The Future of Gaming?

Ubisoft has released some its games for free but are supported with in-game advertising. Is this the future of gaming?

Maybe we can all say goodbye to the huge costs of licenses. For a cafe owner, this is good. Also, for the consumer this is also good news. GM Tristan has blogged about how brands are now seeing the values of marketing to gamers. We here at Queens think that cafes should also get involved.

Meanwhile, Tech In Demand has also posted an article about the pros and cons of releasing games for free with advertising.

The details next…

Pros of Ad Supported Games:

• Game publishers potentially receive more revenue and a wider audience as a result of the games being free.
• Possibly less stress on developers to hit set deadlines.
• Developing add-on content could be more affordable and accessible for developers in the long-term.
• Games will generate revenue for a longer period of time.
• Smaller game developers and publishers could benefit heavily from this.

Cons of Advertisements In Games:

• More focus on optimizing ads instead of game-play by developers, and as a result, less quality of game design.
• Gamers could (and some will) be turned off by advertisements in games.
• Certain genres of games would suffer eventually. (e.g., Grand Theft Auto would benefit, but Total War would suffer due to advertising not working well in a game like it)
• Exclusivity deals with game advertising agencies could harm smaller companies from possibly competing. (e.g., Google signing a deal to provide Google Adsense only to the top 100 ranking websites would damage many other websites that wish to use that service as well.)
• Advertisements could interfere with game-play.
• Publishers could (still) over-charge (I believe game publishers are currently over-charging) game prices.
• Developers could find malicious ways of spying on you and your documents on your computer to try and target advertisements at you (appealing to the advertising agencies and advertisers themselves); this would be a privacy concern for many people.

Via Tech in Demand