lisarenee3505: [www.heavymetal.com image 400x350]

Would like to have a word with whatever jackhole came up with this idea.

EA and Blizzard have been doing the next best thing to this with DRM. And no one has stopped buying their games.

I'm fully convinced that gamers will accept pretty much anything. Anything at all. Games cost $100? No problem, best selling game of all time. Ads interrupt your gaming experience? Small price to pay for entertainment? Your game interrupted because someone pulled a plug out of a wall at Blizzard HQ? Oh well, I'm just renting the game anyway, people shouldn't be such whiny biatches.. after all, Blizzard *allowed* me to buy their game right? My game console doesn't accept physical media so I no longer have the right to sell or rent games? Well, maybe we'll get lucky and the price will come down? Oh, it won't? Oh well, luckily I'm addicted to their product and will weep openly if I don't buy it. So the cognitive dissonance I'm suffering can easily be ignored.

I dont see how they got the patent, angry birds for android did it first

//deleted it right after

NetOwl: .

Companies have invaded our minds and conquered them, and with marketing techniques becoming even more sophisticated as our understanding of psychology improves, they're getting better and better at forcing us to submit.

See, I think part of the problem is looking at advertisers as "invaders." Many people have a bit of a pride issue with ads. They hate them because there is a perceived element of attempted manipulation. The reality, however, is that we are all consumers. We all buy things, and we shouldn't be ashamed of that.

The first step of conquering advertising is to admit that we can be influenced by it. Then, we can reward the practices that we like and punish those we do not. By simply ignoring the whole thing, we greatly devalue our input and let only the most foolish dictate how ads are made, which then means we have to suffer through all these awful advertising practices.

A good recent example of this could be the Old Spice marketing campaign. Up until that point, most companies were following the Axe model of loud noises, scantily clad women and obnoxious announcers. Then OS came along with an understated narrator, serene backgrounds and soothing music. I liked those commercials better, and so did many others, apparently, because their popularity sky rocketed. Now every guy I know wears Old Spice, and every product is using that advertising strategy. By rewarding the ads that were less annoying, we essentially destroyed the obnoxious ones.

The same thing is happening with that Dos Equis set of commercials. They aren't too invasive, and they aren't too annoying, and that particular beer is way more popular now. So yeah, if you see an ad that you like, don't discount it through some arrogant notion of "manipulation." Instead, reward what you like, so you can help destroy what you don't like.

Advertising as an art and science has practically been perfected. The problem is that there's nothing worth buying anymore.

Lolthien: I'm fully convinced that gamers will accept pretty much anything. Anything at all.

By and large they will, go back and study the Mass Effect 3 threads and the more recent Diablo 3 ones as well. A small minority were up in arms over the Prothean (ME3), always on DRM (D3+ME3), cash auction house, lack of single player, enforced multiplayer, duration of the game (D3 has been beaten in 5 hours) and so on.

The VAST majority were getting quite... rambunctious and passionate in their defence of these products. Even to the degree that went I pointed out, admittedly on Reddit, that seeing as Origin liked to escape it's directory and go rummaging it may well also go wandering around mounted network shares that a) it couldn't do that as it'd need to bypass the router b) I didn't know what a SMB share was. It's not like you need to install it or anything right? Right? Bueller? Anyone?

I'll give these people some credit though; the mental gymnastics required to defend the actions of Sony, EA, Activision and the others whilst not being on their direct or indirect payroll is... not something I'd be capable of.

omeganuepsilon: Neondistraction: Rik01:

I click on a link in Google and get redirected to a site that is nothing but ads.


You probably have a virus/malware hiding on your computer. The same thing used to happen to my parents' computer from time to time.

Browser hijackers are no fun.
One easy test is to see if the same search results / links come up with google in a different browser or another computer.
Anyone can install Chrome or FireFox easily enough (a smart thing to do for whoever's computer you fix anyhow as they're not as big of a target as IE and have better security plugins such as AdBlock. Of course, you've got to be smart enough to find install, and update what's needed)

The hard part is getting your family to not use IE, that stupid blue e is synonymous with the magic of the internet. *gumbles*

Plenty of good free Anti-Virus and Ad-ware things out there for use, some farker may be willing to help but I haven't kept up on what there is available.

