Jack Emmert to speak on free-to-play vs. pay-to-win

[JanessaVR]

I'd be more inclined to say the opposite - go for the big corporations.  Not only are they more recognizable for what you'd likely see "walking down the street," but they have deeper pockets, too.   

Having billboards showing ads for the latest movies and storefront signs (possibly with custom storefronts, if they want to pay for it) for fast food chains and such would certainly help the bottom line, and I'm all for that.  The more $ we throw at the devs, the longer the game will last and the more they can do for us.

I've said it before - mindless, knee-jerk anti-corporatism does no one any good.

[Arcana]

I think the "evil" of in-game advertising is partially related to the necessity of the ad revenue.  If the ad revenue is part of your business model, you are compelled to compromise between the integrity of the advertisement content and the potential revenue.  If the in-game advertising is a distinct optional feature that you are willing and able to walk away from, it opens the door to in-game advertising only during the happy happenstance when what the advertiser wants to add to the game is exactly the same thing the content developer wants to add to the game.

So if you want more realism in the automobile models in your game but are worried about intellectual property rights, then using in-game advertising to allow car manufacturers to in-game advertise by making in-game cars exactly like their product lines is a happy coincidence: it means the auto manufacturers get to product place and you don't have to use weird generic car-like-substances driving around the city to avoid getting sued.  Everybody wins.

Adding *voluntary* interactivity as some have mentioned in this thread would be entirely reasonable.  Click on a car door and you'd enter the car like a mission door and you'd be able to see the interior of the car, play with the dash, maybe watch a car commercial on the navigation console.  Purely voluntary, and completely separate from the rest of the game: no one needs to know its there except for the players that want it.

The most interesting aspect of this potentially is the case where the notion of the viral marketing campaign is turned upside down.  Imagine if instead of being asked to play an ARG in real life, they were asked to play one within the MMO.  So lets say McDonalds had an add campaign where if an MMO player visited every McDonalds within the MMO worldspace and punched some virtual ticket, they would get a coupon for a free Big Mac or something.  By encouraging corporate sponsors to treat the MMO virtual world as a real world and encourage interactivity within that world, whole marketing efforts could theoretically be happening all the time but only exposed to the players that cared about then and were willing to participate.  For all other players, it would not really be visible at all: it would be happening mostly behind closed (virtual) doors.  It would be like badge collecting, but for Frappuchinos and french fries instead of accolades.

[Arcana]

A stand needs to be made against the corporatism corrupting gaming - the community already lost its first home to it, so when we're building its new home, we're obviously going to be keeping it a corporatism-free space.

Mostly, my understanding is we lost the game to petty interpersonal politics, but we currently do not have the option of having successor MMOs written by robots.

[JaguarX]

I'd be more inclined to say the opposite - go for the big corporations.  Not only are they more recognizable for what you'd likely see "walking down the street," but they have deeper pockets, too.   

Having billboards showing ads for the latest movies and storefront signs (possibly with custom storefronts, if they want to pay for it) for fast food chains and such would certainly help the bottom line, and I'm all for that.  The more $ we throw at the devs, the longer the game will last and the more they can do for us.

I've said it before - mindless, knee-jerk anti-corporatism does no one any good.

truth.

And that is part of the reason I wasn't too keen on the anti-corporate aspect to begin with or "getting back" at corporations or certain corporation. Because when one pigeon hole themselves as anti-corporation yet go to corporations for cash, it can seem "odd".

- Always leave doors you might need later open. While there is a time to take a hard line stance, sometimes it's best to simply leave the option open, especially when starting up a business. Because there might come a time when those "evil" corporations might be needed. Such as in game ad for money. When taking an anti-corporate stance yet want to add corporate ad into the game that is supposed to be free of corporate influence, it can lead to odd crossroads. Like, are they really anti-corporate or only anti-corporate when it suit their needs and pro-corporate when it suit their needs.

Either way in the end especially in the business world one must do what they must do. And sometimes it's best to stay the middle ground until it's clear. Jump to one side too early, and may seem like back tracking when ya need the other side. But of course many here starting the business is new and those were emotional times and some may have said some things a bit in haste and chose anti-corporation stance too early. Me personally, I wont eat their lunch for it. It happens and most of probably been there at one point or another. But be prepared for quizzical looks and questions from people, maybe a few maybe a lot, that view in game ads as the same thing as laying in bed with corporations that is stated to be against.

