Viacom Looks to Advertise in Video Games (Reuters)

Great. That's just what I fucking want. Commercials in my fucking games. Is nothing fucking sacred anymore? I can't even take a fucking piss without looking at a fucking advertisement mounted on the fucking wall above the fucking urinal. fuck this.
 
I don't know the Blockbuster blimps flying around Hell in Outlaw Volleyball: Red Hot were actually kind of funny. I heard the devil really racks up those late fees and is pissed that his Blockbuster doesn't have a GameRush.

[quote name='daphatty']Great. That's just what I shaq-fuing want. Commercials in my shaq-fuing games. Is nothing shaq-fuing sacred anymore? I can't even take a shaq-fuing piss without looking at a shaq-fuing advertisement mounted on the shaq-fuing wall above the shaq-fuing urinal. shaq-fu this.[/quote]
 
Not even if it makes the game $10 cheaper?

And why are you acting like it's a new thing? Come on everybody, think of the earliest game/ad. 7 up's cool spot games? Zool's candy? Ford's free CGA driving game?
 
I highly doubt that it would make the games any cheaper. Companies dont invest their time and money so they can save us $10. Its so they can make $10,000,00.
 
The point is, this has been happening for a while now. Does it really bother you that much that the hero in some game drinks coke instead of a generic brand soda? It doesn't bother you when you're watching TV.
 
[quote name='Ericnmel99']I highly doubt that it would make the games any cheaper. Companies dont invest their time and money so they can save us $10. Its so they can make $10,000,00.[/quote]

I'm not so sure about that. If the advertisers pay the developers/publishers money to advertise in-game, this might lower the MSRP of lots of games because the development costs would be partially (if not all) recouped before the game is even released. The money spent by big companies to advertise likely covers the costs of making an entire game. I think its great (as long as it doesn't hurt the overall quality of the games)...
 
The distinction is whether it would hurt the general feel of the game (sports brands in a mall level are OK, but not really in place in a fantasy setting).
 
[quote name='Renzokuken']I would hate to be interrupted by a commercial while playing my vidja games.[/quote]

That's NOT what they're trying to do.

Kids today.
 
[quote name='eldad9']The distinction is whether it would hurt the general feel of the game (sports brands in a mall level are OK, but not really in place in a fantasy setting).[/quote]

Kinda like seeing the Powerade ads in the Matrix sequels?
 
[quote name='zewone']yeah like mountain dew in Jet Moto[/quote]

And Tony Hawk 1. How many of you boycotted that series because of in-game advertising?

Yes, that's what I thought.

daphatty, do you own any Tony Hawk games?
 
Beach Spikers has advertising too. It doesn't bother me to see company logos in the game.

It almost makes the game seem more realistic in an inderect way like in Crazy Taxi when you have to drive people to Pizza Hut or KFC.
 
Crazy Taxi sorta has advertising, they a few name-brand fast food places and such. Tony Hawk was definitely the worst, though. Didn't THUG have one level that was just a huge advertisement for KISS, showing clips for a DVD of theres that came out around the same time as the game?
 
[quote name='eldad9'][quote name='zewone']yeah like mountain dew in Jet Moto[/quote]

And Tony Hawk 1. How many of you boycotted that series because of in-game advertising?

Yes, that's what I thought.

daphatty, do you own any Tony Hawk games?[/quote]

Actually no I do not and have never owned a Tony Hawk game. I've played it but I never really could get into it.

And when I ranted about advertising, I didn't mean the subtle additions we see here and there. Nor was I refering to the franchises that have been attempted (7up Spot...). I was talking about in your face, get on your fucking nerves advertising. They always fucking start small and then if they find it to be profitable, they get even more fucking annoying. I can see it now, hey watch this fucking commercial while your fucking game loads! No more static loading screens with second rate techno in the background. NO! This is the fucking new age of fucking gaming commercialism! Hey timmy, make sure you tell daddy to shop at wal-mart next time he wants to remove that unsightly back hair!

:roll:
 
*thread merged*

i don't mind it in some games incorporated as is such as gran turismo, madden, and other games i can't think of right now. but if they were to go all out, and add commercials, logos everywhere, billboards on loading screens, and omg, pop ups, i do believe i will pack it up and stick with what i have and catch up and collect more games. read if you want. they're not giving any specifics, but this is a big company looking to cash in on our hobby. ugh. it's from gamespot.

