Massive Inc Q&A

So hey, I have a question, if advertising becomes a defacto part of games, and they're trying to make ads that fit in the time period, does this mean the end of sword and sorcery or historical games like Rome:Total War or Age of Empires?

I don't see how you could fit period appropriate ads for McDonalds into Diablo 3, unless all the cutscenes are brought to you by the "Anachronism Times"

I wonder if "infomercial" games will become increasingly popular. I know there have been some already, mostly in the form of web games and cheap clones (Chex Quest, anyone?).

i wonder if there will ever be an ad for a game... in a game...

say you're playing gran turismo 5 and there's an ad in it for forza, or PGR3

or you're playing your ps3 and theres an ad for xbox2

I think the idea of placing contemporary ads in contemporary-themed games is a good thing. It's innovative, the technology's there, and can be perfectly in synch with the look and feel of a game.

However, it is extremely idealistic and downright naive to think it will stop there.

When money is involved and companies have shareholders to answer to, money is the irrefutable bottom line, and if there's an opportunity to make more up-front before the release of the game, so much the better. Once the technology is proven viable, it won't be long before the line defining what ad placement is appropriate and what is odd becomes increasingly blurred. Ultimately it will be the single most compelling factor for a publisher to determine whether or not it will pick the title up for distribution.

This isn't a problem with Massive, don't direct your ire there, they're making the most of a legitimate opportunity here. The problem is with publishers.

There is one thing I know for sure. You know how designers and programmers are always talking about how the developer/publisher relationship needs to improve, that publishers hold far too much sway in the success or failure of a game, that things need to come to a head and the paradigm is utterly shifted (or completely collapses, or both) before they get better? This ad model is going to keep any of that from changing any time soon.

again, as usual, the people making the 'i dont understand the problem, ads are everywhere already' argument are totally missing the point. ADS BEING EVERYWHERE ALREADY ARE THE PROBLEM.

some, id like to think a lot of, people despise advertising in every shape and form. i don't watch commercial tv* because it has ads. i will often not bother entering a cinema for a movie until 10 minutes after the start time because i know there are just ads for the first 10-15 (in some cases its even worse). ads in papers, ads on the street, ads in the fucking post, I FUCKING HATE ADS. i dont want to read or watch something unless its something im interested in. i dont tune it to Stargate Atlantis because 5 minutes in im keen on someone piping the song 'ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM' into my brain until i cant forget it.

the PROBLEM is that ads are fucking everywhere already, and there are a lot of people that hate them. i will always make a point of looking away or muting the tv when ads come on if im unlucky enough to be watching commercial tv. its kinda scary to watch tv with other people, and when the ads come on, looking around and watching everyone still tuned in like a zombie watching all that crappy ads being shown.

and if ads become in built into games, you can bet your butt that ill be downloading cracks that remove the ads, and blocking ports that the ad virus programs use to communicate with their fucking companies that deserve to all die painfully. ads wreck everything they are in, and im happy that a lot of people hate the idea of ads in games. this has all occured apparently because the target market is moving more away from tv and more into games. whether we can make the connection between the fact that theyve moved away from things WITH ads to things that have traditionally been WITHOUT them is for another time.

*(in australia, there are 5 'free to air' stations that you can pick up for free, which have ads every 5 mins. you have to pay for what is called 'Foxtel', which is pay-tv, which used to mean TV without ads. but even now that has ads in it, although not quite as bad as free tv. yet)

Sure ads today will be overly cautious of breaking immersion and of being of high taste. But that is because the concept is new and the market is fragile. If advertisers break the trust of the gamer and developer now they will fail forever.

I worry that in 5 years once ads in games becomes the norm that we will be bombarded with as many ads as websites now. Many of them distasteful, overly obnoxious, and killing performance of the game. What then? You can't exactly roll back the clock and say ok, lets go back to having 0 ads.

Stand up for your games today, have zero tolerance for ads!