[Segev]

I, personally - and to my (mostly first-hand) knowledge, the Phoenix Project (and MWM) as an organization - have never been "anti-corporate." I know there are sentiments that run the gamut out there, and there is a lot of concern about making sure we are not an "evil corporation," but it is definitely not a helpful position to assume that "evil" is an essential part of "corporation."

As has been said, we lost CoH to bad business decisions and (potentially) interpersonal politics at the highest level. These kinds of things could have cost us our game even if the organization that owned it had been totally non-profit and anti-corporate, itself. Politics happen. Now, there may well have been a profit motivated aspect, but to the best of our external examination (and here, I use "our" to encompass the whole Save CoH movement) can confirm, it looks like there has to have been either a gross miscalculation as to the profits that could have been made, or there must have been somebody who wanted it gone and used "only making us millions rather than tens of millions" as the "business" reason. This is why we got the bit about not fitting with their company direction (or whatever it was): the decision was made based on something the decision-makers wanted more than just profit.

MWM will never, unless its leadership changes drastically, be "anti-corporate." We will always (again, unless its leadership changes drastically) be "pro-community," however. While we are more than happy to do business with corporations (and even non-corporate businesses) - large and small - that will help us make a sustainable and profitable product, our primary purpose is to build and sustain this game for this community. We view any business partners we obtain as complicit in that effort, and if they prove to be detrimental to doing so, we will end that relationship. However, I firmly agree with those who've commented on how optionally interactive, product-placement and "real-world simulating" ads (e.g. billboards, storefronts) are beneficial to ALL involved: they improve the immersiveness of our game world; they provide our sponsors with a service they value enough to pay us; the right implementation can help us with my personal goal of getting ways for 100% free players to gain access to paid-only aspects of the game; any income that doesn't come directly from the players means less pressure to try to charge for things we might prefer not to; and the interactive nature of the optional aspects can increase the RL QoL of our players who find something they DO want. Heck, in a lot of ways, we'd be getting sponsors to pay us to produce more content for the game. And more content is always good, as long as it fits with the feel and theme of the game. (And obviously, we intend to be very dedicated to enforcing that.)

As for changing out store-fronts, that's something we would have to be able to do, of course. If McDonald's stops paying us for the storefronts in the game, we want to be able to let Wendy's move in if they're going to pay for the privilege. IT can be more involved, programmatically, than changing out a billboard or a flyer or a bus-side ad, but that's why packages that include real-estate in game will cost sponsors more to have in place. They also will increase immersiveness and provide better options for optional interactive content that the sponsor could have us put together, making it still worth it, of course.

[dwturducken]

OK, if this has been addressed, I apologize.

Stepping back from the issue of whether or not or who, what about why, form the advertiser's perspective. They are looking at "bang for buck." The huge events, like the major awards shows or the play-off and championship sports games, can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for ad time, often getting the newest and most creative ads, those becoming as much of an event as the show itself. (I, for one, only watch the Super Bowl for the food and ads)

Also, there's the question of regionalism. Everyone here, regardless of where in the world they live, can get to a McDonald's. Maybe you don't have 12 within easy driving distance, but there's one nearby. Everyone here sees Fords driving around. Maybe it's more Kas and Fiestas than Tauruses and Fusions/Mondeos, and the pickups may be a bit of a rarity, but the blue oval is at least recognizable. But, are those big companies even going to spend the money?

Facebook lives on ads, but an advertiser knows their ad has the potential to hit millions of eyes. Regional businesses, like grocery stores or smaller fast food chains, are less likely to take a chance in a game that may only have a dozen players in their market. Whether or not we believe that ads have a place in the game really ends up being a decision for the advertiser. Not that this would override the development team, but it certainly could make the whole debate moot when the advertisers don't see a medium with only a few thousand viewers/players as being worth the risk.

[Segev]

That is one reason we want to get the audience as large as possible.

You raise a very valid point about regional advertisers. This merits some thought; if there's a way to accommodate them, that could be very cool.

