DISQUS

Geoff H · 11 months ago

Are there any numbers out for ads in games? I used to make games and saw 2 cycles of attempts and failures at trying to put ads in games.

In most games, ads just dont have a place in the environment, in sports games they already exist.

If games are supposed to be fun, and not distracting, like popups or out-of-place-content, or making you pause, like commercials, how can this possibly work?

If I sold or was selling a company to do it, I would say it will work too, but its not simple to place ads like it is on web pages, where the space can simply be used for content or ads.

Ollie_Miles · 11 months ago

Yeah right, the games industry doesn’t have a creativity problem?

This guy know anything of games design? I am a games designer specializing in RPG's and I hardly play any games (I research them but hardly ever play them) because they are all, more or less, the exact same game done in a different game engine.

There is hardly ever any innovation or reformatting of old style gameplay systems. Take World of Warcraft; as good as it is it is not a new game, it is a perfect example of the D20 system, originally conceived in the 1980's. For an 'RPG' it lacks any kind of truly customizable content (except stat changes on weapons) and for its engine and RTS origins Bliz could have produced a much more user-creative game.

I admit that the Wii contains some innovative games but the move to the casual sector has left hard core gamers like myself who have expected innovation and development of our favorite genres to develop, not stagnate into crystalline examples of gameplay we experienced years ago.

Anal-yst · 11 months ago

This guy clearly isn't as clued up as he likes to make out. For a start he says Sony aren't doing ads when New York based IGA Worldwide has multi-year deals with EA and Activision for their PS3 output.

How are Google going to get into that space when companies like IGA and to a lesser extent Double Fusion have all the inventory tied up for 3 to 5 years?

Jay Godse · 11 months ago

Keep in mind that having inventory tied up for 3 to 5 years is not the same as having ad revenue tied for the same time. When it comes to internet advertising, Google and Massive have the advertisers tied up. If the small players such as IGA and Double Fusion don't have the same traction with the advertisers as Google or Massive, then the revenues won't come. Over time, any publisher-facing ad distributor will have to build an adapter to take ads from Google or Massive, and in doing so forfeit a good chunk of the revenues to the same. I'm sure that Google or Massive would love to own the entire dynamic in-game advertising food chain, but they would probably also be happy to use their infrastructure to supply ads for those games that they don't own.

Publishers are not religious either. Even if publishers take ads from IGA/Double Fusion, if they don't get their cut, then they will pressure IGA/DF to get ads from somewhere.

Google will get into that space because they have the advertisers tied up, regardless of who has the publishers tied up.

Jay Godse · 11 months ago

I think that Bernie is right on with the episodic way to build games. Publishers can deliver episodes at a fraction of the cost of a full game. If the first episode or two fail, then they can kill the game and not have to write off as much money as if they had to kill a full-blown game. For successful games, on the other hand, they can develop subsequent episodes with much lower risk because they have an installed base. This builds a business based on recurring revenues instead of one-shot sales.

When Google acquired Adscape Media, they also acquired the patents of the technology tools that make it straight-forward to deliver episodic games. If they would actually use the technology to enable episodic games, they would add tremendous value to game publishers and gamers. I'd rather pay $10 for the first episode of a game and continue paying if I like it rather than paying $60 for a game that I eventually find I don't like. The same risk model that applies to the game publishers also applies to consumers. If you buy a game you don't like, you're only out $10 instead of $60. If you like the game, you're happy to pay $10/episode for a long time.

Distribution of such games is easy with high-speed internet, big hard disks/blue-ray, and the technology from Adscape.

edhardy622 · 1 month ago

British law student sues Abercrombie-Fitch for disability discrimination.
http://www.abercrombieonsale.co.uk