2.10 advert discussion, NOT a lawsuit thread.

[ProblemSolver]

@Dan Locke:
So I payed for WipEout HD, I got ads. What now? Old-school home videos are a
different thing. Putting ads into them wouldn't make much sense, since they
would become out-dated pretty soon. But when you have an internet connection
attached, things will be different. And looking at the Blu-Ray 2.0 standard, which
assumes that every player has an LAN port, the idea of interrupting home
videos with advertisement might become a reality, an annoying one.

[Dan Locke]

>So I payed for WipEout HD, I got ads. What now?

After the huge backlash from people who paid for the game and got ads anyway, Sony got rid of them. You should be proud of your victory.

Believe it or not, Sony doesn't actually exist for the sole purpose of screwing people over.

[ProblemSolver]

So you followed all the discussions against the ads? Good.
I wouldn't say victory, but somethings along these lines may fit.

Btw; I'm not against Sony, quite the contrary is true. Xbox sux.

[Lance]

You all may recall that Sony has twice tried these adverts and just because they stopped a second time does not mean that they will not try a third or a fourth or more.

[ProblemSolver]

I just thought about to write this as well. But I somehow think that Sony / SL 'are
done' with ads on WipEout HD. One thing is for sure, WipEout HD was kinda
acting as a guinea pig. We may probably see ads again in other games, games
that will be introduced having ads right from the start, which would be ok. But
the way it was done for WipEout HD was just (at best) terrible.

[Dan Locke]

You all may recall that Sony has twice tried these adverts and just because they stopped a second time does not mean that they will not try a third or a fourth or more.

So boycott the games. Get a 360 if you care that much.

[Lance]

Problem Solver, I abandoned faith in desired fantasies quite a long time ago; I still enjoy fantasies, but I don't expect them to happen, since they pretty much never do, at least not in a manner that I would consider perfect for my individual preferences.

I suspect that Sony chose Wipeout to experiment on precisely because Wipeout fans are so much fewer in numbers and financial consequence than the highly popular franchises. It is always non-ruling minorities who suffer from mistreatment of various kinds. At least that has always been my experience as someone who is always in several minorities at the same time. So Wipeout may continue to suffer various indignities and negative attention.

----

'Dan Locke', I already have a 360. I do not have a PS3.

[Koleax]

I fully expect the ads to return for the reason Lance stated and because there has been no public statement about backtracking on ads. Everyone had already assumed SL learned something from the State Farm debacle but that was not the case. When the ads return, there may be some public statement along the lines of, "we listened to our customers and the ads are back and better than ever." One of the complaints were that the ads were repetitive, so perhaps they are waiting until they have a lot of different ads to run at once.

Believe it.

[Dan Locke]

I'm very skeptical of your conclusions. Even if ads do become a permanent fixture in Wipeout HD (unlikely), why would they ever become widespread in the industry as a whole, especially in the form of actual commercial breaks? People wouldn't stand for it; there'd be an uproar.

People tolerate product placement in games because it doesn't interfere with the actual gameplay - in some games, it actually adds to the atmosphere. But the same guy who likes seeing the occasional billboard in his favorite skateboarding games would be pretty ticked-off if they actually interrupted his grinds and kickflips with commercials for the same products. As more games add it (again, highly unlikely), the number of ticked-off players grows, eventually reaching the point where you have a mob.

Nobody in the industry cares when a few soccer moms protest video game violence, because they aren't the people who buy games. If you have actual players raging about commercial breaks (and, believe me, they would), though, it's going to turn more than a few executive heads.

Oh, and regarding ProblemSolver's earlier comment that "nobody thought it would happen to TV": filmed commercials actually predate television (they were shown in cinemas before the main feature, just like they are today), and print ads predate filmed commercials (newspapers have had them since at least the 18th century). In reality, few people thought that it wouldn't happen.

[DrMannevond]

Nobody in the industry cares when a few soccer moms protest video game violence, because they aren't the people who buy games.

Technically I think they are. I believe the average gamer now is a thirty-something female. They're either buying it for their kids or for themselves.

And about commercial breaks in games, that is already happening to a certain degree in for instance Dragon Age. It's "cleverly" disguised as a random encounter when moving around the world-map, but you still have to sit through the loading screen, realize it's the same annoying in-game character pushing DLC, and then sit through even more loading going back to the map. So, basically, a forced break with only one purpose - selling something to you, the consumer.

[Dan Locke]

Re: soccer moms

They aren't Rockstar's target demographic; they weren't going to buy Rockstar's games anyway, and Rockstar knew that the people who did buy their games (20-something guys) liked the violence. Hence my point.

As far as Dragon Age: Origins goes, that's pretty much the OPPOSITE of an intrusive commercial break. You don't have to talk to the character, and you can pretty much ignore him for the entire game. I suppose that he could have been left out of the game entirely, but, considering that he was advertizing an expansion for the game itself, I think that BioWare had the right to stick him in. It's not like they were forcibly interrupting the game to shill for Pepsi or Reebok.

[DrMannevond]

They aren't Rockstar's target demographic

No, but I'm pretty sure they're a large part of the demographic for the Sims, Farmville and World of Warcraft.

As for Dragon Age, that's the problem - you can't ignore the guy! He's a random encounter on parts of the world map, which means you might bump into him at any time while moving between locations, forcing you to load the encounter (for the nth time), and then load the world map again, and then load your original destination. That gets old very fast, especially since they have a perfectly fine online store in the game that you can ignore.

But back on topic, as long as the ads in WO are gone I'm , and I would be even more if SL could somehow un-patch the whole ad-serving code.

[KGB]

Just seen a new advert for Percy Jackson and the lightning thief, You little tinkers Sony

[Koleax]

Who wants to say, "I told you so?"

Me.

[KGB]

Am I the only one who has had adverts today, thought this thread would be boiling over by now.

[yeldar2097]

Most of us boot the game without being signed in nowadays


...or it could be just me all on my lonesome, who knows

[Dark-Twisted]

I think it has something to do with my low New Zealand internet speed, but I have NEVER seen one of the adverts in WipEout. I always play it signed in.

Lucky me?

[AG-wolf]

yeah, after all this furor about the ads, myself included, I haven't seen a single one thus far any time I've been connected... I'm not complaining, mind you lol

[Constrictor]

No, no, no ads here - still Don't you dare, Sony!

btw, yeldar, you're not alone

[Aeroracer]

i played wipeout for the first time in a long time and i have been getting harry potter adverts which slow down my loading times.
I thought adverts were gone but obviously i was wrong.

so after all this time i can conclusivley say that sony/sl or both really dont give a hoot about their fans and if they can get away with it even if its imoral or perhaps illegal they will.its not like this has been a highly debated subject.no one has supported these adverts as a good thing.

putting adverts in a game thats already paid for is wrong and illegal in any ones eyes as much as buying a car and a year later when you wake up and go to drive it you find someone came around the night before and painted an advert on your bonnet.

whats really funny is these adverts i see are new ones .someone has updated the adverts yet the game still has faults fans have reported since the dawn of time.

so there ends my bitchy angry tantrum post.