What About "Ad Placement" in A homebrew to defrey costs?

[wiseguyusa]

What is a sponsor paid to have an ad somewhere in the game or attract mode.

 

"Eat @ Joe's - www.JoesRestaurant.com"

 

??

 

 

[jaybird3rd]

I doubt that any advertiser would actually pay money for that kind of product placement, given the extremely small size of the audience. Even if they did, I doubt that gamers would respond well to it. In-game ads are one of the many annoyances of modern games, and speaking only for myself, one of the reasons I still play the classics in the first place is to get away from all that.

[AtariLeaf]

Didn't Pole Position have in game ads? I wonder what the first game was to have in game ads

[+McCallister]

Tapper has the giant Mountain Dew sign on the bonus screen, which I always thought added to the game. That would probably be the exception, though, as far as advertisements go.

[+nanochess]

I saw the Mountain Dew sign in Tapper, but here at Mexico it wasn't distributed so for many time I thought it was a kind of invention for the game

[dubxcube]

I suppose the advertiser would have to review how much exposure he would get off the ad. Homebrew runs are generally in the 50-100 count range, from what I've seen on here. (Not counting BoulderDash and Princess Rescue)

 

I just don't see much exposure coming from a home-made atari game sold to a relatively small (albeit active) group of enthusiasts.

 

And I do agree with what jaybird3rd said about as inclusion in modern games. That being said, I think seeing a couple "modern-retro" billboards in the background of, say, JumpVCS, would not affect immersion. (Brands like Dunkin Donuts, Little Debbie, or existing retro sodas like Bubble Up, Faygo, or Moxie... I bet Jones Soda in Seattle would think it a cool idea to have their logo in an atari game... They seem to thrive on that kind of kitsch)

[raindog]

Mountain Dew was the intermission screen in Tapper? I thought it was Budweiser... they even played the Bud jingle.

 

I think that the first company to sponsor a successful homebrew might get some minor press out of it despite the small audience, but only if the game itself was interesting enough to get the likes of IGN/Kotaku/etc. to cover it, which is unlikely unless it were a port or demake of a much-loved game, which brings licensing issues into the picture.

 

It's not unprecedented in old games; besides Pole Position, in that same period there was Chase the Chuckwagon, Kool-Aid Man, Mr. Boston on the Vectrex, etc., and of course Tapper. But today it's less a novelty and more an annoyance, and the coverage would probably reflect that if it got any coverage at all.

 

On the other hand, a demake of a game with product placement that included that product placement would be hilarious (and also probably C&D bait).

 

Edit: unless it's product placement for a dead company, like the South Park producers did to Braniff.

Edited January 14, 2014 by raindog

[Nukey Shay]

Arcade Tapper...originally Budweiser, later conversion to root beer. Can't recall if there was a specific brand there.

Home versions of Tapper...root beer on the ColecoVision. Mt.Dew on most (all?) other home platform versions.

[+Gemintronic]

I dunno if any companies today would bother their lawyers enough to work out a deal to have their brand on an Atari 2600.

 

I'd think local. Maybe a mom 'n pop video game store that would be interested in a game with their name on it. Maybe some college clubs you could offer custom games for sale to with their logo.

[RetroFiends]

I may be in the minority here, but I absolutely LOVE product placement in video games. Almost breaks the fourth wall, but not quite. I like when soda machines pop out DELICIOUS "MOUNTAIN DEW" rather than generic "Citrus Drink". Billboards in games are obviously a great way to do this, but it's probably best to mix real and invented products/brands so it's not so forced. Sometimes forced is good, such as the PSX game "Pepsi Man" or the Cool Spot games.
That said, I don't think this does anyone any favors in homebrew games. If you want to have someone pay to develop a game, then commissioning it is probably a better option. But as you personally experienced, getting someone interested in a 2600 homebrew commission isn't so easy.

[raindog]

In some cases (and for me, Tapper is one, in its original form -- I can't stand beer, but you can't exactly make a game about pulling taps and have Maker's Mark be the brand) I'd agree the increased immersion is good, and when the brands are subsequently removed because the marketing arrangement only went so far (Tapper, Crazy Taxi, etc.) it takes something away. But when you're going for comedy, I think an over-the-top fake brand name (e.g. the brands in Ratchet and Clank, GTA, etc.) or no brand or description at all (best exemplified by "FOOD" and "BEER" in Repo Man) is better.

 

In a 2600 game, the branding might be applied to the name, label and maybe title or intermission screens, but it seems unlikely to work as well in gameplay as it does in Crazy Taxi or the arcade version of Tapper.

 

In a way I wish it were easy to do this sort of thing, in which case I might be able to hope to someday have a double-ended cartridge entitled "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell".

[RetroFiends]

Hey man, you can always make your own Pizza Hut and Taco Bell cartridge
And yeah, it's definitely lame when brand names get removed in rereleases of games. Crazy Taxi just isn't the same without Pizza Hut, Tower Records and The Offspring music.

[raindog]

Hey man, you can always make your own Pizza Hut and Taco Bell cartridge

 

I don't know if the 2600 could do justice to the game's theme song, even with DPC.

 

 

Edit: what do you know, Atariage embeds Youtube links without asking now. How fun.