Ads are infiltrating every piece of our lives and at what cost? Well america has become the ultimate consumer pig of the world, consuming 3x more then our european neighbours and 10x more then other parts of the world. Don't even get me started on obesity in america. If you think it has nothing to do with ads then keep on being ignorant.

Your witnessing the beginning of the end of the games industry as we now know it. The incentives that massive inc. will provide means that every in game goal, checkpoint, mission objective, and target will have an ad on or near it. There will be incentive to create overly massive areas where the player has to slog it past hundreds of ads. It wont stop there. Once the ad companies figure out that the computer can report to them where the player is "looking" they will want accurate reporting of how long the ad was on screen and whether or not the player paused to look at it. Then there will be the studies that show crazed flashed based ads with more flashy-ness get more attention and then you'll have in-game ads that look like a schizo-TV-on-meth strobe light on every available surface of the game...

Yea, Massive Inc is going to be GREAT for gamers!

Don't get me wrong, I can understand a lot of the arguments that people are posting about how this could, potentially, ruin gaming I don't have a problem with it in moderation. Thing is, I'm sure there were movie buffs upset when movies started prominently featuring ads, but it hasn't ruined the art form. Sure there are films that are little more than glorified commercials, but it isn't in every movie and it won't be in every game.
Fact is, game development costs are expected to rise dramatically with the next-gen. Frankly, I don't mind if I'm playing a game in modern times and see modern ads. In a FPS for example, I think seeing the can of soda sitting in <insert generic base/lab/spaceship here> being a can of Coca-Cola instead of "Soda!" I think that would add to the realism. Just putting in my two cents...

I had the idea to do this before in Half-Life 2 through the use of the Decal system and a server-side dll. Never got around to doing it. I could have been richsued by Valve and lost my shirt.

Whew... thankfully I'm 35 now so the ads won't appear in my games?

Right?

What a bunch of pr bull, the second i see a game trying to long onto ads.massive.com or whatever i'll make sure to block it out. Whats the worst that can happen, red X's when playing a game?

Yeah, i dont care, i saw the ads in SC:PT and didn't care, i was till able to play the game just fine, as long as i can do that i'll be fine. At some point a publisher will go to far, and i wont buy that game, (and hopefully not many other people will either) but as long as the advertising stays similar to how it is now(Unobtrusive, out of the loading screens, but i'd be fine with moreads) i can't complain.

There was an article on gamedev.net recently about how certain genres are dying due to sequelitis (sequels are more profitable and less of a risk to the publisher). Well, I think this new element of 'ads in games' is going to bring the end of even more genres...genres that can't support ad content. Historical games that would make no sense to have ads displayed will be less profitable for publishers.

So your favourite genre will be saved from ads alright....saved by going into extinction.

It may be up to Indy developers to keep your favourite genre alive, like so many other dying and dead genres that aren't as massively marketable.

does anyone know of a LEgends Multiplayer server being up?

This never bothered me but after reading this crap, I can see it really ruining gaming. Seriously. If I'm playing splinter cell and they download some new bright ad fro Dunkin Donuts extra smooth latte and it just dosen't fit into the game. Sigh. This is annoying

The only good advertising in a game can only be found in one place. Nascar race games. Why? Because the cars themselves are driving ads and the walls are covered with them.

Leave the ads where they belong.

so we're still gonna get charged $50-$60 a game when the advertisers could be eating some of that....the consumer is still gonna get jammed?

bah. if they're gonna use real ads in game, those advertisers can eat a few bucks off the retail for the consumer..........imho.

I believe the most important issue is why haven't we seen any good in-game ad photoshops yet?

I know I'm going to be the minority here... but I guess I have four questions about this. Yeah? And? So? What? The game is still there, so what if a billboard is an actual billboard. It just doesn't phase me.

Puhleeze! Unobtrosive? You telling me that a dunkin donuts sign chilling next to Orgrimmar isn't unobtrosive?!

"Hops off of Undead horse to use the Auction house in Orgrimmar" ACK! IT'S A FUCKIN' NIKE SWOOSH ABOVE THE ZEPPLIN!

I wouldn't purchase a game with that technology in it IMO.

