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Editorial On In-Game Advertising, or the Invasion of Your $60 Space

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I can accept advertisements in "free" products, but when I pay for a product, I expect to get the full product without advertisements and/or a DLC moneymaking scheme.

The real problem is the big game studios are spending way too much on developing game titles, and it's not like the ever-increasing budgets have yielded better games. This actually comes down to efficient resource management. These game projects usually employs way too many "creative people" and managers, resulting in conflicting visions and lots of time wasted. Creative people are usually very opinionated as well, so larger teams of them usually grow less efficient. It's not like a game really needs 50 or so artists, story writers, etc. etc. Surprisingly enough, most of these giant projects don't even spent a lot of resources on coding a fine tuned game engine, most of them use off-the-shelf game engines with light scripting, which usually don't result in the best gaming experience anyway.

One thing that is certainly much more annoying than a few advertisements or product placement is the ever growing DLC industry. As mentioned, when I pay >$40 for a title, I expect this to be the full product. Unfortunately, quite often it's just a minor part of the whole game. Quite often this actually stops me from buying a products, and I know many others do so too. When I grew up there were shareware vendors like Apogee, which gave customers 1/3 of the game for free, and unlocked the full game for a reasonable price. Today however, you pay >$40 for the "demo", and have to pay up to several times more to get the "full" game.

I know many developers/publishers think they can earn another 5% or so by adding loads of DLC to a game, but the truth is that this actually drives customers away, resulting in a net loss for the publisher.

I think the only way to fix the industry is competition; small independent developers should strive quality games and give them a run for their money. At this point, most of the AAA games are boring anyway, mostly rehashing of the same old product; Far Cry, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Halo, heck even Nintendo just re-releases the "same" 5 games.
 
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eidairaman1

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Those ingame adverts steal bandwidth and resources because they have to maintain a link to the advert.
 
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I can accept advertisements in "free" products, but when I pay for a product, I expect to get the full product without advertisements and/or a DLC moneymaking scheme.

The real problem is the big game studios are spending way too much on developing game titles, and it's not like the ever-increasing budgets have yielded better games. This actually comes down to efficient resource management. These game projects usually employs way too many "creative people" and managers, resulting in conflicting visions and lots of time wasted. Creative people are usually very opinionated as well, so larger teams of them usually grow less efficient. It's not like a game really needs 50 or so artists, story writers, etc. etc. Surprisingly enough, most of these giant projects don't even spent a lot of resources on coding a fine tuned game engine, most of them use off-the-shelf game engines with light scripting, which usually don't result in the best gaming experience anyway.

One thing that is certainly much more annoying than a few advertisements or product placement is the ever growing DLC industry. As mentioned, when I pay >$40 for a title, I expect this to be the full product. Unfortunately, quite often it's just a minor part of the whole game. Quite often this actually stops me from buying a products, and I know many others do so too. When I grew up there were shareware vendors like Apogee, which gave customers 1/3 of the game for free, and unlocked the full game for a reasonable price. Today however, you pay >$40 for the "demo", and have to pay up to several times more to get the "full" game.

I know many developers/publishers think they can earn another 5% or so by adding loads of DLC to a game, but the truth is that this actually drives customers away, resulting in a net loss for the publisher.

I think the only way to fix the industry is competition; small independent developers should strive quality games and give them a run for their money. At this point, most of the AAA games are boring anyway, mostly rehashing of the same old product; Far Cry, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Halo, heck even Nintendo just re-releases the "same" 5 games.
sometimes giant projects simply have lots of 'stuff', like grand theft auto, it would be terrible if the pedestrians never said anything, if your character repeated the same lines a lot (when crashing your car, etc), if it didnt have complete realistic radio stations with actual hosts, if it didnt have all the parody brands/ads in game

no i dont think every game should have its own engine, that would make a bigger mess of driver issues than we already have, it would waste time in development, but i also want to note that most big games are not really off the shelf (i think you're talking about big games, not indies), they still modify parts of the engine, there is a lot of mundane code that doesnt have to do with something obvious like rendering

i cannot blanket statement DLCs, i have to do it on a game by game basis

if they are cosmetic or a special weapon or something, they are micro, therefore the 'full' game isnt a 'demo'

if a $10 fancy expansion pack like borderlands offers several hours, but the 'full' game is still 5-10x+ larger/longer, then no the full game isnt a 'demo' again, ESPECIALLY if this expansion isnt directly part of the main story or if it comes out half a year later

you are free to buy the complete edition later or on sale, not sure why people keep ignoring this fact, what other industry other than movies or obsolete hardware lets you buy things later at great discounts?

yes i played doom shareware a lot
 
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