[LydiaFrost]

Perhaps some car manufactures could send you 3D models of their cars complete with engine sound to use in the game. It wouldnt hurt to ask, and it gives you more time for other 3D models.
Make the car targetable and have it display specs like Model, Speed  and Fuel consumption and an extended info with could be a complete flyer. They just have to live with it,m that villains may blow up Porsches for their Porsche Badge

I also liked the Idea of making the inside of the car accessible like a mission door. Let the companies do some of that work for you. let them add to your/our game.

The Time you safe for that models is a reward itself.

Lydia Frost MM

[JanessaVR]

I, personally - and to my (mostly first-hand) knowledge, the Phoenix Project (and MWM) as an organization - have never been "anti-corporate." I know there are sentiments that run the gamut out there, and there is a lot of concern about making sure we are not an "evil corporation," but it is definitely not a helpful position to assume that "evil" is an essential part of "corporation."

Um...my post at least was directed at GG, not you.  I'm in full support of your stance.  I had thought that was pretty clear.

[srmalloy]

You raise a very valid point about regional advertisers. This merits some thought; if there's a way to accommodate them, that could be very cool.

That one should be easy enough, at least from the player side; a player would have the option, in their account configuration, to enter their location (i.e., 'Los Angeles, CA', or 'Birmingham, AL', etc.); if they have a location on record, they would have the opt-in choice of allowing their account location information to be used for the purposes of adding region-specific ads to the selection of possible ads in various placements (billboards, the sides of buses, the back wall of bus stops, etc.).

A thought struck me as I was writing the paragraph above, remembering the way that the buses and trolleys here get redecorated each year before and during the SDCC, one of the other sources of advertising that it might be worth looking into, rather than huge corporationss like McDonald's or Nike, are conventions (i.e., a bus rolling down the street with a banner ad for the New York Comic-Con, GenCon, KatsuCon, or Dragon Con on the side) and other gaming companies (i.e., a billboard advertising The Secret World or EVE Online, or even non-MMOs like Angry Birds ).  Or, branching back to the more big-time commercial products, thematically-relevant movies (i.e., ads for 'Avengers XIV', 'Superman XXIX', or 'Dark Knight LXIV: This is the Last One, We Really Mean it This Time').

Perhaps some car manufactures could send you 3D models of their cars complete with engine sound to use in the game. It wouldnt hurt to ask, and it gives you more time for other 3D models. Make the car targetable and have it display specs like Model, Speed  and Fuel consumption and an extended info with could be a complete flyer. They just have to live with it,m that villains may blow up Porsches for their Porsche Badge

Rather than make all of that come up in-game, it should be possible to make an item clickable with an option to either put a link into the clipboard or spawn a handler for the link to open the link in a browser, so that someone could jump to the corporate website to see their full advertising presentation for the project -- which would give them a readily-measurable metric for the value they would be getting by counting the hits they got from the in-game links, and the advertiser gets to control what the full presentation looks like, instead of just what fits inside the game.

[JWBullfrog]

Rather than make all of that come up in-game, it should be possible to make an item clickable with an option to either put a link into the clipboard or spawn a handler for the link to open the link in a browser, so that someone could jump to the corporate website to see their full advertising presentation for the project -- which would give them a readily-measurable metric for the value they would be getting by counting the hits they got from the in-game links, and the advertiser gets to control what the full presentation looks like, instead of just what fits inside the game.

I see an issue of 'can it be done' vs. 'should it be done' from the programmer's point of view. As I understand it (considering that I never got the hang of programming in BASIC) writing the code for an MMO is hard enough to get right with just the in game issues to worry about. Adding on bits to interface with elements from outside the game cannot be easy.
 
In any case, I have no real problem with advertising as long as it is done well, discreetly, and(preferably) with an option to ignore it entirely.
 
As always, my opinion. Take it for what you will.

[Segev]

JanessaVR, I appreciate that and am sorry if I seemed to be arguing with you. I was responding to it to make sure there is no confusion; we have enough occasional mis-messaging due to just the sheer number of people and projects that making sure MWM's position (as I understand it) is clear is important to me. (It's a pathology of mine: I hate being misunderstood, even by accident. This leads me to sometimes (often) be pedantic and to over-explain. ^^; )

I see an issue of 'can it be done' vs. 'should it be done' from the programmer's point of view. As I understand it (considering that I never got the hang of programming in BASIC) writing the code for an MMO is hard enough to get right with just the in game issues to worry about. Adding on bits to interface with elements from outside the game cannot be easy.
 