LISTEN HERE MASSIVE(SHITHEAD) AND PUBLISHERS.
I WILL NEVER EVER KNOWINGLY PAY FOR A GAME THAT COMES WITH SPYWARE/ADWARE IN IT. IF I'M EVER PLAYING THESE GAMES, I WILL MAKE EVERY ATTEMPT TO DISABLE THE SPYWARE/ADWARE "FEATURES".

Why? Who would want to pay a bunch of money to be spied on!!? Not to mention that I dispise advertising. There is no such thing as non intrusive product placement!

Anyone know what I need to block in my .hosts file or acl out in my router to not allow their crap to download those ads and steal my bandwidth?

tari, Codemasters, Eidos, Funcom, Legacy Interactive, Majesco, Take-2, Ubisoft, and Vivendi Universal, to name a few

What happens when the ad server becomes compromised and millions of clients become infected?

I await with rancid anticipation when I connect to a Q4 server and have zero-day malware installed on my machine...

What a load of crap.

I have no problems with game developers trying to pull in some extra cash, but the arguments here are bogus. While it's true that there is a certain (small) number of games whose user experience would benefit from the addition of advertising, the fact is that the "realism" that most users want is actually an idealized reality, which most often does not include obnoxious product placement. The people truly in the position to know what a game environment needs are the developers, but this new advertising scheme is going to be crammed down their throats by the publishers.

Frankly, when users complain that their FPS levels all look like dank, dark dungeons and tunnels populated with repetitive tiles, what they mean is that they would like more and varied environments. What they do NOT mean is that they would like to see those tunnels lined with enough billboards, posters, stickers, display screens, and flyers to make it feel like they're walking through Times Square or Akihabara.

For such a media saturated society we live in, this sure is getting a rise out of people. And for what? You look at advertisements everywhere else and tolerate them, why not in games as well?

So there's only one thing I want to know:

Who the Hell gets the extra money? The devs or the pubs?

If the devs don't see a considerable I will never buy a game that so much as hints at possibly having ads.

omg if you haven't checked out Massive's website, you need to ( http://www.massiveincorporated.com/)

Take a look at that flash video playing at the top showing examples of how 'unabtrusive' and naturally fitting these ads can be. BS!!!! All i see in this ads IS the advertisement.

Yay for PR people not directly answering a question:

Man: "Hey PR guy, where you going? To the bathroom?"
PR Guy: "Thanks to the power of Biped™, I can manuever in and around tables to head to a room where the soap is free and you can listen to wonderful elevator music that enhances your life."

Just once it'd be nice to read a real interview, and not marketing fluff.

Why is the guy feeling like he needs to make it sound like a super cool new feature of the century , and something good for gamers?... Say the plain truth man, it's a new way for the devs to finance themselves, it adds fuck all the realism and gameplay. Not that it's something wrong, that's just the way it is..

elusive age 18-34 market

Paraphrasing Jon Stewart from last night. "Is there anything but the Hallmark Channel that DOESN'T target that age demographic?"

In other news, it's good to see that people are finally realizing that games aren't (just) for kids.

Wow, until now I was on the fence about whether or not I thought this was a horrible thing or not. Now, thanks to the wonder of PR2000, it seems like a completely terrible idea that will have a negative impact on creative game design.

So what happens if you're playing a single player game, not connected to the internet and this thing is trying to connect to download ads?

cant you extrapolate a little and imagine for a second that they would opt to modify the game in order to suit the advertisers?

im pretty sure thats whats going to happen

I hereby swear to never purchase products or services advertised in video games.

"ultimately more gameplay time per title"

???

Thanks for the interview shack! Good to see more content like this.

I'm really torn on the issue, could be good, but could be really really, really really really, really bad. It's on it's way so time will tell.

"ultimately more gameplay time per title"

Oh FFS, spare me. These the same type of publishers who claim that they could drop the prices of games if piracy wasn't such an issue? They'll grab as much as they can and run with it while the customer can go fuck themselves.

I prefer Roddenberry's future to Massive inc.'s