Viacom looking into in-game advertising

CFO Richard Bressler says that the media giant is exploring how to profit off games--via a novel approach.
Last year, Viacom shut down the game publishing operation of its publishing division, Simon & Schuster, after a string of flops. However, this year, the media giant--which also owns Paramount, CBS, MTV, BET, and Showtime, among other companies--is looking to get back into the game business, albeit via new tack.

Speaking today at the Global Digital Summit, a conference of advertising executives, Viacom CFO Richard Bressler said his company is exploring how to profit from in-game advertisements. "The interesting thing for us is to figure out if there's a market for advertising in video games," he said, according to Reuters. While he offered no concrete plans, Bressler did indicate his company was intrigued by the how gamers remain glued to their consoles. "People are spending a lot of time in interactive," he said.

Normally, Bressler's comments would have only been marginally newsworthy. However, in light of Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone's recent takeover of Midway Games, they may augur the company's future game plan, so to speak. Currently, Redstone owns 72.4 of percent of Midway, and has retained a financial advisor to evaluate options should he increase his ownership to 80 percent. Redstone has also recently reshuffled Midway's board of directors, making former VU CEO Kenneth Cron chairman and placing his daughter (and heir apparent) Shari Redstone on the decision-making body.

Redstone's moves have led a number of prominent analysts to speculate that he is considering taking Midway private. Others speculate such a move would be a precursor to Redstone folding Midway into Viacom, whose Nickelodeon properties have provided many-a-profitable game license. Bressler's words today will likely further fuel such speculation.

By Tor Thorsen -- GameSpot
POSTED: 06/17/04 05:38 PM PST
 
Do you want to know what the fucked up part will be? The games will be full of ads, and those bastards will still charge $50 a pop!
 
That would be pretty terrible, I wouldn't quit playing games, just buying new ones. Theres tons out there and plenty to be played that are add free if somthing like that ever happens.
 
if a videogame had blatant advertising i dont' think i owuld purchase...i 95% of the time read reviews and i'm sure it would say if a game had advertining in it
 
That would be pretty bad I still wouldn't quit playing games i think it would some of what it is now just sopt advertsing like for example in the new tony hawk you would walk up to a NPC and they would be like grind that sprite machine 5 times because its the thrist quncher or GTA main charecter saying damn this simth and wesson fires so smoolthy and with little kick back and a hair tigger i can kill more runnning perdestrains in one clip then the normal gun
 
It's already eeking in - the disc that comes with Official Xbox Magazine has started to have some sort of movie trailer or game advertisement or whatever when you boot the disc before you can see the menu.
 
Im fine with this as long as the ads are in the backround and non distracting. Also, they need to stay out of certain types of games. Who would want a Pizza Hut ad in their Final Fantasy style RPG?
 
Frankly I dont see it happening, not on a wide scale anyway. One company might try to put non sequiter ads in their video games but as soom as it happens reviewers and other gamers will SHRED that company. The outcry and mass boycotting of these games will be so horrendous that no other company will try it... this is assuming they could make a game worth owning to begin with.

If you;re worrying about making money on ads you arnt worrying about making a good game.
 
[quote name='WhipSmartBanky']It's already eeking in - the disc that comes with Official Xbox Magazine has started to have some sort of movie trailer or game advertisement or whatever when you boot the disc before you can see the menu.[/quote]
I hate it when you first boot it up and you get an unskipable ad in the OXM disks. They should let you skip it after you have seen it once. After all, it could be easly done by putting a save on the hard drive saying that the disk has been booted up once, and the ad is skippable.
 
If more games implement the whole ads when booting up idea then I think for every second of advertising the purchase price of the game should be $1 cheaper.
 
What if they used the income off the advertising to lower the price on the games to say $20 MSRP? Would you be interested then? They would still make a ton of money off the advertising and the consumer would benefit from a lower price on the game. Depending on how they would go about doing this, it might now be as bad as you might think.

(That was my devil's advocate role for the day) :twisted:
 
implementing adds in anything hasnt lowered a price every as far as i can remember. Movie tickets are still 10 bucks dispite the "pre-show countdown" which is basically just 15 minutes of commercials.
 