In any case, I have no real problem with advertising as long as it is done well, discreetly, and(preferably) with an option to ignore it entirely.
 
As always, my opinion. Take it for what you will.

Fortunately, we already are planning for some out-of-engine interfacing. The chat client is meant to be accessible alone or from in-game. So some of those techniques should already be in our toolkit. That said, you're right about it being potentially challenging.


While it won't help with those who use proxies for privacy's sake (though how they're gaming on a connection with the lag issues that can induce is a question in and of itself), we can technically use IP addresses to locate people to at least within a zip code, I think. I know this is already done invisibly on a number of web sites to personalize them for regional things, such as choosing default display language and the like. Now, I could be wrong about this capability.

...though we also will already have billing addresses, which we could use to instantiate a little bit of regional awareness. On the privacy and security side, however, there are likely reasons to try to keep these two things as distinct as humanly possible, so using them thusly may also run into issues.


The real problem with it is storefronts. If there are events happening at a building, having team-mates in St. Louis want to go to the Dierberg's while those on Seasame Street want to go to Hooper's Store and have them both be in the same location could create confusion and, worse, break immersion.

Having regionals on billboards and flyers, though, could be feasible with minimal risk of immersion-breaking. A subtle way to tie it back together could be to link up the "regionals" of those who are on a team together so they have a larger list through which their regional ads rotate, but so all of them see the same ad in the same place.

[LydiaFrost]

[Arcana]

Another possibility occurred to me yesterday.  Rather than seeking out potential advertisers, I wonder if its practical for an MMO operating team to join a pre-existing affiliate program.  So suppose City of Titans or one of the other successor project games became (for example) an Amazon Affiliate.  That team could create its own advertisements in whatever way they wanted to in a way that would fit with the game environment.  They would then make referral income on any purchase a player made through those ads.

I'm not saying Amazon's corporate affiliate program is the best or even workable: I'm not an expert on such programs.  But there might be certain advantages to somehow joining an existing advertisement program rather than signing up individual advertisers directly: you have full control over what gets advertised and what doesn't, and you don't have to convince advertisers to pay for advertising they aren't sure will pay off for them.  The MMO takes all the risk (in terms of spending its own resources to create the ads) but keeps all of the control (they advertise what they want, how they want, when they want, and they can discontinue at any time).

Of course, the technical challenge is supporting the click-thru mechanisms that make this work in as non-intrusive a manner as possible.  Its potentially doable: allowing players to "acknowledge" an in-game advertisement in some way, but instead of breaking them out of the game the game sends them a "coupon" via email (or in-game mail) they can later use to finalize the click-thru and make (or not make) the purchase.  Ads become things you "collect" and then later use, and if you use the game gets a share of the revenue.

[Segev]

Oh, I like that idea. If we build our own metric-tracking system, it would also allow us to fill our unsold ad space and use the metrics generated from that to sell space to larger sponsors. It is not an either-or, but rather it's yet another way we could potentially boot strap into demonstrating the success of our model.

The "click to put a coupon in a tab of your inventory" concept is one I had thought of, as well, and one I really like, because it allows people to check it at their convenience while making getting to it part of the game. And if they don't care about it, they can ignore or flush it. This, too, is a helpful metric: who collects but doesn't use.

[srmalloy]

The "click to put a coupon in a tab of your inventory" concept is one I had thought of, as well, and one I really like, because it allows people to check it at their convenience while making getting to it part of the game. And if they don't care about it, they can ignore or flush it. This, too, is a helpful metric: who collects but doesn't use.

With the stated intention of having your characters be visible outside the game, this would appear to be a good solution; you go to the website where you can view your characters, and one of the information blocks on the page contains all of the ad-link cards that you saved during play, and you can visit the referenced link or delete them entirely. It's more elegant and less intrusive than either of the ad-link ideas I had.

[Segev]

It will need to intrude at least once, but hopefully that will be not too problematic. Basically at the first time you get one, you get a short tutorial (or at least a dialog asking you if you'd like to see one) explaining what they are, where to find them, and how to use them.