Force-Fed Advertising

[NovaXpress]

nobody bitches at movie theatres for showing full blown ads, even though you pay admission and inflated conscession prices

I do! I boycott theatres that play commercials. And pretty much everyone I know hates them as well.

 

As far as these inserted adverts go, I don't like the idea of anybody knowing how and when I play my games. Notice that the real point of the article was the development of tracking software by companies like Activision which reports on what you're doing. This is flat-out spyware. Hopefully the first games which use this will suffer the failure they deserve.

[raindog]

This business model does sound very much like some of the failed dot bomb era ones, and I hope it does fail.

 

I have to agree with Nova that most people I know don't like commercials before movies. Personally, I use that time to go buy popcorn or whatever, but it has definitely reduced the number of movies I see in the theater to maybe 2 a year. I have only bought one DVD with the "forced commercials" on it, and I ripped it and burned a VCD of it to watch instead because we rarely watch a DVD straight through in one sitting (ADHD...) and after the second or third time it was pretty annoying.

 

Even the FBI warning things are annoying enough that our standard procedure is to insert the DVD, get our drinks, then sit down and turn the stereo and TV on by which time it's at the main menu. I swear sometimes it's less of a hassle to download pirated copies of movies than to watch the real thing.

[Clock]

I don't see the problem.

 

EA advertise Tiger woods on bill boards in Burnout 3.

 

UBI SOFT advertise just about every UBI game in the SplinterCell PT.

 

So what if they advertise an energy drink instead? As long as it does not interfere with the game then I am happy. We can always hope the extra money is spent on making better games.

[Dones]

I don't think companies will make better nor cheaper games with advertisement money. That money will probably end up in the pockets of persons higher in the chain. Then again who knows?

[Shannon]

Nothing they do can be as annoying as that f***ing " EA games, challenge everything" whispering crud.  That just freaks me out.

 

And I thought I was the only one annoyed by that. Same thing for the whispered "gamecube" in gamecube demo disks.

[Shannon]

Sounds like a good reason to get Xbox live!!!

 

New downloadable content!!!

 

Another soon to be released game "roller coaster tycoon 3" has advertising in it for ATI cards.

[Shannon]

Forgot to mention that I consider marketers to be one of the biggest bane of existance. What a bunch of morons.

 

Advertising has definetly gotten waaaay out of hand.

[maibock]

This is crazy!

 

Next thing you know, Konami will advertise 'Contra' and 'Jackal' in between periods of 'Blades of Steel' and tell us that all of our friends will want them!

 

[Blackjack]

nobody bitches at movie theatres for showing full blown ads, even though you pay admission and inflated conscession prices

 

there is also ads and messages on DVDs that wont allow you to Fast Foraward through or skip, and hacking your player or DVD to do so is against the DMCA

 

Actually, I complain all the time

 

I even make backups of my dvd movies without the menus and previews so I can just pop it in and start watching.

 

My main complaint here is that we are constantly bombarded with advertising from the moment we wake in the morning. I hate to see one more thing I enjoy being able to join in the assault.