoying. and I cant get enough of that pic.

I don't mind ads in places I'd expect to find them in real life, but is there any evidence they actually work?

When I see a billboard from the road, it's easier for me to give in to a splurge decision than when I'm home at night, trying to complete the objectives in my game.

Oh... I see what he did there! Playstation HOME is not a game. It's an Experience so we can adversities the shit out of it and turn every wall into a commercial but... not games.

@PooPooKaKaBumBum:
I do not think anyone will be able to keep EA or other companies from trying to make more money - it is what companies do.

I am okay with subsidizing game costs with ads though (look at Battlefield Heroes for a small scale example).

HOKUTO SHINKEN!!!
-sigh- Advertisement in game is a sad thing really in a sense, it's like setting disaster prone chimpanzees loose in The Louvre.

hey, if you had a choice between WoW for 15 bucks a month without ads or have it full of ads on every load screen, billboards in cities, and occasional product tie ins while making it without monthly pay, i'm pretty sure most would opt for the free one. i dont even play WoW but its just an example of where in game advertising could prove to be effective and accepted.

@okenny :): well its also free

if they had a Sports game take...MLB08 The Show and put Real Pepsi or Products along the walls of the Baseball stadiums i'd tollerate that....cause usely thats where it is.

@ lstormy10: I subsidise games with ads...by not spending a cent on them and hope they tank.

@slacker164: It totally depends on the game. Do I want an ad for iPhones in my WWII shooter? Actually, yes, but I'm sorta a dick that way.

But if the ad fits, run with it. Billboards in GTA? As long as they're billboards and not dashboards, why not? And an 80's Vice City style ad campaign for products that have been around that long anyway could fit. I'd love to see a retro Tony the Tiger in GTA hocking box art that's thirty years out of date. But GTA is at least set in something emblematic of a real world. Branded airplanes or cars are fine there, right?

But what kind of innovation is going to allow people to not mind ads in their game? Are we going to go the route of product placement and have all PS3 characters talk on those damn Ericson phones all the damn time or are we going to have radio and tv ads snuck in the background of all the games? Or is it going to be the product-fit-the-game-model where in some army sim, all of the bad guys use Japanese import cars that break down while the guys in your squad won't shut up about how damn reliable their Fords are? (see: 24)

For me, any game that seeks to emulate the real (and current) world, put in real world advertising. The Sims, EA Sports games, Second Life - go nuts. Anything else - you'd better be careful to make sure I don't see the advertising at all, or I'll toss it in the rubbish bin so fast your profits will drop.

Y'know. Unless my dungeon seige team talks up the iPhone now and again. I'm all for anachronisms.

@ hass: The choices are no ads and I play, ads and I don't play.

@ Tonx: Fake parody ads in GTA? Fine.
Real ads? No purchase for me.

It's interesting that Bobby Kotick, ActiVizzard's CEO, says he wouldn't go in this direction, yet Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, an Activision title, completely went in this direction. Of course, I'm not saying that the CEO has his fingers in every decision that gets made--it's just interesting. :)

The first game to nail the viral advertising wins. Traditional advertising will not work with the gaming market in general. I can think of a few ways to market a viral campaign in a game well.

Let's say a compnay wanted to market a new car. A game like Call of Duty 4 could manage this by replacing a generic car on some multiplayer maps with a replica of that car. Players could have fun just blowing up the new, shiny car over and over again. The best way to do this is to limit the window of this advertising so that it only shows up over a given weekend.

Games based on the real world have the best chance for traditional advertising (I'm talking about you GTAIV), but even games like Devil May Cry 4 can utilize it in a new way. Take Gillette's advertising in Burnout Paradise, now imagine having a limited edition weapon available for one week that Nero can use called the Fusion. After the advertising window is over the weapon is gone and no longer available to anyone.

I am in for ads when they make sense, as in billboards in a city if the game takes place in a similar world to ours or in our world.

Now I don't expect real ads in fantasy based games or medival ones cause it doesn't make sense, unless is done like back then. A kid in the street screaming to buy his newest 'Pepsi'...and then you kill him (sadistic, but oh well :P), yep that is how ads should be handle in those kind of games.

@hass: just speaking to his argument. Well it's free because they want to get you in a controlled environment to sell you stuff. His argument is that the gaming demographics doesn't want to be advertised to. NOT the gaming demographics doesn't want to be advertised to for a product they payed money for... I'm attacking him because he works for Sony and I saw a weakness. Stop making this difficult and grab a club and join me!

I'm not particularly fond of the in-game advertising idea. I'd welcome it more if means cheaper games, but if I'm paying the same amount of hard-earned money that I would pay for a game without in-game advertising, what's the point? I hope the game industry doesn't ever get to the point where the price the consumer pays is not enough to cover their bills. Hopefully they manage to keep developing costs low without the expense of gameplay and pain to our wallets.

I'm with Ashcraft - advertising in games, if done well and tastefully, doesn't bother me. However, it seems to be pretty hard follow that rule.

If it helps lower the cost of the game/development and consumers get in on some of the savings, then I'm even more for it.

@Raziel3333: PS: I am all for Modern Games having it if its does good like Racing Games with billboards or walls saying PEPSI or something COKE what ever sports games...GTA could work instead of paradoys....idk i don't really care about it but if its like HEY LOOK PEPSI LOOK ITS AWESOME no thanks.

Advertisements in games doesn't hurt the game as long as it fits in with the setting the game has. I don't mind if for instance; a racing sim has billboards for something car related, or sport games with ads for sports gear. But it depends fully on the type of game. If i saw an ad in say, Final Fantasy, Okami, or Super Mario I would be rather upset.

