Will rpgs have advertisements eventually?

Claudius · Post by **Claudius** » Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:00 pm

Either similar to pandora....

Or perhaps there will be a coca cola dispenser which shephard walks by. I guess we already have nuka cola haha! Khelgar will shave his beard off to become a monk with gillette shaving cream

vio · Post by **vio** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 1:19 am

I think most developers know better than to try it when it would threaten immersion, but it wouldn't surprise me to see it in RPGs with a modern setting, or possibly a futuristic one. I'm not sure, but I think there may be regulations about it like there are for product placements on TV though anyway

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 9:09 am

Claudius wrote: Or perhaps there will be a coca cola dispenser which shephard walks by. I guess we already have nuka cola haha! Khelgar will shave his beard off to become a monk with gillette shaving cream

Or to be more subtle, a wooden mug with the 'Coca-Cola' (or Pepsi or other fizzy drink brands) words engraved on it.

But I agree with vio that developers aren't that stupid to simply place ads in settings that doesn't make sense, especially the medieval or a renaissance setting. I've seen ads being used in racing games like Need for Speed and in certain MMOs and shooters, but not in RPGs as far as I know.

Ares2382 · Post by **Ares2382** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:13 am

DesR85 wrote:But I agree with vio that developers aren't that stupid.

You guys must not have heard of these 2 companies called Bioware and EA.... they made this little game called Dragon Age: Origins, and they actually put an NPC to advertise a DLC for their own game.

/end sarcasm

So yes, some developers are THAT stupid. Now I don't think they're going to do that again, after all the negative feedback they got on it, but I'm sure the powers that be over at EA will think of some other highly intrucive and totally immersion breaking way to put an advertisement in their fantasy games.

As for advertisement in a game with a more modern setting, it's already been done as well, granted the one game that I know is an MMO RPG, but it does it very unintrusevely and it's totally optional, where you can opt out if you don't want it. I'm talking about City of Heroes of course.

There might be other games, but I may not have noticed or may not have played them.

Lemmus · Post by **Lemmus** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 11:07 am

Depending on whether you consider MMOs to be RPGs, this has already been done. When Anarchy Online started in 2001 it had huge in-game ads for fictional commodities, which lent itself to the highly corporate futuristic setting. When the game went free to play in 2004, FunCom sold advertising space on these banners so free players had unlimited access to the game in exchange for watching ads in game (File:Anarchy Online Billboard.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

vio · Post by **vio** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 11:54 am

well there's a big difference between advertising additional content for the same game and advertising real life products which I think is what the original poster meant

besides, while the DLC adverts were annoying they didn't break the immersion as they were just quests for content not currently installed and activated. had they ran up and said "Warden! Ya gotta help me save my family name and get a castle (small print: you do not get the castle) just for the small cost of 560 BioWare points!" (shamelessly taken from my parody) then it would have broken the immersion in addition to just being a minor annoyance