[quote name='Alpha2']implementing adds in anything hasnt lowered a price every as far as i can remember. Movie tickets are still 10 bucks dispite the "pre-show countdown" which is basically just 15 minutes of commercials.[/quote]

Actually you are wrong. What about broadcast television? Completely free. It gets paid for by the advertisers whose commercials air in the programs. It has worked very well in the television industry.
 
[quote name='greendj27'][quote name='Alpha2']implementing adds in anything hasnt lowered a price every as far as i can remember. Movie tickets are still 10 bucks dispite the "pre-show countdown" which is basically just 15 minutes of commercials.[/quote]

Actually you are wrong. What about broadcast television? Completely free. It gets paid for by the advertisers whose commercials air in the programs. It has worked very well in the television industry.[/quote]

But look at cable, you pay alot for cable tv thats full of commercials. You get what, 10 channels for free with an antenna?
 
I said it hasn't LOWERED the prices any. heck if anything you still pay more for tv than you did since almost half the worthwhile tv shows com on basic cable now.
 
[quote name='BigNick'][quote name='greendj27'][quote name='Alpha2']implementing adds in anything hasnt lowered a price every as far as i can remember. Movie tickets are still 10 bucks dispite the "pre-show countdown" which is basically just 15 minutes of commercials.[/quote]

Actually you are wrong. What about broadcast television? Completely free. It gets paid for by the advertisers whose commercials air in the programs. It has worked very well in the television industry.[/quote]

But look at cable, you pay alot for cable tv thats full of commercials. You get what, 10 channels for free with an antenna?[/quote]

The reason you pay for cable is that they cannot make much moey off their advertising. Their viewing levels are very fragmented and they cannot get the reach that a braodcast station can.. Not to mention that some of the channels on cable do not even air commercials (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) Cable is built on a different business plan, that is why you have to pay for it. There is a reason that cable is losing market share to satellie tv.
 
[quote name='Alpha2']I said it hasn't LOWERED the prices any. heck if anything you still pay more for tv than you did since almost half the worthwhile tv shows com on basic cable now.[/quote]

Maybe the shows you like do, but in an average week, around 97 of the top 100 most watched shows air on free broadcast television. The highest cable show is usually around 80th.
 
[quote name='greendj27'][quote name='BigNick'][quote name='greendj27'][quote name='Alpha2']implementing adds in anything hasnt lowered a price every as far as i can remember. Movie tickets are still 10 bucks dispite the "pre-show countdown" which is basically just 15 minutes of commercials.[/quote]

Actually you are wrong. What about broadcast television? Completely free. It gets paid for by the advertisers whose commercials air in the programs. It has worked very well in the television industry.[/quote]

But look at cable, you pay alot for cable tv thats full of commercials. You get what, 10 channels for free with an antenna?[/quote]

The reason you pay for cable is that they cannot make much moey off their advertising. Their viewing levels are very fragmented and they cannot get the reach that a braodcast station can.. Not to mention that some of the channels on cable do not even air commercials (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) Cable is built on a different business plan, that is why you have to pay for it. There is a reason that cable is losing market share to satellie tv.[/quote]

Cable reaches most of the population. We pay the cable company, and they pay the tv stations. See, we pay, and the tv stations get paid, yet we still get bombarded with loads of ads. HBo and all are premium, and are the only channels worht the extra $$$ IMO.
 
Still the point I was making is that nothing that was ever a certain price at first and then added advertisements has EVER gotten cheaper because of the ads.
 
[quote name='BigNick']
Cable reaches most of the population. We pay the cable company, and they pay the tv stations. See, we pay, and the tv stations get paid, yet we still get bombarded with loads of ads.[/quote]

Actually the tv station don't get paid when cable carries them. It helps them reach more people so they want to be carried by cable. And cable reaches less than 60 percent of the country and in some areas even less. Right now cable only reaches 59% of the population in the Madison, WI DMA.
 
Actually when you talk about pre-show countdowns, that doesn't affect your ticket price. The large majority of the ticket price goes to the company making the movie obviously and the theatre sees only a fraction of that. Most theatres make a huge portion of their money on concessions (ever wonder why they are so high priced?) Those pre-show countdown ads also go to revenue for the movie theatres, so they don't come into play for the ticket price too much.
 
