Reviving an old revenue stream

With Freedom hopefully bringing thousands, perhaps millions of new eyes into Paragon City, do we suppose that the real-world billboard adverts will make a comeback?

I read today how a web-based game has started using ad-viewing as its death penalty. What do you think of ads in loading screens, for free players only, of course.

If there are ads anywhere then being a VIP ought to allow you to opt out by default.

At this time we don't have any plans on reviving the in game billboards for real life products, although we had considered approaching In-N-Out for a lifetime burger deal....

Just kidding ...kinda

McDonald's made a deal with Maxis back in the early days of The Sims Online to add a McDonald's burger cart to the game. I don't know how well that actually worked for them as advertising but it shows they're not averse to trying such things.

To give a bit of insight,

We'd most certainly love to do this, however each of those Community billboards is placed by hand into the game world, thus requiring production time. As you may imagine, our production calendar is pretty full up at the moment, but we'll certainly take the sentiment into consideration for future builds.

Thanks!

- Z

To me real world advertisements should not have a place in a game. It breaks immersion to those that are immersion type players. Also some players play games to get away from real life.

They do not spend their day going to work, come home here the raido, watch tv, go online. Seeing all the ads connected to those things, then when they want a little escape from the real world, they play a game and bam more advertising.

More so if it like a free to play game that I played years ago called 9 Dragons, IIRC the top portion of the game screen is an add banner that changes constantly. I played during the year that Obama was elected. So it had ads that said vote for John McCain. Just think if you had that in this game even if it is on the free accounts.

So in clusionsion I would have to say no to the OP's idea.

The ads referred tO by the OP are billboard ads which are not intrusive in this game. They were actually okay - just as was mentioned, never got popular with the companies.

I would rather see billboards on buildings than load screens etc. Some of the ones I've seen are funny and most of my time is spent in instances so I am not bothered by them.

Anything that brings in enough money to hire a team to work on Base and other fixes would be good for me.

Why are you all grabbing torches and pitchforks...?

Instead of overt, possibly obnoxious advertising like billboards, why not a more passive product placement approach?

For example: You've got tons of generic storefronts in the game. So as not to cause any random architectural weirdness or complete redesigns of buildings to accommodate advertising, Paragon designates certain ones can be sold. McDonald's or Pizza Hut pays X number of dollars and McDonald's or Pizza Hut gets X number of building storefronts in the game turned into McDonald's or Pizza Hut outlets complete with signage, some simulated promotional window art for the latest and greatest menu items that could periodically be updated with new content issues, and maybe a static NPC in an appropriate uniform standing outside the store with a handing-out-fliers animation.

What about using the billboards to advertise player AE arcs? People already make banners advertising their arcs, so what if they were to submit them in specific sizes and have them chosen out to go on display for a month or so?