Comments on: Battlefield: Heroes

By: gordon weedman

gordon weedman — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:05:23 +0000

for christs sake! you guys are all whining about how its a total rip off from TF2! would you please stop thinking as a bunch of TF2 fanboys?? also, if you read some articles about it on various sites, you’lle see that TF2 was a encouragement, seeing it was a huuge succes, as they were not sure if Battlefield Heroes was gonna be a succes. also, the game is totally free. so a liiittllle bit of advertising and micromanagement cant hurt right? they need to make SOME money out of it or they’re going bankrupt!

By: shi

shi — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:46:58 +0000

here is a game i made that contains advertising. it also contains art.

http:// romzom.wetgenes.com

the proceeds, such as they are from the advertising, are used to promote : the game. how evil am i. oh me, oh my. i should kill myself.

maybe if you gave your art away for free, rather than charging for it, you might consider advertising in a different light.

but no, real artists sell their art, don’t they?

By: PacManiac

PacManiac — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:31:01 +0000

Some people can bear watching films on TV with ad breaks, some can not. Some can even bear breaks of half an hour of news thrown in the middle of it.

Others buy it instead.

I think films are a good example of how this could turn out.. Creating films, like games, is a big process and also hopefully a labour of love. I bet the creators don’t want people to watch the ads inbetween however, but that’s up to the viewer.

I guess that is what publishers are starting to realize, many people don’t mind and that’s why they try this new route. It would imho be a better idea to release games such as BF:Heroes as a retail version as well for us purists. I can’t see why that won’t happen at some point. This is treated as an experiment by EA and for that reason an alternative option is unlikely.

And I agree with Paolo, Valve stole more from Pixar than EA did from Valve. And Pixar stole from 60’s Disney who in turn I bet stole from someone else, or should I say ‘was inspired by’ (no sarcasm intended).

As long as the ads are not totally in your face I think it’s ok. As a gamer I would prefer a pure version, and if I was a game creator I wouldn’t like it a bit.

By: Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:26:52 +0000

I am hoping not. So far it is listed as “recommended”.

It’s totally stupid, because you don’t need to advertise Xbox Live Arcade to a player WHO WAS JUST IN XBOX LIVE ARCADE TO LAUNCH YOUR GAME. All it does is slow down launching and ruin the atmosphere of the game (and annoy the player).

By: monoRAIL

monoRAIL — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:34:18 +0000

Jonathan – is Braid going to be required to put the Xbox Live Arcade splash screen advertisment at the start? I’ve noticed that’s on all recent XBLA releases.

By: Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:07:18 +0000

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/01/31/david-lynchs-thoughts-on-product-placement/

By: Paolo

Paolo — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:13:09 +0000

If ads were integrated into a game poorly and not like the Bladerunner example then I’m dead against it. I’m just pointing out that there actually are Jonathan Blows in the advertising world too. 🙂

By the way, you might find this a good read:
Sony, Activision Skeptical Of In-Game Ad Potential
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17165

By: monoRAIL

monoRAIL — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:51:14 +0000

BF Heroes screenshot:

http://i32.tinypic.com/288zdhf.jpg

By: Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:55:55 +0000

Paolo: As you are probably aware, games take a lot of effort to create. They are so big and complicated, that for anything that isn’t a tiny flash game, they will always fall short of the author’s vision — there’s only so much that it is humanly possible for the creators to do.

Now imagine one of these games is being funded by ads inside the game. The author has worked very hard to create an immersive world filled with feelings / themes that he cares about. Now he has to integrate those ads into the world in such a way that they do not disrupt the experience he is creating. That is a **very hard** game design problem. It takes a lot of time and energy to do. And therefore, that is time and energy that is not being spent making the actual game better. It’s just being spent to make it not-worse due to the presence of ads. Since every game sucks up all of the author’s effort, then by definition, the game will be significantly worse in the end than if it had no ads.

And this is for the case where the ads are pre-selected and baked into the game (as in the Blade Runner example). But that’s not the way advertising in games is going. Rather, it is using models like Massive’s architecture where ads are rotated into the game and are frequently changed after launch. This means the ads cannot be vetted properly and cannot be integrated into the game in a non-damaging way. They will by definition be disruptive.

By: Al King

Al King — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:47:26 +0000

Ah, Wikipedia tells me the ads were added to the original Counter Strike, not its sequel/update. Nevertheless, De Dust doesn’t strike me as the sort of location you’d expect to be advertising central. Particularly not ads for Intel Core 2 Extreme.

http://blog.mcdportal.com/images/cs_2.jpg