[quote name='Alpha2']Still the point I was making is that nothing that was ever a certain price at first and then added advertisements has EVER gotten cheaper because of the ads.[/quote]

Nothing is a pretty broad statement. I can't think of anything right now, but even if we assume you are right, advertising has at least in some instances kept price increases from rising with inflation. Using the tv example again, think about how much the price to produce television shows and run a tv station have increased since tv first debuted. If it wasn't for the advertising then there would either be no tv,, or you would have to pay for all of it.

Anyway my point is that there is a chance that the business model for selling games could change and prices could go down. Noone knows for sure what will happen. There might never even be ads in games.
 
Sports is one thing that has thrived on advertising. College sports venues can sometimes lower ticket prices due to it. Tons of sports teams take advantage of sponserships as a means of adding revneue. Take Nascar for a good example. It is extremely expensive and nearly impossible to own and race one of those without a sponser, to due so you'd have to have a ton of ready money to dump into it. In fact, if not for TV ads, the NFL likely would not even be here today.

Ads may not always make things cheaper, but often without them certain things we enjoy wouldn't exist. Do they belong in games? Not really IMHO, but then again I'm not a developer/publisher for any game company either.
 
[quote name='Alpha2']Still the point I was making is that nothing that was ever a certain price at first and then added advertisements has EVER gotten cheaper because of the ads.[/quote]

I agree.
 
[quote name='greendj27'][quote name='BigNick']
Cable reaches most of the population. We pay the cable company, and they pay the tv stations. See, we pay, and the tv stations get paid, yet we still get bombarded with loads of ads.[/quote]

Actually the tv station don't get paid when cable carries them. It helps them reach more people so they want to be carried by cable. And cable reaches less than 60 percent of the country and in some areas even less. Right now cable only reaches 59% of the population in the Madison, WI DMA.[/quote]


ummm, ok. So it costs $12 a month to get basic cable, which is just the channels you *could* get with just an antena(I cold only get about 4 channels, but whatever) and you are telling me that ABC, CBS and all the others, let the cable company distribute their channels for free?
 
[quote name='BigNick'][quote name='greendj27'][quote name='BigNick']
Cable reaches most of the population. We pay the cable company, and they pay the tv stations. See, we pay, and the tv stations get paid, yet we still get bombarded with loads of ads.[/quote]

Actually the tv station don't get paid when cable carries them. It helps them reach more people so they want to be carried by cable. And cable reaches less than 60 percent of the country and in some areas even less. Right now cable only reaches 59% of the population in the Madison, WI DMA.[/quote]


ummm, ok. So it costs $12 a month to get basic cable, which is just the channels you *could* get with just an antena(I cold only get about 4 channels, but whatever) and you are telling me that ABC, CBS and all the others, let the cable company distribute their channels for free?[/quote]

Yep, but you are actually getting a few more channels than just the broadcast nets. I work at a tv station. Believe me when I say that cable is a rip off. They keep raising rates faster than their costs go up.
 
[quote name='greendj27'][quote name='BigNick'][quote name='greendj27'][quote name='BigNick']
Cable reaches most of the population. We pay the cable company, and they pay the tv stations. See, we pay, and the tv stations get paid, yet we still get bombarded with loads of ads.[/quote]

Actually the tv station don't get paid when cable carries them. It helps them reach more people so they want to be carried by cable. And cable reaches less than 60 percent of the country and in some areas even less. Right now cable only reaches 59% of the population in the Madison, WI DMA.[/quote]


ummm, ok. So it costs $12 a month to get basic cable, which is just the channels you *could* get with just an antena(I cold only get about 4 channels, but whatever) and you are telling me that ABC, CBS and all the others, let the cable company distribute their channels for free?[/quote]

Yep, but you are actually getting a few more channels than just the broadcast nets. I work at a tv station. Believe me when I say that cable is a rip off. They keep raising rates faster than their costs go up.[/quote]

So broadcast companies get nothing from the cable companies?
 
They get added exposure to viewers, but that is it. Cable doesn't get much out of it either. They can't sell advertising on those stations. It just makes it easier on their viewers to flip back and forth between channels.
 
[quote name='greendj27']By the way, bed news about Summerfest. Britney had to cancel.

Edit: Woohoo, I'm a veteran.[/quote]

Ya, we were getting kinky at my place the other night and she hurt her knee while we were trying out a new position. Oh well.
 
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