*shrugs*

/Gotten to the point I'll help someone deal with a problem 2-3 times, after that, I contract Meh Disease. If they don't listen to advice, I don't try too hard if at all. If they can't be bothered to try and avoid the problem in the first place, especially when warned, i'm not going to put the effort in to bail them out all of the time.

The secret there is to change the icon for firefox to the ie e, and to rename it 'internet'.

mongbiohazard: In a free game it's acceptable because that's the price you pay for it being free.

But if I have to pay so much as a nickle for a game and you stuff interrupting ads in to it they can forget it. Not interested. A billboard in the background? Meh. Real life has billboards with shiat on them I don't pay attention to in the background too, so that doesn't bother me. But don't interrupt something I paid for unless you never want me to buy another one of your games again.

The huge glaring problem, being of course, that if this works for free games, it's going to work for paid games, and like all other media corporations, if video game publishers can forcefark more profit out of it they're going to screw the consumer. Because as others have noted, video game players will simply bend over and scream 'more! Harder!'

Shaggy_C: Meh. In Madden every game is brought to you by Verizon and they have Snickers "Crunch Time" plays of the game. Putting ads in a game in a tasteful manner could benefit both consumer and gamemaker.

Ads in a game do not benefit me in any form. I'm still paying 60$ for it, I'm not getting any extra content, and free DLC or profit sharing. All it does is increase the revenue for the publisher/developer, and annoy the shiat out of me. It's not like they're going to say 'hey, we were going to put this content in but ran out of money so we slapped some ads in there to increase funding so we could finish'.

Well, they might, but it would as much as lie as DA2's 'we had to make the game only have 3 maps to get it out in time'.

It's not a far drop from there to see players needing cap points (or UPC's, etc.) to 'unlock' the best gear, the Pepsi thirst mutlilator 4000, the Pepsi +3 breastplate of thirst, etc. etc.

Old enough to know better: This is good news....for PC gamers.

Just read reviews before parting with your money and you can avoid shiat like this.

Lemme know how that D3 PC game goes for you. Can you play offline? Can you mod or hack it in any way without being shortly locked out of the service? PC's benefit is going to die except for a select few games from friendly publishers (Like sins of a solar empire) who 'get' it.

Inconceivable!: I just asked the creative director of Planetside 2 (via that Twitter machine) if they would feature in game commercials. His response: "hell no".

So I think we're safe for at least ONE game.

Maybe less safe than you think. Sony certainly has the capability to pause your game any time they want, to show _their_ ad, irrespective of whether the game developer wants to have ads in the game. There's no need to have the game written to take advantage of the technology, Sony can implement the whole shebang on their end. Best part? They get all the money from it.

omeganuepsilon: If you know of games that came out in the last couple of years that have straight up DLC that the initial purchaser has to pay for again to unlock, please list them.

Here you go. Games on that list go back to 2000.

rpm: omeganuepsilon: If you know of games that came out in the last couple of years that have straight up DLC that the initial purchaser has to pay for again to unlock, please list them.

Here you go. Games on that list go back to 2000.



/tighter grip/slip thru fingers etc.

*sniff sniff* Smells like Admen in here.

This needs to be implemented in a sensible way. Pepsi commercial in GTA V? Ok. Pepsi commercial in Dragon Age? WTF am I looking at? That would completely take me out of the setting.

Actually, there are some opportunities to do really cool things with this. A game like L.A. Noire could have period ads for Coke. It would be cool and unobtrusive, and actually contribute to the sense of immersion if Coke paid to have some of their retro ads put into appropriate vintage setting games.

bhcompy: [www.joefulgham.com image 640x480]
[img294.imageshack.us image 640x480]
[i147.photobucket.com image 640x480]


It's been done..

It's been done a long time before whatever that game is.

lewismarktwo: Ads only work on children and women. Can't I opt out? The only thing I remember from and ad is what NOT to buy because of being marketed at too hard.

Oh and TV ads were never as effective as they said they were.

I am the advertiser's worst nightmare. I'll remember the stupid jingle, or the tits in an ad, or the catchphrase, but I will walk away completely unable to recall the product being advertised. I usually mess it up.