If a game has ads it should be cheaper or free for the consumer. Some MMORPGs like Anarchy Online are free to play thanks to advertisements. Though I can't actually say that any commercials fit in with that setting. But for games situated in the real world it can actually add more realism to the experience as a whole, although I can't remember any games nailing that yet.

Might be me...but if Microsoft & Sony already use advertising in their online components...how much gayier can it get if all games can be advertising whores?

I mean...watch ads on tv, watching ads online, hearing ads on the radio...turning on my Xbox 360 for another ad...playing an EA game for more ads...I mean gotdamn...let my black asss breathe!

@Tonx: I should learn to type faster so my opinion doesn't come out as a clone of yours ^^;

This ad stuff also reminds me of what yahtzee said about Guitar Hero III.

jerry espenson

I've barely noticed the in-game ads, maybe because I haven't played an EA game in a while or just I don't play those games; but if the ads are detracting from the gameplay experience and they become obvious that ads featured in games generally lead to... nothing, then it should become clear that an in-game ad is NOT a viable source to sway a market that primarily play games to escape a world gone insane with celebrity gossip, rap music and the same product placement every 6 minutes.

Oh, and to contrary belief, there is no such thing as subliminal messages (your brain doesn't see something indirectly and somehow get bombarded with a message to buy blue jeans and Coca Cola).

Advertising hurts gaming - period.
Anyone who says otherwise should be ashamed of themselves.

@Batousi: Exactly my point though. We see so many forms of advertising that we become immune to them. For the most part we ignore anything we see related to advertising. So gaming has the opportunity to advertise in new ways that are not available to the more traditional methods (television, print, radio, etc).

Take Mass Effect as a new example. Imagine how funny it would be for Apple to have their logo on all the computers in Mass Effect. Sure Microsoft would never permit this to happen, but it would be a small advertising method that would work.

I am totally against ingame ads. We are already PAYING for the freaking game. Ads in games have NEVER lowered game prices and I doubt they ever will so please do not even try that argument. I also fear that Game Ads will influence developers/managers in a negative way. Say for example developers want to make a game in the past/future or in a fantasy world. The managers do not like it since they cannot get any ad revenue so they change it too a present day city where they can put modern ads/items to make more money.

@Tonx:
Agreed. I'm OK w/ ads in a few other non-sports situations like billboards or soda machines in real world type settings, as long as they don't start putting billboards on every building to make more room for ads. Sports games just jump out as where they make the most sense, since real life sports always have the sidelines plastered with ads.

i dont know, the only time i have seen ingame ads that went with the game was OddWorld: Munch's(whatever the rest of the game was called), when the vending machines were Sobee. It really seemed to fit in the world that the devs made. I mean c'mon, lizard fuel in Oddworld=hell yeah to me.

@SolidOni_ds: My personal opinion is that games can be both art and business but they're a business first.
They are business for all but shareware games as there are people who depend on income from these games to pay their bills and continue to make more games. This is true for both No More Heros and Mass Effect. If Mass Effect didn't bring in any money Bioware would be hard pressed to make ends meet.

As for in-game advertising. I think it can work if it can be done in a way that doesn't hurt a players immersion or suspension of disbelief, for instance if a level in an fps was a mall and advertisers paid to have their stores or products shown in that mall. But as soon as the ads become intrusive it will hamper sales and that could reduce your overall income below what you make via the advertisers.

Ads in games really set me off. The only thing that can really calm me down after seeing them is a refreshing Pepsi-Cola™.

@PooPooKaKaBumBum: Traditional advertising does nothing for gaming as it just plasters a name all over the place. More often than not it will detract from the overall gaming experience, but it does not hurt gaming.

Let's look at EA's Burnout Paradise. They have advertising everywhere in the game already and even have a van with advertising on its side. Now imagine if they had a contest based on taking out that van a given number of times over a weekend. The award is a new car that you can unlock. It does not take away from the game and actually adds to it. So the advertising rewards anyone who completes the given challenge.

Advertising does not have to be a bad thing. Most companies do not know how to do it well for games though.

It's obviously true that nobody likes bad advertising, but I hope that if Sony does to a certain degree in Home,I hope they do it where it looks something like a simulated Times Square. It would be something I don't mind watching every time I visit Home.

People saying you're already paying for the game. What about this: You're paying to see a movie. In that movie there is paid advertising. You see that bottole of coke? That blatant advertising for Smirnoff Ice? Paid advertising. It's not any more subtle in movies, it's just that we're not used to seeing it in games and thus it will stand out now. In the future it will be the norm. Those saying they wouldn't buy a game if it had real advertising, do you do the same with movies? Because that likely means you haven't paid for any movies for some time.

As much as we may not like in-game advertising, if it can help a small time developer make up the money it needs to put out a game then I'm for it.

I dunno how others feel but I think the in-game adverts were handled quite well in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. In-obtrusive (is that a word? xD) posters and billboard signs that are already part of the in game 'world' if you will.

I kinda liked it. They always advertised for things I wouldn't see in the first place (slasher flicks), but nonetheless it wasn't all that bad either.

@ Hiero Glyph: Yeah, and I refuse to ever buy BO Paradise. Because of the ads.

I can see in game adds working for some games, racing games and sports games in particular. Well it's already being done. I diffinitely don't see in game adds coming across the board. M rated games can't be a great place to advertise.

advertising will soon be adopted i think, but only certain titles mainly those which have billboards ingame that could support advertising and maybe poster on walls which could change throughout time with auto download. yup, not far before we start having adverts implanted in our dreams.