Edited January 16, 2014 by raindog

[RetroFiends]

You may need to offer a cassette tape with an infinite loop to be played at the same time for the soundtrack

[SeaGtGruff]

I could live with a product-placement type of ad if it was part of the game. But I hate free games that pop up random ads at the top of the screen, or in one of the corners, while you're playing the game, and then remind you that you can remove the ads by buying a registered copy of the game. "Hey everybody, download my new game and play it FOR FREE! Oh, and if you want to get rid of the pop-up ads that I keep shoving in your face at the most annoying times or screen locations, you can easily disable them by SENDING ME MONEY!" Bleah. Either release your game FOR FREE without any annoying ads, or CHARGE MONEY FOR IT in the first place. Many of these games are very reasonably-priced (a few bucks or so), but telling you the game is FREE and then threatening to keep shoving unwanted ads in your face unless you BUY the game smacks of extortion.

[RetroFiends]

I agree. Make the ad part of the experience, don't make the ad detract from it.

[tschak909]

There was a variation of Q*Bert that had Mello Yello as a sponsor, it would have cut scenes of Q*Bert floating on a disc, to slurp up the Slurm with his snout

 

-Thom

[Greg2600]

Weren't ads part of the Gizmondo? Terrible.

[raindog]

When I saw the email in my inbox telling me there was a new post, something about the subject line finally clicked.

 

What "costs" do you need to defray when writing a homebrew game, exactly? All the tools are free. I never tested on real hardware back in the day because there was no such thing as a Harmony or even a Cuttle Cart, so that's not really necessary. And if your time is a cost that needs defraying, why aren't you doing Android or iOS games where you might actually have a chance at selling enough copies to cover your development time at minimum wage?

 

Android and iOS games have business models. Anyone who writes Atari 2600 homebrew games as a source of income is frakking high. If you're not doing this because you love the challenge, you should just stop.

[Zwackery]

Didn't Pole Position have in game ads? I wonder what the first game was to have in game ads

 

Very first game: Adventureland (1978) had an ad for Scott Adams's next game; James Pond 2: RoboCod (1991) was the first video game to have a video ad (not a static image ad). If you want to include advergames – custom-developed titles officially licensed and built from the ground up to promote a product or service (so something like Chase the Chuck Wagon or Kool-Aid Man) - then likely something even before Adventureland...I'd have to poke around a bit.

[wiseguyusa]

 

I'd think local. Maybe a mom 'n pop video game store that would be interested in a game with their name on it. Maybe some college clubs you could offer custom games for sale to with their logo.

That was what I was thinking, and I think a URL, for instance, would be minimally intrusive and would get a high percentage of "clicks" even if it were just one time out of curiosity. Maybe an 1980's themed online store or the like.

[+D Train]

That was what I was thinking, and I think a URL, for instance, would be minimally intrusive and would get a high percentage of "clicks" even if it were just one time out of curiosity. Maybe an 1980's themed online store or the like.

 

The problem is that there just aren't that many people looking at the ads to rationalize the sale. A rule of thumb used to be $40/CPM (thousand people viewing ad). If a game sells millions of copies and there's a multiplier involved, selling ad space makes sense. But if a game reaches less than 1,000 people not only would potential ad revenue be *extremely* limited (less than $50), but there's no incentive to advertise to such a small audience.

[grownup]

I dont think its a good idea. 20 years from now, someone will plug the game into their Atari, and like Youtube ads, it will come up first and just be annoying, especially since the website probably wont even exist anymore. It will be like those obsolete ads in the back of old magazines, with companies that arent even around anymore, selling computer stuff thats not even available anymore.

[+LS650]

This thread made me think of this game for some reason...

[raindog]

I dont think its a good idea. 20 years from now, someone will plug the game into their Atari, and like Youtube ads, it will come up first and just be annoying, especially since the website probably wont even exist anymore. It will be like those obsolete ads in the back of old magazines, with companies that arent even around anymore, selling computer stuff thats not even available anymore.

 

Personally, I love the ads in old (really old) magazines. They provide a frozen glimpse into the way advertisers wanted us to think life was 30 years ago. I also love the Bud ad in ppTapper, the existence of the Mr. Boston version of Clean Sweep for the Vectrex, the Namco ads in Pole Position, etc. They were ineffective in that I wasn't going to be buying alcohol at age 13 and I was already playing a Namco game, but 30 years removed they entertain me. (I don't know about '90s games because I was gaming on the Amiga and PC, and didn't play the kinds of games in the '90s (mostly sports games) that featured ad placement. I guess there must have been ads in some of the Mario Kart iterations I played in the '00s, but I don't remember those either.)

 

I just think that it's unnecessary to subsidize one's homebrew development because there are no costs but time -- if you're unwilling to dedicate your free time to a homebrew out of passion, it's probably not going to be very good -- and I don't think ad placement really works out for games with orders of magnitude more distribution than Atari 2600 homebrews have, much less the few dozen to a hundred that a successful homebrew will sell.

 

Someone looking to put ads in a game should be developing for Android and/or iOS. And not ads as in "sign up for an ad network", because those won't stand the test of time and their ocean is already so red that you probably won't make any money at it. Get someone to sponsor your game and put their logo and link directly in it so that ad blockers won't hide it and 20 years hence, someone like us will be digging up the game and saying "OMG, isn't this silly?"