Me - 'Did you see that Burger King commercial with that hot red head?"

"That was for Wendy's"

'Oh'


/In short, fark Sony. I am actually taking pleasure watching the begining of the second video game crash.

NBSV: A captive audience is a good thing with advertising. Angering the audience and then expecting them to go buy your stuff not so much.

I'll accept ads with free versions of things. I'll even accept a little advertising from things like Hulu since it's still way better than paying for cable. But, this would be like bothering to buy a DVD only to have ads inserted into it.

It already takes 10 minutes to get to the movie from the time you put in the dvd.

rpm: omeganuepsilon: If you know of games that came out in the last couple of years that have straight up DLC that the initial purchaser has to pay for again to unlock, please list them.

Here you go. Games on that list go back to 2000.

Bad Company 2 made the list, that makes me question the other games, without a description the list cannot be taken at face value.
It's not so much DLC as what I described above about limiting used sales, DLC Unlocks of weapons that release normally, and Onslaught which was a sort of Co-op functionality.


Even their example of Soul Caliber.

Well nevermind, I found a differing not artificially inflated list with an agenda.

Link

A few notes.
Things like Darth Vader in Soul Caliber were meant to be a system exclusive but were in all platform's code. Same for Yoda for the Xbox.
Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom
We're counting clothing accessories as DLC? lol, you people deserve to pay through the nose.

Anyways, you all missed the point about locked content.

There's a theme here for many of those games, it's unlocking of a novelty item. The games with whole maps(IE multiplayer expansions for games like Halo and the CoD's) are now coming in on the disc, where as they were more of a project overflow(unfinished at time of release, if worked at at all before release, or disk lacking room).

That is the concept of DLC that is changing, and is only a coont hair away from simply splitting up the entire game, level by level, and charging individually, $60 gets you to the game mode select screen, pay $20 to continue.(ergo, affecting the playability of the game in large swaths, something paid easter eggs and novelty's don't do frequently).

Well said omega.

I'm waiting for a game via credit card where I can buy more lives, say at a quarter per continue? Only unlike my arcade childhood, these games I also get to pay 60 bucks to purchase at retail too, and half a grand for the system of course. Then sony loses my CC info...

Smackledorfer: Well said omega.

I'm waiting for a game via credit card where I can buy more lives, say at a quarter per continue? Only unlike my arcade childhood, these games I also get to pay 60 bucks to purchase at retail too, and half a grand for the system of course. Then sony loses my CC info...

Thanks.

I heard through the grapevine that CoD is contemplating $60 for the campaign and additional $ for the multiplayer, as if a vast majority actually buy these games for the campaign and multiplayer is the thrown together bonus...For CoD, it's almost as if the campaign is the afterthought, crappy enough that companies are streamlining and forcing multiplayer maps out of the campaign or visa versa.

I think FPS gamers might be the wall that dev'shiat when pushing for crap like that. We're a fickle lot. Look at Halo Reach, numbers are far far below Halo 2/3 prime. They had to sell off the IP because they couldn't make what the fans wanted. It wasn't about ability for their dev's, it was about "We'll do what we want!" all in cartman's voice, then they look around puzzled when people get the game numbers are kinda low, then a month later people flee like refugees.

I'm going to patent advertisements in cell phone calls.

After every 2 minutes of time on a cell phone conversation, both callers will be cut off for a 15-second advertisement.

RoxtarRyan: Man... they really hate their customers. Seriously, why do people buy their shiat again?

I came to that conclusion years ago. There were several reasons, but only a couple matter to this thread. The PS2 was great. But the PS3, from it's very conception, screamed that Sony was full of shiat and didn't listen to their customers. Plus every malfunctioning piece of electronics I've had in the recent years has been a Sony device. I have two Sony devices left. When they die, some other company will get my money for replacements.

oukewldave: It already takes 10 minutes to get to the movie from the time you put in the dvd.

The last movie I rented from Redbox took 22 MINUTES before I could watch the movie. That was 6 months ago. Was having me get up and do something else during those commercials really with the loss of my (semi-regular at that point) business?