Gearbox on In-game Advertising
At this time Gearbox has not actually made any specific commitments for any of their announced titles to advertisers. "We partnered with Double Fusion because we believe they approach this kind of thing with the right attitude and because we wanted to be in control of these kinds of decisions for some of our games." Pitchford explains.
It is also interesting to note that Double Fusion mostly has made deals with the publishers of games and not the developers. Gearbox Software is going about this differently as they Pitchford says to have more direct control over how potential brands are placed in their games. Below is an example of context sensitive placement as described by Pitchford.
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replySweet... So future Gearbox games are going to cost less, because they are now supported by advertising!
/sarcasm-
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Sure, I agree that they are a good company. The only problem I have is that if I spend 60$ for a game, I would like it to be free of spam and product placement.
The video game industry is still making a killing off of the current business model. In-game advertising is just someones greed trying to cash in even more then they already are.
If they were smart, they would use these advertising deals to lower the cost of the game to the consumer and in turn the consumer would buy more games.
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Steam doesn't fix the problem. Since you still need funding. What really needs fixing is the Royalty-Advance-Milestone-Publisher owned(or licensed from outside the industry) IP model. Long Live Radar Group!
Although I certainly like Steam and services like it can provide a nice additional revenue stream for a company that self-funds, works with Radar Group or has some other non-publisher source of funding, dev studios working in the traditional model aren't likely to make much money(if any) from Steam because of the advance system, from what I understand it is not really that uncommon for dev studios to get 0$ in royalties for their games.
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More than just a few have to actually turn some what of a profit, lest no money actually be made, no one would fund games anymore.
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They only need to turn a profit for the publisher. Doesn't mean that the dev studios see a dime:
http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2003/12/royalties_and_a.html
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Its a billion dollar industry. Dont let them fool you into thinking they are poor.
If there are some bad business deals with the publisher, then they need to figure that out internally. Besides that, if they want to make more money, they should be making better games.
How many million did halo3 rake in on opening day again?
The bad thing with in game advertising, is that once people accept it, its going to get abused to the fullest. I can see it now.... McDonallds, Coke, Pepsi, etc... all bidding to get ad space in the next Grand Theft Auto (or other high profile game of your choice), and they will all insist of paying double if you make their ad bigger and more in your face. Even email spam started out as a great idea to inform you of a cool product that you might be interested in.-
The problem isn't some bad deals with publishers. The problem is with the business model those deals are based on. It is not something that is easy to fix. Really you can divide dev studios in to two categories those very very very few that can self-fund and own their own IP(id, Epic, Valve and 3D Realms being among those few) and those that have to rely on the current extremely broken model and live from milestone paycheck to milestone paycheck.
That very same milestone model is also one of the things that gets in the way of your wish for better games. Since when a project is finished the dev studio typically will need to get some cash flow REALLY quick or go bankrupt. Meaning they can't be picky at all over what projects they sign. So they pretty much have to take any offer that any publisher as to give.
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If it's half empty.
Or one could look at it like Advertising is what allows them to deliver more and more detailed (read: expensive) content while keeping the cost to us the same.
Or one could start questioning the trend towards ever more detailed graphics and the costs associated with them, such as less risk taking and smaller games. DX1 would never have been that expansive if each level had to look as detailed as stuff from games today. /rambling -
No, games cost more to make and this will offset the price so they don't have to raise them.
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He is correct. The price of games has gone down in terms of real dollars. A $50 game in 1988 dollars would cost over $90 today if you account for inflation.
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