Why do we get nervous about in-game ads? Reasons like this:

In the drive in this morning, NPR's All Things Considered had a bit on Massive's ingame advertising software. Mentioned, and I can't find much info about this elsewhere, is that one ad in Anarchy Online for a Toyota is actually integral to the game. If the player doesn't click on the ad to "unveil" the car ... the player doesn't continue playing the quest/mission/whatever Anarchy Online apparently employs.

It's stuff like this that just crushes gamer good will like a snail underheel. Most gamers don't really have issues with rewarding developers with more money for good work — hell, we want to encourage the guys. But intrusive or disorienting ads just make us take our business elsewhere.

One thing to note here, though, is that Anarchy Online doesn't have a subscription fee. So ads like this are largely paying for the game. That doesn't make it any more acceptable — if this is the kind of intrusive in-game advertisement necessary to pay for AO, then it's time for Funcom to simply admit their advertising model isn't working and take another tack.

Still, in my book, in-game advertisement should only be used in games that are either free or heavily discounted: Ads are traditionally a way to offer content to consumers for free or a low price, not as a method to squeeze extra money out of luxury entertainment. And, lest we forget, games at $50-$60 a pop are still very definitely luxury purchases. Florian Eckhardt

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